[Dean's World] Dave Price: Ditches and Delusions

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dave Price:
Ditches and Delusions
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1172110430.shtml


   David Ignatius pens [1]this piece claiming America is "in the ditch in
   the Mideast," and it's hard to tell whether he's deliberately arguing
   from false premises or if he really, honestly is this naive.

     What's worse is that they're giving up on us -- on our ability to
     make good decisions, to solve problems, to play the role of honest
     broker.
     Let's start with some poll numbers presented at the Doha conference
     by Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor and a fellow
     of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, which
     co-sponsored the conference with the Qatari foreign ministry. The
     polling was done last year by Zogby International in six countries
     that are usually regarded as pro-American: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon,
     Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

   Where in the world does he get the notion those countries are
   "pro-American?" Is he even [2]vaguely familiar with Egyptian press and
   what they [3]say about America and the West (let alone [4]Israel), or
   the Saudi-funded "2+2 = death to America!" madrassas [5]all over the
   world? These are some of the most anti-American people on the globe,
   our pragmatic relations with their governments notwithstanding.
   Further, they don't care about "good decisions" or "honest brokering."
   They want Israel destroyed and Western influence curtailed, because
   they have been taught to think these are desirable. Like the
   Palestinians, they live steeped in vicious propaganda that serves the
   interest of the dictators and religious extremists who hold power in
   the region.

     The poll data show a deep suspicion of American motives: 65 percent
     of those surveyed said they didn't think democracy was a real U.S.
     objective in the Middle East.

   That merely shows the depth of their delusion, not the failure of
   American policy. Everyone saw the Iraqi and Afghani elections; it
   takes a massive propaganda effort by those who are threatened by
   democracy to turn this into something about oil, Israel, Islam...
   anything but [6]democracy and freedom.
   What really stands out in Zogby's list is that those countries
   generally have little or no free press. Thus, there is no public
   debate and the great mass of people can be easily misled by whomever
   controls the dissemination of information. To cast such malformed
   opinions as an indictment of American policy rather than of the lack
   of freedom that produced them is either simpleminded Amerocentrism
   that assumes every event is traceable to something we did, or
   deliberate mendacity. (North Korean defectors have long maintained
   most citizens of that country truly believe they live in the greatest
   country in the world while America is a terrible place, because they
   are told so every day; should we take those opinions as evidence that
   our policies have failed and we should emulate North Korean ways?)

     To get out of the ditch, America must change its Iraq policy, soon.
     But it does mean shifting the American focus -- so that we are
     talking with Iraq's neighbors

   To then use these misinformed opinions, deliberately fostered by those
   in power in the region, as an argument to increase the influence of
   the very leaders who are responsible for creating those opinions by
   bringing those leaders into negotiations is just tragicomic,
   especially considering that would mean involving them in a process of
   liberalization and democratization they have every reason to hinder
   rather than facilitate.

References

   1. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/02/in_the_middle_east_america_is.html
   2. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=1739#comments
   3. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24526_Egyptian_Two-Fer-_Racism_and_Misogyny_in_One_Cartoon#comments
   4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion#Egypt
   5. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/interviews/nasr.html
   6. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4450582.stm