It was a surprise, to say the least. I was almost through a September 8th Fouad Ajami column in The Wall Street Journal and found myself in agreement with it. And then it happened. What was a reasonable piece concluded - as the From 9/11 to the Arab Spring headline promised – by making dubious connections between the U.S. invasion of Iraq and this year's Arab Spring.
Ajami writes, "The spectacle of the Iraqi despot (Saddam Hussein) flushed out of his spider hole by American soldiers was a lesson to the Arabs as to the falseness and futility of radicalism." He continued, "America held the line in the aftermath of 9/11. It wasn’t brilliant at everything it attempted in Arab lands. But a chance was given the Arabs to come face to face, and truly for the first time, with the harvest of their own history."
This is dangerous, post-facto rationalization. It’s also a patronizing attempt to suggest that we Americans are the chosen ones, somehow destined in this context to give other peoples their “chance.” To the contrary, our choice to enter Iraq in 2003 continues to embitter the Arab Street. To act as if that decision somehow empowered if not mobilized people to rise up against dictators is dangerous revisionism. Qaddafi aside, most of these dictators were or are our “friends” anyway, and nobody knows that better than the Arab people. It is not clear what the Arab Spring will ultimately look like through the long lens of history. One thing is clear right now, however; it occurred in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia - and perhaps Syria - in spite of and not because of the Iraq War.
So what is said of people who jump off the deep in, for example, continuing to rationalize the Iraq War? They’re all wet! As next year's 10th anniversary of the war approaches, we'll need much greater scrutiny of these kind of claims if we are to separate fact from self-justifying fiction. We were faulted once for not connecting the dots. Claims like Ajami’s, however, connect them incorrectly.
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Ajami writes, "The spectacle of the Iraqi despot (Saddam Hussein) flushed out of his spider hole by American soldiers was a lesson to the Arabs as to the falseness and futility of radicalism." He continued, "America held the line in the aftermath of 9/11. It wasn’t brilliant at everything it attempted in Arab lands. But a chance was given the Arabs to come face to face, and truly for the first time, with the harvest of their own history."
This is dangerous, post-facto rationalization. It’s also a patronizing attempt to suggest that we Americans are the chosen ones, somehow destined in this context to give other peoples their “chance.” To the contrary, our choice to enter Iraq in 2003 continues to embitter the Arab Street. To act as if that decision somehow empowered if not mobilized people to rise up against dictators is dangerous revisionism. Qaddafi aside, most of these dictators were or are our “friends” anyway, and nobody knows that better than the Arab people. It is not clear what the Arab Spring will ultimately look like through the long lens of history. One thing is clear right now, however; it occurred in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia - and perhaps Syria - in spite of and not because of the Iraq War.
So what is said of people who jump off the deep in, for example, continuing to rationalize the Iraq War? They’re all wet! As next year's 10th anniversary of the war approaches, we'll need much greater scrutiny of these kind of claims if we are to separate fact from self-justifying fiction. We were faulted once for not connecting the dots. Claims like Ajami’s, however, connect them incorrectly.
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