In 1954 a hesitant and chaotic revolutionary movement in Iran swept the young and inexperienced Shah from power. The United States sent in the CIA, which spent millions of dollars in bribes to pave the way for his return. The CIA congratulated itself on a job well done. The Americans were pleased with the return to power of a political ally. The Shah quickly built up a massive secret police force and bought billions of dollars worth of weapons to prevent such a thing from happening again. As the years went by it became clear that he was relying on the secret police and the American connection to maintain his throne rather than the support of his own people. The Iranian people became more and more opposed to the regime and its Americans backers. They turned to the Islamic clergy for leadership partly because they knew that this was one group that was definitely not controlled by the United States. The resulting revolution in Iran was a major disaster for American policy, and 22 years later friendly relations have still not been restored.
The United States does not seem to have learned anything from the debacle. For the last 20 years it has been a major supporter of an oligarchic Egyptian government. This is partly because Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, partly because it is a friend of the West, and partly for the general purpose of promoting peace and stability. That is all very fine, but this is another government that does little to promote the prosperity of its ordinary citizens. The majority of the people still live in poverty. Many Egyptians have now begun to blame the United States for their poverty and lack of economic opportunity.
American policy makers are very proud of their special relationship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We support the monarchy, and they sell us oil. That’s great, but anyone with the money can buy oil from Saudi Arabia, and the price is the same for everyone. Now the ordinary Saudi citizens have started to blame us for their lack of a political voice. Of the 19 airplane hijackers in the recent terrorist attack, 15 of them were from Saudi Arabia. What kind of special relationship is that?
The United States is not an Islamic Arab country in the middle of a revolutionary experience. Yet it seems to think that it knows what kind of government these countries should have. This is nonsense.
An example of the vast difference in thinking between Americans and Arabs is Saddam Hussein and the government of Iraq. In 1958 the revolutionary Baathist Party in Iraq assassinated an especially corrupt monarch and seized control of the government. A decade latter Saddam Hussein took power. He solidified his popularity by bringing electricity to the rural villages, and building up the military. He then launched an unsuccessful war against Iran to recover Arab territory that had been lost in previous centuries. He tried to recover from this failure by conquering the principality of Kuwait and making it part of Iraq.
The United States had no problem with his attack on Iran, which was its enemy, but his conquest of the friendly state of Kuwait was a different matter. The American government and media demonized Saddam as an evil dictator by publicizing everything bad that he had done while ignoring his efforts to improve the lives of the common people among his core constituency of Sunni Arabs. The Americans portrayed Saddam as a mad beast who was trying to conquer most of the world’s oil, and went to war to restore the independence of Kuwait.
The Arabic people saw things very differently. All of Saddam’s actions had been calculated to increase his popularity in the Arab world. Kuwait was generally disliked because it had provided a key opening to the British. Back in the 18th century when the English first tried to penetrate the Persian Gulf, they had run into universal hostility and were on the verge of being expelled from the region. Then, they made an alliance with the city-state of Kuwait. This gave the British an important base from which they could expand. The two allies prospered together. In the 1920s when the British Empire controlled the entire region, they greatly increased the size of Kuwait and gave it a large part of the Iraqi coast.
Most of today’s large nation-states achieved their present size by annexing smaller aristocratic and tribal states on their borders. Most Arabs saw no reason why Iraq should not do the same. They highly approved of the idea of Iraq becoming a rich and powerful country that could champion the Arab cause against Israel. When the Americans destroyed the Iraqi army and reversed its conquest, they saw it as just one more example of the United States trying to keep the Arabs weak and impotent.
This is an example of two different societies looking at the same historical event and seeing completely different things. The Americans saw a horrible, evil, war-crazed dictator who was a threat to his neighbors and the world. Many Arabs, who are his neighbors, saw a great champion of the Arabic cause. This problem of different interpretations is common in history, and it often causes trouble.
The United States likes to go stomping around the world, beating its chest, and loudly proclaiming: we destroyed communism; we are the only super power; we safeguard the world against the aggression of evil dictators. Many Arabs have come to believe that America controls the world. It allows them to blame the United States for their poverty, weakness, and corrupt oligarchic governments.
This is a false impression. The Arabic people have few economic and political opportunities because they are still in the early stage of oligarchic society. The United States has been interfering in the region, and it has been less helpful than it thinks, but it has not been deliberately holding them back. The United States does not understand the revolution that the entire world is engaged in, and it is essentially powerless to help the Arab people through their revolutionary transition. The modern revolution is something that every nation must accomplish primarily on its own.
Many people in the Middle East have become disgusted with their oligarchic governments. This is a common feature for countries in the middle of their revolutionary experience. Socialism, communism, and fascism were all developed in a desperate attempt to find some alternative to oligarchic society. Many Arab countries flirted with various kinds of socialism in the 1950s and 60s, but it was not able to provide a successful solution to the problem of how to organize a modern state.
In recent years many people in the Middle East have turned to Islamic fundamentalism for a solution. This is not as strange as it seems to most Westerners. Christian fundamentalism, in the form of the Protestant Reformation. was the beginning of the modern revolution in Europe. In the English Civil War of the 1640s, Puritan fundamentalists under Oliver Cromwell overthrew the aristocratic establishment, executed the king, and began the modern transformation in England. The Puritan government only lasted for about ten years. Religious fundamentalists are much better at leading a revolution than they are at governing a nation.
The American media delights in ridiculing Islamic fundamentalism as a step backward into the medieval world. In this country just 140 years ago, the people in the southern states saw the oligarchic society that was taking shape in the north. They wanted nothing to do with this new kind of society that featured capitalist industry and an exploited working class. They much preferred to keep their agrarian society even though it required slavery in order to maintain an educated elite. They seceded from the union and started the Civil War in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the modern progression of oligarchic society. Which is more medieval, Islamic fundamentalism or the institution of slavery?
It is true that Islamic fundamentalism and anti-American terrorism have developed together in the Middle East, but they are not cause and effect. Islamic fundamentalism is a reaction against oligarchic society. In Afghanistan it was a response to the extreme level of anarchy and lawlessness that has been endemic in the region. Anti-American, Arab terrorism is a reaction against U.S. support for Israel and American intervention in the revolutionary transformation of society in the Arab world. It is also influenced by the mistaken belief that the United States is responsible for the widespread poverty and lack of political opportunity. In reality these problems are a normal and natural part of every countries’ oligarchic experience. The terrorists are much more interested in politics than they are in religion, even though some of them use religion as a cover for their activities.
No comments:
Post a Comment