Fouad..
Fouad Ajami is quite dependable to play “Native Informer” for American audiences who will feel more assured that the Bush Doctrine is the right idea because, hey, that guy has an Arab-sounding name. His WSJ editorial evaluating the Iraq War is one of the more embarrassing kiss-ups to Bush and his imperial adventures I’ve ever seen. Like so many war supporters, Ajami had to jettison the “Saddam Will Kill Us All” justification and quickly pivot to democracy promotion. But since democracy promotion in the Arab world has been an inconsistent focus for the administration, you get embarassing quotes like this:
Mr. Bush made freedom in Arab-Islamic lands his cause. He rejected laments that Arabs do not possess a freedom gene, and that they are fated to tyranny. “The liberty we value is not ours alone,” he told this Nashville convention. “Freedom is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to all humanity.”
One could certainly debate whether Iraq is meaningfully freer today than five years ago, but to say that Bush has consistently supported democracy in the “arab-Islamic” world is just false. He has been downright subservient to Saudi Arabia, the most repressive and least democratic state in the country, and has been every cautious with promoting democracy for a another stalwart ally, Egypt. If one’s democracy agenda consists entirely of hectoring some countries to democratize while allowing your allies to maintain their autocracies, then it’s hard to say that Bush has “made freedom in Arab-Islamic lands his cause.”
Ajami continues his contortions to defend the war by putting aside all the evidence that Hussein had little to do with any terrorism that greatly threatened the US, and make one the more baffling claims I’ve seen from him:
But those looking for that smoking gun did not understand that the distinction between secular and religious terror in that Arab landscape was a distinction without a difference. The impulse that took America from Kabul to Baghdad was a correct one. Radical Arabs attacked America on 9/11, and a war of deterrence had to be waged against Arab radicalism.
Baghdad was the proper return address, as a notice was served on the purveyors of terror that a price would be paid by those who aid and abet it. It was Saddam Hussein’s choice — and fate — that he would not duck and stay out of harm’s way in the aftermath of 9/11. We have not fully repaired the ways of the radicals in the intervening years. But the spectacle of the dictator’s defeat, and the sight of him being sent to the gallows, have worked wonders on the temper of the Arab street.
Ajami couldn’t be more wrong. What, exactly, is “arab radicalism.” While all the 19 hijackers were indeed Arab, I’m pretty sure that they weren’t Maronite Christians or Iraqi Shiites, instead they were Sunni radicals. The term “Arab radicalism” is one of the more useless phrases I’ve ever seen a purported scholar throw around in the context of Islamic terrorism. That’s because it’s not a real scholarly term at all – for Ajami – it instead is a way to put the square peg of Saddam’s secular regime in the round hole of Islamic terrorism. Because even Ajami admits there was no real connection to the group that actually threatens US interests – Al Qaeda – he needed to concoct some “deeper” connection between terrorism and Iraq. Of course, if there was a “proper return address” for “arab radicalism” it was Riyadh, but Ajami doesn’t seem to be concerned with repressive states that breed terrorism as long as they are erstwhile American allies. The fact that this guy is considered a scholar never ceases to astound me.
PS – Another really unfortunate thing about Ajami’s “arab radicalism” is that it was a real phrase in the academic literature. For instance,Uriel Dann’s King Hussein and the Challenge of Arab Radicalism looks at King Hussein of Jordan’s challenge in dealing with the radical pan Arabism sweeping the Middle East when he came to power. Dann, unlike Ajami, is referring to a real phenomenon.
