[Mb-civic] FW: Amir Taheri: Where American Self Loathing Meets Arab Conspiracy Theories

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 11:47:59 -0500
Subject: Amir Taheri: Where American Self Loathing Meets Arab Conspiracy
Theories



Begin forwarded message:


> 
>  
>  
>  http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=3330
> <http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=3330>
>  
> Where American Self Loathing Meets Arab Conspiracy Theories
> 
> 06/01/2006
> 
> 
> Amir Taheri
> was born in Iran and educated in Tehran, London and Paris. Between 1980 and
> 1984 he was Middle East editor for the London Sunday Times. Taheri has been a
> contributor to the International Herald Tribune since 1980. He has also
> written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington
> Post. Taheri has published nine books some of which have been translated into
> 20 languages, and In 1988 Publishers'' Weekly in New York chose his study of
> Islamist terrorism, "Holy Terror", as one of The Best Books of The Year. He
> has been a columnist Asharq Alawsat since 1987
> 
> 
> The would-be ruler of an oil-rich Arab state is planning a policy reform that
> includes allowing girls to go to school, and signing an oil contract with
> China. But days before he takes over he is assassinated when a remote
> controlled bomb destroys his bullet-proof limousine in the middle of the
> desert.
> 
> But who would want such an enlightened prince out of the way?
> 
> The answer given in ³Syriana², the new Hollywood blockbuster starring George
> Clooney, is simple: the murder was planned and carried out by the CIA, the
> dirty-tricks arm of the United States of America.
> 
> But why would the US want an enlightened Arab leader murdered at a time that
> President George W Bush is publicly calling for such leaders to emerge in the
> Arab world?
> 
> Again, the answer provided by the scriptwriters is straightforward: the US
> government is controlled by Texas oil interests that cannot allow any Arab
> state to sign an oil contract with China.
> 
> I saw the film in a pre-release showing in New York last month and did not
> expect it to be already available throughout the Arab world in a pirated
> videocassette version. And, yet, in the past week or so I have received more
> than a dozen emails from Arab friends throughout the Middle East citing the
> film as, in the word of one of them, another ³sure proof² that the US will
> never tolerate democratic leaders in that neck of the wood.
> 
> According to an old saying one can never convince anyone who doesn¹t wish to
> be convinced. The makers of ³Syriana² are preaching to the converted if only
> because an extraordinarily large number of Arabs are comfortable in the
> certainty of their victimhood. Long before ³Syriana² hit the silver screen
> those Arabs were convinced that whatever misfortune has befallen them is due
> to some conspiracy by a perfidious Western power.
> 
> In North Africa where France ruled for more than a century every shortcoming,
> and every major crime, is blamed on the French. From Egypt to the Indian Ocean
> all was the fault of the British, until the Americans emerged as a more
> convincing protagonist in the fantasyland of conspiracy theories. (In Libya
> where Italy ruled for a while in the last century, even the fact that the
> telephones don¹t work in 2006 is blamed on the Italians.)
> 
> Would it change anything if one were to remind the conspiracy theorists that
> none of the high profile political murders in the Arab world over the past
> century had anything to do with the US or any other foreign power?
> 
> Let us start with Rafik Hariri, Lebanon¹s former prime minister, who was
> murdered last February. Was he killed by the CIA or, as Abdul-Halim Khaddam,
> Syria¹s former Vice President, now asserts by a criminal coterie in Damascus?
> 
> The list of Arab leaders murdered since 1900 is a long one. It includes six
> prime ministers, three kings, a ruling Imam, seven presidents of the republic,
> and dozens of ministers, parliamentarians and senior military officials. Every
> single one of them was killed either by Islamist militants (often from the
> Muslim Brotherhood) or by pan-Arab nationalists or by radical Arab security
> services.
> 
> That many Arabs should welcome the suggestion that their tragedies are due to
> evil doings by foreigners maybe understandable.
> 
> It is less so when so many Americans come together to make a film to portray
> their nation as evil incarnate.
> 
> ³Syriana² is not only about a single political murder. It also depicts the US
> as the power behind much of the terrorism coming from the Middle East. The
> film shows American oil companies as employers of Asian slave labour while the
> CIA is the key source of supply for bombs used by terrorists.
> 
> So, why would any self-respecting American want to write or direct or play in
> ³ Syriana²? If the US is as evil as they suggest should they not be ashamed of
> themselves? And if the oil companies control the US government, presumably
> including the Congress, should we conclude that Hollywood is the last bastion
> of American democracy?
> 
> One answer to why anyone might want to make such a film is, of course, the
> very American desire to make money. And as things stand today there is a large
> market for dissent in the United States. In a recent trip to the US I noticed
> that unless you took a dig at the Americans no one would even listen to you.
> In one session when I politely suggested that George W Bush might be a better
> choice than either Mullah Omar or Saddam Hussein I was nearly booed by my
> American interlocutors.
> 
> The truth is that there is a market for self-loathing in the US today and
> many, including the producers of ³ Syriana², are determined to cash in on it.
> 
> Here is how the incomparable Evelyn Waugh described the present American
> situation when the makers of ³ Syriana² were still nothing but glimmers in
> their daddies¹ eyes:
> 
> ³There is no more agreeable position than that of dissident from a stable
> democratic society.²
> 
> The reason is simple: in a stable democratic society in which you are
> protected by law you can lie, cheat, and mislead, all in the name of political
> dissent, and be rewarded with fame and fortune.
> 
> The fact that the CIA is little more than a costly leaking device used by
> rival groups within the US establishment to lump accusations and counter
> accusations at one other need not bother the makers of ³Syriana². The CIA
> masters, for their part, would be pleased with ³Syriana² if only because it
> claims that they can do anything at all!
> 
> The self-loathing party in the US would do well to ponder the second part of
> the above mentioned quotation from Waugh: ³ The more elaborate the society the
> more vulnerable it is to attack, and the more complete its collapse in case of
> defeat.²
> 
> The self-loathing party in the US, which includes a disturbingly large part of
> the elite, is doing three things.
> 
> First, it says that America, being the evil power it is, is a legitimate
> target for revenge attacks by Arab radicals and others.
> 
> Secondly, it tells the American people that all this talk about democracy is
> nonsense if only because major decisions are ultimately taken by a cabal of
> businessmen, and politicians and lawyers in their pay.
> 
> Lastly, and perhaps without realising it, the self-loathing Americans reduce
> the Arabs to the level of mere objects in their history. It is the almighty
> America that decides every single detail of Arab life with the Arabs as, at
> best, onlookers and, at worst, victims of American violence. The Arabs are
> even denied credit for their own terrorist acts as ³Syriana² shows that it is
> not they but the CIA that decides who kills whom and where.
> 
> Pretending to be sympathetic to the ³Arab victims of American Imperialism²,
> the film is, in fact, an example of ethno-centrism gone wild. Its message is:
> the Arabs are nothing, not even self-motivated terrorists, but mere puppets
> manipulated by us in the omnipotent US!
> 
> By suggesting that the US has stolen the Arab oil and decision-making process,
> the makers of ³Syriana² are, in fact, trying to rob the Arabs of something
> more important: their history. The amazing thing is that so many Arabs appear
> to be ready to help the thief.
> 
> Or, perhaps, it is not so amazing after all.
> 
> Adversaries in history often end up resembling each other. So it is, perhaps,
> not surprising that the Arabs are learning the art of self-loathing from the
> Americans while the Americans develop a taste for Arab-style conspiracy
> theories.
> 
>  
> 



------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060106/3aa9c779/attachment.htm