SAN FRANCISCO — I heard then read President George Bush’s speech on the war on terror last Thursday while my wife and I enjoyed a wonderful two-day, two-night train journey across most of the United States, from Chicago to San Francisco. But I only fully grasped the meaning of Bush’s “global war on terror” when I arrived here and had a useful discussion with one of my sons on the fantasy football league that he and my other son in Beirut are deeply engaged in.

For readers who may not follow these things closely, fantasy football is a virtual world over the Internet in which individuals create their own teams by choosing real players from the existing rosters of the National Football League. Every week the performances of the real players are tallied to give the fantasy team a score, and the fantasy team with the highest score at the end of the season wins. The exciting week-to-week interaction between the actual and imagined worlds makes it hard to separate fantasy from realityŠ which brings me back to George Bush’s speech and policy on terrorism.

My conclusion after this rich week of travel and conversation is that sensible middle class Americans get on with the hard work of making a living in challenging times, while their federal government in Washington conducts a fantasy foreign policy based more on make-believe perceptions and imagined realities. The latest public opinion poll figures here bear this out, showing that about one-third of Americans approve of Bush’s handling of the Iraq war, while nearly two-thirds disapprove — a sharp reversal of the situation two years ago.

The long train ride through the American heartland was an opportunity to visually see the varied beauty of this land and the socio-economic variety of its inhabitants, and to engage a small sample of ordinary Americans about the problem of terrorism and how they relate to it in their everyday lives. The Americans I spoke to — a computer engineer from Denver, a train service employee from Chicago, a retired professor from Omaha, a seminary student from South Carolina, a young university engineering graduate from Alabama, among others — expressed lingering anger about 9/11 and concern about a future attack. They also seemed perplexed about two important points: why this terror threat remains so vivid, and why so many people around the world criticize the United States.

I sensed a great disconnect in America today between the sentiments and perceptions of ordinary citizens and the rhetoric and foreign policies of their federal government, articulated again last week by Bush’s cosmic speech about fighting the new global threat of Islamist jihadi terrorism. Bush and his ideological warhorses in Washington want to take this fight to the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere and keep fighting until freedom prevails everywhere. Ordinary Americans would settle for a more effective, productive policy that makes them feel safer at home and less opposed around the world. Bush’s speech at the National Endowment for Democracy last week reaffirmed to me that Washington’s policy to fight terrorism is a mishmash of faulty analysis, historical confusions, emotional anger, foreign policy frustrations, worldly ignorance, and political deception, all rolled into one. The fundamental flaw is that Bush confuses and conflates a range of separate issues that have very different causes and consequences. As a result, he formulates an ineffective or even counter-productive strategy on the basis of distorted analysis and a wrong reading of the symptoms and causes or terror.

He sees the Islamist jihadi movement of Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi as a global totalitarian threat in the same tradition as Communism and fascism, and sees all acts of terror, against American, Arab, European or Asian targets, as emanating from a single, common inspiration. This is nonsense taken to peculiarly Texan heights of intellectual contortion and confusion.

He completely ignores the impact of American, Israeli and other foreign policies on the mindsets of hundreds of millions of people in the Arab-Asian region, whose degraded political and economic environment eventually spawns the desperate and futile criminality of terrorism. This is willful political blindness that makes the analytical basis of American foreign policy a laughing stock around the world.

He correctly notes that more democratic, prosperous and free societies in the Arab-Asian region would spawn fewer terrorists, but he refuses to acknowledge that America’s war-making, military-based approach to promoting democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq is more feared than admired in our troubled region, and creates more resistance to, than embrace of, America’s rhetoric and policies.

He wildly exaggerates the capacity of Bin Laden-style jihadi terrorists to achieve their goals, which he correctly identifies as ejecting the U.S. and other foreign armies from the region, toppling Western-supported Arab regimes, and imposing their vision of Islamic rule. He also grossly misdiagnoses the relationship between the jihadi terrorists and regimes such as Syria and Iran, both of which have established records of political enmity and warfare against such Islamist movements.

Bush keeps making the same speech about fighting terror and promoting freedom around the world month after month, but with progressively less credibility with his own citizenry on every occasion. The cautious, sensible wisdom of ordinary Americans is challenging the emotional zealotry and reckless global militarism of the Bush foreign policy team. This is because Bush’s policies have proved less effective than the rousing rhetoric of his speeches, and after a while Americans prefer genuine security to perpetual warfare, and reality to fantasy.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 10 October 2005
Word Count: 914
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AMMAN, Jordan — The events of the past week sum up pretty well where we are and where we do not want to be in the Palestine-Israel situation:

* Israelis and Palestinians traded missile and rocket attacks;
* Israel rounded up nearly over 440 suspected Palestinian militants in the West Bank and killed nine others in the West Bank and Gaza;
* Hamas members and Palestinian Authority policemen fought street battles in Gaza, culminating in Monday’s incident where Palestinian policemen entered into the grounds of the parliament during a session and shot into the air to demand greater backing from the political establishment; and meanwhile,
* the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian president postponed their planned meeting this week.

This is about as bad as it could get in the short period since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip last month. The two key political dynamics that need to succeed — Palestinian-Israeli and Hamas-Fateh relations — have both quickly soured, reflecting the very serious problems that still define the overall situation. Low quality leadership is the major problem for Israelis and Palestinians alike, with neither Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Israel nor President Mahmoud Abbas in Palestine able to summon the courage or the national constituency needed to break through the constraints of the past and forge a truly new political path to peace-making and coexistence. Neither is able to go beyond the partial, provocative and unilateral tactics that prevail today, and lead his people into a grand but reasonable compromise that achieves the legitimate rights and secure peace that Israelis and Palestinians both deserve and need.

At this delicate moment of transition in the Gaza Strip, and perhaps all of Palestine and Israel, the biggest danger that looms is for both sides to revert to the failed old ways, and this is exactly what is happening now. The Israelis have marketed their unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a bold new initiative that could trigger a wider peace process; but this is a package of false goods because on all other key fronts in their conflict with the Palestinians, the Israelis continue to pursue the politics of colonization and subjugation. The predominant theme among Israeli politicians since the Gaza withdrawal has been the need to consolidate and expand Jewish settler-colonies in the West Bank, finish building the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank, and strengthen the judaization of all of Jerusalem.

The average Palestinian today faces dire prospects for a normal life anytime in the near future. Gaza remains surrounded and indirectly controlled by Israel, and the completion of the separation wall around Jerusalem will trigger massive disruption of life, travel, commerce, health care and education for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Jerusalem region and its West Bank hinterland. It will also enflame the sentiments of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims everywhere, as well as concerned Christians around the world who increasingly appreciate how the Israeli occupation-colonization policies are gradually promoting the emigration of Christians in the Jerusalem-Bethlehem area, to the point where the Christian presence there will soon comprise just a few thousand souls.

No wonder, therefore, that Hamas leads the military resistance against Israel, and continues to score well in local elections in Palestine. The only good news last week was that the Palestinians held the third of their four rounds of municipal elections, with Hamas winning 26 percent of the vote, compared to 54 percent by Fateh. The Abbas-led Palestinian Authority will continue to confront the opposition groups, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who feel that armed resistance to the Israeli occupation and colonization policy is the only route to liberation and statehood. That confrontation will take three forms: peaceful political elections at municipal and parliamentary levels, armed clashes here and there, and control of the streets and neighborhoods, including the provision of basic services such as health and education, jobs, and assistance to the needy.

Both the Palestinian leadership and the Israeli government can be faulted for this situation, which should have been anticipated and prevented. The Palestinian leadership should have made far more strenuous efforts than it did to engage all political factions and seize the moment to assert itself through dramatic political initiatives. These should have included a government of national unity, efficient control of the Rafah border crossing, a massive and immediate job-creation program with available global support, and a political initiative to move to final status talks with Israel based on the Saudi peace plan that has been twice approved by Arab summits. There is no reason other than sheer incompetence that the Abbas-led Palestinian government has found itself confronting Hamas with guns in the streets and being treated with contempt by the Israeli leadership, when it knew ten months ago that Israel was withdrawing from Gaza.

The Israelis for their part are equally at fault for withdrawing from Gaza with one hand, and with the other hand arresting and killing Palestinians and pushing ahead on more land confiscations and settlement expansions in the Jerusalem and West Bank regions. Israel pulled out of Gaza, but with its traditional militarism and colonialism policies it simultaneously pulled the political rug out from under Mahmoud Abbas.

Gaza is a small part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The potential impact of the Israeli withdrawal from that small piece of land will be rendered meaningless if all other Israeli policies towards the Palestinians simply perpetuate the expansionist, militaristic policies that got Israel into such an untenable mess in Gaza and South Lebanon that it unilaterally withdrew from them both in the end.

A dramatic change of pace and direction are required by Israelis and Palestinians alike if this potential turning point is to be actualized into a real moment of transformation in this bitter conflict. The moment demands decisive international engagement to help the parties move towards a political settlement, but that is looking equally elusive. The sad likelihood, given the realities of Israel continued occupation and colonization policies and the mediocre leaderships in Palestine and Israel, is that we should expect continued clashes and some large-scale violence for the near future.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 05 October 2005
Word Count: 1,020
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LONDON — After a week in Geneva and London and many discussions with European, American and Arab political activists, business people, politicians, diplomats and academics, I sense that the United States and the United Kingdom may be finally, slowly, moving towards catching up with the rest of the world on the issue of terrorism and how to deal with it.

Ever since September 11, 2001, the Western world as a whole has allowed the United States to define and lead the “global war on terrorism”; this process has proven to be only partially effective, and deeply flawed in both its analysis and results, as the quagmire of Iraq reminds us daily.

The most obvious sign of the failure of the American-led global anti-terror war is the pervasive, frequently expressed, and growing sense of vulnerability that defines much of the West, especially the U.S. and U.K. The certainty that something equivalent to or bigger than 9/11 is going to happen is matched by the almost total inability of the U.S. and U.K. political leaderships to comprehend the real nature, causes, and aims of the terror groups that target them, like Al-Qaeda. Consequently, the U.S. and U.K. counter-terrorism strategies are failing across the board. Fear and ignorance together are a deadly combination.

The main mistake in the Anglo-American terrorism threat analysis is that it sees Al-Qaeda and Co. as representing those in the world “who seek to destroy our way of life, for various reasons,” as one foreign policy official here said privately earlier this week. He went on to say that part of the anti-terrorism response is an effort “to persuade such people that they are wrong about our way of life.”

Such an analysis of Al-Qaeda and others who target the West and Arab societies alike is diversionary, fanciful and grossly incomplete. Opposition to some Western values (materialism, sexual liberties, fragmentation of family ties, etc.) is common in the world, but is not the cause of the terror threat today. The cause comprises a much more complex series of forces that include defensive resistance to foreign troops in Islamic lands, rebellion against indigenous autocrats in the Arab-Asian region, fighting back against cultural and social alienation, resisting predatory foreign policies by Israel and Western powers, yearning to create an authentic Islamic society, and a few others. All these issues are certainly debatable — but they are very, very far from wanting to destroy the Western way of life.

The bombings in London on July 7, caused the British and other Europeans to wake up to the real nature of this problem, and to explore more deeply the causes that might lead British-born and -raised citizens of Asian ancestry to become suicidal terrorists. Wider issues of emigration, religion, culture and identity are now being discussed more seriously.

The British government are somewhat more realistic than the Americans in assessing the problem and the threat, with one official noting that “we need to get a lot more sophisticated about how we deal with terrorism in the United Kingdom” perpetrated by citizens of this country. London does not use the Bush terminology of a “global war on terror”, preferring to speak about a “battle for the hearts and minds” of Islamists and others who might threaten the U.K.

But the British, like the Americans, still refuse to make that final step into a more complete analytical framework that explores the full cycle of forces that result in the transformation of middle class citizens in England, Saudi Arabia or Egypt into mass murderers of the innocent in foreign lands. They refuse to consider how their own foreign policies contribute to the cycle of discontent that ultimately becomes marginalization, humiliation and dehumanization in the mind of a middle class young man who finally decides to resist this cycle with a single act of what he sees as self-affirmation, redemption and resistance. It is more than merely interesting — I would suggest it is strategically relevant — that young British Muslims here are making the same kinds of analyses and saying the same kinds of things that many of us in the Middle East have said for several decades.

“Disillusionment, disenfranchisement and disadvantage have been evident among the Muslim community in England for many years,” one articulate Muslim woman editor said in a discussion here this week, echoing the same things we in the Middle East have been saying since the 1970s. People who are mistreated by their own societies, and attacked, colonized, and manipulated by foreign armies will not forever take their abuse passively. Terrorism is one form of reaction; it is perverse and criminal, but not surprising or unexpected, and it emerges today from European societies as much as from the Middle East and Asia.

Slowly, it seems, more and more thoughtful people in the West are asking deeper and more useful questions about the terror threat and how to solve it — including some among the ideological skinheads whose peculiar intellectual hooliganism still defines much foreign policy-making in the U.K. and U.S.

They are painstakingly moving towards a more comprehensive and accurate appreciation of the fact that religion, identity, socio-economic conditions, foreign policy, terrorism, and political governance systems are separate issues that impact on one another in subtle and changing ways, with the trigger for terrorism usually being a combination of humiliation and deep vulnerability in the face of foreign military and political power.

The last four years have been a costly learning experience, but if we learn from them we shall not have wasted the time or the lives lost in Middle Eastern and Western societies alike.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 03 October 2005
Word Count: 934
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GENEVA — I think I understand the subtleties, complexities and opportunities of our world just a little bit better this week, having participated here in Geneva in an international preparatory meeting for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) — to be held in Tunis in November — while speaking with a range of European colleagues and also reading two important articles in Foreign Affairs magazine related to the United States’ posture in the world.

The common thread is that the projection and prominence of American power in the world is one of the new realities that we are all still adjusting to and trying to manage in a constructive way. In some cases, the unfortunate among us simply try to get out of the way when the American Marines are ordered to march. In other cases, political activists and business people around the world work enthusiastically with their American counterparts on issues like promoting democracy and human rights, raising education standards or investing in high tech industries. Americans themselves are also learning about what they can and cannot do abroad; and in places like Iraq, they are quickly learning the limits of their massive military power.

The link between the World Summit on the Information Society and U.S. foreign policy is simply that information technology (IT), communications and software-based industries are fast becoming the new arena for global competition. Countries that master the business of IT-based productivity, entertainment and creativity will prosper and slowly dominate the global economy in the same way that the European colonial powers did 150 years ago and the United States did last century. The WSIS preparatory conference I attended here clearly showed a global concern with issues such as whether internet regulation will remain in the hands of American-based groups or become institutionalized in the United Nations system, and whether the IT sector will remain driven by private business profit motives or respond more deliberately to human development needs around the world.

Two noteworthy articles in the September/October 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs address important dimensions of American power abroad, and are worth reading and pondering. Associate Professor F. Gregory Gause III of the University of Vermont explores the question “Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?”, and Harvard University Professor and Academic Dean of the Kennedy School of Government Stephen M. Walt discusses “Taming American Power.”

These two authors raise important questions about the style and focus of American foreign policy. Gause analyses available data on terror incidence and regime types and concludes that “the data available do not show a strong relationship between democracy and an absence of or a reduction in terrorism閣here is no relationship between the incidence of terrorism in a given country and the degree of freedom enjoyed by its citizens.”

He also quotes numerous surveys and other evidence showing that Arabs favor democracy, but are cynical of American attempts to promote democracy in the Arab world (such as through the Iraq war). He concludes that American policy to push democratic reforms in the Arab world will probably result in Islamist-led governments that are critical of the United States, and “is unlikely to have much effect on anti-American terrorism emanating from there.”

A better approach, he suggests, would be for Washington to “focus on pushing Arab governments to make political space for liberal, secular, leftist, nationalist and other non-Islamist parties to set down roots and mobilize voters.” He also sees the U.S. focus on elections as the centerpiece of its democracy promotion strategy as “troubling”, along with the “unjustified confidence that Washington has in its ability to predict, and even direct, the course of politics in other countries,” noting that its “hubris should have been crushed in Iraq.”

Walt in his article takes this issue to a global level, saying that leaders around the world must grapple with how they respond to and deal with American power. He says “The United States will not and should not exit the world stage anytime soon. But it must make its dominant position acceptable to others — by using military force sparingly, by fostering greater cooperation with key allies, and, most important of all, by rebuilding its crumbling international image.”

He notes that even America’s allies often oppose and resist its dominance, and things have worsened since September 11, 2001, because American policies “have reinforced the belief that the United States does not abide by its own ideals.”

Walt suggests several appropriate new strategies, including the U.S. resuming its traditional role as an “offshore balancer” (ready to engage directly in areas of strategic importance rather than control or occupy them directly), and defending its international legitimacy. The most important recommendation in the article comes at the end, where Walt says: “U.S. foreign policy must reflect a greater appreciation of what U.S. power can and cannot accomplish. Possessing unmatched strength does not mean the United States can or should impose its values on others, no matter how selfless Americans think their motives are. Instead of telling the world what to do and how to live — a temptation that both neoconservative empire-builders and liberal internationalists find hard to resist — the United States must lead by example. Over time, other nations will see how Americans live and what they stand for, and the rest of the world will want those things too.”

How true, and how evident this is in every country in the world. American ideals and values are appreciated and usually coveted around the world, while American foreign policies often are scorned, laughed at, and actively resisted. Here is some very sensible advice from two knowledgeable American scholars who understand the world rather more thoroughly and accurately that most of the people who formulate American foreign policy these days.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ｩ2005 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 28 September 2005
Word Count: 957
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BEIRUT — The big question that challenges us all in the Middle East is this: how, in practical terms, does the Arab world make the transition from mild autocracies, benign monarchies and a few police state dictatorships to more democratic rule? How do we “drain the swamp”?

George Bush and Tony Blair have offered their way, via war in Iraq and an aggressive reform agenda throughout the region. Arab citizens and political actors have other suggestions, and have been constantly meeting and working to find the keys that unlock the current rigid systems and open the door to democratic transformations. I attended one such meeting in Beirut last week that provides valuable insights into both the sentiments and the transformational mechanics of the Arab quest for democracy, accountability and just plain decency in how power is exercised in our societies. Here was a group of concerned, thoughtful, and realistic Arab citizens from different countries bringing down the lofty rhetoric of freedom and democracy to the practical level of how to change society.

The private brainstorming session brought together 15 Arab political activists, journalists, academics, former cabinet ministers, students, university professors, and representatives from several UN organizations, international non-governmental organizations, and development and aid institutions. The charge was to identify sectoral, country and program priorities for action to promote human rights and good governance. Where does one start changing our mediocre governments and widespread abuses of human rights and citizen rights, and instead move to more democratic, accountable and humane societies?

The half-day gathering was impressive because it quickly cut through the usual fog of issues that make discussions of Arab democracy such a complicated and contentious exercise, such as cultural and religious values, foreign pressures for reform, occupation and resistance priorities, income disparities, war-torn societies, and other such relevant issues that tend to divert us away from the core challenge. The discussions quickly zeroed in on three basic priorities to change this region for the better: freedom of association and participation; freedom of expression and access to information; and guarantees of fair justice and the rule of law.

So if you’ve wondered recently about how to “drain the swamp” of the Middle East, here is one group of sensible Arabs that provide a very practical answer. The principles of their consensus, if applied, would allow ordinary Arabs everywhere to engage in a more spirited and productive discussion on political change in their societies, which in turn would allow them to determine their own preferred form of government, national ideology, foreign policy and other key issues of identity, policy and national configuration.

From my own experience in meeting regularly with politicians, journalists, academics and civil society activists throughout the Arab World, I sense that these three basic principles accurately capture the views of concerned citizens and would-be democrats across the region, in every corner of the swamp. In other words, Arabs everywhere know why they suffer lousy government systems and frequent oppression, and we also know very well what needs to be done to change this situation.

Basically, people need to be able to meet and organize, in order to express themselves politically. Freedom of association and participation would allow civil society to flourish, and would also generate more serious political parties and parliaments than the existing legislatures, most of which (with a very few exceptions) are designed to suppress rather than express the views of the majority. Political association and participation are critical for promoting accountability in society, through formal parliamentary means as well as informal civil society dynamics.

Freedom of expression and the right to information are vital for citizens who want to participate politically, because knowing what the government does is the first step to holding it accountable. More transparent government would allow less corruption and abuse of power, and would lead to, for example, real instead of doctored national budgets, truthful instead of camouflaged military and security spending declarations, access to information on thousands of detainees, and better awareness of how government contracts are granted.

The overall framework for good governance requires guarantees of fair justice and the rule of law. A single, written, clear legal framework that specifies the rights and obligations of all is needed for a society to operate in a healthy manner; this in turn demands a judicial system of efficient courts and qualified, independent judges to apply the law equally to all and to resolve disputes among individuals and institutions.

The Arab world today is plagued by strong individuals and families whose control of military power allows them to do anything they want, disregarding all laws and institutions, and trampling on citizen rights. The antidote to the existing abuse of power is the rule of law, within which citizens organize, debate issues, and ultimately determine the form of government they want and the policies they wish their country to pursue in their name.

We don’t need fancy new organizations, complex international mechanisms or slightly forced speeches by leaders of large Western democracies to drain the swamp and promote democracy and freedom in the Arab world. Anybody who wishes to move in this direction should simply listen more carefully to the thoughts of those who live in the swamp. Ordinary Arabs must enjoy the right to meet and discuss, to organize and act, and to have access to a fair system of laws and judicial courts. These three practical steps are the focus of activists throughout this region, and they should stimulate more serious strategies for political change in the Arab world by friends abroad.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 25 September 2005
Word Count: 922
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BEIRUT — For too long, self-interested and often hollow-headed politicians in the Arab countries, Israel and the United States (slightly less so in Europe) have ignored the sentiments and aspirations of the Arab majority. They have focused instead on the violent excesses of a small minority of estranged radicals and criminal terrorists who have hijacked the global debate on this region.

Ultimately, neither charismatic killer demagogues like Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden, nor cosmic-grade cheerleaders for liberty’s apocalypse like George Bush, will define the collective history of the people of the Middle East. Instead, the path to a stable, productive future for this region lies in understanding more carefully the sentiments of the middle class majorities that inevitably must define their own political cultures, ideologies and policies. Presumably, that is what democracy and majority rule are all about.

One of the truly historic recent developments in the Arab world in the past decade or so has been the ability to conduct public opinion polling in many countries, such as Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt, UAE, Yemen and a few others, providing crucial insights into what our populations feel, fear and desire.

Yet another new public opinion poll released this week in Jordan confirms two significant points that most of the mediocre leaders in this region and abroad have preferred to ignore: ordinary Arabs (mostly Muslims!) are strongly committed to democratic values and principles, but they are also deeply concerned and fearful about how they are treated in their own countries.

The nationwide random sample poll of adults by the independent Jordan Center for Social Research conducted at the end of July showed huge majorities in favor of electing local officials, keeping and expanding the quota for women in parliament, keeping the one-person, one-vote system, equal work opportunities for men and women, and using peaceful political participation and protest (rather than violence) as the way to change the government. Jordanians identified the most important problems facing their country as the rising cost of living, unemployment, corruption, worsening economic conditions, and poverty, along with the rising gap between rich and poor.

The most striking result of this poll is the nearly schizophrenic attitude of ordinary Jordanians to political values and their real life conditions. While they aspire to democratic practices and a very strong sense of justice, they also feel mistreated and subjugated by their own society. Only 39 percent of respondents said they would be treated fairly and justly in a court of law, 12 percent in a university entrance exam, 9 percent in a police investigation, 6 percent in a job allocation and 1 percent in a tax office. Good morning? Anyone home?

This is yet another confirmation that Arabs and Muslims love freedom, democracy, equality and justice, but they are angry and bitter because they do not feel they are enjoying these important values in their own societies. This helps to explain the sense of resentment and anger that often translates into political extremism, or people turning to their religion for comfort and hope. In the most extreme consequence, enter Osama Bin Laden, and angry young men become suicide bombers. More routinely, citizens turn to peaceful Islamist groups to express their anger and indignity; the poll found that the most popular political group in Jordan was the Islamic Action Front, for whom 37 percent of citizens would vote, against 27 percent for Jordanian nationalist parties.

There is more that also confirms the contradictory sentiments that define ordinary Arabs, in this case Jordanians; but I am certain, from my own travels and extensive research and readings, that this situation pertains throughout all the Arab states. Citizens emphatically do trust some national institutions (93 percent trust the police and army “fully or to a large degree”, 84 percent religious leaders, 76 percent the government), but only 36 percent trust political parties and 56 percent trust municipalities (the media comes in at 63 percent). [Interested readers can contact the center for a copy of the poll, at mjcsr@go.com.jo.]

What to conclude? Good Arabs and Muslims with fine, egalitarian, law-abiding values have found themselves living in societies that do not reflect those values in practice. This is also what I heard when I phoned the director of the survey, the sociologist Dr Musa Shteiwi, for his own interpretation of the results, who was quite categorical: “The people of Jordan seem very committed to democratic ideals, both at the value and procedural levels, but they are also a troubled people who are very concerned about the degree of fairness in their society.”

They are also not sure about whether the country is heading in the right direction politically and economically, he said, citing that 48 percent of respondents think things are moving in the right direction, while 44 percent think they are moving in the wrong direction. He senses that many Jordanians are alienated from their civil and government institutions, such as political parties and parliament, and are not sure that these institutions are working for their best interests. He also detects a gap between elite and popular sentiments on key political issues, also suggesting some alienation.

Good morning? Any takers for the simple idea that Arabs and Muslims love freedom and justice, but hate being denied it in their own societies?

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 21 September 2005
Word Count: 878
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BEIRUT — It is unfortunate that the more military and other heavy-handed efforts the United States and friends have exerted to fight terrorism in the last four years, the greater and more diffused has become the terror threat around the world. A core weakness in the American government’s approach to terrorism since September 11, 2001, has been a wild disproportion between its faulty analysis of the terror threat and its ferocious actions to confront it.

Washington’s use of unilateral military and diplomatic power to change the world in order to protect Americans has been based on a series of analyses and reactions only occasionally built on dispassionate assessments and accurate facts. Rather, the United States has unleashed the military Marines and the Diplomatic Marines (Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes) on the strength of a peculiarly neoconservative American blend of deep ideology, bold initiatives, skewed scholarship, sweeping emotionalism, significant knowledge gaps, and a raging bull sense that America is powerful and can do whatever it desires to change the world in order to assuage American hurt and vulnerability.

The consequent errors in the American-led “global war on terrorism” are clear for all to see, along with only a few successes, leaving the world on balance a much more messy and dangerous place than when the troops were unleashed. This is not a problem that is inherent in American culture, but rather one that reflects the distorted and flawed approaches of the neoconservative-led Bush administration.

Americans generally are much more systematic, logical and effective at addressing problems or threats. They usually correctly outline the nature of the problem, separate symptoms from causes, identify the different underlying causes and their linkages, and finally devise an appropriate response, including short-term tactical moves as well as longer term strategic plans.

Americans tend to be more like engineers than ideologues, fixing problems and facing challenges more methodically than emotionally. Perhaps a good example before our eyes has been the U.S. multi-sector response after the initial sloppy government-reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The subsequent improvement in emergency assistance by agencies and individuals, after the initial week’s mediocrity, comprises a classic American example of can-do engineering and clarity of action.

Why hasn’t this same approach been applied to the problem of terrorism, where instead of sensible strategy based on clarity of analysis and purpose, the U.S. has responded mostly with cowboys and cowgirls?

As I had assumed would ultimately happen, Americans themselves have now come forward to correct this problem, drawing on their best minds and most honest intellectual and political traditions to tackle the terrorism threat more seriously. That means assessing it in a more complete manner than the sophomoric Bush administration’s preference to reduce complex and criminal acts to simplistic slogans geared more to children than mature adults, e.g., “they hate our freedoms” or “you’re with us or with the terrorists”. In word and action, the Bush crowd misdiagnoses the nature of the terror threat and responds with counterproductive military policies that only increase the terror problem and make Americans even less safe.

They also insult the intelligence and decency of ordinary American citizens, who have a right not to be treated like children by their own government.

The more sensible antidote to the Bush and Lady Warriors approach to making the world safe was manifested last week with the publication of the results of an important conference that was held in Washington, D.C. The noteworthy gathering generated the most comprehensive, integrated and useful analysis of the terror threat and America’s appropriate response that I have seen since September 11, 2001. I urge interested readers to review the summaries of the final working group papers, which are available, with video of the conference, at http://www.americaspurpose.org.

The National Policy Forum on Terrorism, Security and America’s Purpose was organized by the New America Foundation in collaboration with the Democracy Coalition Project, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Hauser Foundation, New York Community Trust, the Open Society Institute, and Partnership for a Secure America. It built upon a global summit on Democracy and Terrorism organized by the Club of Madrid on the first anniversary of the Madrid train attacks.

Five working groups of 150 renowned scholars, expert practitioners, former government officials, and private sector representatives examined terrorism’s underlying causes, homeland security and freedom, confronting terrorism overseas, spreading democracy, and America’s grand strategy. They concluded, among other things, that the current approach of a global war on terrorism has failed to make the U.S. more secure, suggesting instead that Washington “must repair key alliances and reconstruct the multilateral partnerships that have benefited American interests since World War II.”

They said the U.S. occupation of Iraq has “catalyzed a global jihad, providing the training ground for the next generation of terrorists and alienating any potential partners,” and suggested instead that the United States should use its soft power assets — the power of its ideas, culture and values — as “essential elements in a more comprehensive strategy against terrorism.”

Very significantly, they urged the U.S. to fight terrorism by considering the underlying grievances that terrorists exploit in furthering their aims and ideologies. “Uniting the victims of political violence around the world will enable people to move beyond national and political divisions and forge a common agenda,” they concluded.

An important working group on promoting democracy globally concluded that “the consolidation of democratic regimes in the greater Middle East will make the American people more secure. The United States, however, must stand behind grassroots campaigns, support moderate Islamist groups and lead by example.”

This is an important and timely piece of work because it tries to analyze the terrorism threat with the complexity that it requires. It correctly notes, for example, the subtle and varying distinctions and relations of religion, politics and terrorism, and the linkages between democracy and security. It is also important for looking globally at the terror problem and its resolution, exploring policies and underlying issues in the terror cycle in the Arab-Islamic world, Europe, the U.S. and other places with equal diligence. This sort of work represents America at its best in terms of intellectual honesty. This is why so many of us around the world admire and love America, especially when it respects its own founding values.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 10 September 2005
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BEIRUT — I was both heartened and disappointed last weekend, on the fourth anniversary of the September 11 attack against the U.S., to see the United States mark the moment with the combination of continued military attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, persistent threats against Iran and Syria, and swearing in Karen Hughes as the new undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.

Has the American-led “global war on terror” been a success, or even a suitable policy response, since September 11, 2001? Have the governments and societies of the Middle East, Asia and Western Europe — the three main incubators of Bin Laden-type terrorism — done enough to contain and end this terror scourge? The balance sheet on global security and stability seems erratic these days, as terrorism has expanded into one of the world’s fastest growing and increasingly outsourced and franchised industries.

So will Karen Hughes and her new public diplomacy department do better at reducing terror than the other American policies of the last four years? One hopes so, but the initial signs are mixed.

Hughes and her department are a potentially very important development in the strained relations between the United States and much of the rest of the world, especially Arab and Islamic societies. This is a mature and welcomed sign that the United States grasps more clearly that its armed forces and threatening diplomacy cannot be the primary instruments of its interactions with societies with whom it has quarrels.

But I fear that if some early distortions, gaps and misguided operating principles are not quickly amended, she and her efforts could turn out to be another howling waste of time and money. It is important therefore for Arabs and Muslims to engage Karen Hughes in the same constructive spirit with which she now approaches our societies, but without the flaws that may hobble her horse before it gets out of the barn.

She has said in her spin-smooth manner that the U.S. approach to public diplomacy towards the Arab and Islamic world will comprise 4 E’s: Education, Empowerment, Engagement, and Exchanges. This sensible and useful approach will reinforce the already mostly positive views of basic American values that a majority of Arabs and Muslims already hold. But it is unlikely on its own to make any significant dents in the widely critical views of United States foreign policy held by most people in the Arab and Islamic world.

I would humbly suggest that she expand her 4 E’s with two P’s: Policy and Perception, reflecting the two serious flaws that she should quickly fix in Washington’s public diplomacy approach, if she expects her department to have any impact beyond her president’s speeches on American military bases.

The “perception” flaw is simply that U.S. public diplomacy efforts seem to rest heavily on the assumption that if Arabs and Muslims had a better knowledge of American values and foreign or domestic policies, they would have a more positive image of the U.S. If she has not done so already she should read the dozens of surveys and analyses of Arab and Islamic public opinion that repeatedly confirm how we Arabs and Muslims admire and even emulate most American values, including freedom, democracy, the rule of law and entrepreneurship. (If her staff do not have the websites for her to check out, I recommend she start by googling the work of Professor Shibley Telhami, John Zogby, the Global Values Survey, and the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, among many others.)

She would quickly discover that the idea that the problem is mainly in how Arabs and Muslims perceive America is both wrong and insultingly racist. If this deep flaw is not corrected quickly, someone should hand Hughes a gun with which to shoot her horse and put it out if its imminent misery.

The second problematic issue in the U.S. public diplomacy approach, “policy,” is actually the apparent total absence of how American foreign policy in the world impacts the minds and attitudes of Arabs and Muslims. The criticisms of the United States that dominate this region and most of the rest of the world reflect policy resentments, not perception problems. Dozens of good scholarly studies confirming this are also available.

At her swearing in ceremony last week, Hughes said, “I believe there is no more urgent challenge for America’s national security and for a more peaceful future for all the world’s children than the need to foster greater respect, understanding and a sense of common interest and common values between Americans and people of different countries, cultures and faiths.”

Well, actually, there is a more urgent challenge, and it falls into one of those slightly awkward P’s, because most of the world’s children and adults already relate to American society and people with “respect, understanding and a sense of common interest and common values”.

The more urgent challenge she should grasp is for the United States, as the world’s dominant power, to pursue foreign policies that respect a single standard of law and morality applicable to all people and countries, rather than pursuing policies that tend often to be erratic, expedient, inconsistent, and sometimes hypocritical and against the grain of the global consensus.

Hughes and her public diplomacy department represent a potentially historic new wrinkle in U.S. foreign policy, which is badly in need of new ideas and directions. If Washington really wants to engage the world on policy, values and our children’s common future, we should all respond enthusiastically and help nudge the U.S. out of its unilateral military approach to promoting global peace and security. If Washington wants only to elucidate to us why we misunderstand American values and intentions, it should cancel the whole spectacle before it wastes its time and money and generates more resentment. This horse can run, if it is powered by honesty and humility.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 14 September 2005
Word Count: 977
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BEIRUT — The Egyptian presidential election last Wednesday is a major challenge to all those in this region and abroad who seek to promote more democratic political systems in the Arab World. The dilemma is a simple one: Do we embrace the elections as a step forward towards democracy because a few opposition candidates were allowed to run, or do we dismiss the whole thing as yet one more sham in which the form of democratic contestation is not matched by the substance?

Those who are pleased with the election argue that it represents step-by-step movement towards greater democracy and pluralism, and such gradual, incremental steps are the most logical way to proceed in the Arab World. There is some sense to this argument, but its main drawback is that we’ve been hearing the same argument for several decades now in various Arab countries, and we seem to be collectively stuck at the stage of the initial transformation from autocratic to democratic governance. Countries that have held elections in recent decades include Yemen, Kuwait, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and several others, but nowhere has a substantive advance towards democratic governance been achieved. One gets the impression that this is a process that revolves around an endless journey, rather than the destination.

The Egyptian election was fascinating from several perspectives. The thousands of judges who are supposed to oversee the voting process and verify the results asserted their independence from the government and the ruling party, and thus perhaps set the stage for a truly independent judicial oversight process in future votes. Civil society organizations formed a coalition for election monitoring and trained several thousand monitors, whom the state did not allow to enter polling sites. Nevertheless, they did a good job of monitoring as much as they could and came up with the usual litany of election abuses: dead people and children voting, no voter registration lists in some voting sites, pressure by the government to vote for Mubarak’s party, and many others that are as amusing as they are debilitating to an honest election. Much international attention focused on Egypt for the election, even though Mubarak’s victory was a foregone conclusion. And the Egyptian citizenry found itself in the novel situation of hearing the views of competing candidates, even though the entire system was badly tilted in Mubarak’s favor.

My own sense is that this flawed election would be useful as a step towards change only if it represented the beginning of a sustained process of transformation in other aspects of Egyptian political life, such as the media, parliament, civil society and civilian control of the military-security establishment. There is no real sign of any of that to date other than a somewhat more lively press. The burden of proof is on the Mubarak government to show that it really is prepared to make changes and move towards a mode democratic political system, and I see no signs of that happening.

Rather, the Egyptian election seems only to accentuate a wider problem that afflicts presidencies throughout the Arab world these days. In most Arab countries that are not monarchies, presidents often serve for 25 years or more at a stretch, usually anchoring their perpetual incumbency in the rule of the armed forces and security systems. Two other troubling dimensions of Arab presidencies have appeared in recent years. One is the tendency of fathers to pass on rule to their sons, and the other is the tendency of the international community to isolate, pressure or ostracize Arab presidents because their policies are deemed beyond the realm of the reasonable global consensus.

The Lebanese and Syrian presidents are a case in point, as they are increasingly subjected to international pressure that in some cases includes calls for their resignations or dismissals. Syrian President Bashar Assad has already cancelled his visit to the UN General Assembly this month, presumably because he expected to face more criticism and isolation than warm embraces. The Lebanese president, Emile Lahoud, is increasingly discredited and pressured because four of his top security chiefs have been detained and are being charged with involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and his days seem numbered. Many of his critics here and abroad see him as a symbol of all that is wrong with Arab presidencies, given that his mandate was extended for three years by a decision of the Syrian government that dominated Lebanon when the decision was made a year ago.

The Tunisian President, Zein Alabidine Ben Ali, and the Libyan leader, Muammar Gadhafi, are paradigms of military strongmen who have brought order to their lands at a very high cost in terms of human dignity and the rights of citizens. They go on ruling for decade after decade, oblivious to any sense of decency in respecting the collective rights of their citizens to decide their own leaderships. And this pattern repeats itself in other lands, like Algeria or Sudan, where military strongmen or members of a single national party rule according to their whims.

The Egyptian election was cleverly marketed as a step towards democratic pluralism, and many people bought that dubious line. The more likely scenario is that Husni Mubarak’s son Gamal will now use the period of the coming 6-year presidential term of his father to prepare to take over. What could have been a significant democratic moment turned out to be a jamboree of Mubarak family political genes.

The problem of presidencies throughout the Arab world is greater than the mere clinging to power by individual rulers or families. It reflects the inability of entire political systems to change this pattern peacefully. If Egypt represents a change in this legacy, we will have to see evidence of that in the months ahead. The election itself was not the significant event in this respect.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 10 September 2005
Word Count: 972
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BEIRUT — Some 3,000 years ago, in the Late Bronze Age, the scribes of the city-state of Byblos, in modern Lebanon north of Beirut, developed an alphabetic phonetic script that became our modern alphabet. In the process, local developments in a city on the coast of Lebanon ultimately changed world history, by providing a standardized means of communicating and recording events and transactions.

As a fellow Arab living in Lebanon and observing events here at first hand, I would suggest that the Lebanese people once again have an opportunity to change the history of this region and of the entire world, for the better. If the Lebanese move quickly and judiciously to assert the rule of law and democratic pluralism as the norms of modern Arab governance, they can start a process that forever breaks the hold of security organizations on the modern Arab world.

Lebanon is the most interesting and promising Arab country in this respect because of four significant, unique factors: a mass expression of a desire for change, in the form of half the country marching in the streets last winter after the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; direct, legitimate international intervention in the form of two successive UN-mandated investigations into the murder; the departure of the Syrian military and political forces that dominated Lebanon for a generation, followed by parliamentary elections that ushered in a majority opposed to the old order; and, the detention and questioning last week of four top former security and military chiefs who are being formally charged with involvement in the Hariri murder.

The arrest and charges of the four senior security chiefs mark a truly historic turning point that could shatter the dominance of political power by Arab security and military establishments. If Lebanon is able to bring its security and military institutions under the control and oversight of parliament, the cabinet, the courts and other civilian institutions, this will have enormous implications for Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, Yemen and others.

Make no mistake about the potential consequences of what is happening here: Success in prosecuting the accused security chiefs in Lebanon will have the same historic impact in this region as the birth of the Solidarity trade union movement had in Eastern Europe 25 years ago, prompting changes in power relationships that ultimately resulted in the collapse of the communist police state system.

The same can and should happen in the Arab world, but it has to start somewhere, with one country that transforms mass indignity and desire for change into orderly movement towards accountable, participatory democracy and the rule of law. Lebanon has the opportunity to be that pioneering success story that inspires others in the Arab world. Nowhere in the modern Arab world has a country experienced such a dramatic and swift succession of a populist then an electoral rejection of the old order, followed by judicial action to hold accountable senior members of the security organizations that have dominated, run and abused the Arab world for most of the last half century. The determination to achieve real change is not so clear, however, because the recent movement in Lebanese politics has not all been forwards towards modernity. The country balances delicately between historic change towards modern democratic governance and numbing acquiescence in the complacent old feudal order.

The past seven months since the Hariri assassination have seen the Lebanese political system move forwards, sideways and backwards. It has toyed with real political accountability, while simultaneously finding comfort in the old ways of feudalism, confessionalism and the narrow communal identities that have long protected Maronites, Shiites, Sunnis, Druze, Armenians, Greek Orthodox and others whose atavistic tribal tendencies still make much sense in the face of thin and brittle modern centralized states.

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora hinted Monday, at an Arab central banks governors gathering here, that Lebanon was on the verge of genuine reforms and that it would take advantage of its “historic and unique opportunity to develop and flourish.” A rational betting person would probably not wager more than a small cup of coffee on such a commitment, given the erratic, generally insincere, performance of the entire Arab world in reforming government systems in recent years, despite overloads of rhetoric on the matter.

The initial political advances in Lebanon, including the arrests of the four security heads, were achieved primarily because of the strong evidence generated by the UN investigation team headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis. As the investigation of suspects, witnesses and accused now shifts into the hands of Lebanese Investigative Magistrate Elias Eid, so does the burden of responsibility for continued reform shift from international quarters to the Lebanese political system.

This moment and the months ahead will test the sincerity and capability of the parliamentary majority that says it wants to break the hold of the “security regime” on Lebanese political and economic life. This is a moment of reckoning both for the collective Lebanese political order and for numerous individual political, tribal and communal leaders who are so powerful here. A surprising and frustrating aspect of the past tumultuous months has been the lack of a single, credible leader who has been able to bring together the former “opposition” forces that are now a majority in parliament. No Lech Walesa has appeared on the Lebanese scene who can bring join the mass desire for change as expressed emotionally by the citizenry with the capacity for change as expressed by the new parliamentary majority, the legal action against the former security chiefs, and the legitimate support of the international community.

If Lebanon is to inspire and change the entire Arab world, and move from being a “security state” to a democratic state, it must soon show a capacity to move beyond narrow communal identities. An important test is whether Lebanon can generate national political leadership anchored in the values of equality, democracy and the rule of law for all its citizens. A culture that gave the world the alphabet is capable of giving the Arab world good governance and quality political leadership, based on a citizen’s rights rather than his or her bloodline.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 08 September 2005
Word Count: 1,028
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