January 01, 2004
No comment needed.
Mark Steyn on 'The Arab Street':
Jihan Ajlouni, a 24-year-old Palestinian university student, reacted to Saddam’s capture by warning: “We say to all the traitors and collaborators: Don’t rush to celebrate because there are millions of Saddams in the Arab world.”
Really? Millions of smelly wimps with ratty hair living in holes in the ground? That could cause massive subsidence in the Tikrit area, particularly if they surrender all at once.
But, of course, Mr Ajlouni is wrong. The West Bank aside, his fellow Arabs aren’t that nuts. When the western world’s Ajlouni left reprimand the Americans for sticking Saddam on TV with a tongue depressor, they’re worried it will make the Arabs feel “humiliated. “I feel extremely humiliated,” agreed the Egyptian writer Sayyid Nassar. “By shaving his beard, a symbol of virility in Iraq and in the Arab world, the Americans committed an act that symbolizes humiliation in our region.”
You should feel humiliated. It is humiliating when you invest your pride in a total loser. The thing is: what are you going to do about it? Rise up in anger? I think not. It’s a safe bet that in 2004 the Arab street will remain as somnolent as it was in 2003 and 2002. That leaves two options: just more festering as usual, or doing something constructive. The big question in the year ahead is whether we’ll start to see forces emerge in the wider Arab world that have drawn the right conclusions from the humiliations of the last two years. You know what would humiliate me if I were a hotshot Egyptian intellectual like Mr Nassar? The Americans democratizing Iraq before Egyptians have managed to democratize Egypt. I predict a few interesting straws in the wind between now and next December.
Via Instapundit.
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