Author: Thomas L. Friedman
Publication: The New York Times
Date: September 21, 2001
In February 1982 the secular Syrian
government of President Hafez al-Assad faced a mortal threat from Islamic
extremists, who sought to topple the Assad regime. How did it respond?
President Assad identified the rebellion as emanating from Syria's fourth-largest
city - Hama - and he literally leveled it, pounding the fundamentalist
neighborhoods with artillery for days. Once the guns fell silent, he plowed
up the rubble and bulldozed it flat, into vast parking lots. Amnesty International
estimated that 10,000 to 25,000 Syrians, mostly civilians, were killed
in the merciless crackdown. Syria has not had a Muslim extremist problem
since.
I visited Hama a few months after
it was leveled. The regime actually wanted Syrians to go see it, to contemplate
Hama's silence and to reflect on its meaning. I wrote afterward, "The whole
town looked as though a tornado had swept back and forth over it for a
week - but this was not the work of mother nature."
This was "Hama Rules" - the real
rules of Middle East politics - and Hama Rules are no rules at all. I tell
this story not to suggest this should be America's approach. We can't go
around leveling cities. We need to be much more focused, selective and
smart in uprooting the terrorists.
No, I tell this story because it's
important that we understand that Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have
all faced Islamist threats and crushed them without mercy or Miranda rights.
Part of the problem America now faces is actually the fallout from these
crackdowns. Three things happened:
First, once the fundamentalists
were crushed by the Arab states they fled to the last wild, uncontrolled
places in the region - Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and Afghanistan - or to the
freedom of America and Europe.
Second, some Arab regimes, most
of which are corrupt dictatorships afraid of their own people, made a devil's
pact with the fundamentalists. They allowed the Islamists' domestic supporters
to continue raising money, ostensibly for Muslim welfare groups, and to
funnel it to the Osama bin Ladens - on the condition that the Islamic extremists
not attack these regimes. The Saudis in particular struck that bargain.
Third, these Arab regimes, feeling
defensive about their Islamic crackdowns, allowed their own press and intellectuals
total freedom to attack America and Israel, as a way of deflecting criticism
from themselves.
As a result, a generation of Muslims
and Arabs have been raised on such distorted views of America that despite
the fact that America gives Egypt $2 billion a year, despite the fact that
America fought for the freedom of Muslims in Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo,
and despite the fact that Bill Clinton met with Yasir Arafat more than
with any other foreign leader, America has been vilified as the biggest
enemy of Islam. And that is one reason that many people in the Arab-Muslim
world today have either applauded the attack on America or will tell you
- with a straight face - that it was all a C.I.A.-Mossad plot to embarrass
the Muslim world.
We need the moderate Arab states
as our partners - but we don't need only their intelligence. We need them
to be intelligent. I don't expect them to order their press to say nice
things about America or Israel. They are entitled to their views on both,
and both at times deserve criticism. But what they have never encouraged
at all is for anyone to consistently present an alternative, positive view
of America - even though they were sending their kids here to be educated.
Anyone who did would be immediately branded a C.I.A. agent.
And while the Arab states have crushed
their Islamic terrorists, they have never confronted them ideologically
and delegitimized their behavior as un-Islamic. Arab and Muslim Americans
are not part of this problem. But they could be an important part of the
solution by engaging in the debate back in the Arab world, and presenting
another vision of America.
So America's standing in the Arab-Muslim
world is now very low - partly because we have not told our story well,
partly because of policies we have adopted and partly because inept, barely
legitimate Arab leaders have deliberately deflected domestic criticism
of themselves onto us. The result: We must now fight a war against terrorists
who are crazy and evil but who, it grieves me to say, reflect the mood
in their home countries more than we might think.
