It has been reported that President Obama will be giving a speech on the Middle East in the coming few days. If he plans to speak to the Arabs, there is one mistake among many that previous presidents have repeatedly made which he must avoid if he wants to gain credibility and maintain it with the Arab masses. Do not approach the Arabs with a notion already formed in your mind that they were put on this Earth to be made use of to serve the interests of Israel or the interests of America or both. If one iota of this notion remains in you, get rid of it because the Arabs will sense it no matter how well you may think you have camouflaged it. There is one article that Mr. Obama can read to prepare himself for the occasion and know what to avoid. It expresses in extreme form the mistake that presidents have made in more subtle ways.
On May 15, 2011 Ben Stein published a piece on the website CBS News.com under the title: “Arab Spring” is a fraud. When you read the piece you realize that it is a highly peculiar way to define the word fraud, and you wonder if this is only the expression of Stein's personal view or if it is the expression of a point of view that is more widely shared among people and organizations in whose name he is speaking. Stein begins the piece by promising to tell the truth about what has come to be called the “Arab Spring” and about the Middle East in general.
However, as he moves into the elaboration of his ideas, he backs off a little from the unequivocal and assertive stance he had taken at the start. In fact, he says that as a force for democracy, human rights and peace, the Arab Spring seems to him to be a fraud. Note the use of the qualifying term “seems” because he signals by it that he is prepared to accept the proposition he may be seeing the wrong thing or that he may be interpreting what he sees the wrong way.
He goes further with the elaboration by saying this: “The dictator and his entourage who were kicked out in Egypt were pro-West, a bit restrained on Israel, open to free enterprise, and resistant to Iranian-sponsored terror.” This is how he believes the situation was before the onset of the Arab Spring. But how is it now in his view? This is how he sees the situation now: “Egypt is now rapidly becoming anti-Israel, pro-Iran, pro the Iranian-sponsored terrorist group Hamas, and very far from being pro-human rights. They are arresting businessmen right and left in Egypt just for the crime of being successful. They have arrested Mubarak's sons, and have said they plan to try Mubarak.”
With regard to his description of the way that Egypt was before the revolt, I can only ask this question: Where was Stein when he and people like him were hammering at Egypt -- not once in a while -- but all day long and all night long in the print and the audio-visual media every time they thought they had an excuse to do so? In fact, the hammering was so pervasive and so relentless, it would have taken dozens of people like me writing dozens of websites like this to respond and to correct all the lies and all the distortions that were being spread, repeated and echoed about Egypt.
As to his description of the way that Egypt is now, he laments that the country is softening the negative stance it was adopting with regard to countries and organizations that happen to be at odds with Israel. What this says about Stein is that he considers himself to be allied with Israel and that he believes in the dictum: “If you're not with us, you're against us.” What is puzzling is his addition of the phrase: “...and very far from being pro-human rights.” This prompts me to ask if he means to say that to be with Israel is to be for human rights, while not to be with Israel means to be anti-human rights. If this is what he believes, he has a lot to learn.
And speaking of learning, there is one important thing he needs to learn. It is that an ignorant outburst such as saying they arrest businessmen for the crime of being successful makes him look like a total ignoramus that loves to wallow in the pool of his ignorance. Although I have been saying for years that corruption was not a big deal in Egypt when you compare it to other places, it does not mean that people never made a few small gains by illegitimate means. In this regard people have been arrested in Egypt, including Mubarak and his sons, and they are being investigated. The allegations brought against them in complaints filed locally are no where near the sick fantasies that were splashed in ignorant British publications such as the one that claimed Mubarak had stashed away 70 billion dollars in foreign banks. If tried, Mubarak and his family may yet be cleared of even the minor charges that were filed against them locally.
Stein goes on to blabber a few more things in his piece about a number of Arab countries to finally conclude that the Arab Spring has so far been a boon to Iran which he says has become the new superpower of the region. And he voices his fear that Iran will continue to make gains which will turn this whole episode into an extremely harsh Mideast winter.
What an article like this says is that Stein and people like him see the world in black and white with no shades of gray in between. They see the world as being made of good and evil and that a war is raging between the two. They go on to explain that everyone on this planet stands either with Israel and everything that is good or they stand away from Israel and everything that is evil. They say that Egypt and the other Arab countries are currently distancing themselves from Israel as they drift closer to the camp of evil. Because of this, they are pessimistic about the future.
This is what they say now which is a way to present history that is the reverse of how they were presenting it a short while ago when they were hammering at the Arab countries, especially Egypt. So then how do we interpret or explain this attitude? There is only one word to explain it all; the word is fraud. These people were a fraud in the past and they are a fraud now. To explain the inconsistencies in their posture before and after the Arab Spring, they call the movement associated with it a fraud. In doing this, they give the word fraud a new definition that is wholly fraudulent.
For a moment at the start of his elaboration, Stein was seen backing off from the assertive and unequivocal stance he had taken earlier, and he indicated his preparedness to being corrected. Let him now come out and say that he stands corrected and that he sees things differently.
As for Mr. Obama's speech, talk to the Arabs as friends if you want to be friends with them and do not predicate the friendship on anything else. Absolutely none. Let this be a quest for a pure, clean, simple and innocent friendship. Nothing more and nothing less because this is how you will open the door for the friendship to evolve, bloom and flourish in a way that will be beneficial for the Arabs, for America and for the world.