I would like to begin this article by apologizing for a
mistake I made in the previous article, seen below this one under the title: “Pastime of the American chattering Classes.”
It happened that I read the article before posting it, and when the first
sentence did not sound clear enough, I changed it by adding something to it. I
was then supposed to delete a few words but deleted the wrong ones.
The net result was
that I made it sound as if the decade of the nineteen nineties was only one
year long, and that the time lapse between the fall of Communism and the 9/11
event was also one year long. I have now corrected the mistake; I thank those
who brought it to my attention, and I apologize to those who were confused by
it.
Now a new article.
The situation in Iraq is a complex one. Fouad Ajami is wrong to blame it all on
Obama and Maliki as he did in his article that came under the title: “The Men
Who Sealed Iraq's Disaster With a Handshake” and the subtitle: “Obama's rush
for the exit and Maliki's autocratic rule ensured that much hard-won progress
would not last.” It was published on June 14, 2014 in the Wall Street Journal.
Also erroneous is
the article written by Thomas L. Friedman under the title: “5 Principles for
Iraq,” published on June 15, 2014 in the New York Times. It is erroneous
because Friedman is doing here what he has always done which is to project to
his readers an image of the Arab countries as being a place where nothing good
happens, especially in the big places such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and
Algeria.
For example, if a
report comes out saying something good about one of those places, Friedman
wastes no time hopping on a plane to fly into non-Arab “Kurdistan” about which
he writes an article that offsets what was said about the big Arab country. He
does that in the Jewish tradition of “balancing” out the truth with noise if
not with outright lies. But if he must show he is not averse to saying
something good about an Arab country, he would pick a token one such as tiny
Jordan or tiny Tunisia, and say something that may be classified as
conciliatory.
It is in this spirit
that Tom Friedman wrote his 5 principles for Iraq, which is why they are no
better than the toilet paper – known as the New York Times – in which the
article was published. He has 5 principles, he says; so you want to know: What
are they? And he says they are the following:
First, in Iraq
today: “my enemy's enemy is my enemy.” Can you believe that? Not even the Dalai
Lama could have come up with a piece of wisdom as divine as this. He goes on:
“Neither Sunni nor Shiite share our values.” Why should they? They have their
own culture that worked for thousands of years. Second: “from the Arab Spring …
the two states doing the best are Tunisia and Kurdistan.” Kurdistan? Part of
the Arab Spring? Third: “Iran is not smart.” I am sure these people love to be
underestimated by the likes of Friedman. Fourth: “Leadership matters.” That's
the refrain you hear from everyone and their echo-repeaters. Fifth: “Kurds are
fighting for our values.” Tell that to the Turks who were terrorized by them.
As to Ajami, he
blames Obama because he failed to negotiate the maintenance of a residual
American force in Iraq … or so he says. But I am convinced that Ajami scoffs at
the suggestion that such force would have prevented the situation from
deteriorating as it did. The reason why he is echo-repeating that refrain is to
get along with “colleagues” of the same ilk. They say that a residual force in
South Korea, Japan and Germany worked well; therefore it will work in Iraq too.
But Ajami was born
there and grew up in the region. He knows that as much as the Afghans resent
foreign forces remaining in their country, the Arabs would have resented them
too. The Israelis learned that lesson in Palestine, Reagan learned it in
Lebanon and the French learned it in Algeria.