I was just waiting for this, and it didn't take long: the pundit declaring that the absence of Arab uprisings means that Arab public opinion can be safely ignored. This is the familiar double dismissal: when the "Arab street" protests against American policies, pundits denounce the Arabs as ungrateful savages filled with nothing but hatred and envy; and when they don't protest, pundits declare that they can therefore be ignored: "There is no outrage in the wider Middle East, either. There is also no anti-American insurrection on the so-called Arab Street. Arab dictators know how to keep their people in line, which is why most of them have ruled for decades. From North Africa to the Persian Gulf, national politics are ultimately the politics of the gun." Or, ">noted Middle East expert William Buckley: "Because of our show of force in Afghanistan and Iraq, because we refuse to engage in anxious propitiation, there is no Arab street to speak of."
This is the perennial problem for Arab public opinion... literally everything they can do (short of, apparently, pulling down statues of Saddam with American help) earns them disdain. American and Israel (Zeev Chafetz wrote the above) pundits who incessantly replay the dual dismissal described above completely and intentionally miss the significance of Arab public opinion. Essentially, they share the same conception of Arab politics as do the Arab dictators - if its doesn't threaten regime change, it isn't important. But why? Why is it that no expression of public opinion short of riots in the street "matters"? Don't expressions of anger in the media, in interviews, in mosques matter? It is this kind of disdain for reasoned public opinion in the Arab world which consistently makes America (and Israel) get it wrong, why their attempts to reach out to Arabs always seem to backfire. There is more to Arab public opinion than the Arab street, there is more to public opinion than rioting, but these guys just can't be troubled to look for it.
Zeev Chafetz at least doesn't even pretend that he's interested in spreading democracy to the Arab world - he takes the straightforward racist line that Arabs just aren't up to it: "These things can best be accomplished in Iraq without turning it into a model of American values. Once the place is pacified, the U.S. should turn power over to locals (the current "governing council" will do), lay down a few basic limitations and withdraw its troops into garrisons in the countryside - with the clear understanding that they will be back if the ground rules are broken." But what about the neocons who at least claim to be fighting for Arab democracy?
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