Tom Friedman praises Victor Davis Hanson.
Because Hanson is right: What ails the Middle East today truly is a toxic mix of tribalism, Shiite-Sunni sectarianism, fundamentalism and oil — oil that constantly tempts us to intervene or to prop up dictators.
This cocktail erodes all the requirements of a forward-looking society — which are institutions that deliver decent government, consensual politics that provide for rotations in power, women’s rights and an ethic of pluralism that protects minorities and allows for modern education. The United Nations Arab Human Development Report published in 2002 by some brave Arab social scientists also said something similar: What ails the Arab world is a deficit of freedom, a deficit of modern education and a deficit of women’s empowerment.
While we’re on the subject you might want to look at this piece from the Brookings Institution. In it the author, Eric Chaney, considers the prospects for democracy in the aftermath of the “Arab Spring”. Short version: the institutions don’t favor it.
You would think that after the examples of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan they would be rushing towards democratization.
Steve
Oddly, no mass demonstrations in town squares in favor of autocracy have been seen so far. Other than astroturf, of course.
I’m getting tired of people like Chaney and Hanson, who have absolutely no qualification on which to speak authoritatively about the Middle East, opining on what it needs. Neither man has significant familiarity with the politics, culture or history of the Middle East but nevertheless seem eminently capable of telling rich white people enough about it to make themselves feel superior.
Orientalism is most certainly not dead.