[NYTr] The Arab Liberals and Their Nostalgia for Colonialism

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Tim Murphy (activ-l)

Wordpress - Sep 24, 2007
Original in Arabic
http://www.al-akhbar.com/ar/node/47180

This translation
http://middeno.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/nostalgia-for-colonialism/

[Asad Abu-Khalil wrote another scathing opinion piece in Al-Akhbar, this
time directed to the Arab liberals who carry out the project of the new
Middle East for the Bush administration.]

Nostalgia for colonialism

By Asad Abu-Khalil
English translation copyright 2007 by Bart Peeters 

It is the season again. The Arab liberals are marching in step with
their guides slavishly copying the conservatives in the west. You can
predict the future course of the Arab liberals by following the past
and present direction of rightwing discourse in the west. The Arab
liberals are groping around looking for clues by copying and following
this discourse, but the products of the west always arrive in our
countries corrupted: you will find them implemented here more harshly,
more brutally, and in a more degrading way. Here, liberalism becomes
right wing, right wing becomes fascism, and leftism is turned into a
despised form of liberalism associated with the Hariri family. Only the
Phalanges and the Lebanese Forces preserve the western product as it
is. They adopted western fascism and preserved it intact.

Take for example the capitalist course that Rafiq Hariri took before his
assassination. You wont find its like in the west, not even in the
programs of the right wing parties. At one point he was considering to
radically abolish all taxes and let the poor take care of themselves.
Didnt he tell the poor to repair their shoes instead of buying new
ones, since only the rich, those whom god had bestowed wealth upon, as
he put it, were entitled to new shoes? He treated the poor as if they
were a burden on society and on the state. And he would have gotten rid
of them if his honeymoon with the Syrian intelligence agencies had
lasted - they who brought him in and appointed him prime minister for
over a decade (although Hariris professional town criers would have us
believe he was powerless during those years).

Worn-out clichis

Arab liberals think they are creators and pioneers, while in reality
they just keep repeating the clichis of the racist theses in Rafael
Patais book The Arab Mind (the same book that Seymour Hersh described
as the gospel of the neocons for use in the American wars). Even the
torturers and executioners of Abu Ghraib took their clues in carrying
out their duties from this book, which was rejected by the academic
world as soon as it was published, but circulated widely in popular,
media and political milieus in this country. Even some academics not
specialised in Middle Eastern affairs had recourse to it for their
understanding (or lack thereof) of the Arabs. For example, Jean
Kirkpatrick (Ronald Reagans UN envoy) used it in the national security
course which she taught at the University of Georgetown, because it
fitted in well with her own ideology: she was the originator of the
theory that aims to distinguish between totalitarian and authoritarian
regimes (and serves as the basis for marketing US support to
pro-American dictatorships  consider the upgrading on this scale of the
Libyan regime, merely because of its foreign policy turnaround).

You read the Arab liberals of today  better to call them the Arab
conservatives, even if they wear the mantle of the Democratic Left (and
democracy here is similar to the democratic model of Kim Jung-Il,
although Elias Attalah has a more stalinist past (?) than the Great
Leader) in alliance with the agents of the World Bank in Lebanon. Read
them, and you will see a monotonous repetition of what you have read
years ago in the writings of the American right. You will see how the
sweeping generalizations about the Arabs and Islam are the same: in
zionist publications, in the writings of the wahhabi Arab liberals and
in the writings of those among the ones calling themselves contemporary
leftists who join them because they can reject the poor. Oh, the glory
of the newspaper Al-Mustaqbal, filled to the brim with scorn for
Srilankan and Ethiopian housemaids committing suicide. Read some of the
liberal writers in the Arabic newspapers and you can trace back some of
their ideas, and even actual phrases, to this zionist magazine or to
that rightwing website, which our writer unearthed as if it was a
buried treasure.

They speak about the culture of life as if the idea was their own
brainchild, or an invention of the Lebanese branch of Saatchi & Saatchi
charged with the account of the cedar revolution (another branch
occupies itself with improving the image of the American occupation of
Iraq in the Arabic media). And western zionism (both its jewish and
christian branches) uses this expression to undermine the credibility
of the Palestinian resistance and to sow hatred for islam  the way the
municipality of Hazir erected a statue for Ernest Renan (whose racism
western academics salute, even when he used linguistic criteria to
grade nations on an incremental scale, but he is ingested in the
country of the cedar and the chestnut. Didnt he breathe the air of our
country? Isnt that enough?) Maybe the distinguished municipality of
Beirut will soon erect a statue for Bernard Lewis. Who knows, maybe
Fuad Ajami (the first Arab Likudnik, although many would follow) will
return to Lebanon, inspired by the methods of Ahmad Chalabi and Iyad
Allawi (the latter being a friend of the speaker of parliament  and
speaking of friendships, why did Chebli Malat stop speaking of his
friend Paul Wolfowitz? Is it because he went on to market the civilised
methods of struggle with Israel (methods which he and Ahmed Fatfat are
very well acquainted with), or is it because of his repeated attempts
and failures to get the sponsorship of the member of congress most
hostile to Arabs and islam, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen - although she did
allow him to attend a rightwing republican event)?

Arab liberals (under the banner of Saudi wahhabism) speak of peace and
harmony between the Arabs and Israel years after Anwar Sadat beat them
to it. They forget that Sadat also preceded them in throwing all the
cards in Americas lap, and that at the height of the cold war. The
American president furthermore patted Anwar Sadat on the back years
before Siniora received this distinguished honour. Arab liberals speak
of peace with Israel as if it is a measure of civilisation (a specialty
of the March 14 movement in Lebanon), and they blame the crisis of the
Arabs (their backwardness as they call it today) on the resistance,
like Muhammad Ali Jabari and others who sided with the Israeli
occupation were already doing when Muhammad Dahlan was still an
adolescent. They relieve the west, and specifically the US, of any
responsibility in our affairs and problems (even while vast numbers of
foreign soldiers are present in our lands), so that we dont fall into
the fold of conventional international legitimacy. This is a classical
colonial technique.

Nostalgia the Lebanese way

For years now, the right in the west has been expressing its nostalgia
for, and singing the praise of, the colonial age, especially as regards
the Middle East, because the nominal liberation of these parts has not
turned out well for Israel, although the zionist state cooperates
conveniently with various Arab regimes, some of whom it has concluded
peace agreements with, and some of whom offer nominal opposition. The
Iraq-born orientalist Elie Kedourie was the first to start this trend
with his book on democracy and the Arabic political culture published
in the early nineties. Kedourie would wax lyrical over the days of the
mandate, before those who Saddam Hussein referred to as the rabble rid
themselves of foreign rule. The American author Charles Krauthammer
(who accuses Likud of moderateness, which is the position of the
neocons who are so fond of the - permanent - cedar revolution - theres
no harm in the spontaneous meeting of opinions, as they tell us) openly
expressed his nostalgia for colonialism in Africa and Asia. Today he is
the spiritual guide of the cedar revolution. And the nostalgia for
colonialism is expressed in the positions of the US administration and
those of none other than the UN. 

What does it mean, for example, when Terje Roed Larsen (who is close
to, if not actually stuck onto, the Bush administration) issues a legal
decision on the subject of the quorum in the Lebanese parliament? Would
Larsen even dare to whisper a statement on the issue of the succession
to the throne in the wahhabi kingdom? Of course not, because Saudi
Arabia is an example of nearly perfect government to the standards of
the UN in the days of Larsen and the new secretary-general, who has no
need to preserve his good reputation. Can Larsen interfere, for
example, in issues related to the government of Hosni Mubarak? Of
course not, because the interference is more obvious in regimes that
have not completely come under the control of the American empire. 

Next, what is signified by the presence of a special envoy of the UN in
Lebanon? What is the extent of his importance, if any? And why does a
society that chants slogans of sovereignty from morning to evening
accepts to host a representative of the remnants of the mandate age,
especially if this man holds opinions and even expresses preferences on
electoral and local topics. And the Lebanese politicians of the 14 and
8 March movements alike are happy and proud to receive Mr. Pedersen and
discuss with him even the most insignificant and local matters. Lebanon
will become really independent when Pedersen is finally chased out of
Lebanon and when the US ambassadors contacts will be restricted to the
ministry of foreign affairs only, when he will be forbidden to roam the
other ministries at will. Why does the US ambassador in Lebanon enjoy
powers and authorities which the Lebanese ambassador in Washington does
not have?

The Lebanese ambassador would end up in Guantanamo prison if he would
interfere with the US presidential elections or make a tour around the
US ministries in Washington. Of course, this is exactly what classical
colonialism is: the powers of the representative of the colonizing
state are wholly different from those of the colonized state. The
acceptance of the idea of western colonialism in Lebanon goes back to
the idea of the creation of the entity which was born, coincidentally
of course, in the time when the zionist movement was apiring to create
a jewish state on Palestine land (will we ever see the day when the
maronite patriarchat will release the text and the documents of its
treaty with the zionist movement which was signed in 1946?). And
Lebanese thinking, since its inception, has been founded on opposition
to the idea of Arab solidarity (even before the idea of Arab unity
emerged how the Baathists have disfigured that word, and how have they
divided and antagonized the Shia in the name of assimilated unity.

Drawing a picture of Lebanon as a representative of the west
(politically, economically and even militarily in the age of Chamoun)
was fundamental in the creation of the entity, fundamental to the
western colonial construct which this entity is. This is why Lebanon
can graphically translate western control (which is essentially
American, whatever the attempt to hide the fact under the fairytale of
the international community as an independent political body that
expresses the truthful and concerned opinions of the worlds states) as
a proof of the solidartiy with Lebanon, just like the allies of the
Syrian regime see the regimes nursing of the country as the translation
of Arabism.

The role of the media

The marks of this nostalgia for colonialism can be seen in most Arab
countries and on many levels, as it is financed by the system of wahhabi
control over the media. And thus king Faruq will be the subject of the
nightly ramadan evening chats in the form of a new TV series financed by
Gulf money. King Faruq will be transformed from a tool of Britain into a
misunderstood leader. And those watching will find enough pride in the
fact that king Faruq was not addicted to wine (because he didnt taste
his food) because islam forbade wine but it didnt forbid service to
colonialism, according to the modern behaviour of the glorious king.
They may revive the introduction of the shame law regarding the royal
self. Thus we see the Arab media taking advantage of specific occasions
(anniversaries of wars or uprisings) to try and rewrite history into a
different image for popular consumption. And so the British colonial
regime in Egypt has become a source of pride and remembrance, all this
to prove the fault of the Egyptian revolution. The liberal Arab writers
in the Arab newspapers are doing the same for the regime of Nuri
As-Said when they make the man look as if hes just another
misunderstood politician. In this way the Arab media mirror the
nostalgia for colonialism and for the regimes of the fat and the
corrupt in Syria, of the Maku Awamir in Iraq and of the corrupt troops
in Egypt. This is the way American colonialism and its Arab
propagandists are trying to convince us that the choice is between
Saddam Hussein and the return of colonialism, as if the choice of a
true independence is but a mirage.

And the nostalgia for colonialism has surfaced in everything that is
published in the press about the assessment of modern Arab history. This
nostalgia fits well with the project of the US administration for the
Middle East. We usually talk about neo-colonialism, but the age of Bush
has returned us to the phase of classical colonialism. The
characteristics of classical colonialism are apparent on many levels,
notably in the fact that the US administration has achieved its
longstanding object of having cooperative Arabic governments open up
their lands to US troops and the CIA. The disarmament of the Arab
regimes began after the invasion of Kuwait (when the Kuwaiti and
western media portrayed the plight of the Kuwaiti people under Saddams
occupation as worse than the plight of the Palestinian people over the
decades). The successive US administrations had made no secret of their
anger at the refusal of the oil governments of the Gulf to host US
troops on their soil. All this changed after Saddams invasion. The
biography of Dick Cheney in the recently published book of Stephen
Hayes shows that the US administration was determined to station its
troops in the region after the invasion of Kuwait, whether officially
invited or not. And the nostalgia for colonialism became actual reality
after 9/11. The US administration realised that the only way to manage
the affairs of the region was to do it directly, not by outsourcing the
warfare to client regimes. The regimes were more than submissive.
Because Nasser, who had scared them, was dead, and the Palestinian
revolution had fallen into Muhamad Dahlans hands, while Hamas was
occupied with trying to turn its authority into reality.

>From Ramallah to Morocco

As for Lebanon, it is always a candidate for the leading role in the
service of colonialism, and it is always glowing with pride when it is
hosting non-Arab foreign armies on its soil. Do we not know why Rafiq
showered the UNIFIL-troops with praise? Is there anybody who thinks
they came to protect the land of Lebanon? Is the history of these
forces not a lesson? Have they repulsed one single Israeli aggression
against Lebanon since they graced it with their presence? They say that
they will testify about the Israeli aggressions, but the UNs reports
are submitted for political editing to Washington (didnt you read the
memoirs of Boutros Ghali about his experience in the UN?) Witnesses?
They are what Ali ibn Abi Talib called the absent witnesses. Doesnt the
statement of Angela Merkel suffice (although Fuad Siniora has already
interpreted her statement saying she was joking)? And the US marines,
who have graced the homeland twice with their presence in the
contemporary history of Lebanon, were enthusiastically received by more
than just Lebanese in the region - we have not forgotten that there
were those (among the sunnites, the shiites, the druze and the
christians) who welcomed the Israeli occupation forces in 1982 by
throwing rice on them.

Colonialism has returned to our countries. The descendants of the
governorate applaud it. The leaders of some sects think that colonialism
will rid them of their opponents. They are mistaken. Wasnt Muhammad
Dahlan set up by colonialism as the governor of Gaza? Didnt Amin
Gemayyel resort to foreign soldiers to rule the land and the subjects?
The struggle for the second liberation from neo-colonialism in our
region will be harder than the first time, not because the cold war has
ended and American sovereignty is globally and universally established,
not even because of the tyrannical ways of the American Empire, but
because the second colonialism comes with a widespread band of
governors, from Ramallah to Morocco, an uninterrupted series with the
character of a governmental squadron.