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July
30, 2002 1:45
p.m.
On
Breaking Bones
Do
Saudi words have consequences? Egyptian?
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he dumbest
saw that ever made its way to workaday myth is the one about how sticks
and stones will break our bones but words will never hurt us. It isn't
even half true. It's true that a stone can kill someone, as fallen Arabian
women discover every now and again, but why does that mean that the words
of the man who sentences you to death do not hurt you? Or even the words
of your associates who deplore your conduct? Does sticking a tongue out
at you count as stick-and-stone, or as mere reprobation?
It is a part
of constitutional law that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom
of speech, and Jefferson hailed the republic whose survival would itself
certify to the inviolability of the principle of free speech. The main thing
to remember about airy statements on the subject of free speech is that
they tend to work — they don't always work — when everybody plays
by the same rules. If the press is free from government censorship, things
can get said with relative impunity, which things, however, can shorten
the pleasant life of individuals, who have problematic recourse to the laws
against slander and libel; and of course in democratic circumstances, governments
change.
When you don't have
ambient freedom, things clog up. Our policy toward Saudi Arabia takes
into account concrete things. First is the oil — they sit on 25 percent
of the world's supply. A second is their ownership of Mecca. A third is
that we are permitted to have bases there which we sometimes rely on heavily,
as when we took the trouble to protect Saudi Arabia from the juggernaut
headed its way via Kuwait in 1990.
Now Time magazine
reports in its current issue that Saudi Arabia "seethes" with
hatred for the United States. Indeed in Abha, the home town of four of
the fifteen Saudi Arabian 9/11 terrorists, those bombers are held in divine
esteem. Such sentiments are more pungently expressed in Egypt. The government
actually owns the paper, Al-Akhbar. A columnist for that paper, Ahmad
Ragab, calls out to "give thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory."
Hitler's imperfection is that he did not succeed in murdering all the
Jews, leaving a million or two to go off to Palestine.
Words Have Consequences,
to borrow the formulation of the late Richard Weaver. We acknowledge this
and, from all appearances, intend to do nothing about it. The first question
a diplomat would ask is: What exactly do you propose that we do, to Egypt,
and Saudi Arabia? But diplomacy properly concerns itself with means by
which things are done, not with abandoning the objective. Consider Egypt.
There are things that we could do to affect Egyptian opinion. We could
stop sending them $2 billion per year, we could ban U.S. travelers from
visiting Egypt, and — following the rule that you list every possibility
— we could withdraw our aid to Israel.
As for the Saudis,
the plan would be more complex. We could destroy Saddam Hussein, make
Iraq the center of a pan-Islamic world inviting Iran, Yemen, Oman, and
Syria to internationalize the sacred city of Mecca, and find a suitable
university to which to send aspirant columnists to train.
It is as straightforward
as that we mustn't accept as the modus vivendi of great Islamic nations
the proposition that Hitler was a saintly figure in history. And that
the United States doesn't much care if Islamists nevertheless think him
so. The famous words of Thomas Jefferson are misread. "If there be
among us any who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican
form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which
error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat
it." Jefferson was betting that virtuous thought would drown out
infamous thought. Well, in important parts of the world, it isn't doing
so, and isn't even being given a chance.
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