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 ill
September 11 be remembered as a watershed in the Middle East? The
answer to that question now depends on one factor only: the determination
of the United States.
As it stands
now, the answer is "no." The terrorist hijackers of 9/11
were Arab Muslims from Saudi Arabia and Egypt — from the Middle
East. But the actual conflict has been played out far above the
heads of Middle Easterners. Afghanistan is to the Middle East what
Alaska once was to North America — a remote and wild frontier,
a place people know only by reputation, a redoubt where people go
to hide. In the first weeks after the attacks, when the focus was
on the hijackers and Islam, the Middle East seethed. But after October
7, when the bombing campaign began, the "war against terror"
became an Afghan-U.S. war — and the Middle East tuned out.
While Americans
pored over maps looking for Kunduz or Kandahar, people in the Middle
East went back to business as usual. In recent weeks, demonstrations
have fallen off to zero. The fabled "Arab street" is quiescent.
Press reports of the war have been moved to the inside pages. And
now that the Taliban are out and Osama is on the run, people are
putting a distance between themselves and yesterday's heroes. After
all, the Taliban and Osama have been defeated. You don't get idolized
in the Arab world by losing.
Of course,
there have been repercussions. The United States is asking Arab
governments to freeze the funds of terrorist-supporting organizations.
But the banking system in these countries is hardly transparent,
and there isn't any sure way to know whether the terrorists' funds
are really drying up. Yes, the United States is demanding that incitement
be stopped in the religious schools in places like Saudi Arabia.
But who is going to enforce and monitor this? Yes, Americans talk
of political reform in the closed polities of the region. But who
is going to press hard for change, when political openings seem
most likely to benefit Osama look-alikes?
There is nothing
here the Arabs can't avoid by the usual combination of prevarication,
obfuscation, and procrastination. They managed to torpedo a "new
Middle East" engineered by America and based on peace with
Israel. They can foil a "new Middle East" promoted by
America and structured around the war against terror. And let there
be no doubt: The Arabs have no interest in seeing their world reorganized
around the needs and requirements of this war. The Arabs are always
accused of terror, and so they are unenthusiastic about acknowledging
America's right to define it. A prime motive for their joining the
coalition has been to influence that definition, and deflect it
from themselves.
So 9/11 is
not regarded in the Middle East as a great watershed. It is just
another trial or tribulation to be endured until things can get
back to normal — if there is anything normal about the combination
of despotism, religious incitement, and tolerance of terror that
is unique to the Middle East.
Well, you say,
that isn't good enough. They had better recognize that we are in
a new ballgame, and that the rules have changed. They had better
realize that if the United States went to the trouble of removing
a regime 7,000 miles from its shores, in a remote and landlocked
country, then the United States means business.
To which the
Arabs say: Maybe — but it has yet to be proven in the Middle
East. The Taliban have been kicked out? So what? America is much
more cautious in the Middle East. Just look around the region, which
is full of serial defiers of America, people who were once "enemy
number one" and who still walk free. At the top of the list
is Saddam Hussein, the living and breathing monument to defiance
of America. Next is the Iranian regime, or those within it, and
their allies in Hezbollah, who hit America time and again in the
1980s. Then comes Libya's Qaddafi (exactly one Libyan operative
went to jail for the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie).
The American
victory in Afghanistan has made the Arabs uneasy, no doubt about
it. But they reassure themselves by saying: Arabs aren't Afghans.
The Taliban were loathed as barbarians, and sat in the middle of
nowhere. But the Arabs have friends everywhere; there is a lot of
oil under their feet; and the Americans want stability and quiet.
They won't dare to push us too far.
Making 9/11
a turning point in the Middle East will require a lot more than
the demonstration effect of the Afghan victory. (And that victory,
by the way, isn't complete until Osama's head is on a pike.) For
9/11 to count in the Arab world, the United States is going to have
to show its determination in the Middle East itself. In particular,
it's going to have to do two things: first, prove that it won't
tolerate rogues going about unsupervised while they plan some future
Armageddon; and second, show that the terrorists flourishing in
the dark corners of the Middle East and working against the region's
stability are no safer than the al Qaeda crowd.
To achieve
the first, spiking the guns of the rogues, the United States has
no alternative but to turn up the heat on Saddam Hussein. If 9/11
is to mean anything in the Middle East, it has to mean something
for the future of Saddam. No one knows for sure whether Saddam had
anything to do with 9/11, but it doesn't matter. If he is not dealt
with now, the day might come when the entire Middle East will have
to place an emergency call to Washington. Saddam may be the only
leader in the region with the will, the way, and the lack of restraint
needed to plunge the region into a cataclysm. The United States
has an advantage now, and it should not fail to press it. The Arabs
and the Europeans will whine and warn through the build-up to D-Day.
But if the United States is resolute, they will fall into line.
They usually do.
Then there
is the second goal: getting the terrorists out of the Middle East
itself. By the Arabs' account, there are no terrorists in the Middle
East. There are only "resistance" groups — like Hezbollah
and Hamas and Islamic Jihad. When they kill civilians with suicide
bombers, this is merely legitimate struggle against occupation.
If the United
States allows the so-called "Arab street" to define what
is and is not terrorism, then to the Middle East, 9/11 will have
changed nothing. The American definition should be unequivocal:
These three groups are terrorists with a global reach. In the case
of Hezbollah, the case is clear enough — less than a decade
ago, they brought down two buildings in another "American"
city, Buenos Aires, killing hundreds. But if anyone thinks that
a suicide bomb in Jerusalem or Haifa is not felt around the globe,
they haven't heard yet about globalization. The actions of these
groups undermine the stability of the entire region, because they
bring it closer to war. And a Middle East closer to war is likelier
to become a Middle East where Americans and American interests will
be endangered.
In this respect,
the Palestinian response to the terror attacks in Jerusalem and
Haifa is not just a test. It's the final exam. We have now seen
the first major wave of post-September 11 terrorism. The Arabs are
poised on the edge of their seats to see whether anything has changed,
or whether the "resistance" can go on blowing up Israeli
Jews as usual.
If it can,
then General Zinni might as well pack his bags. The United States
should hold a "victory in Afghanistan" parade on Fifth
Avenue, and then try to forget the whole episode. But if the war
against terrorism is about anything, it is about zero tolerance
for paradise-obsessed suicide bombers taking themselves and innocent
victims to fiery deaths. And the people who have to acknowledge
this are not Brazilians or Australians. First and foremost, they
are the Arabs, whose societies have tolerated the creation of production
lines for suicide terrorists. The message of the United States on
this point has to be unequivocal: Hamas and Jihad are Osama and
the al Qaeda. Whoever allows such terrorists to flourish under his
roof will be Talibanized. Not next year. Not next month. Now.
Will 9/11 be
a watershed in the Middle East? If the United States leaves it to
the Middle East, the answer will be "no." But it might
become a "yes" — if America only shows the same resolve
in Araby that it has shown in Afghanistan.
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