How To Save The Arab World

Consider the Arab reaction to the videotape of Osama bin Laden. Most of the region's governments quickly noted that the tape seemed genuine and proved bin Laden's guilt. Prince Bandar issued a statement that said, "The tape displays the cruel and inhumane face of a murderous criminal who has no respect for the sanctity of human life or the principles of his faith." Compare those reactions with that of a Saudi cleric like Sheik Mohammad Saleh, a dissident voice, who said, "I think this recording is forged." Or Abdul Latif Arabiat, head of Jordan's mainstream Islamist party, the Islamic Action Front, who explained, "Do the Americans really think the world is that stupid to think that they would believe that this tape is evidence?" In most societies dissidents force their country to take a hard look at its own failings. In the Middle East, the democrats are the first to seek refuge in fantasy, denial and delusion. The state-owned media do not need to promote crazed conspiracy theories about the Mossad's secret role in bombing the World Trade Center or the CIA's fabrication of the bin Laden videotape. The "free" television station, Al-Jazeera, does it voluntarily--and the public laps it up.

America confronts a strange problem. We are used to thinking of democracy as good and dictatorship as bad, but we confront a world turned upside down in the Middle East. Caught between autocratic states and illiberal societies, the temptation is to throw up one's hands in despair and walk away. Indeed, many thoughtful observers have done so, arguing that our task should simply be to crush Al Qaeda and groups like it. This might force Arabs to look at their own societies and ask some hard questions. But that is their concern.

Military victory is indeed essential. Radical political Islam is an "armed doctrine," in Edmund Burke's phrase. Like other armed doctrines before it--fascism, for example--it can be discredited only by first being defeated. When Adolf Hitler was on the rise and advancing in the 1930s, tens of millions of people in Europe and around the world admired his strength and vision. (Young children from Latin America to Turkey were named Adolf in his honor.) Once Nazism was destroyed, they quickly abandoned his cause. (The children were given new names.) Bin Laden understands well the power of success. On the videotape, speaking of the surge of interest in his cause after September 11, he says matter-of-factly, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse." America must ensure that men like bin Laden are always seen as weak horses, preferably dead ones.

Having destroyed bin Laden's aura of success, the United States now has a unique opportunity to press its victory and "drain the swamp" of Islamic extremism. This means taking the battle to its real source, which is not Afghanistan but Arabia. Washington cannot walk away from that region. Oil, strategic ties and history will ensure our ongoing involvement. We will continue to aid the Egyptian regime, we will continue to protect the Saudi monarchy, we will continue to broker negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The question really is, shouldn't we ask for something in return? By not pushing these regimes, the United States would be making a conscious decision to let things stay as they are--to once again opt for "stability." But it is blindingly clear that the current situation is highly unstable. Even if viewed from a narrow strategic perspective, it is in America's immediate security interests to try to make the regimes of the Middle East less prone to breed fanaticism and terror. And the only way to do this is to make these regimes more legitimate in the eyes of their people.

At the start the United States must recognize its true goals. We do not seek democracy in the Middle East--at least not yet. We seek first what might be called the preconditions for democracy, or what I have called "constitutional liberalism"--the rule of law, individual rights, private property, independent courts, the separation of church and state. In the Western world these two ideas have fused together--hence "liberal democracy"--but they are analytically and historically distinct. Britain and the United States were both countries governed by law and in which human rights were honored well before they became full-fledged electoral democracies. We should not assume that what took hundreds of years in the West can happen overnight in the Middle East.

Clarifying our immediate goals actually makes them more easily attainable. The regimes in the Middle East will be delighted to learn that we will not try to force them to hold elections tomorrow. They will be less pleased to know that we will continually press them on a whole array of other issues. The starting point for talking to our allies should be that they observe the Hippocratic counsel--"do no harm." The Saudi monarchy must order a comprehensive overview of its funding (both private and public) of extremist Islam, which is now the kingdom's second largest export to the rest of the world. It must rein in its religious and educational leaders and force them to stop flirting with fanaticism. In Egypt, we must ask President Mubarak to insist that the state-owned press drop its anti-American and anti-Semitic rants, end the glorification of suicide bombers and begin opening itself up to other voices in the country. In Qatar we might ask the emir, who launched Al-Jazeera, to make sure that responsible, moderate Muslims appear as regularly on his network as extremist bin Laden sympathizers. None of this will produce democracy, but it will slow down the spread of illiberal voices and viewpoints.