Bad decisions with Afghanistan and Iraq are now casting a shadow over America’s ability to do the right thing in response to the Arab Awakening of 2011.
Imagine a world in which there was no al-Qaeda, no Afghanistan invasion and no Iraq war. Leave the rest in place, so it’s basically a geopolitical rewind to September 10th, 2001 but with all the socio-cultural, economic and technological history intact from the last 10 years.
So now you’ve fast forwarded to say, January 2011, without the above historical baggage and ask yourself the following question:
What would America’s correct response be to the uprisings blazing across the Arab world in opposition to dictatorial regimes? It’s hard to imagine Americans not intervening. What, after all, would our own often-repeated claims of leadership of the free world mean if not that?
I find myself unable to imagine any response other than (a) moral encouragement without hesitation, and (b) unabashed leadership of a collective international military intervention where genocide is threatened.  Take heed that in none, repeat, none, of the uprisings is there a focal personality. This underscores how each is a grass roots initiative of a population seeking to unshackle itself, and for this reason makes our intervention all the more imperative. All the while, the recent history of our ill-advised and ill-conceived foreign interventions gives us pause where none should exist.
In the “reset button” world I described at the beginning of this piece, it would have been considered the right thing to do because it so thoroughly comports with the principles we have enshrined in our own Constitution. It is this writer’s premise that the fastest way to see a principle turn to dust is to proclaim it loudly while shying away from defending it when both the facts—and the people affected by them—scream unequivocally and in equal measure for that defense.
So what does the future hold for the Arabs? Amid generally increasing prosperity throughout the rest of the world, Arabs everywhere have seen their prosperity decline. But now having also shed their fear, they have decided finally that it’s time for them to stand up and cast off their oppressors. What’s more, they’ve recognized that there can be no prosperity without freedoms and that in turn means that finally, the Arab world and America seem in principle to agree on something.
Yet the signals we’ve given them have been ones of equivocation and vacillation. We have projected our own sense of dilemma over loyalty to the autocratic ally versus loyalty to our founding principles and to the universality of human rights. At a time when America couldn’t be more certain of the principles which are at stake, we hesitate. Certainly, America isn’t responsible for birthing every liberation struggle but (and now conveniently reflecting the actual events of Iraq and Afghanistan) our rationale of spreading democracy which underwrote the Iraqi adventure must certainly ring hollow and cynical if we falter with the Arabs today.
Beyond the alignment of ideals so patently obvious in this situation, regardless of the messy and turbulent aftermath that is sure to ensue, America has perhaps a never-to-be-repeated chance of neutralizing its real enemies, the misguided radicals of al-Qaeda and their franchisees together with the nonsense they put out. No single act could resonate more with Muslims worldwide than for America to be seen to be supporting the popular Arab cause. Not unthinkingly for sure, but thoughtfully and strategically. Ultimately this has to be our response.
Yes, there are those who argue that removal of “stable” forces of autocracy will serve to unleash Islamic fundamentalism. It might not, but probably will. What such commentators fail to recognize, however, is that it isn’t fundamentalism that is assaulting our collective lives. It’s the radical extremists who began by reacting to America’s occupation of Muslim lands and its unwillingness to intervene in the matter of Jewish settlements. It’s our own myopia that prevents us from separating the two quite different concepts of fundamentalism and radicalization.
Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago recently published compelling evidence corroborating the conclusion that occupation, a form of suppression, has always been and remains the single biggest driver of at least suicide-based terrorism, Muslim or otherwise. We must try to understand this dynamic so we can address it properly. But to do so we have to start preferring information over the inaccurate eloquence which is offered by our agenda-laden pundits in what alleges to be news media.
We should also get things in perspective.  Translating a people’s life-risking struggles for freedom into the price that gasoline will reach in order to interfere with our enjoyment of the summer vacation season is, and is seen as, emblematic of America’s real feelings toward the Arab world.
We should remember what principles we are founded on and avoid the trap of proclaiming them ever more proudly and owning them ever more possessively, in tacit compensation for their ever-dwindling substance. The substance of fig-leaves.