DAVID PRYCE-JONES
DAVID PRYCE-JONES GUEST COLUMNIST Contrary to predictions of assorted defeatists, Saddam is, even to Arabs, a creature of shame, not a hero. Arabs anticipated Saddam's defeat. Operation Desert...
...As I write, it is barely conceivable that Saddam's defeat will trigger a sense of general humiliation and with it a revulsion against the West and those Arab regimes that participated in his downfall...
...The sole restraint upon use of force is superior force—the Kuwait crisis was only the latest example...
...In sober truth, in the Middle East as everywhere else live millions of diverse and lively people, fully capable of thinking for themselves, and by no means in the grip of collective frenzies...
...Experts in cynicism and skepticism, they have long been accustomed to the horrors inflicted on them by absolute despots of Saddam's stripe...
...Nothing could better illustrate the staying-power of the customary Arab order...
...Operation Desert Storm may be a similar turning-point for the Arabs...
...What perpetuates customs are the ancient values of shame and honor that define and legitimize conduct for the Arab world...
...Codes of shame and honor sometimes spring surprises, however, even on Arabs who live by them...
...The Arabs (and even Moslems generally) are going to hate the West for years to come...
...Not many years passed before they had adapted for themselves the democracy that has made them free and successful people...
...As individuals, Arabs know that their society is fragmented, a legacy from the tribalism of their past...
...Terms like "the Arabs" and "the Moslems" are generalizations that tend to mislead...
...Whenever any vital issue is at stake in this society, force decides its outcome...
...But each target destroyed in Iraq brought that impulse back to earth...
...Whatever enhances status brings honor, whatever detracts from status is shameful...
...To defend themselves, the weak can only hope to mobilize into a mob or to find outside protectors, as the Kuwaitis did before the war...
...Aggression is heroic...
...It prevents the emergence of nation-states capable of tackling contemporary problems...
...so desperate was their need to recover honor that they mistook their wishes for deeds...
...Assorted defeatists and Saddam's fellow travelers in the West paid no attention to Arab codes of shame and honor...
...In 1945, the Germans and Japanese were in a similar dead end...
...Instead they reveal the mind-set of a certain type of Westerner...
...Each successful Scud missile quickened the impulse to honor him...
...Most probably, however, Saddam will be regarded as a creature of shame, deceived by his own arrogance into a series of catastrophic miscalculations that cried out for retribution...
...The extension of his power into Kuwait and his defiance of the West against all reason at first compelled admiration in this culture: Perhaps he would prove the stronger through belligerence of a kind no ordinary person has...
...To suppose otherwise is to condescend to them...
...Like everyone else, however, Arabs mosUy anticipated Saddam's defeat Underneath the competition for honor that took place in the public arena, Arabs were privately weighing the true balance of forces...
...S» David Pryce-Jones is a journalist living in London...
...If Saddam were victorious, the need to honor him would have become irresistible...
...Some Arabs and Moslems do indeed hate the West, but many more admire it and long to enjoy for themselves its material and political benefits...
...The West and the majority of Arabs, on the contrary, perceived very clearly that the restoration of Kuwait, in other words the supremacy of law and order, took priority over abstract war cries like Arab unity and Islamic crusading...
...Westerners would have been perceived as creatures of shame, humiliated because the repeated assurances of their strength proved actually to be empty boasting...
...Conversely, the West will be seen, even by those who hate it, to have done what it promised to do, to have stood by its friends and allies when a vital interest was at stake and finally to have proved the stronger...
...A one-man ruler like Saddam depended on these values to support his absolutism...
...His most recent book is The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs (Harper Perennial, 1990...
...Such anxieties and aberrations have little or no basis in reality...
...They knew how he brutalized his own people as well as Iranians and, more recently, Kuwaitis, and that he would have no scruples about devastating the whole Middle East with nuclear weapons if he had them...
...The minority who supported him included Palestinians, the Islamic fundamentalist Moslem Brotherhood and others who felt themselves humiliated by their history...
...Repeatedly claiming to be "the defender of Arab dignity" and the conqueror who will drown unbelievers in their own blood, Saddam struck a chord even in those who distrusted and feared him...
...In addition to tried-and-tested pacifists were, unexpectedly, the Edward Luttwaks, Pat Buchanans and Professor Paul Kennedys who argued that America did not really know what its interests were, that we would elevate Saddam's stature by attacking him...
...Then the mob would have stormed one Arab capital after another to overthrow their present rulers...
...The West was unable to negotiate this dispute according to its culture and values, and had no choice but to resort to a trial of strength on Saddam's terms...
...Those who are shamed deserve whatever is coming to them...
...Going down in such humiliating defeat, the Arab tribal order is publicly revealed to be retrograde and self-destructive, in urgent need of reform if Arabs are at last to meet the West on equal terms, as everyone must hope...
...So we were told by an assorted bevy of scare-mongers...
...Operation Desert Storm may be a turning point for the Arabs...
...The strong therefore take pride in despoiling the weak...
Vol. 16 • April 1991 • No. 2
