Word: arabize
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What the demonstrators, who have the historical memory of a gnat, don't understand is that, on the contrary, oil is why America kept its distance from the region for so long. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt made alliance with Saudi Arabia, the U.S. chose to leave the Arab world to its own political and social devices so long as it remained a reasonably friendly petrol station. The arrangement lasted a very long time. Had Sept. 11 never happened, it would have lasted longer...
Sept. 11 brought home a terrible truth. It revealed a mortal enemy, even more fanatical than the vanquished scourges of the 20th century (fascism and communism), lying this time in the bosom of the Arab world. It was temporarily housed in Afghanistan, but it was not Afghan. It has non-Arab Islamic adherents, but it is not pan-Islamic. It does not speak for all Arabs, but it does speak to Arab frustrations, failures and fantasies, what Fouad Ajami has called "the dream palace of the Arabs...
Sept. 11 forever abolished the notion of benignity. It revealed an Arab world that had resisted modernization and democracy--and become home to the most virulent anti-Americanism on the planet. And that hatred threatens the most catastrophic consequences. Maybe not from Saddam, maybe not even from al-Qaeda. Maybe only from their emulators and successors. The players may change, but the blow will come...
Hence the awful realization: preventing the next Sept. 11 will require America to engage the Arab world the way it engaged Europe and Asia a half-century ago. Totally. We have long recoiled from such an undertaking. For decades, we tried a far more modest approach to the Arab world. It had three parts...
Americans don't like that. They do not hunger for exotic lands. America is perhaps the only hegemonic power in history in constant search of "exit strategies." But Sept. 11 taught that what the U.S. needs in the Arab world is not an exit strategy but an entry strategy. Iraq is the beckoning door...