Let's Spread the Good Cheer by Fareed Zakaria

November 26, 2001, U.S. Edition

Let's Spread the Good Cheer
America needs to use the capital of victory to press Arab regimes to confront extremism.
By Fareed Zakaria

While the dramatic events of last week have transformed the situation in Afghanistan, their effects in Washington have been more comical. Gen. Tommy Franks, who 10 days earlier was facing a barrage of impatient criticism, is now being showered with praise. Commentators who had been thundering about Washington's feeble war plans now extol the suppleness of our strategy. The Northern Alliance, once scorned as a ragtag bunch of misfits, is now spoken of with awe and affection. We should not have been so surprised that the Afghans switched to the winning side so quickly. People in Washington do it all the time.

So one great myth about the war against the Taliban--that we were losing on the ground--has exploded. But another still stays strong. We hear daily that even as it is vanquishing the foe, America is losing the propaganda war. Tensions are bubbling over as we enter the month of Ramadan. The Arab street is angry. But is it? Martin Indyk, former assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has tracked the number of demonstrations in the Arab world since the war began. In this entire swath of 21 countries, from Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa to Yemen and Dubai in the Persian Gulf, here's how many anti-American demonstrations have taken place. Week one: 9; week two: 3; week three: 1; week four: 2; week five (and this was the week that Mullah Mohammed Omar called for mass protests, American bombs hit a hospital and Israeli tanks rolled into the West Bank): 0 (yes, zero); last week: 1. After the first few days, these protests were tiny, often being made up of a thousand people. And this despite the daily diet of pictures of Afghan children, Osama bin Laden's speeches and commentary from fiery radicals that was broadcast by Al-Jazeera, the Pan-Arab "news" network.

Or consider the situation in Pakistan, often talked about as a trembling domino. Despite the fact that Mullah Omar and bin Laden both explicitly called for the toppling of President Pervez Musharraf, despite support for their cause from Pakistan's fundamentalist political parties, despite Pakistan's close ties to the Taliban, the response from Pakistanis was a few scattered protests that never gained force. Musharraf remains popular, and in fact his standing may have risen for steering the ship of state so cleverly. The extremists had hoped that the country would shut down for a day in sympathy for bin Laden. It never happened. Outside the Arab world the reaction has been almost nonexistent. With the exception of a few hundred militant extremists in Indonesia (a country with 200 million Muslims) and the Philippines, there has been almost no serious political activity supporting bin Laden. Radical Muslim "leaders" have tried to rally their people, but the people have chosen to stay home.

This is not to say that there isn't plenty of anti-American sentiment in these countries. There is, and it poses a serious problem for Washington. But it did not translate into support for bin Laden, Islamic fundamentalism or terrorism. On the evidence of the past six weeks, most Muslims are still struggling to combine their faith with modernity and have not given in to fantasies about a medieval utopia based on "pure Islam." (This conclusion is consistent with electoral results; in almost every election in the Islamic world in which fundamentalists have taken part, they have done badly.) In addition, American diplomacy and war strategy--carefully tuned not to offend Muslim sensibilities--have made it impossible to portray this struggle as a clash of civilizations. We have heard lots of bad news about the Muslim world in recent weeks--much of it true--but let's take a moment to notice that there is some good news as well.

Now we need to spread the cheer. The American position in the Arab world--particularly among its leaders--is stronger than it has been in years. Victory does that. But we must use it to press Arab regimes to confront Islamic extremism, stop encouraging their media to rant about America and Israel and open up their societies to ease their people's sense of powerlessness and discontent.

We should say to the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the rest: "The past two months have shown that there is no tidal wave of fundamentalism in your lands. You don't need to pander to the extremists or to kill them and maintain a police state. You can battle them politically. And if you deliver economic and political progress, the fundamentalist threat will wither away." It will be a hard sell, because these regimes--fearing a public they don't know--are reluctant to take any chances. They all remember the fate of the Shah of Iran. But it's time to point out that that was almost 25 years ago and that the real lesson of the Iranian revolution is that it did not spread anywhere and brought misery to its people, from which they are only just emerging.

Osama bin Laden did seem to appeal to millions of frustrated people in the Islamic world. But much of his appeal was as an alternative to the wretched regimes of the Arab world and as a symbol of defiance against the mighty American superpower. Once you take success away from bin Laden, what's left is a spoiled Saudi millionaire with a medieval world view. It turned out that there wasn't much support for that in the Muslim world.