The Arab Basement

Thomas Friedman says the problem is not the "Arab Street" but beneath the street in the Arab Basement, which is where all the terrorists are.

So what to do? The only sensible response is to defeat those in the Arab basement, who are beyond politics and diplomacy, while at the same time working to alleviate the grievances, unemployment and sense of humiliation that is felt on the Arab street, so that fewer young people will leave the street for the basement, or sympathize with those down there — as millions of Arabs do today
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My guess is that the only way to stop the drift of young Arabs from the street to the basement is by administering some shock therapy to this whole region. Could replacing Saddam Hussein with a progressive Iraqi regime be such a positive shock? I don't know. I don't know if the Bush team really wants to do that, or if the American people want to pay for it. But I do know this: If America made clear that it was going into Iraq, not just to disarm Iraq but to empower Iraq's people to implement the Arab Human Development Report, well, the Arab basement still wouldn't be with us, but the Arab street just might

Faster, please.

And Friedman doesn't exactly say this, although he almost says it, and I take his comments to the next level: Arab and Islamic terrorism is not primarily motivated by hatred for America or Israel. Those are just the external excuses for resentments against the terrorists own societies. Put the shoe on the other foot and think about it in these terms: Americans, especially Jewish Americans, have many good reasons to be pissed-off at, say, Saudi Arabia. But how Jewish Americans go off and commit acts of terrorism against Saudi facilities around the world? Not many, and the reason for that is because of the society we grew up in, and not because of how awful Saudi Arabia is.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 24, 2002 07:09 AM