One Beefy Mustache = Middle East Expert
I have to give credit to Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist. He manages to take very complicated matters and stuff them nice and neatly into one tiny, simple packaged metaphor. His series of columns on the Middle East could very easily be the text of a “for Dummies” book. Of course, the credit he gets is limited. His oversimplifications are enabled by ideological blindspots, such as the few so apparent in today’s column, ‘Green Shoots in Palestine’:
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to the wider Middle East what off-Broadway is to Broadway. It is where all good and bad ideas get tested out first. Well, the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, a former I.M.F. economist, is testing out the most exciting new idea in Arab governance ever. I call it “Fayyadism.”
Fayyadism is based on the simple but all-too-rare notion that an Arab leader’s legitimacy should be based not on slogans or rejectionism or personality cults or security services, but on delivering transparent, accountable administration and services.
Fayyad, a former finance minister who became prime minister after Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007, is unlike any Arab leader today. He is an ardent Palestinian nationalist, but his whole strategy is to say: the more we build our state with quality institutions — finance, police, social services — the sooner we will secure our right to independence. I see this as a challenge to “Arafatism,” which focused on Palestinian rights first, state institutions later, if ever, and produced neither.
You know who else hinged his legitimacy on the efficient provision of services? Mussolini. I am not saying Fayyad is a dictator, but he is part of the undemocratic reign of the current regime — something Friedman subsumes under his “I-know-better” tone.
Without political legitimacy, institution-building will likely not prove effective. Why? Without being rooted in popular support, institutions will be houses of cards. The current patronage system, which sees the PA’s governance depending on soling out aid income, is an inherently corrupt one and institutions built within this context will be as corrupt. It is inevitable and unavoidable.
The mere provision of services, as a technocrat, is not as Friedman assumes, an ideologically-void endeavor. No, it is firmly rooted in the American-PA agenda of a justice-free two-state solution, a managed settlement that reifies the gains of Zionism and the Jewishness of the state of Israel, and concretizes the submergence of Palestinians rights to Israeli chauvinism and its self-centered security regime.
Where Friedman sees a visionless and practical “Fayyadism,” Palestinians see a clear political agenda. Friedman probably thinks Fayyad is marked by pragmatism, yet I can think of no historical precedent for their strategy — negotiating towards a de-militarized state based on providing security to another country. How is such a rail-thin basis for statehood — one doomed to failure — pragmatic? Just because it is the most easily achievable, it doesn’t make it practical. Practicality must include considerations of sustainability, otherwise it’s just the easy way out.
The other major failure in Friedman’s simplistic reading is that the Israeli occupation — oh yeah, remember that tiny detail — is entirely left out of the analysis. Let’s call that trend Friedmanism.
Related posts:
- Helena Cobban Reports Back from Middle East Trip
- I Know A PR Stunt When I Smell One
- How the Tail Wags the Dog & Sec. Rice has Shame?
- The Unrecognized
- BREAKING NEWS: Lebanon elects a Christian president
Friedman is a Zionist joke and people who buy into his biased words and videos are just as bad.
His books and Op-Eds contain nothing of real, fundamental value and I have yet to see, in his own words, any just and sustainable peace plan or even any basic steps which could be followed. He ALWAYS takes Israel's side and in my own opinion, is a "prositute" of political writing, one who has been bought by people who want him to write what he effectively (and erroneously) conveys to the blinded masses who support his opinions and his outlooks.
He just talks and writes, visits and sermonizes without any real "meat" to debate. His is a weak "milk" that fails to satisfy, comes short of addressing the real problems and in a very fleeting way, fills the minds and bellies of his reader's Middle Eastern cravings with unsubstantial and repetative air.
Posted by Los | August 5, 2009, 5:05 pmi thought it was douchism
Posted by tophat | August 6, 2009, 2:39 pm