Thomas L. Friedman Posted online: Friday, June 18, 2004 at 1017 hours IST Updated: Friday, June 18, 2004 at 1402 hours IST 1 2Next » US has to lower its profile in Arab world, and they have to realise how far India, Philippines, China—which provide the labour they need—have gone.
Visiting India and now China in the past few months tells me how much we Americans need to finish our business in Iraq and lower our profile there—not so we can wash our hands of the idea, and necessity, of promoting reform in the Arab world, but so we can advance that effort.
We can’t dictate reform to the Arabs. Look at how even a watered-down reform proposal from the G-8 summit meeting—The Broader Middle East Initiative—was received in the Arab-Muslim world. No one paid any attention to it. The whole concept was dead on arrival because it was made in America, which is now radioactive in the Arab world.
The pressure for change has to come from within and I think it can—if we lower our profile. Then the Arab world will have to look clearly at the fact that China, India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines—all the countries that provide maid service for the Saudi and other Arab ruling elites and manual labour for their construction—have leapt so far ahead with their own development that they are now taking good jobs away from America.
To put it another way, there are two ways for the United States to promote reform in the Arab world.
One way is to try to dictate it, which is not working. American policy has become so unpopular in the Arab world that anti-reformers can easily delegitimise the reform process by labeling it a ‘‘US plot to destroy Islam’’, and pro-reformers are silenced because they don’t want to be seen as promoting a made-in-America agenda.
US has to lower its profile in Arab world, and they have to realise how far India, Philippines, China—which provide the labour they need—have gone.
