The Culprits Condemn Themselves

A Palestinian and a Saudi: How my Arab friends see the U.S. financial crisis

When I telephoned two Arab friends this week to congratulate them on the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan, as soon as we had gotten past the obligatory pleasantries the talk immediately turned to the United States; the superpower’s crisis, the financial meltdown, the implosion of their image as role model. Both my friends gave me a wide spectrum of Arab opinion, and that’s why I think it’s worth passing along what they told me in condensed form here.

The first friend is a Palestinian who, for various reasons – all of which, he says, are due to Israeli policy – cannot return to his home in Gaza. He has lived itinerantly for years, distressed at the indifference the world shows toward his fate and that of his countrymen.

The dangerous teeterings on Wall Street don’t worry him in the least. His constantly pilfered wallet doesn’t make him a natural customer for Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch and he’s not interested in the derivatives, certificates or anything else the banking world has to sell. My friend is a happy person. He laughs, he jokes and he pokes fun. After the many years of hubris, after the humiliations of the Bush regime, he says now the chickens have come home to roost. Didn’t America stop giving financial assistance to the Palestinians back in 2000? Haven’t they continued to divide his people, invaded Iraq, shot at them by way of their Israeli accomplices? Haven’t they tortured, imprisoned and starved them? That’s what my friend talks about.

And then came the divine judgment: the financial crisis hit the bull’s eye in the United States. He says it was senseless to slaughter all those defenseless people in the World Trade Center. Al-Quaeda wasn’t god’s revenge. No, this revenge is subtler and deadlier at the same time. The culprits condemned themselves, he says. And he’s glad.

Naturally, my friend has a very personal perspective on things, and because we’ve had such discussions with one another for years, it doesn’t occur to me to argue the details with him. All I did was tell him what my other Arab friend told me.

My Saudi friend also lives in constant motion, if you will. He attended college in Great Britain and he’s regularly invited to take part in conferences in Egypt, Germany and the United States. But he’s not fleeing from anything, he’s going of his own free will. He treasures the individual freedoms of the West. He’s not wealthy, but he does have a bank account, as all proper Saudis do. He’s never had any dealings with Lehman Brothers, although these days who knows what credit obligations one’s bank has?

He tells me he’s disturbed by the collapse of the large American financial institutions. What surprises will the U.S. spring on us next? It only took them eight years to destroy their good reputation with the world. The Iraq war destroyed the myth of their invincibility. The torture chambers in Iraq and Guantanamo ruined the legend of America’s moral superiority. Now, the credit and financial crisis is smashing the foundations of their economic leadership.

My friend from Riyadh doesn’t see any divine retribution here, he sees only unbelievable arrogance coupled with suicidal negligence in action. In all three crises – Iraq, Guantanamo and Wall Street – the U.S. government apparently assumes it can gamble in the casinos of world history without fear of ever losing.

What bothers him, he says, is watching the decline of America, his role model, in the eyes of the Arabs. It bothers him that he can hardly argue against the America-haters now. That he, like so many of America’s supporters in that part of the world, has lost his orientation. Because, he says, the alternatives are very flimsy. It’s not as if China or Russia can promise anything better. Nor is there an alternative model in the Arab world. Neither Arab nationalism nor Islam are ideologies upon which a freer, more just and prosperous society can be built. The only thing that remains is chaos.

As I relate all that to my Palestinian friend, he laughs again. He doesn’t believe it could get any worse than it’s been under American dominance since 1991. Since that time, the Arabs have suffered the most. They got nothing from the so-called global economic recovery. The only thing it proves is that it was just a bubble for everybody. An American bubble.

As he thinks, so think most Arabs. Can I contradict him? These days and in this part of the world, it’s difficult to put a good word in for the West’s most powerful nation.