Doomed Pride

The Arab Street’s reaction to the Lebanon-Syria issue is raising a fundamental issue: does the Arab world want to be part of the international community or not?

It is a real irony that Faruq Al Shara’, the Syrian Foreign minister who represents a brutal dictatorship, was speaking for a lot of people in the Arab world when he made those absurd comments about September 11, March 11 and july 7.
I could imagine a lot of Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi cheerleaders admiring him for letting the Americans and British “have it”. Of course, those same people will totally ignore how Shara’ cowardly backtracked after the other foreign ministers let HIM have it.

Why is this happening? Why are so many Arabs impressed by pointless machismo? Why side with a dictator against the whole international community? Why is it that when the Iranian President foolishly says that Israel should be wiped off the map, a lot of Arabs cheer? Why is it that Hassan Nasrallah’s fiery speeches are so celebrated on Aljazeera?

Who do we really think we are? What makes us think that we can get away with defying the international community?

In yesterday’s article by Annahar’s Ghassan Tueiny, I found a piece of collective psychoanalysis that is as much perverted as it is convincing. He wrote:

History is beginning to wonder: have we Arabs taken a liking to the taste of defeat, and to the subsequent crying over ruins, as a necessary trade-off for our adoration of fiery slogans and flowery speeches?

The collective psychology of the Arab world reminds me of that kid who thinks it was worth it to have been kicked out of school for calling his teacher an idiot or for hitting another “weakling” student. Even more, he loves bragging about this for the rest of his life.

He still thinks of him as a weakling who took a beating back in school even after that ‘weakling’ graduates and becomes a successful and powerful individual; he still thinks that he is better than him. He keeps on forgetting that he’s nothing but a beggar, a dependent, a parasitic gnat on fringes of developed societies.

What we Arabs are not getting is that we should go back to the school and accept its “unfair” rules. even if it has “idiot” teachers, or “favorite” students (read Israel). Because the point is how much we learn, how much we produce, not how much others are “abusing” the system.

Saddam is now in jail, and he still thinks he’s better than the Americans. Let’s hope Bashar doesn’t go down the same path, because no matter what the Arab cheerleaders say, only he can chose what he wants for his country, prosperity or a doomed pride?