O dedo na ferida Excertos de artigos de Al-'Afif Al-Akhdar, um tunisiano sediado em Paris, publicados no liberal Elaph, traduzidos e divulgados pelo fundamental MEMRI. O primeiro é escrito do ponto de vista dos mísseis que cairam sobre Bagdad. O segundo artigo são as suas opiniões acerca da obsessão com a vingança. Ambos são extremamente interessantes por duas razões. Em primeiro lugar, por mostrarem claramente, se é que era preciso, que existem posições moderadas e razoáveis na opinião pública muçulmana. A segunda por o autor ter sido despedido do seu jornal original, o que demonstra que essas opiniões não são bem toleradas nos média de língua árabe. Mas o melhor é mesmo ler alguns excertos:

What Did the Missiles Falling on Baghdad Tell Me?

"...All the peoples of the world are moving forward along the course of history towards globalization, a society of knowledge, and political modernization - all but you, who race in the opposite direction."

"The Eastern European countries have moved peacefully and with lightning speed from murderous Stalinist totalitarianism to democracy, and from economic backwardness to continuing economic growth that amazed even the most optimistic predictions. As for you, you're moving in rapid steps from backwardness into sub-backwardness, and from poverty into sub-poverty. As population growth and weapons acquisitions increase, economic growth and education decline into degradation. The peoples of mankind are governed by the law of progress, while you are governed by the law of regression."

"You replaced the dictatorship of the Shah for the theocracy of [Ayatolla] Khomeini, from the pores of whose skin the blood was dripping. In Sudan, Hassan Al-Turabi - nicknamed by our media 'the pope of world terror' - turned against Al-Sadeq Al-Mahdi's elected government after he was toppled by free elections, and established on the ruins [of Al-Mahdi's government] a militaristic and bloody Islamic regime, unique of its kind in the annals of this country, that set it back decades in all spheres."

The hysteria of vengeance on the West and on its protégée Israel has disastrous results - for example, the Arab traditional elite's phobia of Western modernism. The Western imperialism that followed this Western modernism crippled this elite, depriving it of the ability of rational statesmanship. [Statesmanship] that includes [the adoption of] constructive [Western] innovation; setting realistic aims; playing the political game rationally; realistically interpreting the [global or regional] balance of power and harnessing [this interpretation] in the decision-making [process]; managing crises sensibly by peaceably bringing the conditions of its solution into fruition; and, finally, developing decision-making procedures.

The policy of vengeance that prevails today, especially among the influential elites in Palestine, Syria and Iraq, has banished any rational policy from their domestic decision making. In their domestic policy, these elites dismiss all public discussion. In their foreign policy, they refuse to negotiate. This is how these elites increase the likelihood of implosion [i.e. domestic strife] and war. It [also] explains their careening from one domestic outbreak [of violence] into the next, and from one destructive war into the next, much fiercer war.

[...]

The 'all or nothing' policy was behind [Jerusalem's Grand Mufti] Haj Amin Al-Huseini's rejection of the Peel Commission [1937] [decision] to grant the Palestinians 80% of the land of Palestine, and of the 1947 UN resolution to grant the Palestinians 45% of Palestine. This policy also motivated Hafez Al-Assad, at the end of the summit conference with president Clinton in 2000, to refuse [the offer to] regain the Golan Heights except for 200 meters on the eastern bank of the Sea of Galilee, claiming that when he was in the army, he used to wade and fish in the lake! And what was the result? Great difficulty for his successor in regaining even a single meter in the foreseeable future, save for concessions that the Israeli leadership only ever dreamed of.

The cult of arming with WMD drove Saddam Hussein into delirious... decisions. [Such as the decisions] to strike the Kurds with chemical weapons; shoot tear gas at demonstrators - [tear gas] produced from aflatoxins that cause liver cancer... as revealed by Saddam's former scientific advisor Dr. Hussein Al-Shahrastani; attack Iran with chemical weapons; invade Kuwait; in addition to wasting - over 35 years - his country's material and human resources on the altar of his vengeful obsession and insane passion for martial victory.

[...]

This kind of suicidal policy was also behind Yasser Arafat's unexpected shift from promising negotiations to futile armed struggle and Intifada, that has proven no less futile."

And why is that? It was because Chairman Arafat envied Hizbullah's success at 'expelling' the Israeli army from the Israeli security zone [in Lebanon]. Overnight, he decided to shift from negotiating with to expelling the occupying Israeli army, and unilaterally declaring a fully sovereign Palestinian state without [paying] the price of recognizing Israel - as Egypt and Jordan had already done. And what was the outcome of this vengeful and suicidal decision? Unprecedented self-punishment: The occupying army [Israel] returned to 42% of the territories liberated through negotiation.

By the same logic, Chairman Arafat turned down president Clinton's proposal to regain 97% of the occupied territories, with a promise of $40 billion to resettle the Palestinian refugees within the promised Palestinian state. And what was the outcome of this decision, which was in disregard of any consideration of Palestinian national interest for establishing a homeland and a lasting state? The outcome is that Arafat and his people are today in grave danger.

[...]

The last 'hero' of the Arab and Islamic nation, the Wahabbi terrorist Osama bin Laden, wanted to avenge his Arab and Islamic nation on the 'Crusaders' by attacking New York and Washington, D.C. The Arabs and the Muslims, both elites and masses, believed in him and acclaimed him. And what was the result? The complete opposite: The U.S. invaded Afghanistan and expelled bin Laden and his patrons, the Taliban, from the country, with determination to uproot them. In addition, our 'hero' [bin Laden] provided the neoconservatives in the American administration the chance they longed for to implement their geopolitical vision: to redefine and reorganize their priorities independently of their European allies. Abandoning the formalities of international law - which was for a long time a shield for the 'oppressed ones,' of whom bin Laden was the self-appointed spokesman - put an end to the prospects of the emergence of an economically and militarily unified Europe as [another] global pole, [a vision] of which the Arabs dreamed night and day."