The Ultimate Love-Hate Relationship

One of my favorite commentators is classical historian Victor Davis Hanson, probably because I agree with almost everything he writes. On August 3rd, he posted an article to his website titled, "Popularity Contest: Why they hate, and like, us", which is worth your reading. You can find it at http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson080307PF.html.

Consider this quote from the article, which represents the heart of Professor Hanson's discussion: "...what enrages America about the petulant Islamic world's dislike is mostly the unwillingness of these nations to translate their popular anger into any concrete action. We would expect these belligerents to refuse U.S. aid, cease immigrating to the United States, keep their students from visiting the Great Satan, or kick the U.S. military out of the Persian Gulf."

I suggest you go back and read that quote carefully, because it's important.

If you've been reading this blog for very long, you know that I tend to be very hard on the nations of the Middle East for this very reason. The most important word in anyone's vocabulary anywhere in the Middle East seems to be "hate." It's more important to hate someone and blame them for your troubles, than to take action to solve the problems and make life better. If you're a Palestinian, it's more important to sit in a squalid refugee camp, fight with other Palestinians, and blame Israel and the U.S. for your plight than to figure out how to move forward and build a progressive, functioning society. If you're a Muslim, it's more important to hate Christians and Jews than to accept them and work together to build a better life for everyone. If you're an Israeli, it's more important to build untenable settlements in occupied land than to work with the Palestinians to determine the most equitable deal which meets everyone's minimum needs.

It's easier to blame the United States for all the problems, because then you don't have to take responsibility for your own actions. Rajiv Chandrasekaran's wonderful book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, makes the compelling argument that the U.S., awash in good intentions, ended up making life miserable in Iraq, and I wouldn't argue with him. On the other hand, the Iraqis, having been handed the foreigners' gift (to paraphrase Fouad Adjami), proceeded to loot the country into wreckage, then go on to savagely murder each other on the basis of tribe and religious affiliation. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez blames America for every evil down to the termites in his walls. Mexico berates the U.S. for its treatment of illegal aliens arriving from that country, while at the same time treating illegal immigrants arriving in Mexico from the south very harshly.

Yes, it's always better to have someone to blame for your own failures. But why, since we of the U.S. are so terrible, does everyone want to come here? Why aren't people acting as Professor Hanson rhetorically asks?

Consider this thought, which many people smarter than I have expressed before: they come here because we offer what no other nation can. For all our faults (and there are plenty), the United States has built the world's only true, integrated, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, society which offers equality of opportunity to all. Perfect? Hardly. Better than just about everyone else? You bet.

The so-called "anger of the Arab street" and the carping of morons like Hugo Chavez is the sound of jealousy...anger that we have worked together to build a nation and society that all others envy, and are unwilling to do the hard work of building.

So my message to the dysfunctional nations of the Middle East is this: get off your backsides, stop blaming everyone else for your problems, and start working to build, rather than destroy.

You may find you actually like it.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo