Control Room part II

The director, Jehanen Noujain and the fat Al Jazeera guy were on Charlie Rose tonight. She's hot. And got great teeth. Is she the hottest female movie director? Quite possibly - it sure ain't Sophia the horse face or Jane Campion.

But onto more worldly things, I started to realize what annoyed me a bit during the film about the fat guy and other Arab intellectuals....they never, ever, stand up for any American policy in the Middle East. I've hardly ever heard any powerful media, intellectual, or political Arab stand up and say they support American policies and values in the Middle East. (One exception may be Ghaddafi's son, which is this bizarre generational thing). No one even does it for sake of argument. At least, I never hear it...I suppose there are some bloggers out there, but I suspect they are more read by Westerners than by Arabs.

The only position I hear from Arab intellectuals is a waving away of the whole terrorism issue in order to focus on American or Israeli injustices. It's always, terrorism is a problem, BUT...onto to something else. It doesn't make sense to me.

Their position is basically this: our countries suck ass because of inept leadership. The inept leadership is the fault of American support. Furthermore, American support of Israel undermines Arab dignity.

This position, while somewhat correct, misses the opportunity to change things. Inept leadership is not primarily America's fault - it's primarily the fault of the citizens of those countries who fail to take control. If America supports a regime, like Saudia Arabia, the reaction is to hate America - see Al Queda. If America does not support a regime, it's America's fault Iraqi childen starve. If America establishes normal relations with a semi-corrupt regime you have Egypt, another hotspot for anti-Americanism. It's a no win for us.

No progess will ever be made in the middle east until Arab countries start to take responsibility for themselves. To actually stand up and say, "No, actually this is not because of Israel or the US, or any outside influence. The reason the water doesn't work is because we didn't invest in education or infrastructure. But now we're changing that. We're opeing a trade school to train people to become engineers and plumbers and sanitation experts and we're investing in a new system. And if someone tries to blow it up, we will stop them on our own."

Why is that hard to say?

I guess it's easy to point out hypocracy than to actually make things better.