Thomas Friedman:



The Arab world, alas, has been cursed with oil. For decades, too many Arab countries have opted to drill a sand dune for economic growth rather than drilling their own people — men and women — in order to tap their energy, creativity, intellect and entrepreneurship. Arab countries barely trade with one another, and unlike Korea and Japan, rarely invent or patent anything. But rather than looking inward, assessing their development deficits, absorbing the best in modern knowledge that their money can buy and then trying to beat the West at its own game, the Arab world in too many cases has cut itself off, blamed the enduring Palestine conflict or colonialism for delaying reform, or found dignity in Pyrrhic victories like Falluja.



Well this is a new one: Arab nations are too concerned with oil revenue to westernize themselves and fund development initiatives. This is such a probelatic statement, i'm not even sure where to begin (Munif's Cities of Salt works.) Gee Thomas, american oil corporations sure seem to have benefitted a lot from this "atab" pathology of oil greed. And i'm sure that the CIA never, oh, deposed any politicians trying to nationalize Gulf oil reserves or anything like that. What? They did? Oh, but Iran isn't an Arab country, so they don't count right. Ah, i see your logic now. Right. My bad, Mr. Friedman. Sorry to challenge your essentialist Huntingtonian constructions of cultural Otherness. clearly its the arabs' fault that US oil companies helped prop up and reinstate dictatorial regimes firendly to American coproate power. Clearly it is to the culpability of the monolithic arab people that we shoudl ascribe the suppression of democratic movements and social movements in which the US government was more than complicit.



Friedman suggests that if "we keep our eyes on the ball," "we" can "still" "do right" in Iraq. Unfortunately i think its pretty clear where "our" eyes have been all along.