Small World

Jewish World Review Feb. 28, 2001 / 5 Adar, 5761


Nothing succeeds
like failure



By Daniel Pipes

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- EXACTLY 10 years ago today, Iraq's war for conquest of Kuwait ended in total failure. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was expected quickly to lose control of Iraq, but a decade later he remains very much in power.

How did he manage this? Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam's chief spokesmen, hinted, even before war broke out in January 1991, why his master had no worries.

Middle Eastern regimes, Aziz told US secretary of state James Baker, have never "entered into a war with Israel or the United States and lost politically." Though somewhat exaggerated (Arab leaders did pay a price for losing to Israel in 1948-49), Aziz was basically right: military loss usually does not hurt a Middle Eastern ruler. Instead, he denies disaster on the battlefield and flourishes politically.

Consider some examples:

Today, those events are remembered as a glorious victory. For example, Hamas recounted a few years later that the Palestinians in 1982 "humiliated" Israel and "broke its resolve."

But what explains this surprising pattern? Three aspects of Moslem life help account for it.

  • Honor has monumental importance; maintaining it counts more than actually achieving something. Hussein Sumaida, an Iraqi exile, explains Saddam's motives in taking on most of the world in 1991: "Winning didn't matter. What mattered was putting on a good show and gaining the hearts and minds of the smoldering Arab world."

  • Fatalism offers Moslem rulers a way to avoid blame. It was all in the cards, what could we do? As'ad Abu Khalil of California State University finds that in times of defeat, Arab leaders typically adopt an attitude that "people have no influence or effect whatever on their actions and deeds. It is only God who acts." Invoking "the inescapability of destiny" absolves Arab regimes and armies from responsibility. This pattern, he correctly notes, "has become typical to the point of predictability."

  • Conspiracy theories are so dominant that every confrontation with the West (including Israel) is assumed to imply a Western intent to destroy the rulers and conquer their countries. Egyptians, for example, widely believed the British and French governments planned in 1956 to eliminate Nasser and occupy Egypt. When these devastating consequences failed to happen, his mere survival became tantamount to a famous victory. Defeating an enemy on the battlefield is not enough to win in the Middle East; the ruler and his regime must also be eliminated.

The policy implications for Iraq are obvious.


JWR contributor Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and the author of several books, most recently Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes from. Let him know what you think by clicking here.


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© 2001, Daniel Pipes