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By Root 1158 0

to the East, local dress—the flowing robes, the turbans or Arab head cloths (kaffiyah)—marked them as exotic primitives. Yet the modernized dress—Western frock coat and peg-top trousers of the Ottoman—was not an indication that they had emancipated themselves, becoming “modern.” Instead it was evidence of duplicity. They might pretend to welcome the blessings of Western modernity, but they would always relapse into their cruel and atavistic ways. At best they might claim a “half modernity,” taking the technological productions but never the philosophical underpinning of Western Enlightenment. Those unvoiced fears of Eastern untrustworthiness are still with us.

I may be unfair to Zakaria, who always writes carefully and circumspectly.81 He might have “misspoken.” Yet it was said publicly and with such deliberation that perhaps it revealed what he thought but would not write. There is still an ambivalence toward the Islamic world that was magnified by the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent “war on terror.” Yet those events only catalyzed a fear which has older and deeper roots.

THE POLICY OF REMAKING IRAQ AFTER THE COALITION CONQUEST OF 2003 has been clouded by ambivalence. On one hand, there is the plausible vision of a society that can and might embrace liberal democracy. This is Zakaria’s perspective: “Iraq is already a nation. It is not even a failed state. It is a failed political system, which needs to be transformed. In doing so, America and others in the international community can help. But ultimately it is Iraqis who will build a new Iraq. The single most important strength a society can have is a committed, reformist elite.” What will sustain the change is never forgetting the horror of the last thirty years. “National trials, memoirs, truth and reconciliation commissions, oral histories—all will help maintain and recover that memory.”82 All of which is true, but as this book has argued, the power of collective memory is notoriously difficult to direct or contain. The underlying doubt in Washington seems to be: will modernity really take root in all its aspects?

Behind many Western approaches to a new Iraq lies a growing but unstated fear that the long period of Ba’ath rule might incongruously come to be remembered not just for its tyranny but also, nostalgically, for its bread-and-circuses lavishness. The vicious former government of modern Iraq was cruelly oppressive, but also committed to technical modernization and huge expenditures on social benefits. Spending on social reform and industrial development ended only when the cost of the Iran-Iraq war began to bite in 1982–83.83 Will the recovered memories of atrocity, even when buttressed by institutions of liberal democracy, be sufficient to prevent recidivism? Or do the leaders of the world superpower privately fear that there is in some collective Muslim Arab psyche that which tends toward secular tyranny, or, just as bad, inexorably toward an Islamic state?

In formulating their responses Western policy makers might recall the ancient game of Scissors, Paper, and Stone. The rules are simple. “Two people face each other each with one hand behind their back. On an agreed signal each draws their weapon. The weapons are stone (a clenched fist), paper (an open hand), and scissors (index and third finger extended). The rules of combat are: stone blunts scissors, paper wraps stone, scissors cut paper. Therefore, each weapon beats one of the others, and loses against the third. If two identical weapons are drawn a tie is declared.”84 By analogy, the West has been trying to play a very similar game in its relations with the Islamic East, trying to find the winning strategy. Yet time and again it has made the wrong judgment as to which (ideological) weapon to use.85

Dealing with Arab “mulishness,” the choices come down to the stick and the carrot. Or there is the third alternative: the Texas mule tamer, who ends up killing the mule to get its attention.86 The policy makers’ fundamental error stems from misunderstanding the nature and capacity of