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Feature
The Arab World and Its Discontents
The bitter harvest that came from having too much money.
A long time ago (when those of us in our sixties were young and the Great Extinction of newspapers and magazines was still somewhere off in the future), I wrote a letter to Bill Kroger, then the chief of correspondents of Business Week. In it I suggested that he make me his man in Beirut — opening a bureau in that exotic city and putting me in charge.
Kroger turned me down — citing my inexperience. If he wanted to open a bureau in Beirut, he said, he would look for someone who was worldly and sophisticated, and well versed in economics, finance, and oil.
Britain’s Economist once had a Beirut bureau chief who fit this description. His name was Kim Philby — a daring, dashing, and brilliant man. Unfortunately for the Economist (and still more for the British secret service), he disappeared one night — picked up by a Russian trawler in Beirut harbor and whisked off to spend the rest of his life as one of the heroes of the Soviet Union.
For better or worse, I was no Philby. At the age of 27, I had never set foot outside of North America. I spoke no Arabic. And I had only been “stringing,” or freelancing, for Business Week for a couple of years. My full-time job was with the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
Kroger said one thing that gave me a flicker of hope. He admitted the magazine should have a full-time staffer in the Middle East. As I had argued in my letter, how could Business Week call itself one of the world’s leading business magazines and not have a bureau somewhere in the Middle East — given the billions upon billions of “petro-dollars” that were pouring into the region as a result of the Arab oil embargo and the sudden quadrupling of oil prices in 1973 and 1974?
All of that was money taken from the pockets of consumers in the United States and other advanced countries. As a result of this sudden loss of purchasing power, the developed world fell into a deep recession. People stopped buying cars and the housing market cratered. Business Week and other big New York-based publications shared in the all-pervasive misery. They stopped hiring and they weren’t opening new offices — in the Middle East or anywhere else.
As I pondered the situation, I had a sudden inspiration: I would get a jump on everyone else and send myself to Beirut. There was nothing to stop me from going on my own.
So I phoned Kroger with a new plan. This time I asked for nothing more than the opportunity to act as the magazine’s “stringer” in Beirut, just as I was already doing in St. Louis. That meant working on piecework basis, paid so much per column inch — with no salary or benefits to offset the substantially higher cost of living in Beirut, a watering hole for the super rich. This put all the risk on my shoulders. How could Kroger refuse such an offer? He couldn’t (knowing I could make the same offer to competing publications). And he didn’t.
On this basis, my wife and I quit our jobs in St. Louis, sold almost everything we owned, and prepared to move half way around the world. At a going-away party, a friend gave our four-year-old daughter a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Beirut or Bust.”
WE ARRIVED IN BEIRUT just 10 days before the city erupted in violence. The trouble began on April 13, 1975, a day that lives in infamy for all Lebanese, solemnly commemorated every spring as the saddest day in their collective history.
On that day Christian gunmen stopped a bus filled with Palestinian workers and opened fire — slaughtering all on the bus. This was the start of the Lebanese Civil War — a prolonged and messy conflict involving Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, Druze, and Palestinian refugees from Israel and Jordan who lived under United Nations supervision in large camps on the outskirts of the city.
Did the sudden enrichment of the oil-producing states have anything to do with the swirling storm of violence in Lebanon? As a matter of fact, it did. To show their devotion to the Palestinian cause, the Saudis and others sent money to the PLO (then encamped in Lebanon) to buy weapons to use against Israel. However, as the Lebanese Christians saw it, the growing cache of weapons held by the Palestinians could equally well be used against them. The Christians — or heavily armed elements among the Christians — became obsessed with the fear that the Palestinians would tilt the balance of power within Lebanon decisively in favor of the Muslims. This is what led them to take the first step in precipitating a war that left more than 40,000 dead and 100,000 wounded in its first three years.
There was intermittent heavy fighting in and around Beirut in the spring of 1975, followed by a lull in hostilities during the summer, and renewed, and far worse, violence in the fall, when the fighting was more like Stalingrad than Belfast — with pitched battles to control key buildings and a daily death toll that sometimes exceeded 100.
If only briefly, Beirut became the center of world attention and — from my narrow perspective as neophyte foreign correspondent — this counted as a lucky break. From the start, I had a big and continuing story to write about as I made the rounds of banks, businesses, and embassies in Beirut. In working for a business magazine, I did not have to untangle the causes of the war or dive into the labyrinth of Lebanese politics. For me, the story was much simpler: Would Beirut survive as a regional center, and, if not, what would replace it?
I watched the recent television scenes of fleeing expatriates gathered at airports in Cairo and Tripoli with a sense of déjà vu. In late October 1975, we were part of a general evacuation of expatriates from Beirut. Various embassies around the city activated phone chains and pooled their minivans and buses into a ragtag convoy, which stopped to collect people from hotels and other gathering points and took them out to the airport. The most striking figure in our van was a majestic-looking Maronite priest, a black-bearded bear of man. He was dressed in a white cassock with a red sash, with a pearl-handled revolver tucked into the sash. Three Japanese businessmen sat in the back of the bus, with our daughter’s wicker doll basket lying sideways across their legs.
About the Author
Andrew B. Wilson, a frequent contributor to The American Spectator, writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (51) | Leave a comment
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Dee See| 5.25.11 @ 7:02AM
"We are using MASSIVE third world
immigration (largely muslim)
to destroy British culture
once and for all ---forever."
-TONY BLAIR
Former PM/Globalist
"Understand, America's final task before
its own collapse is finished off and RED China's
brought in as 'model' and 'world enforcer'
is to 'bring in' the recalcitrant Middle East."
-ALAN WATT
(essential online coverage)
ALLLL you need to know.
Alan Brooks| 5.25.11 @ 8:42PM
You must have taken even more LSD than I ever did, Dee See-- you need a dose of haldol AND thorazine.
As for Clint, it is not mental illness-- he merely sees a Mossad agent behind every tree because he expects them to be there. Of course he doesn't really believe Marge is an IDF Lady-- but it is how the general direction of his mind works: in the direction of paranoia.
Alan Brooks| 5.25.11 @ 11:30PM
I demand attention and respectful homage be paid to my insightful, intelligent point of view.
Please, I'm so lonely in the basement, the CFL blew and I can't clean it up until mom gets home, she's already mad at me for stealing the neighbor woman's underwear.
davelnaf| 5.25.11 @ 7:38AM
Good article; many good insights, particularly the liberal fantasy that the current Arab upheaval is some kind of an Enlightenment-like event because they’re unable to face the fact that the Muslim-Arab world is very dysfunctional.
Alan Brooks| 5.25.11 @ 8:50PM
BTW, go to workers world. org, you'll see the Commie (Stalinoid) line is parallel to Clint's view that Israel is nothing more than a settler state propped up by America.
Well naturally it is a settler state, it is surrounded by enemies and far-away enemies such as Clint.
However Israel is more than a settler state, it is one of the most brilliant states in the world, including research of all sorts-- something Clint doesn't like; he prefers emotion.
John Navratil| 5.25.11 @ 9:00AM
This article squares nicely with my observations within Saudi Arabia in '79 and '80.
The only thing missing is the description of the expat wives who, because the could only rarely work as teachers or nurses, played bridge and tennis endlessly, but remained convinced that they should be able to dress as they pleased.
It was, in many ways, as intolerant.
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 4:24PM
Thank you, John N. I knew your brilliant comments came from experience.
If you waste 50% of your population, it will not help you. It is a truly horrible culture that is so misogynistic.
John Navratil| 5.25.11 @ 4:42PM
Occam's Tool,
Any society which refuses to educate one-half its population starts out as half-wit.
C Smith| 5.25.11 @ 9:27AM
The impetus du jour is insurrection. Presidents and prime ministers and a far flung unity of nations are facilitating anarchy to their own ends. Facebook and Google are also complicit in fermenting rebellion. A plethora of "talking heads," like an aviary of parrots, mimic the refrain, obvious to reason. And "He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh: The Lord will have them in derision" (Psalms 2:4).
As Libya continues to affirm national sovereignty i.e., not only her right but responsibility to repress anarchy, the US, France, and UK, by launching a barrage of missiles, have imposed a greater tyranny then that they profess to oppose.
Although Gadhafi may lack international "graces," he is hardly to be compared with the Rome's Nero during an era when the Apostile Paul pinned these words affirming "civil obedience," rather than the always contemporary "civil disobedience":
"Let every soul be subject unto the higher [civil] powers [be it Nero or Gadhafi or Mubarak]. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God" (Romans 13:1).
"Whosoever therefore resisteth the power [be it Thoreau or Gandhi or Martin Luther King], resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation" (Romans 13:2).
"For he [Nero] is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil" (Romans 13:4).
So as presidents and prime ministers and a far flung unity of nations perfect the art form of anarchy, there is an unseen reality "... we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12).
http://popularapostasy.blogspo.....-jour.html
PattyMor| 5.25.11 @ 9:35AM
You neglect to talk about the effect of Islam on the region. Instead of developing medicines, inventing new technologies or manufacturing, the Islamic nations spend a lot of their money on supporting terrorism. A great swath of wealth supports Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, MuBros, etal. A giant war and subversion movement.
PolishKnight| 5.25.11 @ 9:39AM
"As a result of this sudden loss of purchasing power, the developed world fell into a deep recession. People stopped buying cars and the housing market cratered."
Most housing markets don't really "crater". Unless people are leaving an area (such as Detroit), falling prices and sales are due to a natural market correction independent, albeit correlated to, other economic factors.
I would love to buy a home right now but prices are too high in my area. So I, like millions of other buyers, are waiting. If the government allowed prices to correct rather than prop them up with billions in subsidies to Freddie and Fannie Mae, then the market would be "healthy" again.
In the meantime, I pay a fraction of what it costs to buy in rent.
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 4:25PM
PK---move to Fargo, and make sure your home gets floodproofed. The taxes are low, the educational system is good, Crime is low, and the people are lovely.
Housing is fairly cheap, as well. Look it up.
bob alou| 5.26.11 @ 11:27PM
And that great American, Roger Maris, is buried there.
John| 5.25.11 @ 10:25AM
The article started well but then fell into conservative stereotypes regarding freedom in the Arab world. The writer should stick to financial matters since its obvious he has learned nothing from his journey . It obvious that US policy has prevented freedom and democracy in this region. In his speeches on freedom Obama neglects to mention the kingdom of corruption (KSa). I can not tell the future but it seems to me that we are witnessing something profound . Beware those who support apartheid in the ME. It will take time. Patience has its own reward- this is not the end of history .
John Navratil| 5.25.11 @ 11:31AM
John,
No it isn't the end of history. It's not even the end of the last 1,200 years of it. And while past performance is no guarantee of the future, it is a pretty good way to bet.
Seems something has gotten in the way of freedom and democracy in this region since long before the Mayflower.
JP| 5.25.11 @ 1:37PM
John,
To borrow a phrase from Progressive academics: Freedom and Democracy on Western constructs. They are alien to the vast majority of Muslim subjects. Sharia trumps Enlightenment everytime. What most of the revolutionaries want are better living conditions, and not liberty.
In that sense, the US has little influence on internal events in the ME.
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 4:27PM
Right. I can hardly wait to see the freedom and prosperity under the reigns of those who oppose the US in the region, like the Muslim brotherhood and Hamas!
John, if your dementia is caused by infection, realize HIV and syphilis induced dementias can be treated and reversed sometimes.
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 4:30PM
This OBVIOUSLY does not apply to John Navratil, who is a consistent model of brilliance I can only hope one day to achieve after I grow up. Instead, this applies to half-wit John the Islamist, who can't spell Israel.
John Navratil| 5.25.11 @ 6:55PM
Occam's Tool,
I'm blushing ;)
Ohioan| 5.26.11 @ 3:40PM
Let me tell you this as dear fellow,
You can buy a mansion in Ohio right now for under 100k.
Or, you can buy a Craftsman bungalow around 1,000-1500 sq, ft for as little as 10k. Yes, I said 10k. And the property taxes are only 200.00 a year. Yes, I said 200.00.
Thousands of homes are foreclosed upon, and the pickins are ripe. Many are scooping them up coming from states like Mass, NY, NJ, and other taxed to death states.
The weather's a bit harsher, but just pick a house with a fireplace and you'll be all set.
Western PA has homes like this as well, but Ohio's property taxes can't be beat.
Nunya| 5.25.11 @ 11:47AM
The Middle East (in my opinion), if it was able to be governed by a democratic capitalist system, would likely be a thriving place throughout. Unfortunately, there exists a universal repressive religion that drives people to kill each other, to abuse women, hate their enemies (whether historic or created for the purpose), and generally act as if it was the dark ages. Their money fuels their hate and affords them the ability to buy weapons with which to kill more people. They call us the "Great Satan", but they don't hesitate to sell us oil. While they have a rich history, as Mr. Wilson says in the article they have regressed, and I don't hold out any hope that they will see the light.
John| 5.25.11 @ 12:03PM
Once America leaves then alone. Who knows what the future will bring.
John Navratil| 5.25.11 @ 12:44PM
John,
Another 1200 years of blood.
Nick| 5.25.11 @ 1:43PM
Meanwhile, President Ditherer continues to bomb Libyan children.
How many terrorists are being created by O'Bama?
Hey....Hey....B - H - O!
How many kids did you put 6 feet below?
John Navratil| 5.25.11 @ 6:21PM
Nick,
Cheap sloganeering doesn't get it.
Will children be killed by bombing? Yes, along with cats, dogs, mothers and the apple pie she was baking. If the killing of innocents would prevent war, there would never be a war. If you want to minimize collateral damage, you go in to win on the first day and don't dither about.
Perversely, the Blitzkrieg minimized casualties, although it left the population behind for other privations.
Your question about the number of terrorists created reminds me of the "Better Red than dead" slogan of the sixties. Anything, but to solve the problem.
Finally, you might ask yourself why the West uses million-dollar smart weapons design specifically to minimize collateral damage when the terrorist is quite content to blow up scores of civilians at a time. Don't they create terrorists? Or do you think civilians are lining up to be martyred?
Nick| 5.25.11 @ 6:44PM
Mr. Navratil,
You seem to have taken my quip seriously. I assure you, don't.
We took this garbage from the commie lefties for the 8 years of President Bush.
It's time to give it back to them, with both barrels!
John Navratil| 5.25.11 @ 6:52PM
Nick,
I did mistake your point. I see it now and the hypocrisy of the Left is clear. The Left will never see it, however, as everything is based, for them, on the current facts and conditions.
When one can, or thinks one can, reject all dogma and derive everything from first principles, one runs the risk of missing a point or two.
Cheers!
Nick| 5.25.11 @ 7:27PM
Mr. Navratil,
Excellent point, sir.
Have a good one!
Mistral| 5.25.11 @ 2:46PM
Let them blow each other apart - who cares? They are certainly no real friends of ours. In fact, they are all potential enemies. When the balance tilts in their favour no quarter will be shown toward us.
Slingshot| 5.25.11 @ 2:51PM
Churchill said of Islam: "No greater retrograde force exists in the world. . .the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it." He said that over 100 years ago, and nothing has changed in the interim.
The pathetic middle eastern people are mentally enslaved and straitjacketed by this contemptible political system (I don't consider it a religion), Islam, created by an illiterate , depraved nomadic warrior in the 600s AD. They're stuck in the 7th century, and show no signs of wanting out of it.
(Churchill's complete quote, for anyone interested, is:
"How dreadful are the curses which Islam lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Islam is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."
From The River War, 1899)
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 4:29PM
I have always loved Winnie the Pooh. Greatest man Britain has produced in the last 130 years.
John Navratil| 5.25.11 @ 6:27PM
Slingshot,
Churchill's word tended to presage events. His words are a valid today as then. Note his observation on fatalism. That, in my opinion, is the principal philosophical difference between Muslim thought and Western thought. One cannot reason with anyone for whom the future is preordained.
shipley130| 5.25.11 @ 3:30PM
Islam is the entity that keeps the Arab world from realizing their full potential. It directly affects their ability to realize every person's potential. When you are working with only half of your engine power, you can't expect to climb the hill.
Richard Baker| 5.25.11 @ 3:30PM
The Arab/Moslem world is a mess with or without money. It seems as if the development of algebra was the high point in their civilization. They follow a religion that glories/revels in killing for Allah's sake. Sunnis live to kill Shia who kill Sufi and on and on. A hopeless historical mess.
RCV| 5.25.11 @ 3:40PM
Kind of reminds ya of Northern Ireland or the Balkans!
Reprobate Charlatan Vomitus| 5.25.11 @ 5:05PM
I don't bother with silly reminders of fifty three million innocent Americans brutally killed averaging over three thousand seven hundred each and every day by the 'legal' abortion policy of the party that at least cares after being partially born while remembering how many are killed in the Middle East or in Northern Ireland or the Balkans on the kind of unintelligence and dishonesty I'm always spouting ya know what I mean matters!
Nunya| 5.25.11 @ 6:11PM
RCV, if I'm not mistaken, isn't the violence in the Balkans instigated by Muslims?
RCV| 5.25.11 @ 7:43PM
The Balkans has been a festering three way fight between Catholics (Croats), Easter Orthodox Christians (Serbs) and Muslims (Bosnians and Albanians) that has lasted thousands of years. They each blame the others, although the Serbians by most accounts can be credited with instigating the worst of the most recent violence.
John Navratil| 5.25.11 @ 6:34PM
RCV,
I suggest you are a little off-point with the Irish. This was a fight in which the religious differences were more coincidence than the fight over sovereignty at its core. After partitioning, the Irish wanted sovereignty over the entire island while the "northern" Irish swore allegiance to Whitehall. Not wishing to minimize the horror, this bears a greater resemblance to the Falklands than the Balkans where religious ideology was the predominant motivation,
RCV| 5.25.11 @ 7:44PM
You're right, I was being flippant, although for the most rabid Orangemen, "Popery" is the main evil that drives their animus toward their nationalist brethern.
Credit Man| 5.25.11 @ 4:14PM
I personally have no hope for this region of the world. It's plain for me to see that Islam is antithetical to capitalism. These people are so backword that when Islam becomes the governments of the region, they will probably become oil importers. Muslims seem to have no entrapanural abilities within themselves.
Dave| 5.25.11 @ 5:08PM
None of the uprisings will produce a democracy. The Brotherhood will take over in Egypt, Libya will be run by a new set of terrorists, and Syria will produce a government of fundamentalists after they take power from the protesters. I fear for our elder brothers in the faith, especially with the anti-Semite in the WH.
Old Soldier| 5.25.11 @ 5:09PM
I saw in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Incredible wealth - completely unearned. They did almost no work to earn the wealth - just sign the contracts. Shell and others will bring in actual working people to pump the oil.
Koreans and Pilipinos will come in and pave the roads and build your houses. The Saudis live in them like undeserving spoiled rich kids.
burnsst| 5.25.11 @ 6:27PM
OK, while the Arabs refined algebra its roots can be found with the ancient Babylonians and Greeks. In fact, Diophantus (3rd century AD) who was sometimes called the father of algebra was an Alexandrian Greek mathematician.
So we owe the founding of algebra to the Greeks not the Arabs. Again, the Arabs further refined algebra.
John Navratil| 5.25.11 @ 6:43PM
burnsst,
Preccisely! And not well known! It's telling that the Arabs had a real problem with the concept of "zero" which had been introduced a millenium before.
It's also noteworthy that after the Mulsim conquests, which provided the environment in which scholarly books were written (not by the Arabs, but by their slaves), the books were left behind in the retreat. They weren't so valuable as to be kept.
Paul| 5.25.11 @ 8:46PM
Very simple, you either support the Jewish people, or you support animals that were cheering on
9-11, and that celebrate when babies have their heads cut off. The rest is just window dressing - this is the bottom line as Americans and Christians.
Dee See| 5.26.11 @ 2:53AM
"MASSIVE third world (largely muslim) immigration
to destroy British culture ---forever."
-TONY BLAIR
(Daily Mail cited by ALAN WATT)
GOT IT?
---NOW, go to Youtube and feast your mind
on that leaked video of the Australian PM Rudd
fulfilling his end of the TREASON agenda
---in Chinese to the Globalist set up, 'EUGENICS
friendly' RED Chinese leadership.
----------------GO ---------------WATCH
BE AWARE the 'continuity of agenda' is worldwide.
All this as here at home borders are set to collapse
along with the currency, while churches are rampantly
infiltrated by 'Clergy Response' Globalist submission ops
--and Texas airports are being federally blockaded.
"Afterall, it's comfort, not conscience, that makes
cowards of us all---"
-George Bernard Shaw
Globalist/EUGENIST
----------SO STOP worshipping your rectums.
WAKE UP and GET MOVING!
crypticguise| 5.27.11 @ 12:36AM
The "elephant in the room" in the Middle East will always be the sociopathic intolerant nature and teachings of Islam. So long as Muslims believe and treat "kafirs (non-Muslims) as non-human Islamic Nations will continue to devolve and stagnate. After all, they are still living in the 7th century mindset of Mohammed.
Richard Baker| 5.27.11 @ 11:20AM
All the more reason to use our energy resources here at home, cut these thugs off from our money, and leave these clowns stewing in their own juices.
weddingdress | 7.1.11 @ 1:04AM
The "elephant in the room" in the Middle East will always be the sociopathic intolerant nature and teachings of Islam. So long as Muslims believe and treat "kafirs (non-Muslims) as non-human Islamic Nations will continue to devolve and stagnate. After all, they are still living in the 7th century mindset of Mohammed.