Artículo de THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN en “The New York Times” del 6-4-03
RAMALLAH, West Bank — The State Department has been upset about how the Arab media have been portraying the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Personally, I don't see what the problem is. As far as I can tell from watching the Arab satellite networks there's only a one-word, actually just a one-letter, difference in how they report the war and how U.S. networks report it. CNN calls it "America's war in Iraq," and Arab television calls it "America's war on Iraq."
What a difference a letter makes. As I have traveled around the Arab world watching this war, I've been thinking a lot about that one letter. It contains an important message for President Bush: Beware of hijackers.
Saddam Hussein's regime will soon be finished, and the moment for building the peace will be upon us. As soon as it arrives, there will be people who will try to hijack this peace and turn it to their own ends. Mr. Bush must be ready to fend off these hijackers, who will come in two varieties.
One group will emerge from the surrounding Arab states — all the old-guard Arab intellectuals and Nasserites, who dominate the Arab media, along with many of the regimes and stale institutions, like the Arab League, that feel threatened by even a whiff of democracy coming from Iraq. These groups will be merciless in delegitimizing and denouncing any Iraqis who come to power after the war — if it appears that they were installed by the U.S.
That means the U.S. has to move quickly to create a process where moderate, but legitimate, Iraqi nationalists can emerge to start running their country, and U.S. forces can recede into the background. We have only one chance to make a first impression in how we intend to reshape Iraq, and we must make a good one. America somewhat underestimated the resistance it would meet when it invaded Iraq; it should not now overestimate how much time it has to rule Iraq, with U.S. generals, before meeting political resistance.
The Egyptian playwright Ali Salem, a courageous Arab liberal, told me in Cairo the other day: "To my fellow Arab pen carriers, I say, `Do not hasten to denounce them,' " meaning Iraqis who will work with the U.S. to rebuild their country. " `Do not resort to these ready-made accusations that such Iraqis are "agents" of the Americans because it will take us nowhere. It will only blind our eyes to our real problems and diseases, which is the need for development and human rights. Don't stick your pens in the Iraqi wheel.' "
But to the Americans, Mr. Salem said, " `Please defend America the idea — defend it — because we are working to embody this idea — to make it stretch across the whole planet. Do not occupy our land under any slogan. It's hard, I know it's hard. [But] if there will be an American general presiding over Iraq [for long], it will be bad for us Arab liberals and for you.' "
The other hijackers are the ideologues within the Bush team who have been dealing with the Iraqi exile leaders and will try to install one of them, like Ahmad Chalabi, to run Iraq. I don't know any of these exiles, and I have nothing against them. But anyone who thinks they can simply be installed by America and take root in Iraqi soil is out of his mind.
Mr. Bush should visit the West Bank. It is a cautionary tale of an occupation gone wrong. It is a miserable landscape of settlements, bypass roads, barbed wire and cement walls. Why? Because the Israeli and Palestinian mainstreams spent the last 36 years, since Israel's victory in 1967, avoiding any clear decision over how to govern this land. So those extremists who had a clear idea, like the settlers and Hamas, hijacked the situation and drove the agenda.
Mr. Bush needs to approach the Iraq peace with the same single-minded focus with which he approached the war. I went to Ramallah to visit the Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, a man steeped in what it takes to produce legitimacy in an Arab milieu, and I asked him what Mr. Bush should focus upon. "Focus on the process," he said, "not on a specific person. Iraqis must have confidence in the process. It must be seen as legitimate and fair."
Israel has been trying to get rid of Yasir Arafat for years, but it was a legitimate process, managed by the Palestinian legislature, that last month produced the first legitimate alternative: the first Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas.
No, this is not going to be easy. Because the ideal Iraqi we are looking for is one who will say no to Saddam Hussein, no to Nasserism, no to tyranny and no to any permanent U.S. presence in Iraq.