Artículo de Khairallah Khairallah en "The International Herald Tribune" del 29-9-02

LONDON The anniversary of the serial suicide hijackings in the United States has generated an enormous amount of commentary in the Arab media, and plenty more will follow. Some of it has borne more resemblance to Lebanese zajal folk poetry than to political analysis, and some has been more like dirges that lament misfortune. .But some has been serious, daring to point out that it is the Arabs who have lost most as a result of the Sept. 11 outrage, and that they stand to lose even more by refusing to face up to reality as it is rather than as they imagine it to be - or to get a grip on their problems rather than leaving them to accumulate by claiming that they do not exist or blaming others. .Only by facing facts can the Arabs begin to cut their losses instead of letting them mount along with their problems. Only then will they be capable of joining the world in its war against "terror," instead of abdicating responsibility by asserting that there is no proof that the suicide hijackers were Arabs, or by claiming that the crime was the work of Israel. .If Israel had indeed wanted to carry out some operation designed to discredit Arabs and Muslims, it could not have done better than Sept. 11, which served its interests completely. But when the Arabs and Muslims have the likes of Osama bin Laden and his followers on their side, who needs the Mossad? Friends like that obviate the need for enemies. .Only when certain Arabs and Muslims start seriously coming to terms with the implications of the fact that the "heroes" of Sept. 11 were Arabs - whose identities, nationalities, movements and ideological affiliation are a matter of record - will they begin to understand what the world is going through, and why its sole superpower considers itself to be engaged in a real war - a war as real as the one that followed the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. .To those who are unsure of Washington's intentions or wonder how far it might go in its "war on terror," one can reply that it will go very far indeed. For this is the first time that war has been waged against it in its heartland, targeting not just civilians in New York and military personnel in Washington but also the very symbols of American political, military and economic power. .America will thus settle for nothing short of the eradication of what it deems, rightly or wrongly, to be the causes of the phenomenon that produced people who willingly crashed hijacked airliners into American cities in order to gain access to Paradise. .Arab refusal to face up to this is an act of pure denial. It is like refusing to acknowledge that the Arabs let the industrial revolution pass them by two centuries ago, just as they are currently failing to keep pace with the communications revolution that began two decades ago. It is like refusing to admit that the Iraqi army would still be in Kuwait today had the administration of Bush père not resolved to confront it, and put together an international coalition for the purpose which shattered the dreams of a sick regime that is out of touch with the world's realities and power balances. If the Arabs really want to be able to deal with the post-Sept. 11 era, they need to ask themselves some painfully candid questions. What are the reasons that prompted 19 Arabs to blow themselves up in the United States? Who is to blame for that? What role did Arab societies play in spawning such people? Is there a problem with the Arab media, and with Arab cultural and religious discourse? Are the education systems at fault? Is there a crisis in a society that rejects the idea of tolerance and coexistence with others? And why is it that hostility to America's government, policies and values is greatest in the Arab countries whose leaders are closest to the United States? .No one can claim that American policy in the Middle East is just. It has shown how unjust it can be in Palestine, and even in Iraq, where for the past dozen years it has effectively been punishing the people rather than the regime that oppresses them. But that does not spare the Arabs - all the Arabs - the need to ask courageous questions about where and why we went wrong, how we should rectify our mistakes, and why we don't acknowledge them. The Palestinians have paid dearly since Sept. 11. One of the main reasons they were made to do so was the insistence of a backward group among them on glorifying suicide operations that repel the entire world. It is that which enabled Ariel Sharon to score what can be considered to be his only victory to date: creating a breach between Washington and Yasser Arafat. That had disastrous consequences for the Palestinian people, for whom U.S. support was crucial in order to counter, or at least moderate, Israeli policies. .Now is the time to be asking those courageous questions. That is the only way the Arabs can start a genuine in-depth dialogue with Washington, instead of remaining on the margins of what is going on in the world. And it is their only way to cut their losses, and grasp the thinking of a world whose view of them in particular, and of Muslims in general, has changed drastically since Sept. 11. .It is no longer enough, in the aftermath of these events, to speak of shared interests. America can find substitutes for many of the interests it currently has in the region, specifically its oil interests in the Gulf. What there is no substitute for is a shared language that refuses to justify terror in any form, whether in the name of religion, race or anything else. .The writer is a senior Lebanese journalist.