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Look Who's Talking

(New York Times) Thomas L. Friedman - The U.S. ouster of Saddam Hussein has triggered the first real "conversation" about political reform in the Arab world in a long, long time. Osama al-Ghazali Harb, a top figure at Egypt's semiofficial Al Ahram center for strategic studies, writing in the country's leading political quarterly, Al Siyassa Al Dawliya, chastised those Arab commentators who argue that the way in which the U.S. captured Saddam was meant to humiliate Arabs. "What we, as Arabs, should truly feel humiliated about are the prevailing political and social conditions in the Arab world - especially in Iraq - which allowed someone such as Saddam Hussein to...assume the presidency. We should feel humiliated that Saddam was able...to single-handedly initiate a number of catastrophic policies that transformed Iraq, relatively rich in natural, human and financial resources, into the poorest, most debt-ridden country in the Arab world, not to mention the hundreds of thousands killed and displaced....The Arabs should have been the ones to bring down Saddam, in defense of their own dignity and their own true interests."
2004-02-19 00:00:00
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