It wasn’t too far back when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency. During that time, Republicans did not stop once to ask the Democrats for input. Shunning bipartisanship, Republican leaders in Congress shamelessly used every nasty trick in the book to eliminate Democrats from all positions of influence and rammed through redistricting policies at the state level, hoping to ensure that the Democratic Party never recovered the seat of power in the United States.

The mess America and the world find themselves in is the direct result of Republican policies, and it is now a fact that the Republican “Contract with America” has proven to be a catastrophic failure.

It is not a coincidence, and Americans must never forget that. GOP policies resulted in the Great Depression; Americans punished the party by denying it a majority in both chambers of Congress for many years. Time to do that again.

I understand what President Barack Obama is trying to do, but I don’t agree with him. The majority of Republicans in Congress are nasty fanatics whose view of the world is extremely narrow and dogmatic. Nothing Obama does will please them because they don’t like him or what he represents.

We didn’t hear them object much to their primary media voice Rush Limbaugh when he broadcast that he wants to see Obama fail. What is wrong with the GOP? It seems to me that attack dogs are rarely suited to be leaders. It was very surprising to see Republican congressmen groveling at their satrap’s feet boosting his ego and asking for his forgiveness.

Obama was elected to dismantle the humungous mess resulting from eight years of total Republican domination of government and he needs to respect the people who voted for him to do that. If he lets himself be consumed by Republican double talk, he will fail. America and the world can’t afford to have him fail.

World-renowned economists agree that contrary to the Republican agenda, Obama needs to inject funds into a fund-starved economy and provide people with an opportunity to regain control of their lives and futures. He is not responsible for the great deficits or the economic mess.

Where was the fiscal discipline that turned $600 million surplus into nearly a trillion dollar deficit or a $6 trillion national debt into a $10.5 trillion one. What do the Republicans have to show for it except war, misery, graft, national decline, and societal fragmentation?

The Republicans have Joe the Plumber, Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter to help them chart the future of the United States. Obama shouldn’t feel compelled to lower his standards to meet that level of incompetence. The selection of experts he has at his disposal will do just fine. And, politically he knows what he needs to do and he should do it.

What is evident in all this are the major shortcomings of the Republican Party as a party for the 21st century. It continues to be caught in an 18th century philosophical loop, quite oblivious to fundamental political and economic changes. Laissez-faire is over and that lesson should have been learned long before the Great Depression let alone the second depression of 2008.

Current events are demonstrating that government is a necessary ingredient that cannot be omitted from any policy recipe, and contrary to the words of former President Ronald Reagan, government is not the problem.

But as demonstrated by years of administrations, including the previous eight years, bad government is.

In both instances, the administration gave Israel a free rein to inflict destruction in Lebanon and Palestine, hoping that Hezbollah and Hamas, two Arab Islamic organizations that refuse to recognize Israel, would be brought to their knees.

The administration’s gamble failed in Lebanon and, based on unfolding events, will meet the same fate in Palestine. Both organizations are more popular and more determined than ever. More important, the United States has, in their view and the view of most Arabs and Muslims, become irrelevant.

Of the many lessons to be derived from Israel’s latest adventure, four have most attracted my attention.

First, embedded logic dictates that the 3,000 rockets lobbed on Israel since 2003 have caused negligible damage to life and property. Yet Israel’s leaders and America’s media continue the tempest in the teacup to justify the murder of Palestinians.

Truth is irrelevant because in the words of Dr. James Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, Israel’s goal is to define the terms of the debate. Hamas was stupid to fire those effete duds because they provided Israel’s global propaganda machine with the opportunity to “parley that into sympathy” and obfuscate the dismal living conditions in Gaza resulting from decades of imprisonment, occupation and the justification for the resistance. That powerful machine succeeded in glossing over and rationalizing the deaths of more than 1,000 and the wounding of over 4,000 Palestinians with American-supplied missiles.

Second, Israeli leaders talk about peace in front of the camera, but act as though that peace will never happen. Israel needs a perpetual war not only to justify its existence but also to maintain the cohesiveness of an evidently fragmented society. By tightening the noose on the inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank, Israeli leaders seem to want Hamas’ belligerence.

Israel used similar provocations on Palestinians of the West Bank. Talking peace can never justify munching away at Palestinian homes, farms and lands under the pretext of thwarting aggression.

Third, in Western society, packaging is the secret to selling any product. Israel’s success in delivering its message depends on presenters who speak to each society in its own language and usually flawlessly. Native English speakers talk to the English-speaking world as do native French, German or Spanish speakers to those societies. More important, they are saying the same thing everywhere.

Arabs, on the other hand, leave a lot to be desired. Listening to some Arab presenters speak really hurts the ears. I constantly see fantastic Arab spokesmen and women interviewed on the global media, but somehow they vanish when they are most needed. Matters are much worse when it comes to substance where many of these guys have no concept of how to debate or talk to the media. Indeed, they do more harm to a just cause than good.

Fourth, huge demonstrations took place outside the Arab world that proved to be much larger than those within. More importantly, the former were far more secular and appeared to be propelled by a desire to combat human rights abuses. Within the Arab world, the demonstrations were much smaller and were in response to religious solidarity calls by Islamists.

Most striking and discouraging was to see so few protestors in the Arab world clamoring for human rights. Effete Middle Eastern dictators have effaced secularism among Arabs. Fearing all forms of opposition and calls for an end to dictatorships prompted these rulers to either ban or tightly control all demonstration.

What these dictators fail to grasp is the importance of secular groups as counterweight to fanaticism. Yet these are the same forces being eradicated by these dictators, limiting the political arena to religious and dictatorial fanaticism.

The Israeli Defense Forces provided the answer to that question last week when 60 American-made F-16s laid waste to Gaza. In response to rocket attacks by Palestinians, the initial IDF air strike succeeded in killing hundreds of Palestinians and injuring many more. The final tally is yet to come when the Israelis decide to end their assault on an area a quarter the size of San Antonio, with 1.5 million people living in misery for the past six decades.

Watching the carnage unfold over satellite was simply bewildering. I was shocked by reporters flung in the air like dolls by shock waves of exploding missiles and dismembered bodies lined up in the courtyard of what was once a school.

In Gaza, the Palestinians have been living in a virtual prison for many years. With limited electricity, food and other basics, they sought help from the international community in lifting the Israeli siege, but as usual, beyond soothing words of “we understand and sympathize with your predicament,” no help came. The United Nations scolded Israel on the human tragedy, but that had little impact on Israeli oppressive behavior.

Long before the assault, Israel’s powerful global public relations machine spun feverishly to paint Hamas as a terrorist ogre that threatened the very existence of the Jewish state. However, with the exception of the United States, where debate about Israel is always severely curtailed and certainly one-sided, much of the world knows better.

Palestinians have always been the victims in this sorry conspiracy and Israel’s predatory designs need to inflate the miniscule and insignificant military threat posed by Hamas’ primitive rockets — or, more correctly, glorified firecrackers. Effete fireworks might be the excuse behind the assault, but reshaping the demographic make-up of Palestine is certainly the goal.

Like it or not, Hamas reflects the popular will of the majority of Palestinians who have no reason to like Israel. I certainly don’t blame them. Palestinian homes, lands, foods, art and culture have been assimilated.

In short, Israelis have exchanged places with the Palestinians. They have occupied Palestine. Do Palestinians have the right to resist? International law screams yes — and by all means possible.

Emulation is the highest form of flattery, but enough already. This has gone beyond emulation and turned into an issue of Palestinian survival. Palestinians are seeing themselves disappear without a trace in full view of the world, and if they resist they are called terrorists. Shame on “civilized society” for promoting and turning a blind eye to this uncivilized and abusive theft.

Now with nothing left to siphon off, some Israeli extremists are floating the concept of “removal” to preserve the nature of the Jewish state. The objects of that removal would be the inhabitants of the West Bank, along with the 1.2 million Palestinians who refused to leave their homes in old Palestine in 1948 when Israel was created. I wonder if the 141 square miles Gaza is large enough to accommodate another 2.5 million refugees, but logic and extremism are not logical partners. And if they have their way, they will be doing the “removal” while trying to convince the world that they are the victims of Palestinian threats or that they are doing it for the Palestinian good.

Israel’s avowed goal of ridding itself of Hamas will not succeed without effacing the Palestinians, who now seem to have learned from their brief diaspora. They will continue to survive and resist as well as document all their rights and the atrocities committed against them.

What the Israelis need to know is that in the region, neither time nor demography is on their side, and their actions will never be forgotten.

In my mind, the problem has not been with Mr. Bush per se for, after all, he remains a simple man, who in spite of graduate degrees from Ivy League institutions, has not demonstrated a profound understanding of politics, economics or culture. And what he did know was so narrowly defined by religious constraints that it was for all intents and purposes quite obsolete.

My gripe has been with the Republican Party for permitting itself to be hijacked by so-called neo-conservatives. Politically born in the ‘70s during the Nixon administration, the neo-cons emerged during the tenure of Mr. Reagan and George H.W. Bush. However, much of their plans met with only partial successes due to the unwillingness of the latter two presidents to defer to them on central issues confronting the country. They finally hit the jackpot with Bush II after a long and arduous search.

Listening to one of the radio shows that, according to the presenter, was “designed to drive liberals insane,” I was reminded that Bush is vacating the office as one of the most unpopular and despised of America’s presidents, but these guys are still here. Their leaders have arranged for themselves cushy jobs in an array of think tanks, as well as consultants or lobbyists. Their influence is far from over and has merely been moved underground where they feel most comfortable until the next opportunity presents itself to find another George W. to provide them the reins of power without accountability on a platter. In my view, the threat of terrorism to the United States and the world is insignificant when compared to the danger posed by these troglodytes.

Barack Obama will be facing a stiff headwind during the first four years and, irrespective of the lineup of experts he assembled from both parties to run the country, he will find himself handicapped by one obstacle after another. His first major policy test will not be posed by a foreign challenge but by a domestic one.

It is important not to forget that 48 percent of Americans, many of whom are young, didn’t vote for Obama and of these, 25 percent still think Bush is an excellent president. How was that possible? The answer can be found in the power of the media. In the past eight years, the leaders in power promoted and supported the growth of small television and radio media outlets into formidable networks that have become their voices and propaganda machines.

Some people will believe and buy anything if packaged in an ideologically adequate format.

Eight years of this rule has divided and turned America against itself. And if Americans expect Obama to wave a magic wand and heal it, they are sadly mistaken because all he can do is show them how. Only Americans can reclaim their country and its freedom, as well as ensure that this never happens again.

Each community in the region has its own particular insulting gestures, but there are also common gestures involving footwear that are considered insulting to all Arabs. Assaulting anyone with shoes is considered insulting by any standard in Arab society. Also insulting is displaying shoe soles, as some are prone to do when they put their feet on a table, desk, chair, or sometimes even while sitting on the ground.

Usually, when entering an Arab or Muslim home, one is expected to take off footwear before entering carpeted or covered areas of the dwelling. Muslims in particular do not enter mosques or pray with their shoes on.

Unlike many across the globe, I found the attack on President Bush offensive — and neither heroic nor amusing. And, in spite of the fact that Mr. Bush’s policies have been a disaster for Iraq on one level, they have, on another level, been a blessing. Iraqi democracy is one of those unintended consequences of the Bush blunder, and even though it came at a great cost, Iraqis are in a better position today than at any time in the past 700 years to chart their own destiny.

More than at any time in the past, I am convinced that Mr. Bush is now sincere in his desire to see Iraqi democracy established and functioning, since it is the only possible achievement his legacy can cling to. He cannot afford to see Kurdish or Shiite separatist movements or the Balkanization of Iraq, for that will ensure Kurdish or Arab genocide and open the doors to many actors to meddle in Iraqi affairs.

The adventure in Iraq also came at great social, human, financial and political costs to the U.S., and there is nothing to show for it except Iraqi democracy.

Americans have come to realize that their government has wronged the Iraqis by attacking a country that didn’t threaten the U.S. But, that aside, America cannot afford to remain in Iraq indefinitely, and will leave sooner rather than later.

To their credit, the Arab regimes remained silent on the shoe attack. but their state-controlled media made an event of it. As expected, the only regime bucking the trend was in Libya. The Libyan statement came from Colonel Qadhafi’s daughter, Aicha, who heads the Wa Atassimou Group, a supposedly “private” human rights organization that just happens to be funded by the Libyan regime, not the Libyan government, as if that makes a difference. The organization decided to give Mr. al-Zeidi the courage award “because what he did represents a victory for human rights across the world.”

I have little respect for anything uttered by the majority of Arab regimes on human rights, particularly the Qadhafi regime. If Ms. Qadhafi wants to give a courage award, she can give it posthumously to the human rights advocate Mansour Kikhia, my cousin, who was abducted and reportedly murdered on her father’s orders, or to the many imprisoned courageous Libyans demanding little freedom and relief from her father’s despotic rule. God knows he deserves it, but they didn’t throw any shoes at him. Human rights advocates receive death sentences or many years in prison for peacefully demonstrating against oppression.

I wonder what will be the fate of any Arab throwing a pair of shoes at an Arab leader. In Libya,for example, the punishment for verbally attacking Mr. Qadhafi is death. So what will be the punishment for shoe throwing? A mincing machine?

I have little respect for dictators or aggressors, and I believe they have been the cause of much suffering and hurt the world over, but I still believe that the journalist needs to be tried for his attack on another individual, and if found guilty, he must be punished. We can claim the right to civility and civilization only when we enforce the rules of a fair and impartial legal code on precisely those illegal acts that make us feel good.

I was surprised at the audacity of Condoleezza Rice’s invitation to Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to resign and leave office.

Mind you, Mugabe is a nasty bit of work, and he should have resigned and left office a long time ago, but where was the courage to tell him to leave or even support a putsch by forces of Zimbabwean democracy against the incompetent dictator?

I would venture that the world has seen more support of dictatorships and human rights abuses around the globe by this administration than any since President Nixon. So why now? Has this administration, like the lion in the Wizard of Oz, found its heart? It seems highly unlikely, if not hypocritical, for an administration that has shown so little respect for the rights of its own citizens to even think about the well-being of citizens of a country half a world away.

Rice’s utterances on Zimbabwe, however, are insignificant when compared to what she spewed on the recent events in Mumbai. It is far better to say nothing than to send mixed signals to the Indians and Pakistanis, thereby increasing the deep-seated animosity and hatred between the Indian sub-continent’s neighbors. On the one hand, Rice is saying she is satisfied with Pakistan’s efforts at dealing with the instigators of the attack on Mumbai; on the other, she is telling the Pakistanis they are not doing enough to deal with the masterminds of the attack on India.

When it comes to Pakistan, India has since 1947 been blind and unforgiving and the reverse is also true. It seems to me that Pakistan is far more impacted than India by daily terrorist attacks. Barely out from under the tutelage of a military dictatorship, Pakistan’s democracy is truly fragile. And only a sheer will to survive has helped Pakistani democracy withstand the daily insurmountable odds confronting it.

The problem between India and Pakistan is evident for anyone wishing to see it. Two wars were fought over it, and the third could be on the way. However, the third will make the first two look like child’s play because if it does come about, it will involve nuclear weapons and lead to the decimation of Pakistan and a large chunk of India with millions of fatalities on both sides.

Kashmir is a carryover from the partition of India in 1947.

It is divided between India and Pakistan, and Kashmiris are in turn divided along a segment that wants to join Pakistan and another that wants independence from both. Pakistan agrees to either options and India rejects both. The result is a Kashmiri armed struggle against India, which expects Pakistan to put a lid on Kashmiri resistance and hence blames it for instigating and sustaining these resistance movements. The Pakistani government, however, cannot even control its own state of Waziristan, which is adjacent to Afghanistan, and has reputedly become a haven to the Afghani and Pakistani Taliban, leaders of al-Qaida as well as drug and arms smugglers, let alone Kashmir.

That’s what Rice should be saying. She should be asking India to join the United States in providing support to Pakistan that includes opening up a dialogue with Kashmir to look at the issue of independence. That’s the solution Rice should be advocating.

The vacuum in global leadership is extremely dangerous, and events in India merely reflect that. Judging by the way the media are reporting the news, one would think Obama had already assumed the presidency, but he hasn’t, and Bush needs to make up his mind to either lead or get out of the way.

I will come back to this later, but let me first deal with higher education as it impacts the city of San Antonio, where the problem is even more critical.

First, I think the proliferation of school districts is a curse because it promotes discrimination and uneven opportunity in education.

This is even more serious in the umpteen university systems in Texas. As chairman of the University of Texas Faculty Advisory Council, I believe the University of Texas System to be the only bona fide system in Texas, and it shouldn’t be denied the opportunity and the resources necessary to play that role and fulfill its mission. This need not diminish the importance of other Texas systems.

Second, enough is enough so let’s stop all the talk about the soaring cost of education in Texas. Judging by UTSA, where I serve as chairman of a department, the cost of education is still very reasonable. That’s the case in spite of the fact that state financial support has diminished from 40 percent in 2003 to just over 27 percent in 2008.

Additionally, state funding for a UTSA student is currently $2,100 less than a student enrolled in UT Austin making it the lowest in the UT System, yet a student at UTSA gets the same quality education if not better than a student at UT Austin.

Almost 90 percent of what students pay at UTSA is pumped back to student needs, be it in financial aid or support. And, while UTSA has emerged as the fastest growing institution of higher learning in the state with 28,000 students and growing, it is getting no support to meet its space shortage of more than a million square feet.

How does the city of San Antonio show its appreciation to UTSA? It does that by agreeing to finance a new Texas A&M campus pushed and promoted by the Verano Land Group, which donated 694 acres of a 2700-acre development project. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the Verano Group is not in it for the love of education or San Antonio’s kids.

Some 694 acres of empty fields is pittance compared to the financial gains from the city and county as well as tax right-offs, let alone the cost of roads and infrastructure which will be assumed by the city, county, and anticipated customers of the 6,938 residential units and 6 million square feet of commercial space.

The city will dish out $135 million in addition to a comparable amount from Bexar County to Verano. Nowhere in the proposal are there any allowances for continual funding and once the land developer gets his money the state will be saddled with paying for a campus that will further siphon badly needed higher education funds.In remedying high school deficiencies, the UT System spends tremendous amounts of money on remediation. This brings me back to school financing and taxes.

The only system worse than financing education with property taxes is one that finances it with lottery monies. When will the people of Texas understand that, when it comes to education, there are no free rides? To have education compete for funds with prisons is insane.

The way out is a move away from property taxes, which are regressive to a state income tax devoted solely to funding education and putting to rest once and for all the cost of higher education issue.

There seems to be a global consensus that he be given every opportunity to succeed and reassure the world that even superpowers have their downturns, and they might have to be isolated from the body of nations until they overcome their maladies.

It was a close call, but America is overcoming its illness and is emerging from eight years of schizophrenia and paranoia stronger, wiser and more determined to re-assume its global position of leadership.

It was an awful experience in how not to govern that took a heavy toll on health and wealth, but the body remains sound and a sound body can recover and make even more wealth. And, what has been a bad dream for the country was a nightmare for the world because it reconfirmed that whatever countries might feel about America, their economic and political health is impacted more by the United States than by their own populations.

Americans should be thankful for these are gifts, but their greatest thanks should be for their most important gift — a new leader who appears to be smart, a builder of consensus, a healer of social wounds, and a leader who reads and learns from the history and experiences of others.

President-elect Barack Obama has a lot riding on his shoulders, and what he does will either put America on the road to recovery or continue the destruction President George W. Bush started.

The task is daunting and will require difficult decisions and some pain to rectify so many years of neglect of issues and problems that continue to fester and poison the global body.

But leaving the American economy aside, because that is a top priority, Obama needs to put on paper the global issues he intends to address, listing each in a hierarchy of importance to America and the world. He then needs to meet each head-on. I don’t know where the Middle East conflict fits in that list, but I do know that the Middle East conflict has negatively impacted the legacy of four U.S. presidents, including the current one. And it has played a pivotal role in undermining the global economy since 1973.

In my view the question of unlimited and unconditional support for Israel by Obama and all candidates for the presidency was determined very early in the primaries before anything else was discussed. Declaring fidelity and loyalty to Israel has become the primary precondition for holding high office in the United States government. Indeed, neither Obama nor any other candidate for high office would have made the first cut had they not made that declaration.

But irrespective of the president’s views on Israel, the problem has endured and keeping a blind eye or rationalizing Israel’s occupation and mistreatment of Palestinians will not make the problem go away.

Will he be up to the task? Yes, but how is another story. In the meantime we can be thankful that he gives the globe a new sense of optimism that to every problem there is a solution and together we just have to find a way.

في المشرق العربي، أصبح تصنيف الحكومة لاأهميّة له مطلقا. فليس مهما في الحقيقة إذا ما وصفت البلدان نفسها بأنها ممالك أوسلطنات أو مشيخات أو جمهوريات، أو في حالة ليبيا البطّة الغبيّة المسمّاة جماهيريّة، أي دولة الجماهير. إنها ألقاب مختلفة، ولكنها كلها تقريبا تعني نفس الشئ، وتحكم من قبل أفراد أو ورثتهم الذين يبقون في السلطة لفترة طويلة جدا. فهي لا يوجد لديها شيء إسمه الديمقراطية، أوالمشاركة الشعبية، أوتقاسم السلطة، أو إقتصاد وطني جدّي، أو أي معنى حقيقي لما تعارف عليه المجتمع المدني. وفي هذه المجتمعات فالتقدم الفكري للقيادات السياسية الوطنية لا يبدو أنه قد تقدم بعد حقبة الحقّ الإلهي للملوك التي ميزّت تشكيل الدولة القومية في عام 1648. وحتى بعد الإستقلال، عندما أتاحت الفرصة إمكانية اعتماد مفاهيم مثل السيادة الشعبية والمشاركة السياسية، لم يتغيّر الأمر. والقادة قاتلوا بشدّة لمنع إصابة مجتمعاتهم بعدوى هذه المفاهيم الخطيرة. وكانت النتيجة سنوات من المؤسّسات السياسية العقيمة، وحكم ديكتاتوري، وتردّي الأوضاع السياسية والاجتماعية والثقافية والاقتصادية، لم تشهده المنطقة منذ نهب المغول لبغداد في عام 1258.

فمن الناحية الإقتصاديّة أخذت الأنظمة تتخبّط على غير هدى، وتتعيّش طفيليّا على الفرص المتاحة لها من النظام الدّولي، وعلى الموارد الطبيعيّة الوطنيّة التي تمتلكها، هذا إذا اسثنينا واحدا أو إثنين منها. وللأسف، يحدث هذا في وقت كانت فيه بلدان كثيرة تتحوّل بسرعة المحرّك الخامسة، في السباق نحو إجراء تغييرات أساسية في الهياكل السياسية والاقتصادية، لمواجهة تحديات القرن الواحد والعشرين. إنها مسألة وقت فقط قبل أن تنضمّ الصين والهند والبرازيل وغيرها من البلدان النامية إلى العالم المتقدم، وتقيم مستعمرات على القمر والمريخ وبالتالي: المشاركة في إعادة صياغة ثقافة عالمية مستقبلية. والذي سيُفتقد في هذا الإرتقاء ستكون الثقافة العربية، لانها لا تُسهم بشيء في وعاء المعارف العالمية. ومن العار على ثقافة أعطت الكثير للتنمية البشرية أن يُطلق عليها صفة ثقافة ميّتة. 

وفي هذا الاسبوع فالزيارة التي قام بها لولشنطن سيف الإسلام القذّافي إبن الدكتاتور الليبي وولي عهد عرشه، تذكّرني بوضوح بالكارثة التي تجتاح العالم العربي. لقد جرى الترحيب به بحفاوة من قبل إدارة بوش. وخلال زيارته انتهز السيد بوش الفرصة وتحدّث هاتفيّا مع الوالد، وشكره على دفع المبلغ المتبقي وقدره 1.5 بليون دولار من الديّة المتعلّقة بكارثة بان آم 103 الإرهابيّة. 

وعلى مدى السنوات الخمس الماضيّة، قلت ما فيه الكفاية عن الرئيس بوش. وليس في نيّتي قول المزيد، ولكن توجيه الدعوة ومقابلة الديكتاتور المقبل لهو أمر مناف لكلّ شئ إدّعى أنه يقف من أجله. وإلاّ كيف يستطيع –بحقّ الأجيال القادمة– أن يتصادق مع الإرهابيين، وفي نفس الوقت يبرّر جادّاّ موت وتشويه مئات آلاف الأرواح في العراق او الحرب على الارهاب؟

لطالما وجّه بوش إلى القذّافي الأب الإتهامات المعيبة، وكان هو يعرف بالضبط ما سوف يكلّف فتح أبواب البيت الأبيض، ولذا فلتسجّل النقاط لصالح معمّر: فجورج الإبن سيكون الرئيس السّابع الذي يضعه وراء ظهره. والآن جاء دور باراك أوباما، فقام الديكتاتور الليبي بإرسال إبنه ليستطلع له الإمكانيّات، في زيارة باهظة الثمن ومنسّقة، وتشمل محاضرات في جامعة هارفارد وجامعة جون هوبكنز، فضلا عن لقاء مع قادة الإقتصاد الأمريكي وأعضاء الكونجرس. 

ولكن ما الجديد بالنسبة لليبيا والليبيين؟ والجواب القصير: لاشئ، عدا إستمرار اليأس. ولا يسع المرء إلاّ أن يشعر بالأسف على بلاد هيمن عليها لفترة ألأربعين عاما الماضية شخص مختلّ العقل يتربّع على رأس نظام حكم فردي مبني على اللصوصيّة والجهل والتخلّف، وبنية تحتيّة منهارة وانقسامات قبليّة وانعدام القانون والفساد، من أردأ أنواع الحكم في يومنا هذا. والمعارضة لأي من هذه الأوبئة، وأي دعوة إلى احترام حقوق الإنسان والشفافيّة وحكم القانون، سيعاقَب عليها بأحكام سجن طويلة.

وثمّة درس قيّم لليبييين والعرب يستخلصونه من زيارة سيف؛ إذ لا أنا ولا هم يستطيعون أن يطلبوا من أيةّ إدارة أمريكيّة أن تتحمّل المسئوليّة عمّا يفعله الطغاة في ليبيا أو البلدان العربيّة. بل عليهم هم أن يتحمّلوا هذه المسئوليّة، ودفع ثمن تخليص بلادهم من الشرّ الذي اجتاحهم لمدّة طويلة، يوهن من صحّتهم وثروتهم. وهذا لن يتمّ دون تكلفة في الدمّ والعرق والدموع. ودون فعل ذلك فإنهم سوف يتوهون في اللآجدوى الثقافيّة والإجتماعيّة والسياسيّة.

In these societies, the intellectual progression of national political leaderships does not appear to have advanced beyond the era of the divine rights of kings, which characterized the formation of the nation state in 1648. And, even after independence, when opportunity presented the possibility of adopting concepts such as popular sovereignty and political participation, none did, and leaders fought vigorously to prevent the infection of their societies by these dangerous concepts. The result has been years of effete political institutions, dictatorial rule and political, social, cultural, and economic regression not witnessed in the region since the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258.

Economically, the regimes chug along aimlessly, surviving parasitically on opportunities afforded them by the international system and, with one or two exceptions, any scarce natural resources they might possess.

Unfortunately, this is happening at a time when many countries are shifting into fifth gear, racing toward fundamental changes in their political and economic structures to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It is only a matter of time before China, India, Brazil and other developing countries join the developed world to set up colonies on the moon and Mars and hence join in the reshaping of a futuristic global culture. Missing from this evolution will be an Arab culture because it contributes nothing to the pool of global knowledge. It is a shame for a culture that gave so much to human development to be referred to as a dead culture.

This week’s Washington visit by the Libyan dictator’s son and heir to the throne, Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi, vividly reminded me of this calamity engulfing the Arab world. He was welcomed with open arms by the Bush administration. During his visit, Mr. Bush took the opportunity to call the father and thank him for paying the remaining $1.5 billion of the blood money for the Pan Am 103 terrorist calamity.

Over the past five years, I have said enough about President Bush and I wasn’t planning to say more, but extending an invitation to and meeting with the future dictator of Libya goes against everything he claims to stand for. How can he, for posterity’s sake, “pal around with terrorists” and earnestly justify the death and maiming of hundreds of thousands of souls in Iraq or his “War on Terror.”

Qadhafi senior had him tagged all along, and he knew exactly what it would take to open up the doors to the White House, so chalk it up for Muammar. George junior will be the seventh American president he puts behind him. Now comes Barack Obama’s turn, and the Libyan dictator sent his son to feel him out in a highly expensive and orchestrated visit, which includes lectures at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, as well as meeting with American business leaders and members of Congress.

But what’s new about Libya and Libyans? The short answer is nothing, but continued despair. One can only feel sorry for a country dominated for the past 40 years by a lunatic sitting on top of a kleptocracy. Ignorance, backwardness, dilapidated infrastructure, tribal divisions, lawlessness and corruption of the worst sort rule the day. Opposition to any of this and any calls for human rights, transparency and rule of law are punished by long prison sentences.

In Saif’s visit there is a valuable lesson for Libyans and other Arabs. Neither I, nor they can ask any American administration to assume responsibility for what the dictators do in Libya or Arab lands. They must assume that responsibility and pay the cost of ridding their countries of the evil that has engulfed them for so long, sapping both their health and wealth. This will not come about without cost in blood, sweat and tears. Short of doing that, they will meander into cultural, social and political irrelevance.