| Popis: |
O NE MAY BEGIN TO SEARCH for instructive insights by looking at a scenario that will probably sound familiar to most observers of the Modern Middle East. The scenario begins with an Arab leader who, though beloved by much of the Arab world, is feared and hated by other Arab leaders. He is a military dictator who is widely rumored to have stockpiled weapons of mass destruction-who has used non-conventional weaponry even against his fellow Arabs. He has openly defied UN resolutions, and evicted UN observers from his territory. He poses a fundamental challenge to the West-and one Western country accepts that challenge and goes to war. The fighting proceeds far more swiftly than anybody anticipates. The once-thought-formidable forces of the Arab dictator rapidly collapse. And as the Western army advances, it is greeted by much of the local population, not as occupiers, but as liberators. That situation does not obtain indefinitely, however. Soon there are acts of armed resistance against the occupation force-acts viewed throughout the region as legitimate attempts to achieve liberation, but seen by much of the West as acts of terror. Does that scenario sound familiar? Of course it does. To anybody following America's involvement in Iraq it certainly should. Yet the circumstances just described pertain not only to America's year-old intervention in Iraq, but to events that transpired 37 years ago-in May-June 1967-in the period leading up to the Six Day War. Then, as now, there was an Arab dictator-not Saddam Hussein, but Gamal Abdul Nasser, the president of Egypt-who was beloved by many people throughout the Arab world, but feared and hated by other |
