Sensible Evaluation

MEMRI translates a wonderful editorial that appeared in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassah. Written by Ahmad Al-Jarallah, it's the most realistic assessment I've seen:

We claimed President Bush will never be able to defeat Iraq and said the resistance will kick the U.S. forces out of that country. We described terrorism, which is killing innocent people in Iraq, as ' jihad ' and expected it to win in the end because it is supported by God. To support our calculations, we recalled how the U.S. troops were sent packing from Lebanon in the Eighties because of the resistance in that country. We fondly remembered how the Americans had to retreat from Somalia because of the resistance put up by Somalia warlords. By this way of thinking we forgot the United States has changed and the world has changed with it. . . .

The world and relations between different countries have changed beyond recognition. In some cases even the countries have changed and a new order is controlling the world. What's more the United Nations is no longer able to control the relations between different countries. All this is happening in the outside world while nothing has changed for the Arab World. We are still living in the past steeped in our age old traditions. Our traditions are the source of our concepts, however old. This has always led us to conflicts with the outside world invariably ending in defeat for us. Such defeats in turn draw us back from the path of development. If there is anything which we have to do urgently it is to correct and remedy this situation.

Read it all.