Foreign Affairs; The Big Terrible

NYT, September 18, 2001
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

By quirk of fate I have been in Jordan for much of the World Trade Center crisis. Sitting here, I've been struck by the number of e-mails that have reached me from friends around the Arab-Muslim world -- from Kuwait and Cairo, from Lebanon and Turkey -- all just wanting to say how upset they were with what happened and checking if the family was O.K. In their own way, they each echoed what a secretary in Jordan tried to say to me in the most eloquent broken English -- that this terrorist attack was ''the big terrible.''

I relate this not to suggest that my friends around the Middle East reflect all public opinion out here. They do not. One need only visit some of the most popular Arabic Web sites and chat rooms to see that public opinion in the Arab world is split about 50-50 -- between those appalled by the bombing and those applauding it. The harshest e-mails, Arab techies tell me, come from Islamists in Saudi Arabia and the gulf, home to some of the hijackers.

No, I relate this simply to say that America still has many admirers in this part of the world. For all that Middle Easterners get enraged with America, many others value it, envy it and want their kids there. They envy the sense of ownership that Americans have over their own government, they envy its naïve optimism, its celebration of individual freedom and its abiding faith that the past won't always bury the future. For a brief, terrifying moment last week people out here got a glimpse of what the world could be like without America, and many did not like it. America is not something external to them; people carry around pieces of it in ways often not articulated.

Why does all this matter? Because we need the help of the moderate Arab states to fight this war. And for now, most of these Arab leaders are ready to cooperate with us -- because enough of their publics are tilted our way. But the moderate Arab leaders are praying that the U.S. will proceed carefully and surgically, because they know that public opinion here, even after all the American deaths, is by no means solidly pro-American.

On Sunday I interviewed Jordan's King Abdullah, one of America's real friends. He had three wise messages: We can win if you Americans don't forget who you are, if you don't forget who your friends are and if we work together. ''The terrorists are trying to break down the fabric of the U.S.,'' said the Jordanian monarch. ''They want to break down what America stands for. The terrorists actually want to provoke attacks on Arabs or Muslims in the U.S., because if the American communities start going after each other, if we see America fragment, then you destroy that special thing that America stands for. That's what the terrorists want -- they want to be able to turn to your friends here and say, 'Look, this is all a myth.'

''That is why you have to be very careful when you respond -- make sure you respond in a way that punishes the real perpetrators, that brings justice, not revenge, because otherwise you will be going against your own ideals, and that is what the terrorists want most.''

At the same time, U.S. strategy can't just be about punishing the bad guys. It also has to be about helping the good guys. Jordan is a country with a decent government and an economy that -- despite the Intifada -- grew 3.9 percent last year, thanks largely to a free-market approach, with an emphasis on software, technology and textile development that is drawing U.S. investors. That's a lot of jobs. (Jordan is also the first Arab country to sign a free trade agreement with the U.S., but ratification has been foolishly held up by the Senate.) In short, Jordan is becoming a good Arab model for how to do things right. We have a fundamental interest in this model succeeding, for all its neighbors to see. Terrorists thrive in failing, stagnant, weak states with illegitimate regimes -- not countries on the rise.

Which brings up the king's last point: ''The bad guys work together, but we don't. The terrorist groups are a global organization. They know how to cooperate and stay focused on their military objectives. We have not. Some people didn't want to share intelligence. [Some] said, Islamic terrorism is not my problem, and looked the other way. We can defeat them, but only if we learn to cooperate globally as effectively as they do.''