saw the film in a pre-release showing in New York last month and did not expect it to be already available throughout the Arab world in a pirated videocassette version. And, yet, in the past week or so I have received more than a dozen emails from Arab friends throughout the Middle East citing the film as, in the word of one of them, another “sure proof” that the US will never tolerate democratic leaders in that neck of the wood.
According to an old saying one can never convince anyone who doesn’t wish to be convinced. The makers of “Syriana” are preaching to the converted if only because an extraordinarily large number of Arabs are comfortable in the certainty of their victimhood. Long before “Syriana” hit the silver screen those Arabs were convinced that whatever misfortune has befallen them is due to some conspiracy by a perfidious Western power.[snip]
The list of Arab leaders murdered since 1900 is a long one. It includes six prime ministers, three kings, a ruling Imam, seven presidents of the republic, and dozens of ministers, parliamentarians and senior military officials. Every single one of them was killed either by Islamist militants (often from the Muslim Brotherhood) or by pan-Arab nationalists or by radical Arab security services.
That many Arabs should welcome the suggestion that their tragedies are due to evil doings by foreigners maybe understandable.
It is less so when so many Americans come together to make a film to portray their nation as evil incarnate.
Readeth the rest.
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