At the turn of the last century, Harvard professor George Santayana observed:
“Those who fail to learn the lessons of history
are doomed to repeat them.” Yet as the prospect of war with Iraq draws closer, we see fresh
efforts to hijack history or, even worse, to dismiss its value.
Some of this qualifies as propagandistic
claptrap. In 1991, the junkyard of Iraqi tanks left
smoldering in the desert put the lie to Saddam Hussein’s
current assertion that his army withdrew in good order to
end Gulf War I.
But as Gulf War II looms, millions of young
people remain without a clue as to what went before.
Nowhere is the problem more acute than in the
volatile arc that stretches from Morocco to Indonesia, an
area where half the people are under 20 years of age.
We know about the U.N. Security Council
debate over Saddam’s failure to comply with the
disarmament deal his generals signed in 1991 to secure a truce.
But we hear less about the U.N.’s success in
eradicating chronic disease in such Third World places as
Egypt, the Sudan, Yemen, and Gaza. Those efforts,
combined with high fertility rates, have spawned a human
surge that has changed the dynamics of the region.
Egypt is a case in point. From 1250 onward,
it’s been dependent, politically or economically, on
the Mamluks, the Ottoman Turks, the French, the
British, the Soviets, and now the Americans. Ever
since Egyptian president Anwar Sadat signed a peace
treaty with Israel, the nation has steadily received about
$2 billion a year in U.S. aid.
Shortly before he was murdered in 1981,
Sadat told me that “Egypt remained the heart and soul
of the Arab world, despite the hatred of our Arab
brothers for what we have done,” which he viewed as
a temporary phenomenon. Two decades later,
Egyptian schoolchildren learn little about the circumstances
of Sadat’s death and nothing about his approach to
the Jewish state.
A squad of soldiers gunned down Sadat during
a military parade that marked the 1973 assault on
Israeli lines across the Suez Canal. Hosni Mubarak,
then Egypt’s vice president and its president ever since,
was seated to his immediate right. He escaped unscathed.
Today, a Star of David flies from the window of
the high-rise in downtown Cairo that houses the
Israeli Embassy. El Al schedules two flights a week
between Cairo and Tel Aviv. (While it’s less than a
half-hour hop, you need to check in at least three hours
before the departure time.)
But many young Cairenes — the “Arab
street” whose mood U.S. analysts eagerly seek to fathom
— find themselves in quite a different place.
Mubarak recently sanctioned an anti-war rally
that drew huge throngs. Pop-singer Shaaban Abdel-Rehim’s theme song, “Ana Bakrah Israel” (“I Hate
Israel”) ranks as Egypt’s best-selling single,
while Shaaban’s popularity has spread across the Arab world.
The song also includes such politically correct lines as
“I love Hosni Mubarak because of his broad mind.” But
Shaaban gives away the game with his second refrain: “I hate Israel,
I don’t even care if you arrest me, I’m not afraid.” It’s not hard
to fathom what else you might write or sing in Cairo that
could truly get you tossed in the clink.
Egyptian friends say that Shaaban reflects the pulse of
“Arab street,” especially among the young. I’m also told that
another one of his popular songs “Habatal el-sagayaer” (“I’ll Quit
Smoking”) has made more of an impact on smokers than
the government’s extensive anti-smoking drives.
Exhibiting his strong survival instincts, Mubarak
encourages Shaaban even as he tells U.S. presidents what they want
to hear. (“You have to treat [Yasser] Arafat like a spoiled child,”
he told me in his presidential office a few years ago.)
In July 1990, when Saddam began massing his
tanks on the Kuwaiti border, the first President Bush
received a CIA briefing that foresaw a high risk of an invasion.
At that point, there was time enough to land a U.S.
“trip-wire” force at the airport, which might have
dissuaded the Iraqis from invading.
Bush called Mubarak and asked him to get
involved. Mubarak thereupon called Saddam and subsequently
relayed to Bush what Saddam had told him in the
strictest confidence: “Not to worry — it’s all a bluff.”
Such are the ironic uses of history.
Andy Glass is managing editor of The
Hill, a weekly Washington-based newspaper that covers Congress.
Previously, he served for 28 years as a reporter, bureau chief,
and senior correspondent for Cox Newspapers.