AND YOU THOUGHT THE ENEMY WAS TERRORISM AND TYRANNY

The Enemy in the Middle East Is Boredom (Bijan Khezri, Wall Street Journal Europe, 8/6/2003)

The long-term stability of the region is threatened by a twin set of evils. One is rampant unemployment and the other the absence of opportunities for Arab youths to translate knowledge and talent into productive activities. Without prospects of a future, Arab youths remain trapped in despair....

In their recent book "Driven," Professors Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria of Harvard Business School devise an incisive analytical framework based on four instinctive human drives -- to acquire, bond, learn and defend -- from which any other need can be then derived. Peace, success and prosperity are highly dependent upon a balanced satisfaction of all four drives. In the context of the Middle East, Arabs have consistently failed to satisfy the basic drive to acquire -- in terms of translating ability and knowledge into prosperity.

As a result, the Arab mind remains shaped by "this fear of finding nothing, of being useless, the sense of living in a void for purposes only of dying, which crops up nihilistically time and again", as David Pryce-Jones concludes "The Closed Circle."

Mr. Khezri is right that the lack of opportunity in the Middle East is a grave problem. Arab youth need to be shown an attractive alternative to combat and radicalism. This is why the success of freedom in Iraq is worth fighting for, even if it means keeping American troops there for years. Freedom in Iraq is the most valuable spoil of this war. Posted by Paul Jaminet at August 6, 2003 8:46 AM