In retrospect, I’d say that Huntington committed the Fundamental Attribution Error. That is, he ascribed to traits qualities that are actually determined by context.
He argued that people in Arab lands are intrinsically not nationalistic. He argued that they do not hunger for pluralism and democracy in the way these things are understood in the West. But it now appears as though they were simply living in circumstances that did not allow that patriotism or those spiritual hungers to come to the surface.
It now appears that people in these nations, like people in all nations, have multiple authentic selves. In some circumstances, one set of identities manifests itself, but when those circumstances change, other equally authentic identities and desires get activated.
What I’ve found interesting about this whole thing in the Middle East is the deafening silence of the Boo Birds who have denigrated American involvement in Iraq since the beginning by arguing this exact point that somehow Middle Easterners are either too stupid or deluded (or insert diminutive adjective of choice) to want democracy.
Hmmm….somehow it continues to seem to me a little optimistic to think self-organizing democracy will lift many Middle East nations:
http://www.aina.org/news/20110304222016.htm
The West will have to countenance reports like this for years – along with events like the assassination of the Pakistani Catholic minorities minister and the killing of two US airmen in the Frankfurt airport by an Islamist employee,in the past week alone.
I haven’t yet seen the historical analysis that explains how the USA’s push for regime overthrow and democratic uprisings in Muslim countries has occurred parallel with the developments in mathematics and physics championing the theory of ‘self-organizing chaos’, but in fact they have occurred in parallel.
What does Brooks think he can argue for by proposing ‘multiple authentic selves’? As far as I can tell we each still exist in one time-dimension at a time, no matter what we may like to think. Some objective truth is needed here.
Abp. Chaput’s lecture posted a couple days ago, about the Christian roots of the American model, points up the weakness in the assumptions underlying the efforts to impose democracy in the Middle East, e.g. : ” “One of the gravest mistakes of American policy in Iraq was to overestimate the appeal of Washington-style secularity, and to [i]underestimate the power of religious faith in shaping culture and politics,[/i]” he added.” (my italics)
The global elite which Brooks represents has under-valued culture which makes us human, thus ‘opening history wide’ to include many inhuman possibilities.
I like David Brooks and what he has to say much, maybe most, of the time. But here all I find that resonates is: “He may still be proved right.”
So, could we all just for once keep our conclusion-jumping to a minimum and proceed with both intellectual and geo-political caution?
I think ‘Cranmer’ (of blog fame) makes my point much better than I did:
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2011/03/democracy-akbar-coptic-church-of-st.html
Just substitute NYT for BBC.