Get Herald RSSNonie Darwish came to campus last night hailed as the Great "Moderate Arab" Truth-Teller. Her face was on the front of the Brown Web site next to a map of the Middle East and the words "Discussing a road to peace." Which all sounds great - until you actually read something she has written.
On the biggest Mideast issue of our day, the war in Iraq, here's what Darwish wrote in a February 2003 column on David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com: "I truly believe that if Saddam is left in office, terrorism will thrive, and fear will be in the background of any thinking American's mind, undermining America's psyche and economy." Hell, at least she's honest. Never mind that Saddam wasn't a terrorist and that he suppressed the same fundamentalists Darwish identifies as the greatest threat - this war was about saving America's fragile psyche and economy.
When paired with her enthusiastic support for the Iraq war, Darwish's talk of reform and women's rights rings hollow. As the late Molly Ivins put it: "It's damn hard to convince people you're killing them for their own good." Our invasion of Iraq and the botched occupation has predictably empowered religious extremists. The Global Fund for Women recently issued a report stating that Iraqi women are now much worse off than they were under Saddam's secular regime - thanks in part to "Arab feminist" Nonie Darwish.
Here's Darwish on the massive anti-Iraq war protests: "All protest organizers agree on one thing: They hate America and want to see it transformed from the democratic and capitalist entity that it is." Here she is on racial profiling: "This is one U.S. citizen of Arab/Moslem background who has no problem being profiled until the U.S. conquers the war on terrorism."
And what about Darwish's specialty, the grave threat radical Islam poses to America? She seems confused about the basics. From the 2003 column, this gem: "As an American of Arab origin, I laugh every time I hear someone in the media asking 'How can you prove that Saddam and al-Qaida are cooperating?' How can anyone imagine that two outlaw organizations with a common enemy would not cooperate? They are both Moslem, Arab and live in the same neighborhood. Do these same people doubt that a fire can ignite when matches are struck near gasoline?"
I guess I'd grasp all this better if I had a deeper understanding of the Arab world. Being only an American of European origin, all this time I was foolishly thinking that two organizations in the same neighborhood - Saddam's regime and Islamic terrorists - could actually be enemies. How silly of me! I forgot to lump all Arabs and Moslems into the same category. Thank you, Nonie.
Turns out Darwish's main credential - apart from being Arab - is the fact that she's a darling of neocons like David Horowitz and former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.,who voices his enthusiastic approval on the jacket of her book. Darwish and her crowd of truth-tellers should be judged on the product of their ideology - the bloodbath in Iraq.
Former Herald Executive Editor Justin Elliott '07 is one of those America haters.
