By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
Staff Reporter of T
HE WALL
STREET J
OURNAL
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Two weeks after much of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia crumbled on the battlefield, America's surprisingly swift military success is prompting a slow but important swing in Arab public opinion.
Some of the earlier anti-American rhetoric -- and even sneaking admiration for Osama bin Laden -- has vanished from the pages of the main Arab newspapers. And, instead of a reflexive urge to blame the West and the U.S. for all of the region's ills, some Arab commentators are beginning to wonder openly whether Arabs themselves are at least partly responsible.
"The rapid pace of events in Afghanistan has dampened the anti-American spirit," says Ahmed Bishara, a Kuwaiti professor who heads a liberal political group. "America after Sept. 11 looked to people here like it was collapsing. But the events in Afghanistan show that America can create new realities on the ground -- and some people have come to realize that they were wrong to choose sides with the Taliban and bin Laden from the beginning."
In part, many commentators say, sentiment is changing because few people in this region want to be seen backing the losers. Until its recent U.S. blitz against the Taliban, many viewed America -- which has failed to dislodge Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein despite a decade of sanctions and occasional bombings -- as unable to secure a definitive victory over its foes.
This perception has changed. "It is painful to see certain Muslims in the world completely under the influence of illusions to an extent that they believe that with primitive weapons and words, they can defeat the most advanced army in the world," wrote Turki al Sudairy, editor in chief of Saudi Arabia's al-Riyadh newspaper. "These poor people were easy prey for the fire of hell that poured on them."
To be sure, Arab media still resent U.S. policies, especially Washington's perceived bias toward Israel and against the Palestinians. Just a few weeks ago, a cartoon in Al Sharq al Awsat -- one of the two main London-based newspapers distributed throughout the Arab world, and like its rival Al Hayat owned by a Saudi prince -- depicted a gun daubed with the Star of David and the words "Western media" as it fired into a hapless man representing the Arabs.
But, while many editorials lament the Arabs' newly weakened international position, there is also a new willingness to go beyond the tradition of blaming it all on an anti-Arab Zionist conspiracy.
"We must ask why the developed world views us as it does," said an unusually frank commentary by political analyst Tarek Haggi that appeared last week in Al Ahram, the newspaper of record in the Arab world's biggest country, Egypt. "Were we to do so, we would find that it is impossible for the world to attribute importance to us when we do not attribute importance to ourselves, or to respect our rights when they are not respected by us within our own societies," Mr. Haggi wrote. "The injustices that some of us commit to each other far exceed those to which others subject us, even if neither are justified."
Much in the same vein, Lebanese journalist Saad Mehio wrote in Beirut's Daily Star newspaper this weekend that, while the Islamic world was traumatized by the sight of American "carpet-bombing" in Afghanistan, Muslims have good reason to rejoice at the removal of a more painful, self-inflicted trauma, the Taliban regime. The Taliban's "introverted and suicidal" version of Islam has left deep psychological scars "of pain, despair and fury" among many Arabs and Muslims, Mr. Mehio wrote -- largely because of their "shame and embarrassment" over the image that the Taliban had given to Islam "not only in the West, but in the entire world."
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com