![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Madeleine Albright
Dec. 1st, 2005 02:57 pmThis morning former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke here, thanks to her connection with Georgetown University. She gave a brief but very good talk on the state of international politics and answered a lot of audience questions. (She said that one nice thing about not being Secretary of State anymore was being able to answer audience questions.)
To me, the most interesting thing she said was in response to a question about American stereotypes about Arabs. She said that Americans tend to assume that everyone else in the world wants to be Americans. Of course that's not news, but here's the interesting part: she said that this outlook pretty much worked during the Cold War, at least with regard to Central and Eastern Europe. To a large extent, she said, people in Soviet bloc countries did want to be like the West, and for an opposition leader to be linked to the West was seen as a positive thing (at least to other opposition-types).
But this they-all-want-to-be-like-us outlook does not work at all when it comes to the Arab world. Certainly there are things about America that people here would like to emulate... but we can't just assume that Arabs really want to be like Americans, or that the kind of society they would choose for themselves would look anything like our society. Thus even (especially?) for reformists in the Middle East, being linked to the West is "the kiss of death."
I'm wildly paraphrasing here, and I think I've inserted some of my own thoughts into hers. But I thought it was an interesting line of thinking, anyway. Living here has given me an appreciation for the kind of skepticism I hear expressed regarding the "American experiment" and the reasons that people are not willing to embrace Western values unreservedly. I think that's one of the things that makes it so painful to listen to Bush from Doha -- he talks as though there's only one, indivisible kind of "freedom" that we have and everyone else aspires to, and as though there is only one template for a well-ordered society.
That said, it's hard for me to consider as a well-ordered society one that imprisons gay men for... going to a party with other gay men.
To me, the most interesting thing she said was in response to a question about American stereotypes about Arabs. She said that Americans tend to assume that everyone else in the world wants to be Americans. Of course that's not news, but here's the interesting part: she said that this outlook pretty much worked during the Cold War, at least with regard to Central and Eastern Europe. To a large extent, she said, people in Soviet bloc countries did want to be like the West, and for an opposition leader to be linked to the West was seen as a positive thing (at least to other opposition-types).
But this they-all-want-to-be-like-us outlook does not work at all when it comes to the Arab world. Certainly there are things about America that people here would like to emulate... but we can't just assume that Arabs really want to be like Americans, or that the kind of society they would choose for themselves would look anything like our society. Thus even (especially?) for reformists in the Middle East, being linked to the West is "the kiss of death."
I'm wildly paraphrasing here, and I think I've inserted some of my own thoughts into hers. But I thought it was an interesting line of thinking, anyway. Living here has given me an appreciation for the kind of skepticism I hear expressed regarding the "American experiment" and the reasons that people are not willing to embrace Western values unreservedly. I think that's one of the things that makes it so painful to listen to Bush from Doha -- he talks as though there's only one, indivisible kind of "freedom" that we have and everyone else aspires to, and as though there is only one template for a well-ordered society.
That said, it's hard for me to consider as a well-ordered society one that imprisons gay men for... going to a party with other gay men.
