A new essay at Victor Davis Hanson’s web site examines the thorniest, most politically incorrect question about the Middle East: The Mirror of Fallujah.

Conspiracy theory in the West is the domain of Montana survivalists and Chomsky-like wackos; in the Arab world it is the staple of the state-run media. This tired strophe and antistrophe of threats and retractions, and braggadocio and obsequiousness grates on the world at large. So Hamas threatens to bring the war to the United States, and then back peddles and says not really. So the Palestinians warn American diplomats that they are not welcome on the soil of the West Bank—as if any wish to return when last there they were murdered trying to extend scholarships to Palestinian students.

I am sorry, but these toxic fumes of the Dark-Ages permeate everywhere. It won’t do any more simply to repeat quite logical exegeses. Without consensual government, the poor Arab Middle East is caught in the throes of rampant unemployment, illiteracy, statism, and corruption. Thus in frustration it vents through its state-run media invective against Jews and Americans to assuage the shame and pain. Whatever.

But at some point the world is asking: “Is Mr. Assad or Hussein, the Saudi Royal Family, or a Khadafy really an aberration—all rogues who hijacked Arab countries—or are they the logical expression of a tribal patriarchal society whose frequent tolerance of barbarism is in fact reflected in its leadership? Are the citizens of Fallujah the victims of Saddam, or did folk like this find their natural identity expressed in Saddam?

There it is, the question that has been on my mind since talk began of “bringing democracy” to Iraq. It’s a noble idea, and very much worth a try; regardless of whether it’s a success or failure, letting the Middle East continue to stagnate in corruption and extremism was not an option after 9/11.

But I worry that our Western tendency to project our values on other cultures, and assume they hope for and dream of the same liberties we do, may be leading us astray. Even at the highest levels, there seems to have been a preference for believing the best (“Islam is peace,” President Bush has said many times) about cultures that are radically different from our own, despite mountains of evidence that point in another direction. A direction that led to Fallujah.

I’d like to think this is all misdirection, that our leaders have a real grasp of the Arab-Islamic mindset, and are finessing the situation while the true goals are well-defined.

I’d like to think that.

UPDATE: Michael Ledeen comments.

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