CSM column on Arab opinion, more background

Scott H. was amazingly quick in getting his kind commentary on my latest CSM column up onto the blog. (I’ve also archived the column here.) I just want, quickly, to give y’all a bit more background to the piece.
I planned the column in discussions with my editor at the CSM on Monday. (That, taking into account the fact that he was running this op-ed piece, which is more on the inside-Iran effects of a US attack on Iran, on Tuesday.) I wrote mine on Tuesday. It came in at around 960 words. Yesterday, after doing some tweaking with the text and bringing it down to around 850 words, the editor called me to say he really, really needed me to be ready to cut it further– to around 680. I took out my scissors and did one big “snip”, taking out 2-3 paras I’d had up near the top reiterating the strong plea I expressed in this CSM column in September for the establishment of a reliable hot-line between these two combat-ready militaries.
I just made a choice there. In my original version I was making two main arguments– and clearly there was only room for one. Should I repeat the argument that I’d already made back then, or focus on this other one, which is backed up by solid new evidence that I’ve gathered while here in Cairo so far, about the rosiness or otherwise of the expected regional scenario in the event of a US attack on Iran? … I guess in the end it was a no-brainer; and the resulting scissor-work was clean and easy.
But I don’t want anyone to forget that important argument about the need for a hot-line!
… So now, I just want to fill in a little more background on the piece. I’ve been meeting some really interesting Egyptians (and some other Arabs) during the time I’ve been in Cairo, but because of the way my schedule has been structured so far, these have included many more people of fairly strong pro-US inclinations, than they have people more opposed to the US. Thus, for example, the three people I quoted in that column– Saad Ibrahim, the former Egyptian ambassador, and the high-level Saudi executive– are all people whom I’d judge to be of generally pro-US bent. And I have found that among these pro-US people, the warnings about the disastrous consequences of a US attack on Iran and the resulting opposition to the idea of such an attack have both been expressed in extremely strong terms, and either unanimously or nearly so.
I imagine that when, as I soon hope to, I get to interview people associated with the Muslim Brotherhood or other parties and trends less friendly to the US, I will probably find their level of opposition to a US attack on Iran to be even stronger.
But what I want to note here is that the people I quoted in the column, and the other Egyptians and Arabs I’ve talked to here who have all expressed opposition to an attack on Iran are not by any means people of a deep anti-US bias. I think that’s a very important point to get across, and I wish I’d had the wordage in the column to be able to make it there.
(Nice to have this blog and be able to make it here, huh?)
I also want to note that I am really glad that this week, in particular, I have been able to be here in Cairo and provide a little of my own “ground truth” to a US elite discourse that has become worryingly drenched in the “spin” and otherwise misleading general impressions being disseminated by some of the juggernauts in the MSM.
For example, in the NYT of February 6, Michael Slackman and Hassan Fattah had this long article about what they described as “Saudi Arabia’s more pronounced public posture to counter Iran’s rise.”
Slackman and Fattah noted– rightly, imho– that the Kingdom has gone into something of a frenzy of new regional diplomacy within the past 4-6 weeks. But they wrote of this shift into diplomatic activism that it,

is occurring with encouragement from the Bush administration. Its goal is to see an American-backed alliance of Sunni Arab states including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, along with a Fatah-led Palestine and Israel, opposing Iran, Syria and the radical groups they support.

So what they’re saying is that the Saudis are working with Washington to help assemble the American-backed alliance of Sunni Arab states (a.k.a. in Issandr el-Amrani’s immortal phrase, “the Sunni Arab-Dominated Dictatorships Against the Mullahs, or SADDAM.”)
Yes, S&F do also warn along the way that “Riyadh’s goals may not always be in alignment with those of the White House, and could complicate American interests…”
But don’t you really think that their whole, very nicely funded piece of writing– with content from handsomely compensated reporters in Riyadh, Jiddah, Washington, and Cairo– might have included some reference to the warnings I heard again and again from the people I’ve talked to, namely that the anti-Americanism in the Sunni Arab countries is far stronger and deeper than the more recent concerns that have been expressed about the rise in Shiite or Iranian influence?
By not including those warnings– which surely, they would have heard from their interlocutors if they even started to ask the kinds of questions I’ve been asking– don’t you think these reporters are just helping to construct the kind of “rosy scenario” regarding outcomes that, today as in 2003, can make launching of an attack much more conceivable for members of the US policy elite, and therefore significantly more probable?
I would also characterize the motivations and content of the Saudis’ current diplomatic activism very differently from these NYT-ers. Where S&F write about the Kingdom’s “public posture to counter Iran’s rise”, I would describe its posture as being more aimed at energetically exploring the potential of mediation and other forms of diplomacy to help resolve the region’s burning problems and thereby de-escalate the tensions that threaten to engulf all of it.
There is, of course, a world of difference between an anti-Iran posture and a pro-mediation posture. Yet S&F seem unable to tell the difference and want to convey to Americans that the Saudis are almost completely on the US side in the confrontation with Iran?
Look, I’ve been in this business of reporting on and analyzing the behavior and attitudes of Arabs and Israelis for 32 years now. I know there’s always a lot of nuance involved in trying to “read” actions such as the ones the Kingdom has been undertaking over the past few weeks. But the big question I’ve been asking all the Egyptians and other Arabs I’ve been meeting so far has been “Do you think a US attack on Iran would be a good idea?” And unanimously, the answer I’ve heard– from all these very pro-US people I’ve been talking to– has been “NO!”
And that is really the bottom line that people in decisionmaking circles inside the US need to hear right now.