We Arabs have a strong natural inclination to put sentiment before logic and fantasies before reality.
We are inspired and unified by rabble-rousing speeches, yet swiftly dispersed by the slightest show of force.
We love bellicose demagogues, even when they march us into hell.
Are we so different from those pre-Islamic Arabs who, by some accounts, moulded idols out of piles of dates, which could be worshipped as a deity, but which they wouldn’t hesitate to eat when they became hungry?
The Arab world entered the modern age of uprisings in 1949 with the first in a bewildering succession of coups in Syria.
The unsettling events of 2011 across the region demonstrated that such tendencies remained strong.
There are those today who worship dictators like Bashar Al Assad who destroyed their countries to retain themselves in power.
Through his sectarian and autocratic policies, former Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki made extraordinary efforts in Iraq to create the conditions for terrorism, rampant militancy and state collapse. Saddam
Hussein likewise continues to enjoy remarkable popularity from beyond the grave.
I recall being in the US during June 1967 as we incredulously watched on TV while Israeli tanks swarmed across Sinai after Egypt’s air defence capabilities had been shattered.
I recall my naïve younger self telling anybody who would listen that this was an ingenious trap by the Egyptian military, to draw the Israelis in and then destroy them completely!
Nevertheless, we woke to the bitter realisation of the most comprehensive and humiliating military defeat of modern times; a defeat which at a stroke neutralised all the considerable achievements of Gamal Abdulnasser in nationalising the Suez Canal, economic reforms, and monumental projects like the Aswan dam.
In the final days of the Second World War an increasingly deranged and desperate Adolf Hitler retained sufficient self-respect to prefer the option of suicide, knowing that he would be rightly demonised by the history books.
Meanwhile the victorious Winston Churchill within a matter of months faced catastrophic defeat in the British general elections, the electorate having sufficient awareness to fear the prospect of authoritarian governance by a leadership which believed it deserved credit for winning the war.
History should celebrate the example of Arab leaders like King Faisal, who heroically imposed an oil embargo on the West for its support for Israeli aggression.
Likewise King Fahad bin Abdulaziz’s determined stance in support of Kuwait in 1990 against Saddam’s aggression.
King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have meanwhile taken a resolute stance against Iranian encroachment in Yemen, along with their ambitious and far-reaching programme of reforms for the kingdom.
Similarly His Majesty King King Hamad from 1999 led the way in such reform programmes, with the National Action Charter putting Bahrain at the forefront of advanced and civilised nations; further reinforced by Crown Prince Salman’s wise and definitive Vision 2030 programme.
Real leadership is not all about posturing, empty rhetoric or impossible military campaigns.
The Arab world will only advance and prosper when we celebrate and empower leaders with the courage to make difficult decisions.
The sorry state of the Arab world today is partly the fault of our enemies, such as Israel and Iran.
But principally it is largely the fault of our own tendencies to follow the worst kind of leaders into catastrophe and chaos.
Instead of silver-tongued leaders with the empty rhetorical flair for turning humiliating defeats into dizzying victories; let us pray for the wisdom to get behind leaders who can take us from our sorry state of failure and defeat towards genuine victories and tangible progress.
akram@fp7.com