Syria's revolution is a chance to win back Arab hearts and minds

Hani Hamdan lives in Burnsville and practices dentistry in Lakeville, Minn. He is a contributor and editor of Engagemn.com and a source in MPR's Public Insight Network.

The Syrian government's crackdown on the popular revolution is only increasing in brutality. It seems that every perceived milestone — a U.N. General Assembly vote, a Security Council's failure to vote, or even a chimerical "reformation" package proposed by the Syrian Baath regime — is reason for an immediate escalation by the Syrian Army in shelling residential buildings and shooting civilians.

But if we focus on the way Russia and China, along with other countries like Iran and Venezuela, are supporting the crackdown in Syria, we see the great benefit of a healthy Arab perspective on world politics.

For the past few decades, many Arabs were galvanized on the side of anything and everything that stood in the face of the United States. This is understandable given the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. support for Israel against the rights of Palestinians. Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, all of whom made statements condemning Israel and the United States, were celebrated as heroes in Arab countries during the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2009. Lacking an essential level of cynicism, many Arabs saw in these figures an answer to America's imperialistic force, but now many are starting to realize a different truth.

Now, Arabs have seen their Syrian brethren being slaughtered en masse, with over 8,000 dead and many more injured or missing. In response, Russia and China have provided political, economic and even military support to the Syrian regime, and those Arabs have started to form a much more balanced view of world politics.

Now Arabs realize that not everyone who is anti-America is "good," and that not everyone who is pro-America is "evil." They see now that countries like Russia and Iran are, just like any other player in the region, eager to secure their own interests regardless of the dignity and independence of Arab peoples, and that these countries' "anti-imperialism" is brazenly hypocritical. The Arab moral compass is readjusting. Recently the Coalition for Arab Writers and Intellectuals called for a boycott against Russian and Chinese products in response to the two countries' veto of a U.N. resolution against the Syrian government.

Iran and Hezbollah have also profoundly undermined their own leverage within the Arab populace. I would even venture to say that by continuing to support the Baath regime in Syria, those two entities, always claiming to be the chief defenders against the "greatest Devil" that is America, have lost almost all their public support amongst the Sunni Muslim majority in the Middle East.

With their revolution, the Syrian people could not have possibly given us a greater gift than this. Here we have a historical opportunity to win back the hearts and minds of Arabs. But are we taking advantage of it?

I think we can start by understanding that an independent yet friendly Arabia is not an oxymoron. If we send to Arabs the message that they have to choose between us and their independence, we're bound to lose that region sooner or later. We can, on the other hand, start rebuilding our foreign policy toward Arabia based on understanding and respect for a region deeply entrenched in human history and culture, and reap the benefits for generations to come.

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