The Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was right when he advised the people of the Gulf not to abandon their donkeys and camels. This was because the Gulf Arabs will likely join their poor brothers in other parts of the Arab world if they allow themselves to be influenced by their demagogues.
The Libyan leader is right because we Arabs are capable of everything but logical thought. Under the influence of an emotional speaker, we would not hesitate to destroy everything we have inherited, earned and even bought with our money. Some young people in Bahrain have already begun destroying their recently earned freedom and democratic achievements, driven by some sensationalist demagogues in the name of liberating Palestine. A TV station in Qatar is spreading chaos everywhere. Some in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are demanding a halt to oil sales to the West, echoing the advice of leaders in non-oil exporting countries. The same people also demand pay increases from their employers! Only by selling the oil could their pay be increased. The shortsighted leaders do not mind begging tomorrow in the hope of bringing back Arab glory today.
This is the way most Arab societies, oil-rich or not, think. They are embarking on a path of self-destruction. This path has already made some of them ride donkeys while some others are already on the way to buy them.
If we were intelligent enough, we would not be dependent exclusively on oil. Unfortunately, we are in such a state that our budgets are dependent upon oil. If we adopt the dual policy of total reliance on oil and the destruction of its market at the same, we had better preserve our animals because the day is sure to come when we will find no customers for our petrol. The question is how we can live without intelligence and oil at the same time. It is evident that oil is not essential for a nation to be rich. Singapore, for example, is devoid of mineral resources and has an income level above that of any Arab nation. Some of our societies are short of brains, not oil, and we see poverty, backwardness, and general weakness prevalent among us. Real wealth is the brain. One gets rich by proper use of the brain. The great powers of the contemporary world have progressed by exploiting intellectual potentials and not because of oil or anything else. It is Western scientists who have converted into money and power the oil we formerly used to treat the skin diseases of our camels. Oil is found in abundance in some Arab countries while the brains of people in those governments have remained poor,
The brain is far more important than the oil. Finland which possesses only scant supplies of timber and fish and whose weather is often freezing has achieved more than all the oil-rich Arab countries. On the contrary, people with leaders who are no more than demagogues will never progress from the age of donkeys to the age of spacecraft. This is why we should retain our donkeys and camels as long as men such as Ahmad Saeed and Faisal Al-Qasim, who are fighting the enemy with their empty words, dominate our politics, media or universities. I am afraid that they and those like them will cast the Arab world to the abyss of poverty and misery.
What honor have these demagogues brought to our people in the past 50 years? I want people to review what they have achieved for us before we follow them any further. The Arab world is currently divided into countries characterized by varying degrees of madness. Most nations have jumped on this bandwagon though a few have continued to think rationally and so have kept to a less dangerous road.
