Back in the days of sailing ships and waxed mustaches, a bunch of Western gentlemen (they were all men) set out to explore and understand the Muslim world. Of course, they took their prejudices with them, and their writing reflected it. These men were called “Orientalists,” and today the value of their work is considered diminished by their ethnocentrism. One can admire a people and still describe them with condescension.
Something like that is going on right now among the paranoid leftist set, for whom Ghadafi is some sort of populist hero and the popular rebellion in Libya is a CIA manufacture. These people do not regard Libyans as capable of wanting, much less fighting for, their own freedom, or of recognizing the evident tyranny of Ghadafi. In this paternalistic view, the people of Libya are ignorant of their own fate, and need enlightenment through translations of Noam Chomsky.
This is a new Orientalism, and it is more than a little bit condescending. It is also racist. Detractors simply cannot believe that an American president or Western alliance has chosen to stand on the right side of history, for once; a kind of myopia sets in, limiting their discernment. There is one easy way to find out whether the revolt in Libya is a democratic revolution: ask the Libyans. But the new Orientalists won’t, and don’t have to, because they know better.
