MUST READ: FLANAGAN METHOD: WEST'S POLICY TOWARDS MIDDLE EAST

Flanagan Method: West's Policy Towards Middle East
Prof. Barry Rubin

Father Edward Flanagan was a great man. In 1917 he founded Boys Town, now Boys and Girls Town, in Nebraska as an orphanage combining revolutionary and traditional approaches to help orphans who had never before known kind treatment. Flanagan was an innovative educator but he never meant his methods to be used in Middle East politics or international affairs.

Through no fault of his own, the Flanagan Method has, however, become the backbone of contemporary Western Middle East policy toward radical nationalists and Islamists. “There are no bad boys,” was Flanagan’s most famous statement. “There is only bad environment, bad training, bad example, bad thinking.” If, he argued, his orphans were only treated properly they could be saved. Or, in Flanagan’s own words, “There is nothing the matter with our growing boys that love, proper training and guidance will not remedy.”

Take Hamas, for example. Much of the media coverage, for example an article in the Los Angeles Times, July 13, tries desperately to find some way to avoid concluding that Hamas is fanatical, genocidal, terrorist, and ruthlessly repressive. If only it is given a chance and treated properly, the argument goes, it will become moderate. The Los Angeles Times article portrays Hamas as walking “an ideological tightrope” between its “pragmatists” and “hardliners.” Wow, I sure hope the pragmatists win.

If there is a villain, we are told it is the smaller Islamic Jihad, Army of Islam, al-Qaida or others “seeking to capitalize on the unrest between Palestinian political parties and turn Gaza into a radical Islamic state.” Hamas’s own goal is now attributed instead to marginal third parties who are supposedly using the Fatah-Hamas conflict for this purpose. It is bad enough to cope with the concept that Fatah are the good guys and Hamas the bad ones. Now this is being taken one step further, with Hamas as the moderates trying to hold off the real radical Islamists. To many in the West, a radical is simply a moderate they have not yet explained things to, or who perhaps have not yet tasted the supposedly inevitable moderating influence of being in power or the educational effect of receiving Western financial aid.

According to this view, it is not Hamas that is the source of religious extremism but various troublemakers who “have found cover” under Hamas’s banner. This neglects the fact that Hamas’s banner is hoisted over a charter which is perhaps the most explicitly antisemitic doctrine since the fall of Berlin in 1945 and its political progress is built on the bodies of those it has slain in numerous acts of terrorism.

“I have yet to find a single boy who wants to be bad,” said Flanagan, and it is a basic principle of many who observe the Middle East that no movement wants to be bad either. They also don’t seem to tell any lies. Or as the Los Angeles Times explains:

“Hamas says it disavows Islamic radicalism but faces tension between its religious hard-liners and pragmatists who want to convince the West that it is not a political mask for jihad.”

I have no doubt that Hamas says this to Western reporters. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of thing it says to its own supporters. The Hamas leadership, doctrine, methods, and goals are all hard line. Is this so hard to understand?

But if you are a naïve visiting reporter you might actually believe that “the wider challenge for Hamas is whether it can, or even wishes to, rein in independent Islamist groups seeking to impose Sharia law that would limit other religions and force women to wear hijabs or head scarves.” The notion of Hamas stopping those extremists so far-out that they want to make women wear head scarves is rather quaint.

“It costs so little to teach a child to love, and so much to teach him to hate,” explained Father Flanagan. Quite true. Perhaps, though, Western aid will pay for the Hamas-controlled schools so the cost of teaching hate will be financed by foreign taxpayers rather than Hamas’s constituents.

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Professor Barry Rubin is the director of Global Research in International Affairs...



Pertinent Links:

1) Flanagan Method: West's Policy Towards Middle East