# Posted 4:57 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

LETTER FROM EGYPT: OxBlog's correspondent in Cairo is not as optimistic as I am about the political significance of Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf. He writes that:

As a resident of Egypt, I suspect that the problem is not simply one of a few bad governments hiding the truth from their people. The Arab people are complicitous in this process as well. Here in Cairo virtually none of my very well-educated students and friends see al-Sahhaf as a liar even now. As recently as a few days ago, many Egyptians were telling me that the U.S. couldn't even defeat Iraq, and is now finished as a superpower. They asked me how I could stand living in the West, where the media lies to its people and receives no objective truth.

The optimistic scenario is that regime changes in the region will change the mindsets of the populace and make it easier for them to engage in badly needed self-critique. But I fear that there is a cultural dysfunctionality here and not just a political one. There is a tendency here to use statements not as propositional truths, but as bargaining positions. When one's bargaining position becomes untenable here, instead of modifying it, one simply changes the subject. In the 1967 War, after it became clear that Nasser's media had lied about the supposed conquest of Tel Aviv and even about the supposed American bombing attacks on the Egyptian Air Force, there were no consequences for the government. Sure, it was a highly authoritarian state, and one wonders whether a _true_ regime change would alter things. Maybe. But I continue to hear the wildest conspiracy theories in the Arab world about the most indubitable realities, and am reluctant to blame that entirely on the governments.

This may be sounding like some sort of "the Arabs aren't ready for democracy" argument. It's actually not-- I'm in favor of democracy throughout the region. But I also know that I'm going to go back to school tomorrow and hear highly westernized and pro-democracy/anti-Mubarak Egyptians tell me that Baghdad hasn't really fallen, that the Jews are behind 9/11, that U.S. Special Forces are stealing baby food from warehouses in Iraq and taking it back to America, and other nonsense of this kind.

Anyway, I hope that you're right and I'm wrong. It would be wonderful if the utter falsification of al-Sahhaf's claims were a show-stopper for absurd Arab media rhetoric.

I think the most interesting thing reported by our friend in Cairo is the way in which Arabs criticize the lies and subjectivity of the Western media. While such assertions may be nothing more than a "bargaining position", it suggests that the Egyptians have a certain understanding of difference between truth and falsehood, spin and reality.

For a broader look at the culture of truth and fiction in the Middle East, OxBlog's Tel Aviv correspondent, BM, recommends David Pryce-Jones' "The Closed Circle".

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