Free The Good Son by Michael Gruber Page A

oil. That’s not a problem, she said. America and the West could become independent of Middle Eastern oil in a decade if they put their minds to it, using existing technology. The price of oil would collapse and the principal exports of the Muslim world would go back to being dates and rugs. The Saudi princes would become simple camel drivers again, no one in the West would care what happened in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan, and all would return to the wonderful days of the early caliphate. Men would be simple and just, women would be chaste, sharia law would prevail throughout the umma and Osama bin Laden and his followers would no longer rage. When that happened, Westerners could return as tourists to the quaint crumbling cities of the new caliphate. They could buy rugs and dates.
    Jamil Khan said, “Forgive me, madam, but that is a ridiculous position and patronizing as well. It assumes that the majority of Muslims worldwide are supportive of the mullahs and people like bin Laden. They’re not. They want the same freedoms and the same opportunities for self-improvement as people in the developed nations.”
    “Yes, I believe that too,” my mother said, grinning, “with all my heart. I’m afraid I was being a bit facetious. Forgive me. But the truth is that America has poisoned the well through her clumsiness and stupidity. As it stands now, every Muslim father who wants his daughter to get an education, from Morocco to Bengal, can be portrayed as un-Islamic and a tool of the Americans. If you want democracy and free speech and secular law, that’s un-Islamic because America wants all those things too. It demoralizes the whole umma. But if America became less aggressive, the mullahs would fall on their faces, because they really cannot provide people with what they want. The Iranians would throw them all out next week if they couldn’t keep pointing to the Great Satan. Thousands of Pakistanis tolerate the Taliban, thugs who practice a religion utterly inimical to the Pakistani tradition and spirit, and why? Because American troops are occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, and killing and torturing Muslims, and bombing civilians in Pakistan itself.”
    “But I thought it was the American withdrawal after the Russian war that enabled the Taliban to take over Afghanistan.”
    “Yes, and so what? No American would have given two pins abouthow Afghanistan was ruled if bin Laden had not been based there and attacked America, and he would not have attacked America if we hadn’t been up to our armpits in the politics of Muslim nations. It is not our responsibility to decide how others should live, and whenever we try we fall into the most arrant hypocrisy. And lies. The Americans say, ‘Oh, we’re fighting to preserve our way of life; the mujahideen hate our way of life, just like the communists.’ But as bin Laden says, al-Qaeda has no interest in changing the Western way of life; he doesn’t attack Sweden. All he wanted from the 9/11 attack was the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Arabia, and he got that almost immediately. He won; the war is over. Why are we still fighting? Look, I am a Pakistani
and
an American. I love both my countries, but one of my countries, America, is incapable of rational action in the other country. When little boys fight with sticks, the mother must separate them and keep them in separate rooms for a while, and that is what I am suggesting.”
    “The Israelis would not be happy with what you suggest, and as we all know the Americans do what the Israelis want.”
    “Yes, except when they sell arms to the Saudis,” she said. “I’m tired of hearing about Israel. Israel has the only modern economy in the Middle East, the most powerful army, and over two hundred nuclear weapons. Israel can take care of itself. What keeps that ulcer raw is not only the land hunger of the Israelis, about which we can do nothing, but also the stupidity of the Palestinians, and I would say here that America is