In his column in the Saudi daily Al-Watan, under the title "The World Without the U.S.," Saudi liberal Ali Sa'd Al-Moussa depicted the U.S. as the standard-bearer of scientific and technical progress in the world. He said that without America, the world would regress by 100 years.
Responding to Al-Moussa, Anas Zahed wrote in his column in the Saudi daily Al-Madina that Al-Moussa was merely prettifying the U.S.'s image, and added that its much-vaunted scientific progress had brought disaster to humanity.
The following are excerpts from both articles:
Ali Sa'd Al-Moussa: Research and Progress All Have Their Roots in the U.S.
Ali Sa'd Al-Moussa wrote in Al-Watan: "... The political face of the U.S. eclipses its dozens of other faces. Would it surprise you if I said that it is the hidden face of the U.S. that drives your life, making it easier and more convenient? Take, for example, the fact that the U.S. is [the source of] the pills you take: 70% of prescription drugs. Not because it controls two-thirds of the world pharmaceuticals market – but because it controls two-thirds of the research and industrial engines for drug manufacturing and for pharmaceutical chemistry...
"Take a good look at this fact: Nine out of 10 patients on Earth take prescription drugs, whether or not they know that the original idea for these pills was hatched in a U.S. factory or laboratory. That is, [the drug] originated in an experimental idea, as part of research by an American researcher. Read the list of Nobel Prize laureates in medicine and science, and you will see absolute American control. [Now] look at it from the opposite direction: What will the world be like without America?
"The Shanghai ranking of the world's universities indicates that eight of the first 10 universities on the list are American. 38 U.S. universities are on the list of the 50 best universities, and 54 are on the list of the 100 best... I am not propagandizing for the U.S. – the U.S. propagandizes for itself in a way that brings anyone who is not an American to despair...
"...Without the U.S., the world would regress 100 years. The math is simple: Assume that all technological and scientific progress attained by man in the past century stands before you like a tall building. Now, remove every American brick from this building – every brick representing research, an experiment, an invention, or a product. You will see that not only have you removed American bricks, but also half of every brick that the rest of the nations [provided].
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"The Japanese car was invented by an American mechanic. The rights to manufacture electronic chips in India were acquired from Silicon Valley, California. The Finnish Nokia [mobile phones] are an amazing development of an idea that began with an American communications company. Viagra began as an experiment with a circulatory drug for an American patient. In terms of the number of speakers [of world languages], we [Arabic speakers] are in sixth place, yet we don't make the list of the 20 most widely used languages on the Internet. Thanks to the U.S., 65% of webpages are in English, because the inventor has priority access to the product.
"Look at the following terms – not only are they difficult to translate into Arabic, but they are difficult to translate into any language, so much so that all the languages in the world use the American term: Internet; Google; YouTube; Yahoo; Microsoft; Facebook; Twitter. All these are not only the names of inventions, but new global tribes. They are the peoples of the 21st century... Look at the newest of these new tribes – Facebook, whose members now number 430 million, including 1.2 million Saudis and counting.
"Anyone who is missing a term or a dictionary of curses, I can give him mine, so that he can curse the American nightmare. But before you curse America, ask where you have encountered it – in food, in medicine, in the media. Banish from your life every device that you think has even a single American nail, and you will see that you have regressed an entire century, back to life before the era of machines." [1]
Anas Zahed: American "Progress" Has Caused Only Harm
A sharp rebuttal to Al-Moussa's column came from Anas Zahed, in his column in Al-Madina. He wrote: "Although the U.S. has not succeeded in prettifying its image worldwide, a great many journalists among us are still trying to complete the mission at which the giant American media apparatus failed... In his daily column, Ali Sa'd Al-Moussa penned praise for the U.S. that a neo-conservative would be ashamed to write... This disturbed simplification of the reality of technological progress, which conceals the rules of the capitalist regime that controls it, is an attempt to justify the crimes of the U.S. towards humanity, the environment, and life itself.
"This is also an attempt to hide the numbers proving that the money spent by the U.S. on scientific research for civilian purposes is dwarfed by what it spends on military research. Even the pharmaceutical companies, whose achievements Ali Sa'd Al-Moussa reviews, are merely a lobby that acts every so often to create genetic diseases, to spread rumors, and to invent falsehoods, so they can rake in huge profits by manufacturing and exporting drugs for those same diseases. I believe that readers will still remember the swine flu story. This writer [Al-Moussa] should have started out with the opposite point of view, and build his article from there. He should have asked about the destruction that humanity would have been spared if America did not exist...."
"Permit me to ask: [even if] we assume for the sake of discussion that what the writer points out is accurate... why didn't he talk about the other side of the picture? ... Why didn't he ask about the atomic bomb, born in the American factories and laboratories? Why didn't he ask about the sums of money that humanity has wasted on the nuclear arms race, which contributed to the problems of famine, poverty, and disease worldwide?
"Why didn't he ask about the millions of Iraqis killed in the first five years of the cruel American occupation? Hasn't humanity been set back hundreds, if not thousands, of years because of the American crimes in Iraq? Are devices and inventions designed to provide convenience for those who can pay for them more important than the millions of lives lost only in the years since 9/11?
"Doesn't he think that science is not an aim in itself but a means to actualize progress? Doesn't he think that the concept of progress means every nation drawing closer to civilization and farther away from barbarity? Doesn't he see the crimes of the U.S., which followed naturally from its achievements? Doesn't he think that the attack on man and nature – [all] for the sake of monetary profit for the large industrial lobbyists – is a mark of shame on the U.S.'s forehead, and shame for its scientists, its laboratories, and its factories?
"It would have been better if a writer on the level of Ali Sa'd Al-Moussa... had reflected all sides of the picture, instead of trying to wash clean an image that all the laundry detergent in the world cannot help."[2]
Endnotes:
[1] Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), August 22, 2010.
[2] Al-Madina (Saudi Arabia) August 28-30, 2010.
