By Thomas L. Friedman
What has been going on in Yemen is unbelievable, and it has been on my mind ever since it began. What’s important, however, is that we focus on what this means to the citizens themselves. The current administration seems too caught up in worrying about their own skins to pay attention to the important effects on daily life. Just call it missing the fields for the wheat.
When thinking about the recent turmoil, it’s important to remember three things: One, people don’t behave like computer programs, so attempts to treat them as such inevitably look foolish. Computer programs never suddenly shift their course in order to fit with a predetermined set of beliefs. Two, Yemen has spent decades being batted back and forth between colonial powers, so a mindset of peace and stability will seem foreign and strange. And three, capitalism is an extraordinarily powerful idea: If corruption is Yemen’s curtain rod, then capitalism is certainly its tabletop.
When I was in Yemen last August, I was amazed by the variety of the local cuisine, and that tells me two things. It tells me that the citizens of Yemen have no shortage of human capital, and that is a good beginning to grow from. Second, it tells me that people in Yemen are just like people anywhere else on this flat earth of ours.
I don’t know what Yemen will be like a few years from now, but I do know that it will probably look very different from the country we see now, even if it remains true to its basic cultural heritage. I know this because, through all the disorder, the people still haven’t lost sight of their dreams.
Source: The News York Times, Edited by Website Team
