What's Next in the Arab World
ZAKARIA: So, the deliberations of the Arab league aside, what do most Arabs want the United States to do about Libya? Many claim to know what the Arab street wants. We have a battle of people who actually do. Rami Khouri is a Jordanian who directs the Public Policy Institute at the American University of Beruit. Ashraf Khalil is a Cairo-based journalist for the Egyptian newspaper. Rashid Khalidi is a Palestinian/American professor at Columbia University School of International of Public Affairs. And Abderrahim Foukara was born and bred in Morocco and is now Al Jazeera's Washington D.C. bureau chief. So we've got Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and the Palestinian territories all covered. Welcome, gentlemen. Romney from your push in Beruit, how would you answer this simple question? What do Arabs want? More American intervention, less American intervention, different American intervention?</s>RAMI KHOURI, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT: I think what the Arabs generally in public opinion, I would say the majority of the public opinion in the Arab world wants is for the United States to act consistently across the Middle East, to act according to the rule of law and with legitimacy that is anchored at least in this region and the will of the majority and the protection of minority rights.</s>ZAKARIA: Would you say at a gut level, do people want the United States to help the Libyan people? I'm going to say the people, because it seems a vast majority of them want to oust Gahdafi or do they want it to stand back and not get actively involved?</s>KHOURI: It's a difficult question that doesn't have a straight answer. I think people want the outside world to help, including the United States, if the Libyans ask for it. Clearly there, is a legitimate way for the U.S. to do this, but they don't want it to be unilaterally done by the United States.</s>ZAKARIA: What does this look like from Cairo?</s>ASHRAF KHALIL, CAIRO-BASED JOURNALIST: I think there are different levels of intervention that would be accepted by different levels and different numbers of people. I mean, if you are talking about a no- fly zone, I do think a no-fly zone would be largely welcomed by the majority of people here in Cairo and perhaps across the Arab world. If you get into more direct things like having military advisers on the ground, helping the rebels, that becomes thinner ice. Arming the rebels, that will be accepted by some and rejected or viewed with suspicion by others. So there's many levels of intervention and with each one, you have to sort of balance the suspicion or mistrust of having foreign troops, foreign military intervention in society.</s>ZAKARIA: Abderrahim, what does it look like to you? Do you think that they would accept some level of intervention, but be suspicious of too much?</s>ABDERRAHIM FOUKARA, D.C. BUREAU CHIEF, AL JAZEERA: Fareed, let me first of all say that the main problem that the United States has in Libya, as it had before in Tunisia and Egypt, is a serious problem of perception. Many people in the region have come to see the United States' interest in democracy in that part of the world as being more on the esoteric side rather than on the real practical side. People in the region want the United States to help get Gadhafi out of power, out of Libya possibly, in one way or another. Whether that's going to be done peacefully or whether it will involve more bloodshed, both on the side of the people who are opposing him or the people who are actually still supporting him.</s>ZAKARIA: So, Rashid, I think what I'm hearing from our three friends in the Arab world is a sense that the United States should try and help oust Gadhafi, but a great nervousness because the United States has tended to be one sided, unfair and that there is a -- it would be very easy to taint that process and have it become known as American imperia imperialism? Is that fair?</s>RASHID KHALIDI, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS: I think you're right, Fareed. I think that one issue we always have to keep in mind is that people are very wary of the United States operating on a conventional definition of its own interests instead in terms of its principals. I think it's very, very important that we stick to principles. The definition of our interest is usually one, which doesn't combine the way people in this region see their interests. The second is you want to just not start talking about no-fly zones and this and that limited form of intervention, you have to be thinking about the end game. What starts with a no-fly zone, may well if that does not work, lead to demands for something further and something further than that. And you have to really worry about that a great deal. One thing leads to another in ways we cannot foresee. If we're doing this supposedly for humanitarian reasons to prevent Gadhafi from killing hundreds or thousands of his own people, and the no-fly zone leads to the bombing of radar installations and so forth in which hundreds of thousands of Libyans are killed. With the best of intentions, the United States may have created a problem bigger than the problem we're trying to solve. People want a certain degree of external intervention within those parameters. Principles, limits and with concern for the way in which these have been perceived in the past.</s>ZAKARIA: Let me ask you guys an exit question on this segment. Suppose I would draft a letter that was a call from Arabs to the United States and it said that it endorsed the use of American military assistance to oust Gadhafi, the United States should militarily help, whether it's no-fly zone, funding or arming rebels, the Libyan Opposition, would you fellows sign it? I'm going to start by asking you Rami Khouri? Where would you stand?</s>KHOURI: If it was addressed to the American president, I wouldn't sign it because I don't think this is about the United States. It's not only about ousting a brutal dictator like Gadhafi. I think you have to look at all of the international view, NATO and many others, why are we focusing on the United States and why is it only getting rid of Gadhafi and then you get a question if you do this to Gadhafi what about others? How many people have died in Sudan in the last 20 years, so what do you do there? What about other countries where 10,000, 20,000 people have been killed? So it's really a difficult question to answer with a yes or no.</s>ZAKARIA: Ashraf in Cairo, what would you do?</s>KHALIL: If I was the U.S. president, I would seek covering a larger organization such as NATO with ideally the Arab League lending its support. I think that would be crucial. And regarding military assistance, for me, the key -- the key redline is boots on the ground. I think if you have U.S. soldiers or foreign soldiers or even foreign military advisers or some fuzzier concept like that on the ground, in eastern Libya, that's going to make a lot of people very uncomfortable and a little bit suspicious. But everything short of boots on the ground, no-fly zone, arming, funding with an Arab league endorsement, I think that works.</s>ZARARIA: Abderrahim?</s>FOUKARA: Well, Fareed, let me say this. I think given what the situation on the ground has ended up being, I think it's become amply clear that you definitely need, let's see, a deus ex machina. And that deus ex machina is going to have come from outside of Libya to help one side or another. Because I think the scenarios that Libya now faces, whether Colonel Gadhafi survives or he's toppled are really difficult ones to imagine.</s>ZAKARIA: Rashid, if I presented you with this letter, would you sign it?</s>KHALIDI: I think that this has to be an Arab -- an Arab intervention as well as an external intervention. And I think it has to be rigorously limited and I think it has to be based on principle. And I think we have to realize that this may not be the last Arab revolution which degenerates into a civil war. If the United States intervenes here or if external powers intervene here, are we going to be calling -- asking the same question about two or three or other Arab countries over the course of the next several months? So I would be very cautious. I don't think I would sign such a letter. And you have to remember, what you do here, you're going to maybe called upon to do elsewhere. One hopes not. One hopes that the Libyan people can topple this tyrant. And one hopes that other Arab peoples can do the same peacefully elsewhere. But that might not always be possible. Tyrants like Gadhafi are always capable of killing their people to stay in power, unfortunately.</s>ZAKARIA: All right. We are going to come back with our panel. We're going to talk about those other Arab revolutions, potential and ongoing in Egypt and Tunisia when we come back.</s>TEXT: Next on</s>GPS. KHOURI: They're saying that we actually believe what the Americans said in their founding documents. That all human beings, not just white people, not just Europeans and North Americans, not just males, all people are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights.