Arab anti-Americanism not evident.

With that startling headline, we report that Mr. Totten's account of Arab hospitality in Tunisia is a charming and welcome contrast to the daily remorseless stream of overheated rhetoric emanating from some highly disturbed people.

The Colonel's parents were married in Morocco in the 1920s and there was no hint from them that the vitriolic sentiments expressed nowadays against infidels were echoed there at that time. Nor were they, for that matter, people who took on airs as a result of their good fortune to live in Africa. They took Africa as it was and left it a better in their way. They explored their own surroundings with the friendly interest of the Tottens. Mother preferred to be amused by parties in Rhodesia where people slid down the stairs on metal trays and told great stories.

The hypertrophy of political statement has poisoned many a well in Africa and elsewhere. However, the reality of people rubbing shoulders with each other can be quite pleasant, although Oriana Fallaci paints an ugly picture of what the Palestinians did when they took over Beirut.

What invasions are not ugly?

Perhaps we idealize our childhood. Certainly it was a blessing not to have to listen to the zealots who would later do so much damage.

It was peaceful. A stop to refuel a four-engine prop airliner in Khartoum in 1956 left the Colonel with his solitary memory of a tall black soldier or policeman with a red fez standing silently inside the terminal with its high ceilings. It was late at night and the room was lit by a dim yellow light. A slow ceiling fan blew the hot air around and the silence was complete, almost a hiss in the ears.

The Sudan would change.

Obviously, some modern Arabs have none of the seething hatred of the West that seems to so dominate the news now. Mr. Totten's insights are important to bear in mind in thinking and writing about the Middle East. True, he was writing of Tunisia. It's a country with many cultural influences that are bound to moderate extremes.

At least we hope so.

After all there is an equally great cultural diversity (gag) in some of the worst countries in the M.E. Which seems to validate Mr. Totten's hypothesis that the evil there today is driven by ideology, which trumps cosmopolitanism most days. Even though Beirut became a hell hole after the Palestinians arrived, it was a place before then that Mr. Totten might have written about in terms similar to these:

[That's] just the way it is in Tunisia right now. Anti-Americanism [isn't] quite what its cracked up to be.

I felt more welcome traveling in Tunisia than anywhere else [I've] ever been in my life. Partly this is no more than the legendary Arab hospitality, which [I'm] happy to report is alive, well, and understated. Even so, [I'm] more convinced now than before that the Terror War is strictly ideological. It has little or nothing to do with any clash of civilizations. If Tunisians thought me their enemy they chose a peculiar way to express it.

It really must be the ideology.

Nuclear weapons are not the most dangerous things in the world. The most dangerous thing is the human ego fueled by a dime store idea.

"An American in Tunisia." Michael J. Totten, TCSDaily, 8/11/04.