How lame. Fouad Ajami citing the great mind of Hannah Arendt. But when he talks about Arendt's notion of "the banality of evil", and she was talking about Adolph Eichmann, it is as if he has not read her, or missed the point. She was talking about the Nazi evil at the rank of the bureacratic functionaries like Eichmann. She would never invoke the notion of Banality of Evil about Saddam: Saddam's evil was not ordinary or banal. Notice that Ajami also invokes the dreaded cliches of Raphael Patai's racist book the Arab Mind when he talks about the "shame culture" of the Arabs, as if there is no notion of shame in the West. Also notice that he expresses his admiration for Qatar and Kuwait: two polygamous and royal dictatorships. These are the only two Arab countries that invite Ajami.