Statements have been made that seemed to me the height of naivete. It has been stated that if we did some good the Arabs would not necessarily hate the US. This shows, in my opinion a great lack of historical understanding.
Almost two years ago on "another" site I put together number of references and posed the question, why do the Arabs hate us. This was before the invasion of Iraq, and yet most what I wrote was still relevant. I am posting it here so that there can be comments regarding the issue.
Some of the new questions might be:
1-How has the war changed the analysis?
2-How does it tie to some of the other analyists or analysis we have discussed?
3-What does it say to the future and importance of Iraq in the context of what was written?
4-Finally, after two years, is the majority of the analysis still accurate or wrong from the beginning? If so, where and how?
Analysis:
If we do good the Arabs will like us?
I posted this quite some time ago.
Interesting question, and I can already tell most of you are getting ready to hit that reply button to trot out the normal answers (even answers I normally give), you know, fanatacism, or the evil empire syndrome of the US, both sides have their talking heads, blurbs that generally are spewed back at us on a nightly basis in our thirty minute news flash of what is happening in the world. Lately I have been doing some reading. Here are some thoughts to add to those 30 second flashes of news.
For a number of years the US has been villified for several reasons, support of Israel and support for unpopular Arab regimes run by despots. This, many assume came to a boil on 9-11. Now while we know that anti Americanism is fairly widespread it really doesn't tell us why and its seems a bit misleading. I find it difficult to reconcile Arab and Muslim hostility towards the US with US policy. US policy has actually been very very pro-Arab and pro-Muslim so I believe that this anti Americanism is actually a product of self interested manipulation by key groups inside of Arab society. I believe it is important to identify such an action for the following reason:
If Arab anti Americanism is grounded in the domestic issues of Arab society and not the "evil" deeds of the US, then no amount of public relations or any real change in US policy will change that perception. As a matter of fact, changing US policy to meet this manipulation within Arab society will only make it worse. US attempts at meeting the internally designated evils of America will be seen as an "appeasement" of a weaker nation and encourage radicalism to go even farther.
Seems to me that for the past decade or two anti US sentiment has always been the "last resort" of despotic political regimes whose failed systems have tried to prop up their own standing and diverted attention away from their domestic failures. By assigning faults or shortcomings of their own systems on the US many Arab leaders hope to distract their people from the real problems, so instead of pushing for greater privatization, equality of women, democracy, a rule of law society, freedom of speech, due process, (note how lacking all of these items are in the Arab world), it is better to use the US as a whipping boy (think Schroeder doing this over several decades to win elections).
What is so interesting about this tact is how it flies in the face of reality if one were to look at the factual history of US policy. The US has always favored a policy in its own interests, but those interests have also generally coincided with those of Arab leaders and their people.
Kuwait
The US saved Kuwait from annexation by Iraq's secular dictator in 1991, mainly to preserve cheap oil to be sure, but it was still in effect a pro-Kuwaiti, pro-Muslim and pro-Arab. It would have been easy for the US to sieze Kuwaitis fields and demand lower prices or even political concessions. Instead we, well, we just left while we sought the highest level of political support for our actions among Arabs and Muslims.
Conflicts in general
When the US has become involved in a regional dispute (often at the pleadings of Europe) it is usually during fights between moderates and secular Arab forces or radical Islamist groups that even most Muslims consider too far in one direction. The US has generally backed groups with a strong claim to Arab or Islamic legitimacy. You can see this going all the way back to the 1950's. Look at Egypt, Syria and Iraq, while dictatorships friendly to Moscow they menaced Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Even during the 1950's the US wanted good relationships with Nassar and we even prevented his overthrow by the UK, France and Israel in the 1956 Suez War. The US continued to woo Egypt, we accepted Syria's hegemony over Lebanon and really during that period the US did little to punish state sponsored terrorism. The US even acted as a protector of Islam during that time since we viewed traditional Islam as a counter to secular communism which had, at the time aligned itself with radical Arab nationalism.
Still we are the bad guys.
During the Cold War it became popular for radicals to portray moderates as western puppets to establish their own legitimacy and even accused US backed moderate governments of being anti democratic or ignoring human rights while ignoring the actions of regimes like Libya, Syria and revolutionary Iran which had far worse records. And I believe that is part of the impossible dilemma for the US. When we help friendly governments we are accused of undermining revolutionary movements in Islam, but when we pressure those Arab governments into improving their actions in democracy or human rights (which we also do) we are accused of being imperialists (see Eddin Ibrahim on google if you don't believe me). During the 70's to the 90's whenever there has been a conflict between moderate governments and Islamic movements we did not take sides. In Iran's 79 revolution, the US wanted to Shah to stay in power but we instead restrained him from being tougher than he was. After the revolution (before the hostage crisis) Jimmy Carter attempted a conciliation with the new government, that unfortunately caused the radicals to seize the embassy with a sign that said "No moderates served here". The only time the US has ever really been involved countering an Islamic rev movement was Afghanistan.
Lets look at some other examples:
1-End of the Arab Israeli War in 1973 the US rescued Egypt by forcing Israel into a cease fire.
2-US saved Arafat from Israel in Beirut in 1982 and arranged safe passage to Tunisia.
3-The US was willing to support Arafat and the PLO while overlooking their history (our bad) of terrorism, anti Americanism, and alignment with the Soviet Union (you'd think we would learn after Castro).
4-Despite Palestinian backing of Iraq during the War the US sponsored a peace process with Israel, pushing for an agreement that would have created a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem (See how Arafat has **** all that away).
5-Our support of Afghanistan against the Soviets.
6-Saudi Arabia from Iraq
7-Bosnia and Kosovo from Yugoslavia (Not Europe's finest hour for peace).
8-Muslim Pakistan against India
9-Muslim Turkey against Greece
10-Accepted Syrian control of Lebanon (a neutral action)
11-On a racial basis we supported Arab Iraq against Persian Iran (and believe me the Arabs like Persians only a few notches above Jews).
12-Arab oil tankers against Persian Iran (yes also in our best interest but remember they often coincide).
13-Somalia where the US is trying through humanitarian efforts (and no compelling state interest) to help a Muslim people under warlords (I really don't see any Arabic states stepping up to the plate on this one either).
14-When US oil companies holdings were nationalized by Saudi Arabia, Lybia and others we showed an amazing amount of restraint.
15-Soviet collapse would have been a golden opportunity for a purely pragmatic movement into the Levant.
16-We have not used our overwhelming strength to directly dominate the Gulf and gulf states.
17-Since 9-11 the US has also taken great efforts to show the world (and the US) that Islam and Arabs are not US enemies.
Almost two years ago on "another" site I put together number of references and posed the question, why do the Arabs hate us. This was before the invasion of Iraq, and yet most what I wrote was still relevant. I am posting it here so that there can be comments regarding the issue.
Some of the new questions might be:
1-How has the war changed the analysis?
2-How does it tie to some of the other analyists or analysis we have discussed?
3-What does it say to the future and importance of Iraq in the context of what was written?
4-Finally, after two years, is the majority of the analysis still accurate or wrong from the beginning? If so, where and how?
Analysis:
If we do good the Arabs will like us?
I posted this quite some time ago.
Interesting question, and I can already tell most of you are getting ready to hit that reply button to trot out the normal answers (even answers I normally give), you know, fanatacism, or the evil empire syndrome of the US, both sides have their talking heads, blurbs that generally are spewed back at us on a nightly basis in our thirty minute news flash of what is happening in the world. Lately I have been doing some reading. Here are some thoughts to add to those 30 second flashes of news.
For a number of years the US has been villified for several reasons, support of Israel and support for unpopular Arab regimes run by despots. This, many assume came to a boil on 9-11. Now while we know that anti Americanism is fairly widespread it really doesn't tell us why and its seems a bit misleading. I find it difficult to reconcile Arab and Muslim hostility towards the US with US policy. US policy has actually been very very pro-Arab and pro-Muslim so I believe that this anti Americanism is actually a product of self interested manipulation by key groups inside of Arab society. I believe it is important to identify such an action for the following reason:
If Arab anti Americanism is grounded in the domestic issues of Arab society and not the "evil" deeds of the US, then no amount of public relations or any real change in US policy will change that perception. As a matter of fact, changing US policy to meet this manipulation within Arab society will only make it worse. US attempts at meeting the internally designated evils of America will be seen as an "appeasement" of a weaker nation and encourage radicalism to go even farther.
Seems to me that for the past decade or two anti US sentiment has always been the "last resort" of despotic political regimes whose failed systems have tried to prop up their own standing and diverted attention away from their domestic failures. By assigning faults or shortcomings of their own systems on the US many Arab leaders hope to distract their people from the real problems, so instead of pushing for greater privatization, equality of women, democracy, a rule of law society, freedom of speech, due process, (note how lacking all of these items are in the Arab world), it is better to use the US as a whipping boy (think Schroeder doing this over several decades to win elections).
What is so interesting about this tact is how it flies in the face of reality if one were to look at the factual history of US policy. The US has always favored a policy in its own interests, but those interests have also generally coincided with those of Arab leaders and their people.
Kuwait
The US saved Kuwait from annexation by Iraq's secular dictator in 1991, mainly to preserve cheap oil to be sure, but it was still in effect a pro-Kuwaiti, pro-Muslim and pro-Arab. It would have been easy for the US to sieze Kuwaitis fields and demand lower prices or even political concessions. Instead we, well, we just left while we sought the highest level of political support for our actions among Arabs and Muslims.
Conflicts in general
When the US has become involved in a regional dispute (often at the pleadings of Europe) it is usually during fights between moderates and secular Arab forces or radical Islamist groups that even most Muslims consider too far in one direction. The US has generally backed groups with a strong claim to Arab or Islamic legitimacy. You can see this going all the way back to the 1950's. Look at Egypt, Syria and Iraq, while dictatorships friendly to Moscow they menaced Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Even during the 1950's the US wanted good relationships with Nassar and we even prevented his overthrow by the UK, France and Israel in the 1956 Suez War. The US continued to woo Egypt, we accepted Syria's hegemony over Lebanon and really during that period the US did little to punish state sponsored terrorism. The US even acted as a protector of Islam during that time since we viewed traditional Islam as a counter to secular communism which had, at the time aligned itself with radical Arab nationalism.
Still we are the bad guys.
During the Cold War it became popular for radicals to portray moderates as western puppets to establish their own legitimacy and even accused US backed moderate governments of being anti democratic or ignoring human rights while ignoring the actions of regimes like Libya, Syria and revolutionary Iran which had far worse records. And I believe that is part of the impossible dilemma for the US. When we help friendly governments we are accused of undermining revolutionary movements in Islam, but when we pressure those Arab governments into improving their actions in democracy or human rights (which we also do) we are accused of being imperialists (see Eddin Ibrahim on google if you don't believe me). During the 70's to the 90's whenever there has been a conflict between moderate governments and Islamic movements we did not take sides. In Iran's 79 revolution, the US wanted to Shah to stay in power but we instead restrained him from being tougher than he was. After the revolution (before the hostage crisis) Jimmy Carter attempted a conciliation with the new government, that unfortunately caused the radicals to seize the embassy with a sign that said "No moderates served here". The only time the US has ever really been involved countering an Islamic rev movement was Afghanistan.
Lets look at some other examples:
1-End of the Arab Israeli War in 1973 the US rescued Egypt by forcing Israel into a cease fire.
2-US saved Arafat from Israel in Beirut in 1982 and arranged safe passage to Tunisia.
3-The US was willing to support Arafat and the PLO while overlooking their history (our bad) of terrorism, anti Americanism, and alignment with the Soviet Union (you'd think we would learn after Castro).
4-Despite Palestinian backing of Iraq during the War the US sponsored a peace process with Israel, pushing for an agreement that would have created a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem (See how Arafat has **** all that away).
5-Our support of Afghanistan against the Soviets.
6-Saudi Arabia from Iraq
7-Bosnia and Kosovo from Yugoslavia (Not Europe's finest hour for peace).
8-Muslim Pakistan against India
9-Muslim Turkey against Greece
10-Accepted Syrian control of Lebanon (a neutral action)
11-On a racial basis we supported Arab Iraq against Persian Iran (and believe me the Arabs like Persians only a few notches above Jews).
12-Arab oil tankers against Persian Iran (yes also in our best interest but remember they often coincide).
13-Somalia where the US is trying through humanitarian efforts (and no compelling state interest) to help a Muslim people under warlords (I really don't see any Arabic states stepping up to the plate on this one either).
14-When US oil companies holdings were nationalized by Saudi Arabia, Lybia and others we showed an amazing amount of restraint.
15-Soviet collapse would have been a golden opportunity for a purely pragmatic movement into the Levant.
16-We have not used our overwhelming strength to directly dominate the Gulf and gulf states.
17-Since 9-11 the US has also taken great efforts to show the world (and the US) that Islam and Arabs are not US enemies.
