This will be my last political post. I agree 100% with the views expressed in this article.
Why Many Arabs Hate America
by Scott McConnell
September 12, 2001
After the assassination of John F. Kennedy – before today, the most traumatic
event for Americans in my lifetime – Malcolm X said "the chickens have come
home to roost." Malcolm was reportedly gleeful and rancorous, and his audience
laughed at his words: he meant to convey that Kennedy's death meant very little,
compared to what whites had done to his people. But the phrase would not be
inappropriate today – if said in sorrow – after thousands of innocents were killed
in the worst terrorist assault in American history.
Whether the World Trade Center perpetrator is Osama Bin Laden, or one of
countless Arab or Muslim subgroups, we should not have any doubt: this attack
was welcomed in much of the Arab and Muslim world. Palestinian leaders may
have given it pro-forma condemnation, but the people on the Arab "street" were
smiling and flashing "V" signs when they heard the news.
Before Americans set their sights on revenge, (and revenge is expected, and
necessary) they should at least understand why this attack delighted many, why
United States foreign policy makes it hated in much of the world.
The reasons were spelled out in part last month by Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak's foreign policy advisor Osama Baz. He came to Washington carrying
the urgent message from the Arab world's most populous state: the United States
would face mounting rage in the Middle East unless it did something to diffuse the
escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He was received politely by Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and otherwise
more or less ignored. A month before, Senator George Mitchell's carefully
modulated plan for a Middle East cease-fire, which incorporated a freeze on new
Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, had been allowed to die on the
vine after Israel said no dice to a settlement freeze. America's unanimously
pro-Israel pundit class paid no heed to Baz's visit, instead using their columns to
shill for an Israeli military reoccupation of the West Bank, supposedly to solve
Israel's terror problem once and for all.
But the United States, supplier of the tanks and helicopters and rockets which
Israel uses to control the West Bank and assassinate the odd Palestinian leader,
cannot opt out of the Middle East peace process. By its large scale arms shipments
and financial subsidies to Israel, it is already engaged. It is a key partner. The Oslo
Peace process has aroused Palestinian hopes for a viable state, and one can't
imagine that they would relinquish them now. In his attempted mediations, Bill
Clinton eloquently gave voice to the reasonable core of Palestinian aspirations.
Now George Bush, whose knowledge of the Middle East seems little deeper than
what he picked up from a ride with Ariel Sharon on a helicopter, has decided to
snub the Arab world.
Israel and Palestine is not the only issue which arouses Arab rancor. The embargo
on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, organized and led by the United States, and now ten
years old, is responsible, UN officials estimate, for the death of more than half a
million Iraqi children. Saddam Hussein – one of the world's cruelest tyrants,
bears no small measure of responsibility for the current horror in Iraq. But while
American policies have left him in power, they have done grievous harm Iraq's
weakest, the old, the sick, the very young. Americans don't read or hear much of
this – it is not on their front pages or TV screens. But there now must be at least
tens of thousands of Iraqi parents who know that their children are dead because
of the American embargo. It creates a sentiment – now widespread throughout
the Middle East – which allows for the perpetrators of today's horrific deeds to be
recruited.
America's airwaves are alive now with ordinary people calling for vengeance
against this most vile of attacks. I don't feel differently, and if I had lost a loved
one, would volunteer for a revenge mission myself. But we shouldn't delude
ourselves about why there is so much hatred for the United States. It does not
come out of the clear blue. It is not because we represent freedom and virtue and
light, while the Arabs stand for darkness and repression. American culture may
represent something corrosive and immoral to certain Islamic sensibilities – that
can't be helped. But that is not what provokes suicide bombers. American policies
often kill, directly and indirectly – and this is why people are willing to sacrifice
themselves to kill us in return. |
