OT--US FOREIGN POLICY COMMENTS (from another thread)
Please do NOT read if you an not interested in this subject.
There have been several suggestions that "world-events" items have no place on this thread. I disagree and post here, because:
-- if anybody thinks world events have no impact on the
market, just locate September 11 on any market chart.
-- HOW the major issues are resolved has a major bearing on
whether this is a conflict actually RESOLVED or IMPROVED
or whether it just goes on for year after year, as the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict has.
-- I do not consider it to be SEDITION to express a point
of view that is other than what could be called the OFFICIAL government view
-- I do not expect that everybody sees things my way, and welcome the free expression of other ideas. However, I do not expect to be attacked just because my views are not the same as somebody else's.
So, having said that, here is a Muslim's view of US Foreign policy. Is it the same as the OFFICIAL US view? Well, no....would you expect it to be?
I think something can be learned from the comments, but you may consider them garbage. However, please don't dump on me just because your views do not match those in the article.
Namaste!
Jim
atimes.com
'Anti-Americanism' Has Roots In US Foreign Policy
Commentary by Mushahid Hussain
ISLAMABAD - Addressing the American people on October 11, US
President George W Bush seemed as perplexed as millions of Americans
about the "vitriolic hatred for America in some Islamic countries". He added:
"Like most Americans, I just cannot believe it because I know how good we
are."
The day after Bush's remarks, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt and
Palestine witnessed more violent anti-American protests. What accounts for
this dichotomy between the American self-image and how others, particularly
Muslims, view them?
For any foreign visitor to America, the goodness of the average American,
and the fact that immigrants rightly perceive America as providing
opportunities and freedoms denied at home is certainly an important ingredient
that makes the US the world's most popular destination. Their deeply
ingrained empathy, candor, humor and hard work endear Americans to all
those who interact with them.
How is this "good guy" transformed into the "bad guy" abroad? The problem
is that American goodness is hardly ever exported, remaining confined to its
shores. This gap between what American says at home - liberties, rule of law
and democracy - is rarely practiced in American foreign policy.
After all, what was common among a diverse group of leaders such as Mao
Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Fidel Castro or Sukarno? They
were all great admirers of America and the American Revolution prior to
assuming office. They all looked up to the United States of America, whose
20th Century role and ideology had been defined by Woodrow Wilson as
supporting the "right of self-determination" of subjugated peoples and
colonies.
An enterprising American journalist, Edgar Snow, whose sympathetic account
of the Chinese Communist Party's struggle, Red Star over China, remains a
classic, launched Mao on the international stage.
When Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam's independence from France on
September 2, 1945, he borrowed the opening words from the American
Declaration of Independence regarding the "inalienable right of people to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness", so inspired was he by American ideals.
Before the July 1952 overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy which he and 12
other members of the Free Officers Movement initiated, Nasser was very
close to the Americans, including the Middle East chief of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) of that period, Kermit Roosevelt, who was
covertly communicating with Nasser through Anwar Sadat.
Indonesian leader Sukarno idolized Thomas Jefferson and his speeches were
laced with Jeffersonian quotes. And when Castro launched the Cuban
revolution, he was confident of receiving American support.
But then, what happened? After coming to power, they became implacable
American foes after a rude shock that the America they admired and idolized
and the one they had read about in history books was different in real life.
Then there were two events which were to prove a forerunner of the emerging
patterns of American policy: the first successful CIA coup against a popular,
democratic government because it was perceived to be acting contrary to US
economic interests, led by Dr Mossadeq in Iran in 1953.
A decade later, the CIA engineered the ouster and assassination of South
Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem, a friend and ally of the United States,
simply because he had outlived his utility to American interests.
From ousting an elected nationalist to killing a friend, the US persona was
now being defined as an amoral, ruthless power whose foreign policy
instruments were capable of anything, irrespective of friend or foe. It was
perhaps in this context that Henry Kissinger once remarked, "to be an enemy
of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal".
Negativism about America has largely been derived and shaped by
predominant popular perceptions in three areas: dignity, double standards and
democracy.
The leading London-based Saudi-owned Arabic newspaper, Al Hayat,
recently carried a poet's lament on the plight of the Arabs that includes lines
such as "Children are dying, but no one makes a move. Houses are
demolished, but no one makes a move. Holy places are desecrated, but no
one makes a move. I am fed up with life in the world of mortals."
The author of these lines is not some raving radical in a Palestinian refugee
camp, but Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain, and the sentiments he has
expressed represent what is by now almost a universally-held belief among
Arabs, the poor and the elite alike.
For Muslims, the double standards they see reinforced this hostility. For
instance, when United Nations resolutions apply to Iraq, they exempt Israel.
And nuclear weapons are even given religious labels, such as Pakistan's
"Islamic" bomb. Or terrorism is treated as a virtual Muslim monopoly,
forgetting that Timothy McVeigh, Baruch Goldstein (the Jewish settler who
gunned down 29 worshippers in a Palestinian mosque in 1994) and the Tamil
Tigers, who blew up Rajiv Gandhi, were not Muslim.
Democracy, or its absence in countries that are American allies, is another
key ingredient of anti-Americanism, more so when the United States has
conspired or connived to undermine the democratic process.
Patrice Lumumba was ousted in 1960 in the Congo and replaced by General
Mobuto. In 1965, Sukarno's replacement by General Suharto was followed
by a massacre of almost 500,000 Indonesians, some of whose names were in
lists proved by the American Embassy to Suharto's men. And in 1973, the
elected leftist President of Chile, Salvador Allende, was ousted and killed in a
CIA-backed military coup.
It is no surprise that those peoples in these countries traced their plight at
home - the injustice, the police state repression, the poverty, and the
corruption - to American actions.
However, not many Americans were aware of the adverse impact of
American foreign policy on billions of lives overseas. All that changed on
September 11, 2001. Nineteen suicide bombers have done more damage to
America's self-confidence than World War II, Vietnam or the Cold War
combined. On October 7, after returning from bombing Afghanistan that
Sunday night, Commander Biff, head of an F-14 Tomcat squadron, told the
media: "Tonight was about restoring America's confidence."
However, restoring America's confidence must not be at the expense of
renewing America's relationship with the Muslim world, which is facing severe
strains. Hence, the crisis needs to be handled with patience, maturity and
wisdom.
Of all the hordes of Western journalists who have been in Pakistan after
September 11, not one has reported any hostility or harassment from the
people they encounter in the streets, even those in anti-American
demonstrations.
There is no personal animosity toward any American or Westerner from
people they have met, only a strident political critique and resentment of
American foreign policy, which is where the roots of anti-Americanism lie.
(Inter Press Service) |
