Re. America and the Muslim world, although I've posted this before, I think it is now relevant to repost. Zonder, I welcome your comments on the passage below:
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In listing the many "pro-Arab" and "pro-Muslim" acts of the United States in the Middle East and related issues over many decades, it is possible to cite a remarkable number of such cases. Some examples have already been mentioned above, but the list also should include:
-- The United States saved Yasir Arafat in Beirut in 1982 by arranging safe passage for him out of the country after he was besieged there by the Israeli army. It initiated a dialogue with the PLO in 1988 and turned a blind eye to the terrorism of PLO member groups until a blatant attack and the PLO’s refusal to renounce it made this policy impossible to sustain in 1990. It became the patron of the Palestinians between 1993 and 2000. The United States forgave Arafat for past involvement in the murder of American citizens, including U.S. diplomats. The United States worked hard to mobilize financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat was frequently invited to the White House. The United States almost always refrained from any criticism of the PA. President Bill Clinton went to Gaza and made a very sympathetic speech to an audience of Palestinian leaders. Finally, the United States tried to broker a peace agreement that would produce an independent Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem. After Arafat rejected the U.S. peace attempts and did not implement ceasefires he promised to the United States, American leaders did not criticize him.
--The United States proposed numerous détente efforts with Islamic Iran. These included the Carter policy of 1979, the covert contacts by the Reagan administration in the mid-1980s, and several initiatives by the Clinton administration. The United States did maintain sanctions on Iran to try to change three specific Iranian policies (sponsoring terrorism, developing weapons of mass destruction, opposing Arab-Israel peace) but it also sought to find ways to end those sanctions through diplomatic compromise and never waged a serious campaign to overthrow that regime.
--The United States saved Afghanistan from the Soviets; Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from Iraq; and Bosnia and Kosovo from Yugoslavia. In the first case, this involved covert U.S. efforts and in the other three instances the actual deployment of U.S. troops and their commitment in combat. In short, the United States risked American lives to help Muslims. The United States is being targeted in part because of Muslim suffering in Bosnia and Kosovo, two places where the United States sided with and protected Muslims.
--Year after year, administration after administration, U.S. governments were careful not to hurt Muslim sensibilities in any speech or policy. In every statement, distinctions were made between radical Islamist movements and Islam itself.
--The U.S. government supported Muslim Pakistan against India, though Congress put some sanctions on Pakistan because of its nuclear weapons’ program. The United States ignored Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism against India.
--The U.S. government supported Turkey, a country with a Muslim population, against Greece over the Cyprus conflict.
--In Somalia where no vital U.S. interests were at stake, the United States engaged in a humanitarian effort to help a Muslim people suffering from anarchy, civil war, and murderous warlords. When it became clear that the mission could not succeed, U.S. forces left. Now that voluntary end to a humanitarian mission is being portrayed as the defeat of an American anti-Islamic imperialist effort by Muslims, in short as a grievance justifying anti-Americanism and a model for attacks on the United States.
--The United States supported Arab Iraq against Iran during the latter part of the Iran-Iraq war. It took these steps at the urging of such Arab allies as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
--When Iraqi President Saddam Husayn began to seek Arab leadership in 1989 and repeatedly denounced the United States, U.S. policy did not respond in a tough enough manner in order to avoid offending Arabs. The United States continued to provide Iraq with credits and other trade benefits even when it had evidence that the money Iraq obtained was being illegally misused to buy arms. When Saddam Husayn directly threatened Kuwait, the United States hurried to assure him, through U.S. Ambassador April Glasspie, that America was not his enemy and was neutral in this dispute. Convinced America would not intervene, Saddam then invaded Kuwait.
--For many years, the United States kept its military forces out of the Persian Gulf to avoid offending the Arab and Muslim peoples there. It went in only when requested, first to re-flag Arab oil tankers and later to intervene against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Its forces never went where they were not invited and left whenever they were asked to do so by the local states. American forces also stayed away from Mecca and Medina to avoid offense to Islam. Once Kuwait was liberated, the United States even advocated the concept of the Damascus agreement, in which Egypt and Syria would have played a primary role in protecting the Gulf. It was the Gulf Arab states who rejected implementing this idea.
--The United States rescued Egypt at the end of the 1973 war by pressing Israel to stop advancing and by insisting on a cease-fire. The United States became Egypt’s patron in the 1980s, after the Camp David peace agreement, providing large-scale arms supplies and other military and financial assistance while asking for little in return. Indeed, all of this U.S. help and support gave the United States no leverage over Egyptian policies, nor even good will in the state-controlled Egyptian media and in the statements of that country’s leaders.
Indeed, in 12 major issues where Muslims had a conflict with non-Muslims or secular forces, or Arabs had a conflict with non-Arabs, the United States sided with the former groups in 11 out of 12 cases:
The United States backed Muslim versus Non-Muslim states in six of seven conflicts: The United States supported Turkey over Greece; Bosnia and later Kosovo against Yugoslavia; India against Pakistan; the Afghans fighting the Soviets, and Azerbaijan against Armenia. The only exception to this pattern was U.S. support for Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Muslim versus secular: The United States helped moderate Islamic-oriented states against both Egyptian Nasserism and the Ba’thist regimes in Iraq and Syria; and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia fight Iraq. The only apparent exception was U.S. help for Iraq against Iran, though this was not an act based on U.S.-Iraq relations but was an attempt to help the conservative Islamist Gulf Arab regimes threatened by militant Islamist Iran. Given this aspect of the Iran-Iraq war, the United States helped Muslim against secularist governments in three of three conflicts.
Arab versus Non-Arab: Here, the United States supported Arab Iraq against non-Arab Iran; and both the Arabs and Iran against Soviet power. [The Israel issue is included above] Two of two.
If the Arabs and Muslims are so aggrieved at U.S. support for Israel, it may be because this is the only significant contrary case in the Middle East and its vicinity to the usual U.S. policy of supporting their causes. A second major grievance was U.S. opposition to Iraqi aggression in 1990. Yet this step was taken on behalf of other Arab states with better Islamic credentials than Baghdad, and after the United States had helped Iraq in a previous conflict.
This pattern of U.S. attempts to maintain good relations with Arabs and Muslims was so strong that even after some 3,500 Americans were murdered in a massive terrorist attack, U.S. leaders spent much of their time urging that there be no retaliation against Muslims or Arabs in the United States. American policymakers repeated at every opportunity that they did not see Islam as the enemy, tried everything possible to gain Arab and Muslim support or sympathy for the U.S. effort, dropped food supplies in Afghanistan, and promised to help develop the country in the future.
President George W. Bush even asked American schoolchildren to send donations to help their counterparts in Afghanistan. Instead, he could easily have called for revenge, denounced whole peoples and countries, and stirred up anger and hatred. But Bush’s approach was a continuation of the traditional American approach of avoiding antagonism to Arabs and Muslims while cooperating wherever possible.
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