In America we do not trust
A year after September 11th the mood in the Arab world has soured. In part that is because of the likely invasion of Iraq. Arabs intensely dislike American policy. But this doesn’t mean they will defy it
Americans think we should be more like them, goes a bitter joke currently consoling Arabs, but every day they look more like us. They have a hereditary presidency, corruption, terrorism, Israeli-occupied territory (Capitol Hill), and a bad record for human rights. Now they want to do to Iraq what Iraq did to Kuwait. What people find funny is often revealing. One thing this joke illustrates is that in the past year Arabs, even more than before, have come to regard American motives with scepticism, and American power with panic. Another is that Arabs have never felt their own failings so keenly.
Disenchantment with America is hardly an Arab monopoly. Yet the erosion of post-September goodwill has been particularly complete in a region that feels it is being condemned collectively for the sins of a few. The looming invasion of Iraq, and the sense that other Arab targets may be next, have further soured the mood. In its mildest form the attitude is one of simple disappointment. Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmad Maher, laments that America lost a unique chance to rally the world to its side after last year’s attacks. It lost the chance by applying the “with us or against us” judgment in pursuit of narrow domestic interests rather than broader global principles.
More commonly, Arabs are aggrieved by what they perceive as an American failure to listen to them. Why do they hate us?, Americans ask. They answer the question by persuading themselves that the hostility of the “Arab street”, a hostility that al-Qaeda carried to savage extremes, stems from some kind of cultural envy, made poisonous by the oppressiveness of Arab societies and states.
But, as any simple Arab citizen will confirm, resentment of the superpower has never been a response to America itself. Rather, it is a response to its policies: its throttling of Iraq, sanctioning of Libya and Sudan, and, above all, its generous bankrolling of an aggressive Israel. “Take Israel out of the equation,” says a businessman in Jeddah, “and, poof, we’ve basically never had a problem with America.”
[http://economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1328853]
Carl
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