... [Young Kurdish Iraqis exhibit] a warped perception of the United States suggesting that once Mr. Hussein falls, Americans will have to face continuing mistrust of their intentions across the Arab and Muslim worlds.
The threat stems in part from the radical Islamist, anti-imperialist and nationalist views on new satellite television channels and scores of Islamist Web sites in the Arab and Islamic world. From these have emerged an ideology of sorts that presents the United States as evil incarnate.
Because this evolving creed draws from different critiques of the United States, it can mean different things to different people.
To those leery of globalization, greedy American corporations are out to rule the world. To nationalists, Washington will bomb into submission any government it does not like. To Islamists, the United States is waging war on Islam, not terrorism. And rather than removing war criminals from power, the United States itself is a war criminal in this world-view. The list of American victims stretches back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Vietnam and Cambodia. It includes Bosnians, Chechens, Kashmiris and Palestinians, millions of Iraqi babies said to have died under United Nations sanctions and thousands of civilians said to have been killed by American bombs in Afghanistan.
The technique is classic propaganda, of the kind disseminated through the third world by the Communists during the cold war: seizing on what Americans see as a fault or tragic mistake, like racial segregation in the 1950's or the killing of innocent civilians in Vietnam, and recasting it as a malicious defining characteristic of an evil society.
Once the portrayal of malice has been sketched on a thin gauze of fact, flat-out lies are woven in to fill out the picture. And once an image of American malfeasance takes hold, new allegations are readily accepted. ...
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/weekinreview/09ROHD.html>
Carl
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