Opinion, June 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Understanding America is key to improving its foreign policy,
Robert Rabil
The Daily Star, 6/1/03
During my daily routine in Washington of reading the Arab press, I
never cease to be astonished by the pervasive anti-American feelings that
blame the US for the miserable conditions gripping the Arab world.
Although the charges are manifold, their common denominator is a belief
that the US does not understand or care about the Arab world. Monopolizing
the Arabs’ oil industry and making the region safe for Israel are held
to be the driving forces behind American foreign policy in the Middle
East. It follows from this policy that the US seeks to colonize Iraq and
allow Israel to impose its will on the Arab world.
A reflection of this pandemic rationale was emphasized by one commentator,
who wrote that “the American president either does not understand, or
does not care to understand, how the attitudes and policies of his
administration have fueled unprecedented anti-American rage in the Arab
and Islamic world.”
This assertion followed a litany of charges, echoed in the Arab world,
that ranged from accusing the president of devastating the civilian
structure of Iraq to holding Muslims illegally at Guantanamo Bay, to
treating Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the most brutal leader in Israel’s
history, with hand in glove.
Such assertions not only reinforce widespread anti-American attitudes, but
also play into the hands of lay, religious and official figures who share
the belief that US efforts to democratize the Middle East are doomed to
fail. These voices insist that democracy will bring extremists to power
and is unlikely to happen before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is
settled.
Another way of saying all of this is that the US does not understand or
care about the Arab world, yet it seeks to bring democracy to the Arab
world in order to colonize it.
The phoenix has to rise from the ashes of such circumlocutions and
fossilized impulses. The challenge for the Arabs, especially Arab
intellectuals, now is not to ask why the US does not try to understand the
Arab world but rather why the Arabs themselves do not try to understand
the US. Why for example don’t they ask their oft-repeated questions in
reverse? Do the Arabs understand or try to understand what has happened in
the US since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001? The irony is that the
only attempt at understanding what happened on Sept. 11 has generally
generated ludicrous conspiracy theories faulting the US itself.
Understanding the US is the key to affecting its behavior and addressing
its shortcomings. The US, as a democratic system, is indeed not perfect.
Yet it is still a system that reflects the aspirations, fears, and needs
of the American people, who are currently deeply concerned about Islamic
radicals. The Sept. 11 attacks, and the trauma they brought upon the
collective consciousness of the US, are the works of such radicals.
Consequently, Americans authorized President Bush to disabuse the radicals
of the illusion that America is a paper tiger and to confront far away
dangers. From an American perspective, killing innocent people for a cause
is terrorism, and terrorists and nations that harbor them will face the
wrath of US justice. This forms the background against which the US is
pursuing a policy to promote democracy in the Arab world, beginning in
Iraq. Hence, one needs to address some of the issues Arabs blame the US
for.
The US did not devastate the civilian infrastructure of Iraq. The US
liberated Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant that built an infrastructure of
killing fields. It was Saddam Hussein that collectively and individually
killed, tortured and mutilated Iraqis. Reading thousands of Iraqi official
documents has shown me how Saddam whimsically, arbitrarily punished Iraqis
and atomized Iraq’s civil society. He tried to brutally forge a
symbiosis between tribal traditions, Baath ideology and his personality
cult while at the same time aiming to turn as many Iraqis as possible into
accomplices and executioners.
He, along with many in the region who kept silent, is responsible for the
devastation of Iraqi civil society and, by extension, the country’s
civilian infrastructure. Can someone really assert that had it not been
for the Americans, Iraqis would have been able to remove Saddam?
Innocent Muslims at Guantanamo Bay need to be released. In this respect,
the US is gripped by a raging debate about the anti-terrorism powers
granted to Justice Department officials by the USA Patriot Act. Civil
liberties groups and high-ranking US politicians and officials have
complained about the federal government’s detention of defendants as
material witnesses in connection with the investigation of the Sept. 11
attacks.
On the other hand, a recent Justice Department report states “the
government’s success in preventing another catastrophic attack on the
American homeland … would have been much more difficult, if not
impossibly so, without the USA Patriot Act.” The US is beset by
questions of legality and morality over how to provide security without
trampling on civil liberties.
Regarding the Bush administration’s bias in favor of Israel’s Ariel
Sharon government, questions do abound. But one crucial question that
needs to be asked is: Who helped elect Sharon? Can someone deny the fact
that Palestinians themselves helped elect Sharon by making Israelis more
insecure?
Addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should not serve as a pretext
to forestall dealing with political and economic reforms. As I see it,
sooner or later, the Palestinians and Israelis will find out that they are
natural allies. But until that time, the intifada needs to be
demilitarized. Let us not forget that in the late 1980s it was the
intifada of children with stones that turned Israel’s policy of
“breaking bones” on its head.
The US as a democratic system has its imperfections. But it is a versatile
and flexible system that can be affected if properly engaged. Can Arabs
rightly engage this system for their own benefit?
Robert Rabil is project manager of Iraq Research and Documentation Project, Washington. He is the author of Embattled Neighbors: Israel, Syria and Lebanon. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |