An Arab Assessment of US Policy in the Middle East

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli <mo () mo md>
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 17:03:54 -0400
To: dave () farber net
Subject: An Arab Assessment of US Policy in the Middle East

Dear Dave,
I thought fellow IPers might like this transcript of a recent lecture at
the JFK School of Government.
mohammad

e mo () mo md
w www.mo.md

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==

"An Arab Assessment of US Policy in the Middle East",
by Adib F. Farha
Harvard University's JFK School of Government
April 10, 2003

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am grateful to the JFK School of Government for inviting me to shed
some light on how Arabs view US policy in the Middle East -- and to all
of you for your presence here today. Indeed, the timing of this lecture
could not have been more appropriate, coming one day after the fall of
the regime in Baghdad when the US faces major decisions on its role in
the world. 

The ongoing war presumed that the coalition forces would be viewed by
Iraqis as "liberators" and catalysts for democracy. Against a backdrop
of two dozens years of tyranny by Saddam, this has been true to a large
extent so far. But I am afraid it won't be long before this changes. The
presumption was based on a misreading of facts that ignored or
underestimated the suspicion of US schemes in the collective Arab mind
as well as the minds of people across the globe. The ideologues behind
this war were counting on the resentment of the Iraqis to the tyrannical
regime of Saddam Hussein to offset Arab resentment to US policy in the
Middle East. The final outcome will show that although Iraqis have
suffered miserably from Saddam's reign of fear and firmly wished to rid
their country of his rule, Arabs are equally firm in their mistrust of
and contempt for US policy in the region.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if history repeated itself whereby
developments in Iraq after the coalition finishes its job of replacing
Saddam's tyrannical regime by a "coalition-friendly" US-dominated rule
in Baghdad becomes analogous to developments in Lebanon after Israel
ousted the PLO in 1982 and installed a friendly government in Beirut.
Because of the resentment of the residents of south Lebanon to the
excesses of the PLO between 1967 and 1982, local residents showered the
invading Israeli troops with flowers and rice. However, once Israel had
kicked out the PLO, the same people who had welcomed the Israelis became
its staunchest enemies and put up a fierce resistance that eventually
forced it to withdraw in May 2000. The excitement of getting rid of the
PLO, which had set up a state within the state of Lebanon, quickly gave
way to the historical resentment of Israel.

The resentment of US policy is not limited to the people of Iraq. It is
widespread among most Arabs, including those who have great respect for
American principles of freedom, justice, and respect for human rights
and those who strive to emulate the so-called "American way of life". In
fact, admirers of American values are perhaps the most vociferous
critics of American policy in the Middle East. The root causes of their
bitterness lie in what they see as a double standard wherein the US
practices its noble values domestically but ignores them in its foreign
policy. Crown Prince Abdullah, the de-facto ruler of Saudi Arabia,
expressed the frustration of the many Arabs who have great respect for
the United States very succinctly when he said a year or so ago, "It is
difficult to be a friend of the US".

It is, regrettably, a little known fact to the average American that
your values are no different than those of Muslim as well as Christian
Arabs. The letter released on February 11, 2002 that was signed by 60
leading US intellectuals, most of whom are high powered academics who
study ethics, religion and public policy at American universities and
think tanks, entitled, "What We're Fighting For: A Letter from America",
listed four principal values to which Americans adhere. The first was
"the conviction that all persons possess innate human dignity as a
birthright' based on the Founding Fathers' affirmation that it was
"self-evident that all persons possess equal dignity". The second was
the conviction that "universal moral truths exist and are accessible to
all people". The third was the conviction that, "because our individual
and collective access to truth is imperfect, most disagreements about
values call for civility, o! penness to other views, and reasonable
argument in pursuit of truth". Finally, the signatories cited "freedom
of conscience and freedom of religion".

While this valuable document was published in the Arab press and became
the subject of lengthy introspective discussions, the many thoughtful
commentaries by Arab scholars in response went unheeded in the American
press. In a nutshell, we saw no dissimilarity between the stated
American values and ours. The combined Christian and Muslim Arab ethos
holds the very same truths. Why then do Arabs feel such animosity toward
US policy? 

The simple answer is that Arabs feel that, when it comes to Middle East
policy, the US does not apply these common values that we both hold so
dearly. America is perceived to use double standards in its practiced
policy regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular, and regional
matters in general. What is good for the goose is not good for the
gander. 

Until 1956, the US was viewed as a friendly country by all Arabs. The
commonality of values as well as interests represented a strong bond.
The Wilson Doctrine had greatly inspired and impressed the Arabs, who
saw in the US a beacon of democracy and a champion of human rights and
fairness. Moreover, the noble US position under President Dwight
Eisenhower who condemned the tripartite Israeli-British-French
aggression against the Suez Canal and thus opposed direct colonialism
had reinforced that bond.

It was only when then US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles blocked
aid for Egypt to build the Aswan Dam, which was a critical project for
Egypt social and economic development, while the USSR jumped on the
opportunity and offered Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser the
necessary funding that alliances started shifting. Technical advisers
soon followed, then military and political support, and the rest is now
history. This fateful shift has had regrettable results for the Arabs as
well as the US and laid the foundation for growing anti-US sentiment.

With Nasser's swing toward the Eastern bloc, Israel presented itself as
America's solid friend in the region and guardian of its interests.
Since then, successive American administrations have gone to great
lengths to support Israel, even as the latter continued to annex
additional territory by occupation and while it has continued to treat
Israeli Arabs as second class citizens. The questions that come to the
Arab mind is, "What happened to the Founding Fathers' belief that "all
persons possess equal dignity" or to the United Nations Declaration of
Human Rights, Article 1, which states that "human beings are born free"?


When desperate Palestinians after decades of US acquiescence to Israel's
occupation of their land, took up arms to reclaim their land and their
dignity - and I am not referring here to suicide bombing of civilians
that has been condemned by Arab political and religious leaders, the US
repeatedly condemned their struggle as acts of terrorism. Yet when
Israel practiced its policy of targeted killings, the US administration
merely found it "regrettable".

While Israel is a self-proclaimed theocracy, the US administration
repeatedly refers to it as the "only democracy in the Middle East". How,
wonder the Arabs, can a theocracy be an exemplary democracy? And while
the theocratic state of Israel discriminates between its first class
Jewish citizens and its second class Christian and Muslim Arab citizens,
the US condemns the lack of democracy in some Arab countries and
pressures Arab regimes that incorporate religion into its constitution
or their laws to disengage religion from state governance.

Yasser Arafat, hardly a model leader but nevertheless the elected
president of the Palestinian Authority, is considered "irrelevant" by
President Bush for failing to end so-called Palestinian terrorism
although Israel has demolished all his police stations and all but wiped
out his forces and rendered them incapable of any level of
effectiveness. Yet Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who watched from
a nearby building Israeli-allied militias butcher hundreds of innocent
Lebanese and Palestinian men, women and children in the Sabra and
Chatila districts of Beirut over the course of two days in the summer of
1982 while his forces were in total control of Beirut and was later
found guilty of complicity in the massacre by Israel's own Kahane
Commission in 1983 is proclaimed by President Bush as "a man of peace".
Yet, the US administration insists that it is an honest broker in the
regional conflict and expects Arabs to believe it!

Syria is reprimanded for hosting information offices of Palestinian
resistance groups yet the US for many years allowed the IRA to collect
funds under various disguises in American cities to support its
terrorist activities. More recently, and under President Bush's
simplistic doctrine of "with us or against us" that leaves no room for a
third option, Syria has been reprimanded by the US and threatened for
siding neither with the war on Iraq nor with Saddam Hussein.

The UN Security Council had as far back as 1967 called for the
withdrawal of Israel from the territories it occupied after the
so-called Six Day War and little tangible results have taken place.
Rather than punishing Israel for its continued occupation, against the
will of the international community, Israel remains the largest
beneficiary of US financial aid and military support.

Although it was the United States that sponsored Security Council
Resolution 425 in 1978 calling on Israel to withdraw "immediately and
unconditionally" from territory it occupied in Southern Lebanon, the
Israeli occupation stayed on for 22 years until Israel finally withdrew
under the pressure of the Lebanese resistance, the US did little to
ensure its enactment and merely repeated statements calling for respect
of international resolutions while condemning acts of resistance by the
Lebanese who were under occupation.

Yet when the Iraqi regime occupied oil-rich Kuwait in 1990 and a
subsequent UN Security Council resolution called for Iraq's withdrawal,
the US solidly backed the resolution and thankfully assembled a
coalition of 31 countries to implement it. It put the lives of some of
its young men and women at risk to do so and expediently got the job
done. Can you blame the Arabs for wondering why the occupation of Kuwait
deserved the risk of American lives while the occupation of the West
Bank, the Golan Heights, and Southern Lebanon went unabashed, other than
the fact that Kuwait is an oil-producing country and its occupier was
another Arab country while the occupier of Palestinian, Syrian, and
Lebanese territories is Israel?

Which brings us to the current crisis in Iraq. Against this backdrop of
continued blind support by the American government for Israel and
disregard for Arab rights, it is hardly surprising that anti-American
sentiment is on the rise and that US and allied troops were not welcomed
as liberators. American moves have become suspect. Of course, it only
exacerbated Arab suspicions when Secretary of State Colin Powell
recently stated that among the US goals in the war on Iraq was to
"reshape the region" to better serve US interests.

What started out after the horrible atrocities of 9/11 as a justified
war against terrorism quickly and inexplicably shifted to a war against
Iraq. In his recent book, Bob Woodward reported that at a meeting with
his aides after 9/11, President Bush asked them what the next step
should be. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld quickly responded, "We
should attack Iraq". The reason, asked the President? "We already have
the plans for it", Woodward quotes Rumsfeld's response to have been.
Indeed, the Arab public is aware that the ideological team of Vice
President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliott
Abrams, et. Al. had long planned this war and patiently awaited the
right moment to implement their Domino Theory, wherein Iraq would be the
first domino while its neighbors would follow.

But they had wrongly assumed that Iraq was akin to the former Berlin
Wall, which had prevented the democracy-seeking Eastern Europeans from
reaching their dreams. Once the wall fell, the rest indeed fell like
pieces of domino. They assumed that the Arab masses were keen on
replacing their leaders by ones that would be more American-leaning.

To the public, the stated reason for the assault on Iraq would one day
be Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. Then the
purpose would suddenly shift to an alleged and hitherto unproven link
between the Iraqi regime with Ossama bin Laden. From that, it shifted
into bringing about democracy in the Middle East. Then it changed again
to regime change, an act that is construed by most countries to be in
breach of the UN charter and the sovereign rights of nations.

The multiple and rapidly-shifting stated goals have only raised already
existing Arab suspicions from the US further. The Arab mind has combined
Powell's statement about reshaping the region and America's steady
support of Israel to conclude that, whatever the real goal was, it
certainly was not in the Arab interest.

Where the authors of the Domino Theory went wrong was that, if anything,
the Arab masses were becoming increasingly agitated against perceived US
bias and viewed their leaders to be too American-leaning and not the
other way around. It is primarily the pro-American leaderships in the
region that do not practice democracy. They rule countries where the
population is increasingly upset by American policy and progressively
more resentful of American support for their autocratic leaders.

Moreover, there is great resentment among Arabs for the notion of
democracy imposed by a foreign power through B-52 bombers and Tomahawk
missiles and it is met with great suspicion.

If democracy is to come to the Arab countries that are behind in this
regard, and it should, it must rise up from the people living in those
countries. Importing governments from exile or propping up cronies will
only exacerbate the situation and have disastrous results. Needless to
say, any notion of an interim foreign military government will have
catastrophic repercussions, both for the US as well as for the Middle
East region. Iraq is neither Germany nor Japan.

Countries that are sincerely interested in promoting democracy in the
Middle East can help this noble cause by fostering economic and social
development and prodding their allies to use their countries' resources
toward that end. "Gentle persuasion" worked before and it can work
again. 

On the other hand, persistently offending the people of the region by
what they view as blatant intervention in the internal affairs of their
countries that is perceived to have imperial motives will indeed topple
certain regimes in the end. It will bring about democracy. But the
democratic regimes that will emerge in the process would be overwhelmed
by fanatics and religious fundamentalists who will not necessarily
further the cause of stability and the war on terrorism. If the hope is
to bring about friendly governments who adhere to the common societal
values we both cherish, the result would assuredly be the opposite.


Ladies and gentlemen,

There is no fundamental reason why Arabs and Americans should become
enemies. We have a great deal more in common than meets the eye and most
Arabs admire and respect the American way of life. We don't hate you, as
President Bush suggested in the aftermath of the tragic events of 9/11
nor do we hate your way of life. We want very much to be friends, but we
also want to reclaim our land, our dignity, and our pride. The only
obstacle to renewed friendship has been the blind bias of the successive
American administrations for Israel at the expense of Arab rights. This
regrettable constant in US policy is pushing some Arabs to become
anti-American and fueling fanaticism.

An even-handed policy founded on traditional American values and respect
for international legitimacy is all the Arabs ask of the US. It is also
all it would take to win back their hearts and minds.

Thank you. 


------ End of Forwarded Message

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