The policies of the West towards the region as a whole did not help. The United States managed to aggravate the situation at every turn. It initially opposed revolts against Kaddafi in Libya, Mubarak in Egypt, Saleh in Yemen and Ben Ali in Tunisia. But the will of the people overcame what the West preferred. The West was forced to support, sometimes equivocally, the national forces aligned against the kings and dictators.
Clearly, no discussion, no matter how cursory, would be complete without mention of the creation of the state of Israel, its policies toward the Palestinians, its occupation of the third-holiest shrine of Islam. This occupies a special place in determining the relationship between the Arab/Moslems on the one hand and the West/the US on the other. Our unrelenting support of Israel, right or wrong, ensured the enmity not only of the 340 million Arabs living in the Middle East but also of the over 1.5 billion Moslems all around the world. This problem defies solution and consistently reminds the Arabs and Moslems that the West is their enemy.
Today, it is getting even worse. In the minds of the mostly uneducated Arabs/Moslems, hatred of the West/America is now being translated into hate of Christians and of Christianity as a whole. This manifests in attacks on Christians in Pakistan, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world. Christians have lived among Moslems in peace, harmony and safety for more than a thousand year. Only recently have Christians become the subjects of relentless terrorist attacks in Moslem lands. They are subject to violence and discrimination and, as a result, the Christians are leaving the region in droves. Many observers rightly believe that the future of Christians in the Middle East is doubtful at best.
Of course, this discussion has not been an exhaustive history of the Middle East. Yet, it clearly reveals that the enmity of the Arab/Moslem world did not just happen; it is the result of years of short-sighted self-serving Western policies, driven by our then voracious appetite for Mid-Eastern oil, fear of communism and our support of the State of Israel. These attitudes persist to this day and are not going away anytime soon.
In the meantime, the Arab/Moslem people are changing. They are becoming more educated and more aware. They cannot be as easily fooled as before. The West, and the US in particular, need to take the lead and start instituting policies that not only reduce the enmity of these people towards us but also to reverse the decades of pent-up hostility into more productive working relationships. After all, the Arabs/Moslems represent one fourth of all humanity. We know we can get along with them; we did so successfully for many years before the events of relatively recent history. Today, many Arabs/Moslems admire the freedoms and human dignity so prevalent in the West. In fact, most Arabs/Moslems want peaceful and constructive relations with the West and the United States. Only a very small minority can be characterized as religious fanatics and terrorists.
A Conflict of Interest
It is clear that news media shaping public opinion in the United States are not helping to sooth this conflict. Media coverage is consistently biased against Arabs/Moslems. Today, public opinion in the United States is strongly negative not only toward Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan but towards the Arabs and Moslems in general. Arabs/Moslems are now viewed mainly as terrorists sworn to destroy the United States.
There is a continuous attempt to fan the flames of that hatred. Of course, 9/11 did not help. Although in the view of most unbiased commentators 9/11 was a reaction to stationing American troops in Moslem Holy land and not actually representative of a general enmity in the Moslem and Arab world towards the US. This view is rarely discussed in the media so it did not become widely understood. And since then, we have killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Arab/Moslem world. The cycle has the potential to be endless.
One does not need to look farther back than when President Obama decided to seek Congressional approval before launching a missile strike on Syria to witness this news media bias. That decision touched off an explosion of news reports, commentaries and political analyses by a wide range of reporters, news organizations and the like. In the process, a divergence in opinion between the president and the American public at large became apparent. The American people do not want to be involved in another military adventure in the Middle East. Their views are colored by the recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president, on the other hand, for humanitarian or international political reasons wanted to execute a surgical strike against Syria to punish it for its use of chemical weapons and to prevent a recurrence of such horrible and inhumane acts in the future.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
