Not surprisingly, the demise of the Cold War involving the US and the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s left military strategists in the West searching for a new enemy. To borrow Richard Conder, author of the Munchurian Candidate: "Now that the communists have been put to sleep, we are going to have to invent another terrible threat." Former US Secretary of Defense, McNamara, in his 1989 testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, stated that defense spending could safely be cut in half over five years. For the Pentagon it was a simple choice: either find new enemies or cut defense spending. Topping the list of potential bogeymen were the Yellow Peril, the alleged threat to US economic security emanating from the East Asia, and the so-called Green Peril (green representing Islam). The Pentagon selected "Islamic fundamentalism" and "rogue states" as the new bogeymen. (3)
Jochen Hippler corroborates this view when he says: “The West no longer has the Soviet Union or communism to serve as enemies justifying expensive and extensive military apparatuses. It was in the mid-1980s at the very latest that the search began for new enemies to justify arms budgets and offensive military policies, at first as part of the communist threat and then in its place. First the 'War on Drugs', the somewhat absurd and naturally failed attempt to solve New York's drug problem by naval exercise off the coast of South America and military operations in Bolivia, then 'Terrorism', a term applied to real terrorists as well as to various unpleasant freedom movements in the Third World which (of course) demanded military responses, were two such attempts during the 1980s.” (4)
One could multiply examples to prove the point but I believe it is not necessary. It will suffice to say that in the absence of the Soviet Union the West, particularly the United States, needed to introduce a new enemy to rationalize its military policies and more importantly as B. Tibi has argued to “ensure the continuity of its political and military unity and hegemony.” (5)
Consequently, demonizing of Islam began in the post-Cold War period with many ‘experts’ and political leaders trying to define Islam as a new threat or an 'enemy' of the West. M. Rodinson, the author of “The Western image and Western studies of Islam”, for example, has pointed out that “the Muslims were a threat to Western Christendom long before they became a problem.” (6) In a 1990 address Bush Senior Vice President, Dan Quayle, listed Islam with Nazism and Communism as the challenges the Western civilization must undertake to meet collectively. (7) In a similar tone in February 1995 the former North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General, W. Claes, warned that Islamic fundamentalism is as much a threat to the Western alliance as communism once was. (8)
The 9/11 terrorist attacks have presented an “opportunity” for Washington to attempt to constrain the emerging complexity of the emerging international system as a whole by shifting international focus to the relatively narrow, but no less significant, issue-area of 'anti-terrorism'. Since then, the US has made consistent and persuasive, indeed unremitting, attempts to reduce many other items on the international political and economic agenda to an ‘anti-terrorist’ essence. (9)
With regards to US relations with the Islamic World, the 9/11 attacks have created a new wave of anti-Islam movement in the USA and even other Western countries. At the beginning President Bush tried to identify (the US war on terror) a crusade however, it was quickly reacted by the Muslim world and some non-Muslim nations as well. But as it has been stated the 'war on terror' was not limited to Afghanistan and Bin Laden's group (Al Qaeda) it would be continued against Muslim and non-Islamic countries that the America considered to be supporter of terrorism (You are with us or with enemy). Based on this statement Bush characterized Iraq, Iran and North Korea ‘axis of evil’.(10)
The US ‘war against terror’ since 9/11 and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as incarceration and torture of hundreds of Muslims in Guantanamo Bay US military prison in Cuba, not only created a negative feeling toward the US but a new perception of American intentions. There now seems to be a perception that the US has entered into a war against Islam itself.
Since 9/11, foreign public opinion polls conducted by the State Department and private firms and organizations have shown that negative attitudes toward the United States have generally grown worse in many countries around the world, particularly in the Muslim world.
Not surprisingly the World Public Opinion Organization survey of 2007 finds negative views toward the US government even though the governments of the countries surveyed, by and large, have a positive relationship with the US government. Most negative were the Egyptians—93% expressed an unfavorable view with 86% very unfavorable. In Morocco, 76% had an unfavorable view with 49% very unfavorable. In Pakistan, 67% had an unfavorable view with 49% very unfavorable. The most moderate responses were in Indonesia where 66% did have an unfavorable view but a more modest 16% had a very unfavorable view. (11)
Why do they hate us?
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