DOHA, Qatar — It is no surprise that at the annual meeting of the U.S.-Islamic World Forum here in Doha, sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the State of Qatar, the focus of discussion returns repeatedly to American policies throughout the Middle East. The heart of U.S.-Islamic World relations is the discord over the Middle East, but that issue also clouds wider perceptions of the United States around the entire Islamic world.
At this annual gathering of some 200 distinguished personalities from all walks of life, we experience two related phenomena: We reap the wisdom of scholars, analysts and pollsters who chart for us the broad trends — mostly deterioration — in American-Islamic perceptions, and simultaneously we get to watch Americans and Arabs show with their words why these two communities continue to express mutual hostility and fear.
The dynamic is uneven, but now mutual. For years the United States has used its military and diplomatic power to pursue its aims in the region, overthrowing regimes and trying to rearrange the political and social landscape. In September 2001, a band of killers from the Arab world attacked the United States, and Washington responded with armed fury. It waged a “global war on terror” that has achieved a few measurable successes, but sparked many more currents of concern and resistance around the Islamic and Arab worlds.
The statistical data from many reputable pollsters is consistent. One recent American survey of the Arab world (University of Maryland with Zogby International) shows that 78 percent of Arabs have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of the United States, while 72 percent of Arabs polled see the United States as the biggest state threat to them. A global survey of 40 Islamic communities by the American Gallup organization shows that Muslims admire American technology, freedom and democracy, but want more “respect” from Americans. Not surprisingly, the poll found that 57 percent of Americans, when asked what they admired most about Muslim societies, said “nothing” or “I don’t know.”
This is not a foundation for a mutually constructive relationship, and it shows very clearly every time Americans and Arabs/Muslims gather to talk, as happened in Doha last weekend. Private discussions among those who view themselves as adversaries or even fear each other tend to be useful, frank and satisfying; the public debate, however, verges ever more negatively on the insulting and the catastrophic. You only need listen to American officials speak publicly at such gatherings to understand why nearly four out of five Arabs have an unfavorable view of the United States and its policies.
Last year the inimitable Karen Hughes, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, gave a talk that could have won a prize for naïveté, arrogance, poor preaching, and insult all rolled into one. This year, the task of further lowering Arab-Islamic esteem of the U.S. government fell to Ambassador David Satterfield, the senior adviser and coordinator for Iraq in the U.S. Department of State.
The gist of his remarks was that the U.S. public and government have limited patience in Iraq, and it is up to Iraqis now to take change of their future by acting in a national rather than a sectarian fashion. He noted correctly that Iraq now represents a potential strategic threat to the entire region in the form of sectarian conflict, while saying that the United States could act mainly as a “catalyst” from now on as Iraqis took charge of their destiny. He also said that the challenge to Iraq and others comes from those terrorists and insurgents “who try to achieve their goals through the use of violence” — as if the United States primarily used Tootsie Rolls and iPods, not weapons, in its occupation of Iraq.
The potential destruction that might be unleashed around the Middle East — and possibly the world — from the unilateral American decision to go to war in Iraq is only now starting to become clear, as Satterfield noted. For the United States to say that its patience is limited and it can be a catalyst at best in the face of the furies and destruction it has unleashed by its war in Iraq is precisely the sort of neocolonial, self-serving double standard that causes so many people around the world to fear and resist it.
The issue of responsibility, impunity and accountability is rising higher on the list of priorities of people around the world who wish to end this cycle of fear and war that seems to define the United States and much of the Arab-Islamic world. Saddam Hussein and his Baathist thugs were finally held accountable and killed. Similar judicial processes, but with more legitimacy, are underway in Lebanon and Sudan.
One wonders: Are only Arabs and Muslims to be held accountable for their brutality and crimes? Or is it possible to ask that those in the United States, the UK, Israel, and other lands who have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people also be held accountable to world public opinion and the rule of law? Only then can we hope to slow down and perhaps stop this terrible cycle of perpetual tyranny and war in our region, which is now closely associated with a penchant for mutual disdain and distrust among ordinary Americans, Arabs and Muslims.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 21 February 2007
Word Count: 879
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