Hussein Ibish, senior fellow of the American Task Force on Palestine, makes the argument at The National that Arabs can’t blame America for everything:
Anti-Americanism, a ubiquitous feature of contemporary Arab political culture, arises from an insidious and deeply- ingrained concept: the myth of American omnipotence.
Thus the will of the United States becomes the default explanation for everything that happens in the Middle East, particularly when people don’t like it.
Can’t blame the U. S. for everything? Sure they can.
Dr. Ibish attributes the present condition of reflexive anti-Americanism to traditional antipathy to the “Christian West”, and “disillusionment and perceived betrayal by an ideal, combined with a wild overestimation of US power”. I think he leaves out an important component: misdirection.
Over the last millennium Arabs have been colonized by other Arabs, Turks, the French, the Spanish, the Italians, the British, and Israelis. They have never been colonized by the United States or, at least, any definition by which Americans can reasonably be said to have colonized Arabs would also apply to the Russians, Chinese, and just about any other country that trades or has any other contact with Arab countries.
This is not to say that we haven’t had colonies. We colonized the Philippines, Hawaii, Haiti, Cuba, and other U. S. possessions in the Caribbean and Pacific. It’s also arguable that the United States west of the Mississippi was colonized by the United States. Just no Arab countries. How, then, can the ire be explained?
I would attribute it to two factors. First, I think there has been a conscious strategy of associating the United States with the “Christian West” by elites in Arab countries to distract attention away from themselves and maintain their own power and by people in the United States for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me. We’ve taken up the “white man’s burden”. God knows why.
Second, I think that the U. S.’s version of Realpolitik, which includes, for example, our support of Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s war with Iran, has tended to support Arab autocrats for the last seventy or so years. And we’ve supported Israel for the last forty or so years. I don’t think we have been well-served by Realpolitik. I don’t think we’re good at it. We are too conflicted. Every so often a little glimmer of idealism breaks through, reflecting the diverse views within the United States, and that tends to make others see us as insincere and hypocritical.
The only thing that makes the opinion of the Arab world at all noteworthy is oil. With fracking and shale oil development and eventually more seabed oil fields, their importance even in global energy markets is doomed to serious relative decline.
Given the endemic elite corruption and popular cultural hostility in many Arab countries towards open markets, secure property rights and a low-trust society preference for clannish/bazaari business practices, most Arab states are going nowhere fast.
I expect by mid 21st century, many Arab countries will be lagging behind subsaharan African ones
Don’t forget the massive Soviet disinformation program that operated through the 50s and 60s, as well as all the foreign aid they provided — especially the scholarships the Soviet Bloc offered. Those projects were successful in creating generations of ill-informed, sorta-socialists who can’t hear the word “USA” without instantly thinking “neo-colonialism”.
Thanks, John. I’ve mentioned that from time to time around here. Sadly, it’s not just Arabs who believe the disinformation. I suspect that most Americans do as well.
For example, I think that most Americans who’ve ever heard the name Mossadegh believe that the United States overthrew the Mossadegh regime in Iran. At most that’s an exaggeration. At the time of the overthrow we didn’t have a single operative in the country. There’s a better argument that the British overthrew Mossadegh but the best description of all is that Mossadegh’s collapsing government was given a final shove by a putsch which was supported by the British and Americans.
So you dont believe the writings of Dr. Wilber?
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/
Maybe I am biased since a close friend from my enlisted days was a Persian interpreter. His wife and her family were refugees from the Iran and the Shah. I would agree that the Brits probably played a larger role, and that Mossadegh was no saint. We still played a role and were probably instrumental in getting the Shah in place.
Steve
Sure. We provided “walking around money” for demonstrators/rioters. That wasn’t what brought Mossadegh down. What brought him down was a putsch conducted by Iranian military officers loyal to the Shah. There is eyewitness testimony to that effect from participants in the putsch. That’s why so many military officers were executed after the Khomeini revolution—they’d learned from Mossadegh’s experience.
Mossadegh was already on the way out. The only question was whether he’d be replaced by the Tudeh, Islamists, or the Shah.