The Kansas City Star October 15, 2001
Anger takes Americans by surprise;
Analysts say hubris fed hatred in other parts of the world
By Rick Montgomery
In their time of grief, Americans wondered how in the world people could say such things.
"Americans have had it coming for a long time," a Canadian told a newspaper in British Columbia shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"The thug got beat up," a Moscow metalworker told the Chicago Tribune.
"Is it possible that the people of America will some day realize that (their) suffering is minuscule in proportion to what the U.S. has inflicted directly and indirectly on others?" asked a letter writer to a French newspaper.
Criticism of the United States is nothing new. But this brand of resentment - whispered even in friendly nations, shouted in parts of the Arab world - served not only to upset Americans. It took many by total surprise, experts say. We were aghast: How could radical Muslims dance while thousands of innocents lay dead beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center? How dare those anti-American protesters in Pakistan unfurl a banner that read, "Americans, think! Why does the whole world hate you?"
No, the whole world does not hate the United States, propaganda scholar Nancy Snow said. But "there is a huge disconnect in the way we view ourselves and how others view us.
"We are the symbol of all that is big," said Snow, associate director of the Center for Communications and Community at the University of California at Los Angeles. "We are the big one, and until Sept. 11, we didn't think the big one could take big hits."
That sense of invincibility - some call it arrogance - is part of the problem for the last superpower standing after the Cold War. Military and economic triumphs here have bred envy and scorn elsewhere.
Many non-Western cultures overtaken by McDonald's restaurants, American movies and Nike shoes fret about "Westoxication" and an English-only "McWorld" in the making.
Whether the griping is general or specific - U.S. support for Israel being one obvious sore point in the Mideast - the criticism speaks to a universal image problem that analysts said must be addressed as the United States battles terrorism.
Foreign-policy critic John Pike said he was encouraged by the Bush administration's efforts to win support around the world, including Arab countries, before U.S. and British forces struck back at terrorist sites in Afghanistan.
"Over the last month, I've seen a substantial reversal in the way the U.S. has postured itself in the eyes of the world," said Pike, of GlobalSecurity.org. "We can either be a bully or a leader. For now, we've decided to lead."
Fuel for anger
It took only two days after last month's terrorist strikes for a columnist with the London Guardian to opine "that most Americans simply don't get it."
Why their land is hated by some others, that is.
Among Islamic extremists, "hate" is no overstatement. The late Ayatollah Khomeini labeled the United States the "Great Satan" in part because Washington propped up the rule of the Shah of Iran before Muslim fundamentalists in that country revolted in the late 1970s.
Major issues that have fueled anger in the region include:
Israel.
Palestinian hostility toward the United States stems from varying interpretations of a 1967 U.N. resolution calling for Israel to "withdraw" from the West Bank and other occupied territories.
Muslims generally feel that the United States has strongly favored Israel; American leaders have tried to cast themselves as honest brokers in efforts to end the conflict.
Oil.
The United States long has pursued an energy policy based on cheap Middle Eastern oil. Despite production decisions made by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, many Muslims think the United States forces prices to artificially low levels that prevent Arab nations from earning a fair return on their chief export.
Arab regimes. The United States has used its military, diplomatic and economic might to support friendly - if undemocratic - governments in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt. Many Muslims regard these as corrupt and unpopular regimes more interested in preserving their ties with the United States than in serving their own people.
American culture.
Muslims have expressed fears about the global reach of American popular culture - from fast food to feminism to rock music and pornographic films. They are concerned that American ways may have a corrosive influence on Muslim youth and undermine elements of traditional Islamic civilization.
Middle Easterners are hardly alone on this issue. Lawmakers in France and the Canadian province of Quebec, among other places, have pushed legislation to slow the spread of the English language in their borders. Russians have decried the presence of billboards written in English since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Iraq.
To contain Iraq in the wake of its 1990 invasion of neighboring Kuwait and the Persian Gulf War, the Clinton administration continued to enforce economic sanctions against Baghdad. Many people in the region blame the U.S.-led embargo for widespread disease and a steady increase in infant mortality in Iraq.
"When Osama bin Laden talks of babies dying in Iraq, he is absolutely hitting a nerve" throughout the region, said Gregory Dowling, a free-lance writer in St. Joseph who once worked for U.S. oil interests in Saudi Arabia. "For a decade now, the sanctions against Iraq have not accomplished anything. All they've done is help eradicate civil society in Iraq."
Afghanistan.
In the 1980s, the United States pumped nearly $1 billion a year in military aid to assist Islamic fighters in Afghanistan's war to drive out Soviet invaders. But American attention declined after the conflict. Many Muslims say the United States used Afghanistan as the final battlefield of the Cold War, then turned its back on the ravaged land. The country's poverty and political instability ultimately proved an excellent incubator for pro-terrorist groups such as the Taliban.
Even President Bush at a news conference last week said, "We learned a lesson from our previous engagement in Afghanistan. "We should not simply leave after our military objectives have been achieved," Bush said. "We should work for a more stable Afghanistan."
The Great Satan
Only the most bloodthirsty of outsiders could rationalize the murders of 5,000 civilians by blade-wielding hijackers. But it is understandable that distrust and an often vague dislike of America exists even among friendly neighbors.
"This is a country whose power throughout the world is multidimensional - militarily, economically, culturally," Pike said. "This is the country that landed men on the moon, the country that invented the Internet, the country whose military encompasses a planetary empire.
"Not only are we, in the eyes of some, the Great Satan, but this Satan lives longer than people in the Third World. Our babies do not die at birth. We're enjoying a lifestyle closer to angels than to animals. "I think it's natural for some countries to reject what they cannot have," Pike said. "Sour grapes is human nature."
U.S. victory in the Cold War made the country a giant target for grievances worldwide, said John Hulsman of the Heritage Foundation. "The strongest nation is always going to deal with resentment," said Hulsman, a research fellow at the conservative think tank. "It was true when Romans ran the world, when the Spanish ran the world and when the British ran the world. "When you're the biggest elephant in the china shop, you swish your tail and you're going to break some china even when you don't intend to," he said.
Still, Hulsman said, Americans should take immense pride. "For all the blundering we've done, we did defeat Nazism, fascism and communism. You add up all those 'isms' and the millions of people killed under them, I think the world today is a far better place. Given the options, I'll take the U.S. anytime."
Hulsman might save his breath when speaking to Iraqis, Syrians and Afghans - natives of a region that once boasted a majesty and cultural enlightenment of its own.
Yesterday's Middle East, in the words of Islam scholar Bernard Lewis, was "a crossroads and a marketplace where merchandise were brought from ancient and distant lands, and then sent, sometimes much improved, to continue their journey ... "The modern history of the region is one of rapid and enforced change - of challenge from an alien world."
The demographics changed, as well. Because of a recent "youth bulge," more than half of the residents of the Arab world are 25 or younger. Most of them have been steeped in Islamic education. The combination of youth and religious extremism has produced a population willing to turn their hatred of the alien world into bloody action.
Not a simple sell
While many experts stress that the United States must never capitulate to terrorists, they say the nation may have been well-served in the past had its leaders taken a humbler stance on the international stage. "What the outside world wants to communicate to the U.S. is, 'Why don't you sit down, stop shooting, shut your mouth and just listen to us?"' said Snow of UCLA. "Listening more and talking less could be the key to our long-term survival."
Bush's oft-repeated "good-vs.-evil" pitch in the war against terrorism is not a simple sell in most countries, Snow said. Even allies know global relations are more complicated than that, she said.
After years of grumbling about American hubris, the world community dealt a direct blow to U.S. diplomacy last May, when it ousted the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Many allies were angered by the United States' snubbing of the Kyoto environmental agreements, its support of a nuclear missile-defense system and its monetary debts to the United Nations during two presidential administrations.
Clinton took criticism at home for being too bendable with other nations, for advancing an ill-defined foreign policy, for dismissing public cries to put "America first." Still, much of the globe resented us.
Before Sept. 11 the foreign news media labeled Bush a "unilateralist," meaning someone willing to run with American interests and leave the rest of the world behind. That image is rapidly changing as Bush builds a global coalition against terror.
"I see hopeful signs," said Osman Bakar of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. "I've seen sincere efforts in this country to understand Islamic culture. The president has showed himself to be cautious, to make clear he's not against Islam. He's against terrorism."
Bakar and others say that if America is to win this war, it ultimately will need to help Islamic populations form their own democracies. "There's a big difference between imposing American values on others and helping people govern their own countries within the context of their own values," Bakar said. And making democracy work, some say, is what America really does best.
Copyright 2001 The Kansas City Star Co.
