Ignoring the Past in the Middle East

I wrote this several months ago but never tried to get it published as an op-ed. Sadly, and in light of yesterday's attack in Mosul, it's still relevant . . . BB
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“Ignoring America’s Past in the Middle East”

“Anti-Americanism is resurging in the Arab world,” the secretary of state reported to U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East. “Recent bombings . . . vitriolic public statements by . . . high officials . . . diatribes and fantastic rumors,” he explained, “all testify to the reenkindling of Arab animosity against the United States.” Whether prompted by Moslem extremists or “whether attributable to a sincere objection to America’s part in Palestine developments,” such ill will “bodes no good for the interests of the United States . . . .”

Clearly, such an analysis would accurately describe conditions in the Middle East today but it was not producted by Colin Powell in 2004. It was written by Secretary of State Dean Acheson in May, 1950. Today, two conclusions stand out: anti-American sentiment in the Arab world remains just as strong after 54 years, and U.S. leaders have shown little sensitivity, or even interest, in trying to understand the historical roots of such feelings in the ensuing half-century.

Since becoming more intimately involved in Middle Eastern affairs in the aftermath of World War II, the United States has had an overweening presence in the region. On one hand it has been able to develop strong relations with pro-American, of internally repressive, Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or, before 1990, Iraq, to protect its oil interests in there. On the other hand, by intervening with American forces, fomenting coups d’etat, and, most importantly, funding and providing political cover for Israeli policies against Palestine, U.S. leaders have provoked an often-violent response to their presence, as the world saw on September 11, 2001.

However, instead of asking “why do they hate us,” American leaders could have been examining the very clear historical legacy that they had created in that region. In 1952, for instance, the state department cited the widespread “suspicion of foreigners” and “feeling against [the] US because of Israel” as barriers to having open and frank discussions with Arab leaders.

In 1954, just a year after the CIA-sponsored ouster of Mohammed Mossadegh, the Iranian leader who tried to nationalize that country’s oil resources, the national security council recognized that conditions and trends in the Middle East “are inimical to Western interests.” Nations in the region were “suspicious of outside interest in their affairs” and “the Arab nations are incensed by what they believe to be our pro-Israel policy.” Just two years later, after the Americans reneged on loan guarantees to Egypt to help fund the Aswan Dam project, Gamel Abdel Nasser wished that the Americans would “choke on your fury” and nationalized the Suez Canal in response.

Even though the Americans opposed the combined Israeli-British-French military intervention, Washington maintained an economic boycott of Egypt and stopped several aid programs to Cairo. A year later, the so-called Eisenhower Doctrine asserted an American right to intervene in Middle Eastern states threatened by Communism. The result, as in the aftermath of the Mossadegh coup, was a new round of anti-Americanism in the Arab world and renewed prestige and influence for nationalist leaders like Nasser and, ironically, even closer relations between Arab leaders and the Soviet Union.

America’s image in the Middle East continued to deteriorate over the ensuing decades, as conceded by U.S. leaders. In the wake of the 1967 and 1973 wars between Israel and Arab states, in which massive U.S. arms shipments made Israeli success possible, Middle East leaders and, more importantly, the “Arab Street” turned more virulently against the U.S. presence in the region. In the late 1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organization became a world-recognized political entity and its leader, Yassir Arafat, something of a Third-World icon. Meanwhile, U.S. aid to Israel grew dramatically because, as President Richard Nixon explained, weapons shipments and foreign aid to Israel were the cheapest and most efficient way to ensure American strategic objectives in the region without having to actually intervene or becoming more involved with American troops themselves.

Not long after that, the Americans would truly reap the whirlwind of their history in the Middle East. The 1978-79 Islamic Revolution in Iran was a belated response to the 1953 coup in Tehran and it unleashed waves of anti-Americanism, just as in 1950, throughout the region. By the 1980s many of the guerrillas who had been receiving massive amounts of American aid and equipment to subvert the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan were forming terrorist cells and targeting American institutions.

America’s military presence in the region, wars and destructive sanctions against Iraq, sponsorship of repressive Arab governments that, and, most critically, overwhelming support of continued Israeli attacks, and human-rights violations against the people of Palestine, have created a situation which, to put it mildly, is “inimical” to American interests. The current war against Iraq, now exacerbated by American attacks on cities and mosques, and, more damaging, the growing scandals concerning American torture of Iraqi prisoners, will make it virtually impossible for the United States to be accepted positively in the Arab world.

So, in 2004, U.S. leaders face conditions almost identical to those pointed out by Dean Acheson in 1950, by the National Security Council fifty years ago, and by subsequent generations since then. Contemporary developments in Iraq and Israel, where the United States is either committing or sponsoring wars against people who seek political sovereignty, will only lead to greater animosity and violence and that, as the Americans realized a long time ago, “bodes no good for the interests of the United States . . . .” Nor, for that matter, for the interests of the Arab states or of the world. America’s refusal to confront its history will only lead to an intensifying downward spiral with all of us potential victims of the violence that will ensue. The current American leadership, ignorant of its own history in the Middle East and drunk on hegemony, seems condemned to repeat it, time and again.