njlauren
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
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ORIGINAL: truckinslave
Boko Haram.
They detest our values, our actions, our very essence.
Their hatred is deep, vicious, and religiously based.
Until we accept that the source of their hatred is the God-damned Koran we will never even admit the problem.
They hate us for what we do, for who we are, and for breathing; but they hate us even more for what we are not. We are not Muslim.
Maybe so, but when we're talking about the schism between Muslims and Christians, that's been going on for well over 1000 years. Their hatred of America is relatively recent, only within the past few decades. Looking back on U.S. history 100-150 years ago, I don't recall seeing any major problems with Arab countries back then. They didn't burn the U.S. flag or say "Death to America" back in those days, and even after WW2, the world in general had a very positive attitude towards America. Something has obviously changed between then and now, and it's not our values or actions, since they've been much the same all along.
Read up on the history of the Treaty of Tripoli in 1798 (where it famously totally makes fools of the religious right in this country, when it says the US is not a Christian nation in black and white), when Muslim countries from North Africa were preying on US ships, often taking their crews into captivity to be used as Galley slaves, it is why there is the line in the Marine Corps hymn ('to the shores of Tripoli')....:).
To get into the root causes of all this would take several books, and it isn't just the US, the British left a mess in the middle east, forming 'countries' that made no sense tribally, and let us not forget the giant shaft of 1949, when Britain KO'ed the two state solution for Palestine, insisting that Hashemite Saudis who had fled Saudi Arabia be allowed to take what is now Jordan, which was supposed to be a Palestinian state.
The reasons are many, but to a large extent the hatred is because the US preaches freedom and democracy yet we in that reason meddled, often to keep brutal dictators in power, because we could 'trust them'.....keep in mind during the Cold War the US government viewed democracy with not a little bit of suspicion, because they feared, as they did in South America, that popular uprisings would lead to socialist governments, as did in Egypt with Nasser. We upended a democratically elected government in Iran and put the Shah on the throne for almost 30 years, we support the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the like, and then when oil became a big thing, when the US started importing oil, it became king...which left a lot of people poor, and frustrated, because the money was going to the ruling class and everyone else got nothing.
The middle east also became a chessboard for the cold war; the US supported Israel, the USSR Egypt and the Syrians, South Yemen, and it became a kind of proxy war when the arab countries pulled their various invasions, USSR equipped troops on one side, the US equipped Israelis on the other and that added to it.
Then, too, comes Israel, where without trying to cast blame on one side only, there has been shortsighted US policy, in part because of the incredibly strong Israeli lobby in the US, that has led us to be a little less strong with Israel then we should. You cannot claim to be bargaining in good faith when Israel is allowed to build all these settlements in Palestinian territory to please the Ultra Orthodox in their country (who frankly I find as repugnant as I do the militant Islamic types; they may not plant terrorist bombs, but they cause a lot of damage to Israel that we end up paying for), or when we don't use the very potent amount of aid Israel gets to gain concessions and stop people like Netanyahu from dealing out of both sides of his mouth (and before someone starts the rant about the Palestinians, what they represent, I realize what you are saying, and i don't disagree either, they also are dealing out of both sides of their mouth, and then some, when they have this idiotic dream that suddenly they are going to take the whole thing, there was no country of Palestine, it never was, was owned by others for several thousand years). Personally I think most of the Arab world could give a crap less about the real plight of the Palestinians, it is just propoganda, but it is effective.
One of the mistakes we make about Islam and why muslims seem to gravitate towards trying to make countries ruled by Sharia law is because if you read the Q'ran, a lot of it is about social justice, about the poor not getting screwed by the rich, one of its goals, even moreso then Christianity, was to create a world where the poor are taken care of and not exploited. Their rules on interest bearing loans being illegal is part of that, the Q'ran is full of that, and to many people, they see that as a hope that maybe, just maybe, they will see some social and economic justice in a part of the world where that is scarce. It isn't that I agree with that or think it is a great think (I don't, very simply because the Q'ran is an idealized book the way Marx's economic theories were or Plato's republic, and in practice they end up being oppressive, not freeing, just look at what the USSR did with Marx, or Iran with the Q'ran). Maybe if we saw it for what it was, we would find a way to help people their gain some justice. Our naivite about the "Arab Spring" in part was in thinking that this was the revolt of middle class, educated people, who would be less likely to go for a theocracy, but the problem is they may have triggered the revolt, but in the end the masses decide, who are uneducated, poor and see Islam as a shining beacon. If you look at Egypt, those opposed to Morsi were the educated classes, not the poor majority, they were for him.
I don't think it is because of the freedom of the US, or that we allow women full rights or don't stone gays to death, despite the religious right trying to use that as justification to oppress women and gays to please the critics *lol*, I think it is because they feel the US had the power to do good, and instead, in blind self interest, just piled on their misery. I could argue that a lot of what they feel isn't true, it is perception, but it doesn't matter....and when our so called friends, the Saudis, spend their not small wealth building radical islamic schools all over the middle east, when they sponsor media and such that spreads lies and half truths in order to curry favor with the radicals, it doesn't help.
I tend to agree with others, I think the biggest mistake the US made after 9/11 was not pulling a Manhattan project and getting the world off of oil within 10 years (not just the US, the world)..you do that, and you have the leeway to let the Middle East figure out things for themselves, rather than keeping petty ante tyrants like the Royal families in power.....among other things, basing your GDP on oil alone almost guarantees stratification, because there is no need for a middle class, who might otherwise be building a real economy.
I think with Egypt we learned a lesson, that Democracy doesn't always provide results we would want, it is why our founding fathers put the checks and balances and escape clauses they did; had Egypt had an electoral college of educated people, theoretically they could over stopped the Brotherhoods from taking power, it is why the electoral college exists in this country, so Vox Populi couldn't elect a dictator or worse.
BTW,be really careful about using Arab to mean all Muslims or Middle Easterners. The Iranians are Persian, and they would be insulted to be called Arabs, and for example, The Sudanese are not Arab, they are black I believe, whereas the Iraqis are Arab.
< Message edited by njlauren -- 7/12/2013 5:11:18 PM >
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Why Arabs Don't Like the U.S. - 
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