by Barry Rubin
President Saddam Hussein spoke the same way, arguing for example in 1990 shortly before invading Kuwait that the United States would seize control of the region unless the Arabs united behind him to fight against it.27 But not only had the United States never fought against Saddam before the 199os, it even helped him win his war against Iran in the i98os.
As radical Islamists rose to prominence beginning with the 1979 Ira nian revolution, they made similar arguments. Khomeini, leader of Iran's revolution, insisted that the United States was a demonic force that made the world a terrible place and prevented the emergence of an Islamist utopia."$ Yet Khomeini's labeling of the United States as the "Great Satan" was an intriguing clue to the real issue. In Islam as in Christianity, Satan is not an imperialist bully but a smooth persuader, a tempter who makes his wares seem so attractive that people want to sell him their souls. Precisely because America was so attractive for Iranians, Khomeini had to convince them it was so ugly.
Many Arabs and Iranians find America alluring. This makes the task for ideologues, intellectuals, politicians, and revolutionaries to discredit America all the more urgent. What better symbol for this reality than the fact that at their last meeting with U.S. diplomats before taking them hostage in November 1979, Iranian officials spent half the time denouncing America and the other half requesting visas for their relatives.
Thus, anti-Americanism may be based on accusations that American society is ugly but is actually motivated by fear of its lure. Many extremist Islamists, including most of the September ii terrorists and the militant Iranian students who seized the U.S. embassy there in 1979, had much personal contact with the West. Having come close to embracing "temptation," they barricaded themselves inside a radical Islamist identity to shield them from their own desires.
Similarly, anti-Americanism simultaneously portrayed the United States as an arrogant bully and cowardly weakling. Calling America an imperialist giant is a good way to provoke outrage against it, but insisting that the United States is weak is more likely to mobilize people to fight it. A real superpower, after all, makes a frightening enemy and a useful ally. Indeed, most often anti-American rhetoric is a substitute, not a prelude, for confrontation. Almost everyone in the Arab world and Iran wants the benefits of U.S. aid, products, and protection. Despite much talk about boycotts, Arab businessmen seek American trade and investment, while young Arabs are eager for its mass culture, and many would jump at a chance to immigrate to the United States.
Thus, despite constant claims that victory over America was certain, knowing the political-military power and cultural-technological appeal of the United States often gave a decidedly defeatist tone to Middle Eastern anti-Americanism, which heightened its passion and stridency.29 As in Europe and Latin America, much anti-Americanism was inspired by the conclusion that the cultural Americanization of society and the U.S. triumph strategically were inevitable.
At any rate, the idea that the United States was embarked on a program of world conquest-a mainstay of historic European antiAmericanism-was taken for granted in the Arab world and Islamist Iran. For instance, in a long analysis of American history, the mainstream secular Egyptian intellectual Samir Amin explains in his country's most important newspaper that America is different from Europe because its "extremist Protestant sects" saw themselves as a Nazi-like master race with a "God-given mission" to conquer the globe, making it the most brutal threat the world ever faced. It is no democracy but rather a capitalist dictatorship, where politics is merely a form of entertainment to fool the masses into believing they really have some say. The people are doused with disinformation, while critics are isolated and forced to sell out or are murdered. "The establishment can easily manipulate `public opinion' by cultivating its stupidity." Somehow, the American people just don't see this obvious truth.30
Given this internally repressive system based on illusions, the United States must create a foreign enemy during times of internal stress in order to keep itself going. Once this was Communism; now it is terrorism. But the real American goal is world domination: "to prevent the emergence of any other power which might be capable of putting up resistance" and to ensure that other countries are merely "satellites." All American presidents agree, Amin explains, that "only one country has the right to be 'big' and that is the United States."31
And thus, what American policy in the Middle East and elsewhere is really about is to "impose the new imperialist order" on everyone. They must "either accept U.S. hegemony, along with the super-strength 'liberalism' it promotes, and which means little more than an exclusive obsession with making money-or reject both." The world will be remade "in the image of Texas" unless it defeats America's "neo-Nazi challenge."32
Of course, not everyone accepts such a comprehensive system of explaining America's true nature. But many did accept the basic assumption that the United States is hostile to the Arabs, the Muslims, and the various countries where they live. Consequently, American actions are portrayed in the worst possible light, no American deed is shown as being positive, and U.S. policies are not described accurately enough to be understood even by those who might be skeptical about the line they are being taught.
Should Egypt show any appreciation for the $2 billion in aid it receives every year from the United States? No, explains the state-owned newspaper al-Akhbar. Egypt did not ask for the money; it was an American initiative. And besides, America is not seeking "friends but agents, which is unacceptable" to Egypt.33 But why, then, does Egypt accept the aid, and why does U.S. aid to Israel constitute support while assistance given Egypt is a form of subversion?
Does the desire of many Arabs to migrate to America prove that it is an attractive society? No, explains a panelist on al-Jazira television, because "America's plunder of Arab resources and its colonialism ... imposed the regimes that repress the peoples and oppress them-that is what has forced hundreds of thousands and millions of Arabs to emigrate to Europe and America."34
Can the United States help promote democracy in the Middle East? No, explains an Egyptian newspaper columnist in 2003, because "[the American] culture of death and murder cannot lead to the creation of [the] opposite culture [of democracy]." Americans need war "to feed their aggressive military economic machine." In this context, terrorism is seen as simple self-defense by "the weak who possess no means of resisting destruction, plunder, and death ... to confront the American culture of murder and destruction."35
The key issue, then, was that specific U.S. actions were only used, and distorted, to fit a preexisting conception in which nothing America did could vindicate itself. The core principle was of America as an imperialistic state that operated on three levels: as a bad model, culturalintellectual seducer, and military aggressor. It controlled what went on in the Middle East and was responsible for all the bad governments and for the failure of revolutions. Israel was either a tool of this imperialist drive or the master of it by controlling America itself. As a result of this pervasive anti-American case, many were ready to agree when bin Ladin's lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri presented the view that the United States "will not permit any Muslim power to govern in any of the Islamic countries," and were equally ready to make the same conclusion if the word "Arab" were to be substituted for Muslim and Islamic.36
These arguments, long on passion and short on evidence, escaped critical scrutiny because they had a monopoly in terms of government sponsorship and acceptance by the intellectual establishment. "You come to us to exhaust our oil and steal more of our land," explains a leader of the Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas. "We see on your hands nothing but the blood of our peoples ... downtrodden and miserable." The real U.S. goal is to divide the Arabs and destroy our identity, "so that we forget our names and our memory in order to instill the evil you spread all over our land" in fighting among ourselves.37
Amin, in al-Ahram, explained all this in terms not at all atypical of mainstream writing about America, "The United States practices international terrori
sm against the whole world." Its rulers are a "junta of war criminals," whose police force has "powers similar to those of the Gestapo."38 An Iranian newspaper made a similar comparison, since America terrorizes and bombs other countries and breaks all international rules. "The Americans are infected today with satanic pride and arrogant egotism" and have been "throughout the zoth century." It had trampled on the rights of "Afghanistan, Iraq, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, and other places in the world that are on the brink of confla- gration."39 A Saudi writer agrees, accusing the United States of committing terrorist acts "all over the world" as it seeks global hegemony.4°
America must be fought and punished because otherwise, as an Iranian newspaper warns, "No country ... anywhere in the world will be immune to the cruel nature of [American] arrogance."41 This kind of talk came not only out of radical Iran and Iraq. Even Egypt's leading newspaper also proclaimed that there was still time to fight America: "The world has not yet become a single sphere of influence entirely subject to a single superpower.... There is still ability to resist."42
When actually stated in some detail, however, the case against the United States was remarkably thin, certainly compared to what a Latin American, African, or Asian could muster. There were three basic components in the charge sheet: alleged U.S. aggression against Muslim states, supposed U.S. backing for dictatorial regimes, and support for Israel.
Before the 2003 Iraq war, the first category consisted mainly of references to Libya and Sudan, which the United States hit with one bombing raid each in response to terrorist attacks, as well as the 1991 UN- and Arab League-sanctioned war on Iraq and the postwar UN-mandated sanctions when Iraq clearly did not implement its own agreements. De spite the attempt to portray post-September ii counterterrorist activities as objectionable, such acts of aggression, then, were virtually nonexistent.
Equally, there was nothing that could reasonably be called economic exploitation. Arab oil-producing countries had been the main beneficiaries of petroleum pricing and production since the early 1970s, and there was little U.S. investment elsewhere. It was hard to argue that Arabs are poor because Americans are rich-though this did not stop some from doing so-and it could not be claimed that Arab raw materials are sold at low prices in exchange for high-priced Western industrial goods, a situation quite different from that of those countries that export only cacao or other agricultural products.
The false claims of injury at American hands take on remarkable forms. In 1999, an Egypt Air passenger plane that took off from New York crashed in a way suggesting sabotage by a copilot due to Islamist political motives or a psychological breakdown. Egyptian official statements and the state-controlled media presented this tragedy as the result of a U.S.-orchestrated conspiracy or at least cover-up designed to slander Egypt. Yet rather than confront this slander, the U.S. government acted typically in trying to avoid offending Egyptian sensibilities in its report by leaving open the crash's cause, though it would never gain credit for an approach so at odds with the false image being purveyed to Egypt's people.43
The second variety of complaint contained a paradox. If the United States was criticized when it went against Arab states, it was also condemned for cooperating with them. As one writer put it, Arabs said that their governments were so "corrupt and authoritarian" because the United States gave them billions of dollars each year, so they must be U.S. puppets.44 But the only country to which the United States gave large-scale aid was Egypt, which in turn promoted anti-Americanism because, it complained, America was not helping the Arabs enough.
The United States was constantly said to dominate everything and, through conspiracies, to be behind every government or event. It was blamed for supporting "unpopular" or "repressive" regimes even by those who themselves represented the worst examples of this genre. Kha- mene'i, Khomeini's successor as Iran's spiritual guide, complained in 1997, "The American government speaks of... democracy and sup- port[s] some of the most despotic regimes."45 Even high-ranking Saudi officials complained that the United States backed "autocrats" and "oppressive" regimes.46
But what "despotic" and "oppressive" Arab regimes did they have in mind as being backed by the United States? The most brutal Arab rulers were also the most energetic advocates of anti-Americanism, yet many Arabs believed that the United States was so powerful that it controlled even those most outwardly hostile to it. Thus, Saddam, Arafat, Khomeini, Asad, and others were said to be American agents. After all, it was explained, the United States could easily remove those it really opposed.
Thus, the United States was not only blamed by the dictatorships but blamed for them as well. Yet, whenever it pressed regimes for reform or moderate policies, they accused it of a bullying imperialism; when it dealt with them as legitimate rulers, they accused it of blocking democracy and keeping tyrants in power.
In fact, during the twentieth century's second half, no Arab government existed because of U.S. backing. Incumbent rulers retained power without its help. At most, U.S. policy gave occasional protection to more moderate Arab regimes against foreign attack, a tradition culminating with an American-led coalition freeing Kuwait from Iraqi aggression in 1991. If anything, the story of U.S. policy in the Middle East has proven how little it was able to affect the policy of Arab regimes, or Islamist Iran, for that matter.
Equally, on no occasion did Arab governments get direct U.S. help against internal threats. In contrast to Latin America, counterinsurgency against radicals-at least until after September 11-was never done with U.S. assistance or at American behest. For example, it was Britain that aided Oman to battle a Marxist insurgency in the 1970s and France that helped Algeria fight Islamist revolutionaries in the 199os. Aside from fighting Iraq in 1991 as part of a UN-mandated, Arab league-endorsed coalition, there had been only two short-lived U.S. military interventions into Lebanon-in 1958 and 1982-that had little effect on that country's internal politics.
Claiming that the United States controlled governments over which it had little influence was merely another way of expressing the idea that America was both malevolent and omnipotent. It was fancifully implied that these countries would become democracies if America did not subvert this process. Regimes that systematically defied the United States like Saddam Hussein's Iraq and like Syria, which were outright hostile, or Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which ignored U.S. requests they didn't want to fulfill-were said by anti-American ideologues to be really doing its bidding. As Abdel-Bari Atwan, the editor of an influential Arab newspaper, put it:
[Arab regimes] sell oil at prices said to be determined mainly by America, open their countries for U.S. military bases, facilitate American control and domination over the Arab world's economic resources including oil, and convert the Arab world into a huge consuming market for U.S. products. In addition they are purported to make unnecessary huge arms deals worth billions of dollars which allegedly give them a capacity to suppress the people rather than using the money for socio-economic development.47
Finally, there was an attempt to reduce all of American policy to a single issue defined as "U.S. support for Israel," while also distorting the nature and policies of Israel itself. A typical example of this approach was made by Khalid Amayreh in an article published in 2001: "America is the tormentor of my people. It is to me, as a Palestinian, what Nazi Germany was to the Jews. America is the all-powerful devil that spreads oppression and death in my neighborhood.... America is the author of 53 years of suffering, death, bereavement, occupation, oppression, homelessness and victimization ... the usurper of my people's right to human rights, democracy, civil liberties, development and a dignified life."48
As the phrase "53 years" showed, the real accusation was that America's sin was not permitting the violent destruction of Israel. But the United States backed the creation of a Palestinian state in 1948 and had little to do with this conflict until the 1970s, when it began energetically pursuing a long process of trying to negotiate a compromise solution to the dispute. It never co
nspired to help Israel dominate the Middle East, oppress or exterminate Arabs or Muslims, or carry out any of the similar notions daily put forward as unquestionable truth in the Arab world. Its policy toward Israel revolved around two basic principles: to help it survive real threats to eliminate that state and to broker a negotiated peace agreement acceptable to both sides in order to end the conflict.
For decades, the Arab states and the Palestinian movement were unwilling to make peace with Israel. Yet whenever opportunities seemed to arise for diplomatic progress, the United States seized them, believing a peace agreement to be in its interest precisely because it wanted good relations with the Arab world. By resolving this issue, the United States would be better able to promote regional stability, reduce the possibility of war, and ensure its own regional position.
By the same token, U.S. peacemaking efforts were dangerous to those whose plans required continued strife and declining American influence in the region. This is precisely why those who wished to destroy Israel and to block any negotiated settlement objected to U.S. policy: because it would deprive them of this issue as an excuse for retaining or fomenting revolution. Thus, their real anti-American complaint was not that the United States wasn't doing enough to resolve the conflict but that it might succeed.
During the 1993-2000 peace process, the United States tried hard to achieve a solution, putting the issue at the top of its agenda, moving considerably closer to the Arab/Palestinian standpoint, accepting a Palestinian state, negotiating directly with Arafat and giving him financial aid, and urging Israel to make concessions. The biggest wave of antiAmerican sentiment in history would thus take place immediately after the greatest U.S. effort to resolve the Palestinian issue to the satisfaction of Arabs and Muslims in 2000 at the Camp David meeting and in the Clinton Plan.49
