January, 2002

The Trouble with America

Dr. Osama El-Ghazali Harb

2001 has been assigned to history, gone forever, but indelibly etched in human memory. This is a year whose events have already staked a claim to eternity. In the 20th century, the defeat of Nazi Germany, Hiroshima, and the collapse of the Soviet Union are the only events that come close. On 11 September, the United States, unchallenged leader of the international order, sole superpower of our times, received the worst blow it had ever suffered, Pearl Harbor aside. The culprit was unknown, the evidence shaky, and the reaction quick. A hastily assembled international coalition went out to fight a shady outfit. The 'war on terror' at least in this first phase, went smoothly. The Taliban were pulverised, Al-Qaida was dismantled, and Osama bin Laden went missing. Many, however, wonder: What next, in this open-ended battle?

The future of the war depends on one question: have the Americans learned anything from 11 September? The hurried, compulsive reaction to the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was somehow understandable. Americans wanted to hear nothing but words of comfort and condemnation. They wanted everyone on board their battleship, double quick and no questions asked.

But now, four months later, it is time for questions. It is time for the Americans to examine what happened, and to understand why. It is not enough to focus on the military campaign against terror, on security and the financial means of fighting this evil and stifling the governments and forces accused of supporting it. The shocking thing about 11 September is that the attacks blew the lid on a bottomless well of hatred. Precise planning, disregard for human life, the choice of target: these aspects left the world speechless. Who are they, and why do they hate us? ordinary Americans asked. The official answer was as rapid and assertive as it was misleading and rash: the Arabs and Muslims did it. We're going to get them.

But why did it happen? Two competing answers emerged amid a flurry of lobbying, finger-pointing, and arm-twisting. One blames the pro-Israeli bias of US policy in the Middle East. The other claims that Arab and Muslim societies are naturally prone to 'terror'.

In Asia or Europe, the United States or the Middle East, terrorism can be traced to religious and ideological fanaticism, tyranny, and social and economic woes. But the Americans should also realise that the attacks of 11 September were closely related to half a century of US bias toward Israel, a bias that runs counter not only to the will of the international community as a whole, but also to America's cherished principles of freedom and self-determination.

US policy in the Middle East is destined to cause hatred, bitterness and despair among Arabs and Muslims, regimes and citizens alike. The political and economic elites, indeed, have shown considerable restraint in responding to US policy in the Middle East, and in trying to understand the complexity and intricacies of US decision-making. The common people were less fussy. For them, this policy was nothing but relentless abuse. To ordinary Arabs and Muslims, the fancy aid packages, the sugar-coated words from US officials meant nothing.

More puzzling is that the United States has failed to grasp such a simple matter. How could the mighty intelligence services, the opinion pollsters and the lavishly funded think tanks miss the point so determinedly? To this day, influential American columnists pontificate with amazing conceit about the emergence of terror and how it came to target the United States, without mentioning any of the obvious facts. The result is disturbing. In a recent poll conducted jointly by the International Herald Tribune and a Washington-based centre, less than one out of five Americans believes that US foreign policy was responsible for the 11 September events. Worldwide, the figure is three out of five.

Arabs and Muslims, as well as the European nations, have been warning the United States that its Middle East policy is risky. President Hosni Mubarak, for one, told the Americans that half the causes of terror are linked to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet no one thinks to apply the analysis so expertly expounded by US and Israeli columnists to Israel itself. Is the creation of a state based on religion in the middle of the Arab world not a credible motive for the revival of fundamentalism? Have tyrannical regimes in the region, Saddam Hussein's for example, not used the Palestinian issue to boost their own legitimacy? Even the undemocratic regimes that prevail so widely in the Arab world base their political credibility on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In more prosaic terms, are the region's economic woes not caused, at least in part, by the pressure of Israel's military might?

Israel's threatening presence and belligerence toward the Palestinians is the main cause of terror in the region. Terror may have other underlying causes, but the United States' abiding bias toward Israel provided the main motive for the 11 September attacks. The Americans have vented their wrath on Afghanistan, but the hijackers were Arabs for the most part; and the Arabs have every reason to be outraged by the situation in Palestine. The Americans may now be seeking other victims, but they would do better to focus on treating the causes of the dilemma: namely, finding a just and urgent solution to the Palestinian problem.

Egyptians are entitled to speak assertively on that matter. We signed a peace agreement with Israel over 20 years ago. We reiterate our commitment to peace on a daily basis. We had been fighting terror for far longer than the United States. And we are aware that further terror attacks, even against the United States, will hurt us too, exactly as 11 September did. Unfortunately, we see no sign that the United States has learned anything from the cataclysm that befell it last autumn. Its tragically misguided veto-wielding at the UN Security Council is a case in point. If the death of over 3,000 Americans and the destruction of major symbols of American civilisation is not enough to make the US administration see the trouble with its policy, what is?