During this week's CNN/Youtube Republican debate the following question was posed:
1. Persian Gulf War in which U.S. troops free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. To be fair the subsequent butchering of the Shia after they were tacitly encouraged to rebel by Bush is a black mark but the U.S. also engaged in substantial relief efforts for Muslim Kurds and helped promote the establishment of a de facto independent Kurdistan.
2. U.S. troops sent to Somalia to feed starving Muslims and attempt, unsuccessfully, to impose order on the country.
3. U.S. forces sent to Bosnia in the mid-90s to prevent butchering of Muslims at the hand of Serbs.
4. U.S. airpower used to halt slaughter of Muslims in Kosovo.
5. U.S. forces help take down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan which had killed thousands of its own citizens.
6. U.S.-led forces remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, during which time he had both killed literally tens of thousands of his own (Muslim) citizens and started wars against Muslim neighbors Iran and Kuwait.
Not to mention the millions of Muslims that enjoy full religious freedoms here in the U.S. If the U.S. is indeed hell-bent upon destroying Islam we've been going about it in a rather strange fashion.
In fact, if you want to look at the real culprits out there, the leading of killer of Muslims are...other Muslims. It is Al Qaeda and other Islamic terror groups that deliberately target Muslims civilians for killing, not the U.S.
To help repair the U.S.'s image, as Yasmin says, our next President should be able to drive home these points on a consistent basis, which aren't heard often enough. That the Bush Administration has done such a poor job of selling U.S. policy is deeply frustrating, and a real opportunity missed. I can only hope Bush's successor will do a better job of that. After all, if the President and his advisers can't articulate such arguments, why should we expect those in the Middle East to?
All that said, much of the anti-U.S. sentiment throughout the world is reflexive and irrational. Even perfect diplomacy will not result in an embrace or even a tolerance of the U.S. That is something that also should be kept in mind.
Yasmin: Good evening, gentlemen. My name is Yasmin and I hail from Huntsville, Alabama.Now, while it may be the case that Yasmin wasn't the undecided Republican she was made out to be, her question still has some validity. Plainly the U.S., and the Bush Administration in particular, isn't regarded too highly in that part of the world. This has extremely serious consequences. Reading a recent article "Where Boys Grow Up to Be Jihadis" a few parts stood out to me:
My question has to do with the current crisis in Iraq, as well as the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.
After living abroad, personally, in the Middle East for a year, I realized just how much damage the Iraq war and the perception of invasion has done to the image of America. What would you do as president to repair the image of America in the eyes of the Muslim world?
Chino was finally freed from the Moroccan prison in June 2003; the court declared him innocent of the murder charge, Elkharraz, his lawyer, said. But Chino returned to Spain a different man. He had become obsessed with the war in Iraq, his brothers recalled. He said he couldn’t sleep at night knowing that women and children were dying at the hands of Americans, all in the greedy pursuit of oil. He no longer had time for small talk. He would walk into a room and within minutes begin the same diatribe.Such perceptions are, of course, ridiculous (although I think I have at least an inkling of where they come from). If anything U.S. policy has been wildly pro-Muslim for at least the past 15 years. To wit:
...Muncif came to believe that defending Iraqis was an obligation of all Muslims — that the occupation of Iraq should be viewed as part of a global struggle. “If they do not have someone to help them, maybe this will happen to all Muslims,” a relative recalled him saying. “Maybe if Iraq doesn’t have sovereignty, Morocco will be the next country invaded.”
Muncif’s brother Bilal was soon talking the same way. He insisted that the war was not simply aimed at conquering Iraqis but also at defeating Islam. “The goal of the United States is to wipe Islam out,” he said, according to the relative.
1. Persian Gulf War in which U.S. troops free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. To be fair the subsequent butchering of the Shia after they were tacitly encouraged to rebel by Bush is a black mark but the U.S. also engaged in substantial relief efforts for Muslim Kurds and helped promote the establishment of a de facto independent Kurdistan.
2. U.S. troops sent to Somalia to feed starving Muslims and attempt, unsuccessfully, to impose order on the country.
3. U.S. forces sent to Bosnia in the mid-90s to prevent butchering of Muslims at the hand of Serbs.
4. U.S. airpower used to halt slaughter of Muslims in Kosovo.
5. U.S. forces help take down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan which had killed thousands of its own citizens.
6. U.S.-led forces remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, during which time he had both killed literally tens of thousands of his own (Muslim) citizens and started wars against Muslim neighbors Iran and Kuwait.
Not to mention the millions of Muslims that enjoy full religious freedoms here in the U.S. If the U.S. is indeed hell-bent upon destroying Islam we've been going about it in a rather strange fashion.
In fact, if you want to look at the real culprits out there, the leading of killer of Muslims are...other Muslims. It is Al Qaeda and other Islamic terror groups that deliberately target Muslims civilians for killing, not the U.S.
To help repair the U.S.'s image, as Yasmin says, our next President should be able to drive home these points on a consistent basis, which aren't heard often enough. That the Bush Administration has done such a poor job of selling U.S. policy is deeply frustrating, and a real opportunity missed. I can only hope Bush's successor will do a better job of that. After all, if the President and his advisers can't articulate such arguments, why should we expect those in the Middle East to?
All that said, much of the anti-U.S. sentiment throughout the world is reflexive and irrational. Even perfect diplomacy will not result in an embrace or even a tolerance of the U.S. That is something that also should be kept in mind.
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