US President George W Bush yet once again
has blamed the Arab media for his country's image
problem.
"I recognize we got an image
issue, particularly when you have television
stations, Arabic television stations that are
constantly just pounding America - saying America
is fighting Islam, Americans can't stand Muslims,
this is a war against a religion," Bush commented
following a speech in Philadelphia on December 12.
It's disturbing to think that the
president truly believes that Arab and Muslim
contempt for his government stems from Arab media
detractors, rather than his
administration's misguided policies. Simply put,
Arab and Muslim nations' disdain for the Bush
administration is a natural human response to
colonization, military oppression and the
degrading regimes they bring about.
Before
offering his impulsive remarks, Bush should've
consulted the history of the Middle East - of
which his clique often claims mastery - a region
whose past has been marred with utter contempt for
foreign occupiers and unyielding struggle to force
them out.
Indeed, the US image problem has
little to do with newspapers and 24-hour news
channels, and more to do with the dangerous
insistence on ignoring the roots of the West's
fallout with Muslims, not always as a religious
group, but as colonized and exploited nations.
Indeed, for centuries the Muslim-dominated
Middle East has captured the West's imagination in
myriad ways. Yet, as is often the case, the
disparity of power and wealth dictated the course
of Western action - and reaction - then
concentrated mostly in Europe. Up until the second
half of the 20th century, much of the Middle East
- not to mention other regions that were viewed as
lands of equally "inferior" races - fell victim to
untold exploitation, degradation and often brutal
violence.
Little has been done since most
Middle Eastern nations attained their independence
in recent decades to redeem the roots of hatred;
to the contrary, much was done to exasperate the
animosity.
In the second half of the past
century, colonialism was brought to an end in its
conventional ways, perhaps, with Palestine
remaining the most practical and tragic example;
but its dialectics - those of political and
economic hegemony - were hardly altered. The
Arabs, after all, still had plenty to offer and
the West, now US-dominated, persistently saw Arab
offerings purely through colonialist-colored
lenses: spoils; plain and simple.
Evidently, European imperialism - despite
constant attempts to delineate the differences
between French colonial experiences and those of
Britain, for example - had devastated Middle
Eastern cultures. Even the positive contributions
to local cultures during those years were mostly
unintentional and often cosmetic.
The
conventional colonialist experience was forced to
yield in the years following the end of World War
II to alternative methods that would still allow
Western countries to safeguard their economic
interests in the region. Militarily weakened and
unable to tame the fractious colonies, yet
reluctant to treat former subjects as equal
partners, Western nations were compelled to devise
new colonial stratagem.
Arab nations, for
example, were subjugated through Western-sponsored
local elites, corruptible and coercive. Many Arab
intellectuals have rightly argued that a decided
halt of Western imperialism never truly
actualized. Direct and indirect intervention in
Arab affairs - with the same arrogant expectations
- continued to mar the relationship between the
West and Arabs.
The US in particular,
joining the colonial club at a later stage, was
not always viewed as a colonial menace. The US
government's strong stance against the
British-French-Israeli aggression against Egypt in
1956 placed it in a somewhat different category
from the rest. However, the US colonial status,
bashful and reluctant at first, was forcefully
shaped during the Arab-Israel war of 1967.
Only then did the US's devout and resolved
support of Israel - a colonial protege itself -
fully actualize.
Since then, the US
political, financial and military commitment to
Israel has further damaged the perception of the
Arab and Muslim peoples of the US. Thus being
anti-Israel - a common feeling among most Arabs
and Muslims, for obvious reasons - was tantamount
to being anti-American. The failure of Arab
regimes to take a strong stand against both also
added to the tension. The fury and bitterness
espoused by early colonial experiences lingered,
unscathed. To pretend that extremism and
terrorism, plaguing many spots in the Arab and
Muslim world, are irrelevant to this debate is to
ignore the roots of the violence at the expense of
innocent lives everywhere.
As if its
despised involvement in helping shape a miserable
reality throughout the Middle East was not enough,
the US occupation of Iraq, the heart of the Arab
world, in March 2003 earned it the designation of
colonial master. More, the fact that the war took
place largely as a result of neo-conservative
plotting - a dedicated pro-Israeli camp - and amid
the cheers of Israeli leaders, Arabs were left -
as reflected in their media - with no other option
but to view the US as an official enemy of the
Arab people, as belligerent as former European
colonialists, and twice as lethal.
It
appears too late for Bush to appreciate this
attempt at explaining the roots of his country's
image problem. Indeed, in his Philadelphia speech,
he seemed heedless of history, its complexities
and its many good lessons. It was the media who
should be blamed for his problem with Arabs and
Muslims, he insisted.
With such a
misconstrued perception, one's hope for a serious
change of course in US foreign policy will have to
be shelved, long enough for reason to prevail, or
for history to repeat itself.
Ramzy
Baroud, a veteran Arab American journalist,
teaches mass communication at Australia's Curtin
University of Technology, Malaysia Campus. He is
the author of the forthcoming book: Writing on
the Palestinian Uprising: A Chronology of a
People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London). He is
also the editor-in-chief of
PalestineChronicle.com.
