One of the things that this country, and it’s current Administration, does not do very well is convincing other parts of the world of the reality of America. We forget that, though we are a country awash in at-your-fingers, instant information from multiple sources, most of the rest of the world is not. Most of world is dependent on information (aka, “propaganda”) that is in some cases tightly controlled and heavily massaged by governments. This means that while Americans can learn a lot in a very short time about other parts of the world, and be reasonably assured that what they are learning is accurate, the same is still not true in most of the world. What does this mean for America? Well, it means that millions are making a maximum of assumptions about America and Americans based on a minimum of information. Most of this information is highly suspect and slanted to fit a particular prejudice or poltico-religious agenda- or to simply distract their subjects from unpleasant domestic realities.
One of the reasons we experience such hatred and and resistance in so much of the world is our material success- and our singularly American ability to flaunt it. When you live in a one-room shack with a dirt floor, it’s not hard to resent someone who in your eyes lives like a king. That’s part of it, but the hatred and misunderstanding runs much deeper than that. We live in a country that values and cherishes the separation of Church and State, but in the Muslim world, the Church more often than not IS the state- and vice-versa. What this means for us is that all too often, the Church/State has an entrenched interest in propagating a less than flattering public image of the US. After all, if a restive population’s anger and hatred can be focused on the hateful Americans, that’s less anger and hatred that will be directed at a corrupt, ineffectual government primarily interested in ensuring that a desperately poor nation doesn’t rebel against them. That’s why we get this sort of stunning, hateful ignorance focused on us like a laser beam:
Suraya Mohammad Ahmed has never spelled her own name, read a book or seen Egypt’s famous pyramids. Except for one three-hour train trip to Cairo, she has spent all of her 14 years in her village where farmers hack at the soil with hand tools, haul produce on donkeys and thatch their roofs with straw.
But Ahmed claims to have learned plenty about the United States. She knows it as a place awash in alcohol, where women prance nearly naked in public and soldiers are trained to fight Muslims.
“Americans are killing people in Iraq,” she said with an air of solemn outrage.
Ahmed and young people like her represent an ever more urgent challenge for the United States in its struggle to curb the rage or resentment that gives rise to terrorism. President Bush outlined the task this month, saying the nation must defuse the hostility and frustration smoldering in a new generation of Arabs and Muslims.
Across the Middle East, potential new recruits for terrorist cells were cutting their teeth when Osama bin Laden issued his first fatwa against Americans in 1992.
“If the broader Middle East is left to grow in bitterness, if countries remain in misery while radicals stir the resentments of millions, then that part of the world will be a source of endless conflict and mounting danger,” Bush said.
The problem now, of course, is that the Bush Administration is pursuing a policy in Iraq that clearly demonstrates to the poor, ignorant, and highly propaganized in the Middle East what an evil, imperialistic place that America truly is. That this view is horribly wrong does not decrease it’s veracity in the eyes of millions of desperately poor and uneducated Muslims. And it’s not like Our Glorious Leader’s actions have shown his willingness to be cognizant of Muslim sensibilities in the Middle East. Sure, he talks the talk of understanding and cooperation, but he continues a senseless, immoral war of occupation in Iraq that has killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.
Until and unless Our Glorious Leader truly takes the time to understand what is happening in the Middle East, and takes steps to improve how we are perceived in that part of the world, terrorism will continue to be the scourge that it is. Fighting politically-motivated violence with yet more violence has been clearly proven to be an ineffective means of demonstrating that Americans are not the Great Satan most of the Islamic world seems to think we are. Given Our Glorious Leader’s Iraq policy, though, it’s not difficult to understand why Muslims might think otherwise.
WE DESERVE BETTER.
