The United States and the Middle East Since 1945

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The perceived hatred and conflict between America and the Arab world are a subject that causes emotions among many people especially in the Arab world. Little’s book provides an interesting account of reasons for this hatred and the causes of 11^th 2001.

On a cloudless Tuesday morning in September 2001, two Boeing 767 jetliners commanded by Arab terrorists stroke the World Trade center. Ninety minutes later, the twin towers exploded, killing nearly 3,000 office workers, firemen, and passerby and crushing everything in nearby territory. In ways that few could ever have imaged; Osama Bin Laden and his Afghan-based terrorist network Al-Qaeda had brought the Middle East problems and crisis to America. As rescue workers helped people in lower Manhattan, policy makers in Washington developed plans for military reaction against Bin Laden and his Taliban allies, President George W. Bush posed a question that most Americans were already asking themselves “why do they hate us?’’ (Little, D Pg 1).

The President’s answer came during a nationally televised address nine days after the tragedy. “They hate our freedoms-our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, of freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other”. Bush asserted on 20 September. “These terrorists kill not merely to end lives because we stand in their way”. Although Bush’s remarks seemed to capture a contemporary truth, the full answer to his question was deeply rooted in the past.

Some initial answers may be found 130 years earlier, when Mark Twain and a band of self-styled pilgrims from different American cities and town first brought the US to the Middle East. Although his voyage took place more than a century before Middle East became a national obsession. Americans were provided with an enduring portrait of an unforgettable and unpredictable region by Twain at the moment when the United States was beginning to emerge as a super power (Little D, pg 2).

US interests in the Middle East have developed aggressively but, in some respects, American attitudes have changed little since the nineteenth century. The public at large of course is now far more likely to get its information from CNN or the New York Times than from the real resources that do not disseminate propaganda. The hundreds of students who have attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem or American University in Beirut, the thousands of emigrants who have made new lives for themselves in Israel, and the tens of thousands of tourists who have touched the wailing wall have helped created a more adequate picture of the Middle East in the United States. And the oil executives, national security managers, and academic experts who shape US policy today have a far better understanding of Middle East cultural, economic, religious and political peculiarities. (Little D, pg 4)

Yet early in the new millennium many Americans remain frustrated by the slow development of social change, disturbed by the persistence of political autocracy and appalled by the violent xenophobia of groups such as Al-Qaeda emanating from a part of the world that’s strategic and economic importance remains unsurpassed. From the dawn of the cold war through the twilight of the twentieth century, US policy makers insisted time and again that Islamic radicals, Israel prime ministers and Iraq dictators had merely misunderstood America’s good intentions and that better understanding would produce better relations. Over the years, however, critics from Tel Aviv to Tehran have responded that they understood those intentions all too well and that the peculiar 1900 anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic sentiments were as American as apple a pie. (Little D, pg 45)

During the early twentieth century, businessmen, missionaries and archeologists reinforced this orientalist outlook from popular magazines like National Geographic with the coming of the second world war, the Holocaust and the founding of Israel, however, anti-Semitism was stopped and Jews were “westernized” while Arabs and Muslims were “demonized” as anti-western terrorists. By the late 1990s these more complicated orientalist messages were being projected not only onto America’s movie screens through Hollywood blockbusters such as Schindler’s List and True Lies but also into America’s living rooms through nightly news footage and contrasted moderate and westernized Israelis with brute Arabs. (Little D, pg 68)

Not withstanding such orientalist orientation, the most recognizable symbol of the Middle East for most Americans has probably been the oil. During the quarter century after 1945, policy makers and oil executives developed a relationship that allowed the United States to provide and exert influence in the Arab world while keeping shareholders and friends of Israel relatively happy. What was best for Exxon and Texaco seemed also what was best for America, and vice versa. With the emergence of the organization of petroleum countries (OPEC) after 1979, however, corporate and national interests become opposed to each other.

Many on main street and capital Hill attributed the ensuring energy crisis to the plot between greedy Arab Sheiks and profit-hungry multinational corporations, who conspired to cut the output, rise prices and united American consumers while US policy makers, were preoccupied with cold war crises outraged at having their loyalty called into question, oil executives screamed foul, pushed patriotic themes in their public relation, and blamed America’s energy corporation principally on the special relationship between the United States and Israel (Little D, Pg 47)

America of course has had a special relationship with Israel and that relationship has created problems with Arab oil states. A common faith and democracy and the principle of lobby politics united the United States and Israel since 1940-s. Another factor contribution to the war relations between US and Israel was that Israel developed nuclear weapons which could make it a strategic American partner in the Middle East. The development of aggressive Israeli state was combined with regular American supply of conventional weapons and huge financial funding. (Little D, pg 148)

The 1990-91 Gulf War must be understood not merely as a response to Saddam Hussein’s smash and grab tactics but also a reaction to the “Vietnam syndrome” that had stopped American intervention to other countries for more than 20 years. The Middle East had actually served as the testing ground for an early application of the doctrine of “limited war” in 1958, when Eisenhower sent the Marine to Beirut and back in just 100 days. But the model of controlled escalation so central to success in the Middle East eventually produced disaster in Southeast Asia, where LBJs no-win had disastrous consequences for American foreign policies elsewhere (Little D, pg. 175)

George W. Bush representing neoconservative group in American establishment though that Clinton’s efforts to broker peace in Middle East were useless and hence distanced himself from the peace process. The inability of Clinton or Bush to break the Arab-Israeli statement would have come as no surprise to Mark Twain who had toured the Middle East eighty years before America’s forty-second and forty-third presidents were born.

Unlike most of other passengers aboard the Quaker city, Twain was a just judge of character and a lifelong student of irony who observed that whenever they went from Damascus to Jerusalem to Cairo, Americans tended to underestimate the resourcefulness of Arabs and Jews while overestimating their own Yankee abilities. This made him believe that if Uncle Sam would be so ignorant to exert its power on Middle East, he would be surely defeated early or later. Finally, Twain’s prognosis has been accomplished and Osama Bin Laden (or may be somebody else?) crushed twin towers in New York on 11th 2001. (Little D, pg 321)

Little’s analysis demonstrates that there were no easy solutions to the Middle East’s problems. The Bush administration claimed that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would rise democratic forces all over Middle East which in its turn would create preconditions for peace in this region. As time showed these statements were absolutely ungrounded and were a cover-up of imperialist strategy to gain control over rich oil and gas fields.

The Arab-Israeli conflict remains the point through which United States is seen by Arabs according to them. Indeed, it would be surprising if the Israeli –Palestinian conflict was not central in the minds of the Arab public. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, five major Arab-Israeli wars have shaped the collective psychology of several generations, each of which was devastating to the Arabs. History shows that another argument is true – only peace between Israelis and Arabs would be a final precondition for settling peace in Middle East and its democratization.

Historically, the US also hindered democracy in the Middle East. Shaw Pahlari was installed in Iran in 1953 replacing the democratically elected Mossadeq. In 1949, the US encouraged a military chief, Hunsia Zaim to overthrow the existing government of Syria, setting the stage for a military dictatorship. According to Little, Ziam immediately authorized a western pipeline project. As much as the reasons for these interventions are complicated, but they demonstrate that the US is most successful in spoiling democracy in the region rather than building it. (Little D, pg199)

There are aspects of the book well worth examining. Little opens with a chapter on America’s cultural aggression against the Arab world, where he makes the valid point that perceptions of Arabs in the United States lag far behind those of other ethnic groups in terms of sensitivity. The idiotic stereotypes of Arabs and Arab-Americans are evident in the American popular culture.

The majority of Americans still see Arabs in white and blacks, loving Aladdin and fearing Osama Bin Laden. This is a result of century long propaganda against Arab culture through films industry, popular culture etc. which stirred the hatred against Arab civilization. American propaganda and ideology portray Israelis as truthful friends and Arabs as aggressive rivals which are to be destroyed. Watching 11^th 2001 even more increased their fear of Arab which was used by American authorities to legitimize the war against Iraq and Afghanistan.

America has virtually become a Middle Eastern state because of its Iraqi presence. More often than not the region has absorbed its conquerors and neutralized them. Against this history stands an American tendency to impose the will of the United States and as Mark Twain put in Innocent Abroad, to bear down on the people of the region, “with America’s greatness, until we (crush) them”. Therefore, liberal order is impossible in Middle East until the United States stop engage aggressively in its affairs.

There is no denying the importance of the fact that democratization and liberalization of Middle East is a certain ideology or myth used to legitimize aggressive imperialist politics in this region.

If America want democratic and liberal Middle East why does it support ruthless autocratic Saudi dynasties, Pakistani military junta etc. The majority of Arab states which G.W. Bush calls “American friends”: are dictatorship which were sponsored by American corporations and political establishment for decades to stop development of real democratic alternative in Middle East. You would never see negative account of Saudi or UAE on American TV, not even a word about the absence of democracy and civil society, because these countries’ leaders as once American president said ‘are sons of bitch, but they are our sons of a bitch’.

To sum it up, as the history showed the involvement of the United States in the Middle Eastern political and economic affairs prove that it pursues utilitarian interests in these regions spoiling its developmental prospects. Contemporary situation in Iran shows that American propaganda searches for every possibility to demonize this country and its leaders, insulting him publicly.

As IEAA reports time and again showed Iran does not elaborate nuclear bomb, but American corporate media still continues to zombie American public with hysteria about alleged Iran aggressive plans, create propagandist films such as 300 Spartans etc.

Work Cited

Douglas Little. 2002. American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

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The United States and the Middle East Since 1945

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