Sheldon Richman: The Phony Mystery of Why They Hate Us

Source:Free Association

I don't tend to use the phrase of 'why they hate us', because it is a Far-Left way of almost justifying the 9-11 attacks without actually saying that. As if the 9-11 attacks are justifiable revenge for American Middle-Eastern policy. And then you have to go into who is they and do they really hate us or not. Its clear the Jihadist's not only hate American foreign policy and national security policy, America values and are liberal democratic values, American individualism and everything else. But that doesn't mean the average person in the Arab World hates us.

But the average person in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and other countries in the Arab World if anything likes those things about Americans. They don't like everything about American culture, but they tend to like us. And a reason why a lot of them have emigrated over here to make a better life for themselves and to escape the authoritarianism from their own country. They want to build a quality life for themselves and live in freedom while they stay true to their own Arab and religious values that they brought from home.

I can give you excellent reasons why Arabs hate American foreign policy and our national security policy as it relates to the Middle-East and perhaps in general. Its the hypocrisy of it. We claim to be big champions of liberal democracy in individual freedom on one hand, as we back big government statist  authoritarian regimes who are the complete opposite of what we preach and practice at home. We claim to support individual freedom at home and even abroad while we back Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and his authoritarian regime. The same thing with the Shah in Iran in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. President Jimmy Carter even called the Shah a model of stability and leadership in the Middle East in 1977. And the Shah is thrown out of power by his own people just more than a year later.

America, at one point during the Cold War, were allies with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, because he invaded the Islamic Republic of Iran. America has a seventy-year history of backing authoritarian dictators and regimes while we claim to be champions of liberal democracy and freedom. And Arabs on the ground who hate their authoritarian regimes, see through the American hypocrisy of it and stand up and even risk their lives as a result. And fall victims to Islamic theocratic radicals who if anything are even worst than the authoritarians that they want to replace. Which is what happened to Iran in the late 1970s as they became the Islamic Republic of Iran. And what happened to Afghanistan in the 1990s after they defeated Russia with American help and Islamic theocratic Taliban comes to power there.

The justification for American backing of Middle-Eastern dictators and their regimes has always been, "that if we don't do this, those regimes will fall, because they don't have the backing of their people and something worst will come in and replace it. Who would be anti-American." Well, what do you call the Islamic Republic in Iran? They came to power by overthrowing the Iranian Monarchy that was backed by America and Britain. What do you call ISIS in Iraq and Syria? They came to power in Iraq, because Iraq couldn't or wouldn't defend itself and had their own corrupt government led by Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. We're still backing the Islamic Kingdom in Saudi Arabia, who still treats their women like slaves and second-class women. Who put people to death for being gay. Who finances schools and groups that put out this anti-Western and American propaganda.

Not saying that if America stopped backing Middle-Eastern dictators, or that he we never did that in the first place, that those countries would back Western liberal democratic values and individual freedom. Maybe they would replace those military and Marxist dictatorships with Far-Right Islamic theocratic states. The Arab World has no history of liberal democracy, liberal democratic values and individual freedom. But if you want to promote liberal democracy and freedom, you do that by encouraging people to get behind it and backing people who support it and would bring it to their country. Not by backing regimes that are anti-freedom and completely Un-democratic. What America has done is to back authoritarianism and statism in the name of American foreign policy interests. And the people in those countries see right through that propaganda.