Following is a series of articles in the series "Why America is Hated". This material is offered in the spirit of understanding America's role in the world and the impact that we have had on its citizens. It is not intended as fodder for disrespect for America, and particularly not as disrespect for American citizens and residents. I did not write any of these excellent articles myself. If you have any questions, please contact the original authors directly. I have included all of the contact information that I have available. Peace, Bill ************************************************************* ************************************************************* ************************************************************* WHY AMERICA IS HATED - Part 1 Return-Path: fjgil@CATTELL.psych.upenn.edu Received: from cattell.psych.upenn.edu (cattell.psych.upenn.edu Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 17:41:25 -0400 From: Francisco Gil-White fjgil@CATTELL.psych.upenn.edu Dear NIGHTLINE, It is commendable that you seek to explore the causes of the hatred against us. Please do your best to turn this into a history lesson. I implore you to avoid trivialities. Nobody wants to destroy America because it produces porn, or because it does not cover its women. Much less because it supposedly promotes individual liberties. Even to suggest such a thing will distract the minds of Americans who need to understand what their government has been doing over the years. It is your job, as patriots, to inform Americans about things that the government might not want us to hear. That is the only sense in which you are the IV Estate. Otherwise, you are just the propaganda division of the US government. I beg you to rise to the patriotic occasion. Please address the following: 1) The Eisenhower administration's CIA brought down a popular representative government in Iran, in 1953, because Mosaddeq, the prime minister, wanted to nationalise Iran's oil. America installed, nurtured, cradled, and propped the Shah for the next 25 years no matter how dictatorial and oppressive he became. This behavior, of course, led to the bloody Islamic revolution in Iran. You have to SAY this, and to put the blame where it belongs: OUR CIA, and OUR foreign policy. Show us that you are a free press, and not the propaganda division of the US government. 2) Saddam Hussein is another CIA creation. We call him a 'Hitler' now, but he comes with a "Made in America" label stamped on the back of his neck. We installed him and supported him, and we encouraged him to wage a bloody war against Iran over a few square meters of real-estate. We needed to hit Iran hard, thru Iraq, because Iran had become dangerously anti-American because...uh huh...you begin to see the problem. 3) Saddam thought he had our blessing for everything. We had never stopped him before, and we had been supplying him with weapons. That is why he attacked Kuwait, the deliverance of which cost American lives. 4) Jihad as political holy war had been a dead concept in Islam for centuries. When a few crackpots in Pakistan and Afganistan started talking about a holy war against the Soviet imperialists, the US thought, "Great! Let's get this started and launch millions of Muslims against our Cold War opponents." So we fostered, encouraged, and funded this holy war of the mujahideen. Osama bin Laden was our ally, spending his own money and organizing people on the ground, as well as bringing them from all parts of the Islamic world. WE built the network that is bin Laden's Al Queida. 5) When it became necessary to deliver Kuwait from OUR violent protegé Saddam Hussein, American troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's homeland. But they never left, and this is holy soil. This insult is added to the fact that we installed the ruling family there and have been supporting them ever since even though they run the country in dictatorial fashion and are widely hated. That is what made bin Laden our enemy. We had already built him up into a powerful warlord, and now he had gotten out of control. Sounds like Saddam? Yes it does. 6) When the Islamic party in Algeria won in fair and free elections, we supported the violent crackdown of the military because, it was said, the Islamicists would abolish democracy. So we made sure it was abolished before the Islamicists had a chance to try. It is hard to imagine that the bloody rampages that have characterized Algeria since could have been worse under the Islamicists. But we will never know, because America hates democratic outcomes. What it likes is tin-pot dictators that are obliged in clientship relationships to the United States. Of course, this is very dangerous. But it keeps happening because what each President keeps thinking about is the next election, not long-term outcomes, and American's don't read History. 7) Finally, we have been supporting Israel since its inception, even though it is a state born of terrorist violence, and even though its abuses have been many. Menachem Begin, one of the first prime-ministers of Israel, used to be a wanted terrorist with a bounty on his head. But who knows this? Do you? Americans don't read history. They are not interested. YOU MUST BRING THIS UP. The Palestinians are guilty of crimes as well, but we have never shown an even hand in the region: we mostly condemn the crimes of the Palestinians, the crimes of the weak. We have been Israel's unconditional allies. 8) I want to end this list with the future. In a few days, NATO troops will leave Macedonia and a bloodbath will begin. Paramilitary squads are trained and ready, and it is likely that the army will join them in anti-Albanian rampage. Nobody on the ground believes that a peaceful outcome is even remotely possible once NATO leaves. The conclusion that Muslims everywhere will draw is that we don't care about Muslim lives, and that we have left Muslims in Macedonia to be butchered by Macedonian Slavs in retaliation for the bombings. This is how it will be seen. 9) Another point for the future is that, without firing a shot, our rhetoric has already radicalized many in Pakistan, and the country is becoming unstable. The brand of fundamentalism in Pakistan is Taliban, imported from the conflict in Afganistan when the Pakistanis assisted the Taliban by letting them train inside Pakistan. If Pakistan falls to a Taliban revolution, the same people who are protecting bin Laden will control a country with millions of people AND nuclear weapons. This list is incomplete. However, it brings into relief that the claim that Americans are hated because of their "culture" is total madness. It will not help Americans understand why they have been attacked. Please: Educate Americans about this history. Stay away from the ridiculous claims that we are hated because we respect individual liberties. In the Muslim world, over and over again, we consistently HAVE NOT respected individual liberties but rather supported tin-pot dictators. Therefore, the claim that we are hated because of our "culture" is a complete travesty of the truth. Before the fiasco in Iran, Americans were perceived all over the Muslim world as a benign world power. The hated powers were the colonialists: France and Britain. American culture was not radically different then. Women showed their skin, unmarried people kissed in movies, there was pornography, drinking, etc. If we were really hated for our "culture" this hate should have peaked in the 60's. It is peaking NOW. Now that we have become much more conservative than in that decade. REMEMBER: It is your duty to educate. Patriotism for a media outlet, at this crucial moment, means teaching history. It means using the freedom of the press to say things that are difficult to say and hear. Patriotism means NOT BEING PROPAGANDISTS FOR THE GOVERNMENT. Patriotism, for you, and for me, and for all of us, means not allowing the truth to be the first casualty of war. Please, I beg you, do your duty. Now more than ever. Francisco Gil-White Fellow, Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania ___________________________________________________ Office Phone: (215) 573-2622 Cell: 267-971-3070 Fax: 215-898-7301 fjgil@psych.upenn.edu http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~fjgil/ Assistant Professor of Psychology University of Pennsylvania 3815 Walnut Street, Suite 400 Philadelphia PA 19104-6196 Fellow Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict MEXICO home: (52-5) 259-2461 or 8328 Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing Helen Keller ************************************************************* ************************************************************* ************************************************************* WHY AMERICA IS HATED - Part 2 Date: Saturday, September 22, 2001 6:04 PM Subject: Who do we cry for? Will Tears Ever Stop? By John Gerassi I can't help crying. As soon as I see a person on TV telling the heart-rendering story of the tragic fate of their loved-one in the World Trade Center disaster, I can't control my tears. But then I wonder why didn't I cry when our troops wiped out some 5,000 poor people in Panama's El Chorillo neighborhood on the excuse of looking for Noriega. Our leaders knew he was hiding elsewhere but we destroyed El Chorillo because the folks living there were nationalists who wanted the U.S. out of Panama completely. Worse still, why didn't I cry when we killed two million Vietnamese, mostly innocent peasants, in a war which its main architect, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, knew we could not win? When I went to give blood the other day, I spotted a Cambodian doing the same, three up in the line, and that reminded me: Why didn't I cry when we helped Pol Pot butcher another million by giving him arms and money, because he was opposed to "our enemy" (who eventually stopped the killing fields)? To stay up but not cry that evening, I decided to go to a movie. I chose Lumumba, at the Film Forum, and again I realized that I hadn't cried when Our government arranged for the murder of the Congo's only decent leader, to be replaced by General Mobutu, a greedy, vicious, murdering dictator. Nor did I cry when the CIA arranged for the overthrow of Indonesia's Sukarno, who had fought the Japanese World War II invaders and established a free independent country, and then replaced him by another General, Suharto, who had collaborated with the Japanese and who proceeded to execute at least half a million "Marxists" (in a country where, if folks had ever heard of Marx, it was at best Groucho)? I watched TV again last night and cried again at the picture of that wonderful now-missing father playing with his two-month old child. Yet when I remembered the slaughter of thousands of Salvadorans, so graphically described in the Times by Ray Bonner, or the rape and murder of those American nuns and lay sisters there, all perpetrated by CIA trained and paid agents, I never shed a tear. I even cried when I heard how brave had been Barbara Olson, wife of the Solicitor General, whose political views I detested. But I didn't cry when the US invaded that wonderful tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada and killed innocent citizens who hoped to get a better life by building a tourist airfield, which my government called proof of a Russian base, but then finished building once the island was secure in the US camp again. Why didn't I cry when Ariel Sharon, today Israel's prime minister, planned, then ordered, the massacre of two thousand poor Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, the same Sharon who, with such other Irgun and Stern Gang terrorists become prime ministers as Begin and Shamir, killed the wives and children of British officers by blowing up the King David hotel where they were billeted? I guess one only cries only for one's own. But is that a reason to demand vengeance on anyone who might disagree with us? That's what Americans seem to want. Certainly our government does, and so too most of our media. Do we really believe that we have a right to exploit the poor folk of the world for our benefit, because we claim we are free and they are not? So now we're going to go to war. We are certainly entitled to go after those who killed so many of our innocent brothers and sisters. And we'll win, of course. Against Bin Laden. Against Taliban. Against Iraq. Against whoever and whatever. In the process we'll kill a few innocent children again. Children who have no clothes for the coming winter. No houses to shelter them. And no schools to learn why they are guilty, at two or four or six years old. Maybe Evangelists Falwell and Robertson will claim their death is good because they weren't Christians, and maybe some State Department spokesperson will tell the world that they were so poor that they're now better off. And then what? Will we now be able to run the world the way we want to? With all the new legislation establishing massive surveillance of you and me, our CEOs will certainly be pleased that the folks demonstrating against globalization will now be cowed for ever. No more riots in Seattle, Quebec or Genoa. Peace at last. Until next time. Who will it be then? A child grown-up who survived our massacre of his innocent parents in El Chorillo? A Nicaraguan girl who learned that her doctor mother and father were murdered by a bunch of gangsters we called democratic contras who read in the CIA handbook that the best way to destroy the only government which was trying to give the country's poor a better lot was to kill its teachers, health personnel and government farm workers? Or maybe it will be a bitter Chilean who is convinced that his whole family was wiped out on order of Nixon's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who could never tell the difference between a communist and a democratic socialist or even a nationalist. When will we Americans learn that as long as we keep trying to run the world for the sake of the bottom line, we will suffer someone's revenge? No war will ever stop terrorism as long as we use terror to have our way. So I stopped crying because I stopped watching TV. I went for a walk. Just four houses from mine. There, a crowd had congregated to lay flowers And lit candles in front of our local firehouse. It was closed. It had been closed since Tuesday because the firemen, a wonderful bunch of friendly guys who always greeted neighborhood folks with smiles and good cheer, had rushed so fast to save the victims of the first tower that they perished with them when it collapsed. And I cried again. So I said to myself when I wrote this, don't send it; some of your students, colleagues, neighbors will hate you, maybe even harm you. But then I put on the TV again, and there was Secretary of State Powell telling me that it will be okay to go to war against these children, these poor folks, these US-haters, because we are civilized and they are not. So I decided to risk it. Maybe, reading this, one more person will ask: Why are so many people in the world ready to die to give us a taste of what we give them? John Gerassi Professor of Political Science Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY e-mail: tgerassi@qc1.qc.edu ************************************************************* ************************************************************* ************************************************************* WHY AMERICA IS HATED - Part 3 The United States and Middle East: Why Do "They" Hate Us? By Stephen R. Shalom The list below presents specific incidents of U.S. policy in the Middle East. The list minimizes the grievances against the United States in the region because it excludes more generalized long-standing policies, such as U.S. backing for authoritarian regimes (arming Saudi Arabia, training the secret police in Iran under the Shah, providing arms and aid to Turkey as it ruthlessly attacked Kurdish villages, etc.) The list also excludes actions of Israel in which the United States is indirectly implicated because Israel has been the leading or second-ranking recipient of U.S. aid for many years and has received U.S. high-tech weaponry and the diplomatic benefit of U.S. veto power in the Security Council. 1948: Israel established. U.S. declines to press Israel to allow expelled Palestinians to return. 1949: CIA backs military coup deposing elected government of Syria. 1953: CIA helps overthrow the democratically-elected Mossadeq government in Iran (which had nationalized the British oil company) leading to a quarter-century of repressive and dictatorial rule by the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. 1956: U.S. cuts off promised funding for Aswan Dam in Egypt after Egypt receives Eastern bloc arms. 1956: Israel, Britain, and France invade Egypt. U.S. does not support invasion, but the involvement of its NATO allies severely diminishes Washington's reputation in the region. 1958: U.S. troops land in Lebanon to preserve "stability". early 1960s: U.S. unsuccessfully attempts assassination of Iraqi leader, Abdul Karim Qassim. 1963: U.S. reported to gives Iraqi Ba'ath party (soon to be headed by Saddam Hussein) names of communists to murder, which they do with vigor. 1967-: U.S. blocks any effort in the Security Council to enforce SC Resolution 242, calling for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the 1967 war. 1970: Civil war between Jordan and PLO. Israel and U.S. prepare to intervene on side of Jordan if Syria backs PLO. 1972: U.S. blocks Sadat's efforts to reach a peace agreement with Egypt. 1973: U.S. military aid enables Israel to turn the tide in war with Syria and Egypt. 1973-75: U.S. supports Kurdish rebels in Iraq. When Iran reaches an agreement with Iraq in 1975 and seals the border, Iraq slaughters Kurds and U.S. denies them refuge. Kissinger secretly explains that "covert action should not be confused with missionary work." 1978-79: Iranians begin demonstrations against the Shah. U.S. tells Shah it supports him "without reservation" and urges him to act forcefully. Until the last minute, U.S. tries to organize military coup to save the Shah, but to no avail. 1979-88: U.S. begins covert aid to Mujahideen in Afghanistan six months before Soviet invasion in Dec. 1979. Over the next decade U.S. provides training and more than $3 billion in arms and aid. 1980-88: Iran-Iraq war. When Iraq invades Iran, the U.S. opposes any Security Council action to condemn the invasion. U.S. soon removes Iraq from its list of nations supporting terrorism and allows U.S. arms to be transferred to Iraq. At the same time, U.S. lets Israel provide arms to Iran and in 1985 U.S. provides arms directly (though secretly) to Iran. U.S. provides intelligence information to Iraq. Iraq uses chemical weapons in 1984; U.S. restores diplomatic relations with Iraq. 1987 U.S. sends its navy into the Persian Gulf, taking Iraq's side; an overly-aggressive U.S. ship shoots down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing 290. 1981, 1986: U.S. holds military maneuvers off the coast of Libya in waters claimed by Libya with the clear purpose of provoking Qaddafi. In 1981, a Libyan plane fires a missile and two Libyan planes shot down. In 1986, Libya fires missiles that land far from any target and U.S. attacks Libyan patrol boats, killing 72, and shore installations. When a bomb goes off in a Berlin nightclub, killing two, the U.S. charges that Qaddafi was behind it (possibly true) and conducts major bombing raids in Libya, killing dozens of civilians, including Qaddafi's adopted daughter. 1982: U.S. gives "green light" to Israeli invasion of Lebanon, killing more than 10,000 civilians. U.S. chooses not to invoke its laws prohibiting Israeli use of U.S. weapons except in self-defense. 1983: U.S. troops sent to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping force; intervene on one side of a civil war. Withdraw after suicide bombing of marine barracks. 1984: U.S.-backed rebels in Afghanistan fire on civilian airliner. 1988: Saddam Hussein kills many thousands of his own Kurdish population and uses chemical weapons against them. The U.S. increases its economic ties to Iraq. 1990-91: U.S. rejects any diplomatic settlement of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (for example, rebuffing any attempt to link the two regional occupations, of Kuwait and of Palestine). U.S. leads international coalition in war against Iraq. Civilian infrastructure targeted. To promote "stability" U.S. refuses to aid post-war uprisings by Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north, denying the rebels access to captured Iraqi weapons and refusing to prohibit Iraqi helicopter flights. 1991-: Devastating economic sanctions are imposed on Iraq. U.S. and Britain block all attempts to lift them. Hundreds of thousands die. Though Security Council had stated that sanctions were to be lifted once Saddam Hussein's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction were ended, Washington makes it known that the sanctions would remain as long as Saddam remains in power. Sanctions in fact strengthen Saddam's position. Asked about the horrendous human consequences of the sanctions, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declares that "the price is worth it." 1993-: U.S. launches missile attack on Iraq, claiming self-defense against an alleged assassination attempt on former president Bush two months earlier. 1998: U.S. and U.K. bomb Iraq over the issue of weapons inspections, even though Security Council is just then meeting to discuss the matter. 1998: U.S. destroys factory producing half of Sudan's pharmaceutical supply, claiming retaliation for attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and that factory was involved in chemical warfare. U.S. later acknowledges there is no evidence for the chemical warfare charge. ************************************************************* ************************************************************* ************************************************************* WHY AMERICA IS HATED - Part 4 Business Week SEPTEMBER 20, 2001 NEWS ANALYSIS The Roots of Resentment Beneath the international expressions of sympathy and support is a growing reaction against American foreign policy By John Rossant in Paris, with Pete Engardio in New York, Dexter Roberts in Beijing, Susan Postlewaite in Cairo, and Paul Starobin in Moscow The entire world seemed to pause in solidarity with American suffering in the hours and days following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. With national flags flying at half-mast from Paris to Tokyo and the revulsion and horror expressed by millions around the globe, many Americans felt less alone in a suddenly uncertain world. It even seemed as if the U.S. had no enemies at all -- apart from a shadowy band of Islamic radicals in distant lands. Tap the pulse of the streets in many world capitals, though, and it becomes clear the U.S. fan club is not as big as many American citizens and policymakers want to believe. In France, politicians from across the political spectrum rushed to support the U.S. in a way not seen since World War II. But there also has been a rash of angry calls to the popular Radio France Internationale. "What is so special about the American dead?" asked one caller. "Millions have died in Africa, but they never left messages on answering machines since they were too poor to have cell phones." Half a world away, Chinese Internet sites were jammed with anti-U.S. vitriol before censors clamped down. When he heard of the bombing, Beijing construction site supervisor Li Jiankun, 30, says he felt sympathy for the American people but none for the U.S. government. "They are constantly intervening in other countries' affairs," Li says. "This is an opinion shared by all my co-workers." And in the streets of Cairo, tour guide Abdel Hady Gaballah voices the sentiments of many: "Everyone knows that America's policies lack justice," he says. Varied voices, indeed. But they mirror an unpleasant truth: Beneath the surface of public promises of solidarity with the U.S. in this time of crisis lurks a deep and growing resentment of America and its policies (table). To be sure, anti-Americanism in most places is hardly the virulent variety exhibited by flag-burning mobs. And more often that not, it's mixed with admiration and even a desire to live in America. UNDERCURRENTS But the sentiment is serious enough that it could pose major challenges as President George W. Bush solicits worldwide support for a war on terrorism. Across the 22 nations of the Arab world, strong anti-U.S. undercurrents breed tolerance of terrorist networks like those of Osama bin Laden. And as the U.S. fights back in the coming months, domestic opinion could weaken the support in Europe, Central Asia, and moderate Mideast states for sustained military action, especially if U.S. strikes kill Muslim civilians. The causes of anti-Americanism differ from region to region. And they reflect how much the world has changed since the end of the cold war. American ideals inspired student protesters in Beijing at Tiananmen Square in 1989. And in the early 1990s, the U.S. basked in glory after driving the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. Throughout the collapsed Soviet empire, the American way was viewed as the new model. Following the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993, Washington was seen as an honest broker in the search for peace. Canvas the global scene now. Begin with the turbulent Middle East, where support for eventual U.S. actions will be vital. It is the one region where anti-Americanism is now metastasizing out of control. At its most extreme, groups such as bin Laden's Al Qaeda network or the underground al Gamma al-Islamiyya, responsible for the murder of 58 tourists in Egypt in 1997, view America as the infidel power that is spreading its permissive, secular culture, the Great Satan that pollutes the world with its pornographic cinema, its alcohol, and its indulgence of women. America is also seen as the prop for corrupt, secular Arab regimes, and of course, Israel. To these radicals, it is imperative that Americans be violently driven out of Dar al-Islam, the lands of Islam. FERTILE GROUND While only a tiny minority support terrorism, this stance strikes a chord among vast segments in the Middle East. The decade-old intifada among Palestinians has intensified smoldering resentment in moderate states such as Egypt over massive U.S. support for Israel. And while these nations backed the Persian Gulf War coalition against Saddam Hussein, they're angry at years of U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq. One sign: a Sept. 12 anti-U.S. demonstration in Kuwait itself. "The Arabs sense they have been not only scorned by the U.S but considered somewhat less than human," says political scientist Dan Tschirgi of American University in Cairo. The failure of key Muslim nations to benefit from globalization has created a more fertile ground in which extreme ideas can grow. While the U.S. boomed in the 1990s, Arab economies grew by a mere 0.7% annually. Unchecked population growth has resulted in massive youth unemployment. This has been coupled with a breakdown in social services. Indeed, across huge swaths of Western and Northern Africa all the way to Pakistan, Islamic institutions -- schools, welfare groups, even hospitals -- have been stepping in to fill the gaps. "You can see people switching loyalties to an Islamic belief system as secular, liberal models fail for them," says Mark Malloch Brown, head of the United Nations Development Program. The same trends are at work in the old Soviet republics of Central Asia. Since 1990, the economies of Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan have shrunk dramatically. But a gush of U.S. aid in the early 1990s has slowed because of frustration over the slow pace of economic reform. "The social consequence is that you see an unhappy population that is moving toward Islamic fundamentalism," says Kathleen Collins, a University of Notre Dame researcher who has spent three years in Central Asia. SCHEMING Economic despair isn't the only ingredient for anti-Americanism. Take China. It has prospered over the past decade. But according to popular sentiment stoked by Beijing, the U.S. is scheming to keep China from becoming a world power. Many Chinese resent U.S. support of Taiwan and its criticism of Beijing's human-rights abuses. "The Chinese do not support violence against America," says Gao Chaoqun, executive editor of Strategy & Management, a Beijing-based policy journal. "They just resent the U.S. hegemony." Washington also cannot take the current front of European solidarity for granted. In Russia, there is resentment over Bush's plans to renounce missile control treaties and a feeling that the U.S. didn't offer enough aid after showering it with capitalistic advice. Among the left in Western Europe, the march of U.S. free-market policies and the abrogation of the Kyoto global-warming treaty have sparked a globalization backlash. Members of France's center-left coalition government also are starting to chime in. "The reality is that American policy could only result in the kind of terrorism we've just seen," says Green Party member Noël Mamère. For the past decade, a triumphant America has been able to push its agenda without worrying too much about what everyone else thought. That may well have to change if it wants the rest of the world's help for the fight ahead. ANGER IN THE STREETS China, May, 1999 U.S. Embassy attacked in Beijing after accidental U.S. bombing of Chinese Embassy in Serbia Greece, November, 1999 Thousands of anti-U.S. protesters fight Athens police and burn shops as President Bill Clinton arrives France, April, 2000 McDonald's employee dies in bombing of restaurant in Dinan by nationalists opposed to the U.S. chain Yemen, October, 2000 Bomb kills 17 sailors on USS Cole after anti-U.S. protests over Israeli attacks on Palestinians Iran, December, 2000 Marchers burn U.S. flags and chant "Death to America" on anniversay of 1980 takeover of U.S. Embassy Canada, April, 2001 Thousands march in Quebec City as 34 heads of state meet for Summit of the Americas seeking freer regional trade New York, May, 2001 U.S. is voted off U.N. human-rights panel Sweden, June, 2001 Outraged at Washington's refusal to sign the Kyoto global-warming accord, protesters in Gothenburg clash with police during George W. Bush's first Presidential trip to Europe Cuba, July, 2001 Some 1.2 million march in Havana as Fidel Castro leads nation's biggest anti-U.S. rally in four decades South Africa, September, 2001 U.S. boycotts World Conference Against Racism after it is criticized for past slavery Pakistan, September, 2001 Celebrations break out after the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings ************************************************************* ************************************************************* ************************************************************* WHY AMERICA IS HATED - Part 5 A call for US to be fair to Palestinians Boston Globe 9/21/2001 By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Staff IN REACTING to the attack on the United States, Ehud Sprinzak, a widely quoted Israeli terrorism expert at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said, ''Many of us feel vindicated by this.'' He said the pictures ''are better than a thousand ambassadors trying to explain how dangerous Islamic terror is.'' Sprinzak said, ''From the perspective of Jews, it is the most important public relations act ever committed in our favor.'' That was a smug and brazen display of self-assuredness. Sprinzak assumes that the attacks will allow Israel to become the most innocent lamb in the Middle East. As the United States shakes down the Islamic world for Osama bin Laden, Israel's army hopes it will be spared a shakeup of its relationship with us. Contrary to Sprinzak's hope that the attack would play in Israel's ''favor,'' it should inspire in the United States a new sense of fairness. If terrorism out of the Middle East is to stop, America must stop fueling the spiral of violence with its lopsided support of Israel. America has to stop turning a blind eye to Israel's use of American weapons to kill Palestinians. Much have been made of the Palestinians who cheered the destruction of the World Trade Center. Photos of rock-throwing Palestinians are a staple in American newspapers. In American households, names like ''Arafat,'' ''Hamas,'' and ''bin Laden'' are much more reflexively connected to Middle East violence than ''Lockheed Martin,'' ''Boeing,'' and ''Pratt and Whitney.'' It is tragic whenever a Palestinian mob or bomber kills Jews. But if Americans really want to understand why Americans might have been targeted for catastrophe in New York and Washington, we can no longer ignore the fact that we are helping the Israeli police and military to outkill Palestinians by more than a 3-to-1 margin. In the last year of clashes, the Associated Press has counted 632 Palestinian and 174 Israeli deaths. Americans can no longer ignore why Israel is winning the body count in their conflict. Since World War II, and despite some ups and downs in our relationship, Israel has been the largest total recipient of American aid, between $81 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service, and $92 billion, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a think tank founded by former American foreign service officers. The beginning of large-scale sales to Israel began with the selling of Hawk missiles by President John F. Kennedy. Today, Israel has 320 American-made F-16 fighter planes, more than any other nation in the world except for the United States. Israel has ordered 100 more, which will be delivered through 2009. While Palestinian children are criminalized for throwing rocks, Israel has not been seriously criticized for using its 50 American-made Apache helicopters (with orders for 29 more) to attack Palestinians with laser-guided missiles. According to Newsweek last month, US-made helicopters have been involved in nine of 29 assassination attempts by Israel. ''We spend a lot of money buying arms in the United States,'' Shlomo Dror, an Israeli defense spokesman, told Newsweek. ''I'm sure US companies would not want that to change.'' The United States sells plenty of arms to friendly Arab nations, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, but by all accounts, Israel gets the most lethal equipment with the best targeting electronics. Though on paper it appears that Egypt is close to Israel in US aid, the quality of the aid is so different that retired US Army Colonel Norvell B. De Atkine told The Wall Street Journal a year ago, ''from a military point of view, the gap between Israeli and Arab military might has widened profoundly over the last 15 years.'' The gap in carnage has widened so profoundly that it is no surprise that the Arab world is angry not only at Israel, but at us for letting Israel behave too often as if it is a law unto itself. The United States never said much back in the 1980s when Israel sold arms to the apartheid regime in South Africa and not much now when Israel has bulldozed and impounded Palestinians into parched lands no different than Soweto. While 1,300 Israelis have been injured in clashes, at least 10 times more Palestinians, more than 14,000, have been injured by the more potent Israeli police and military. Until that imbalance is confronted, America is chasing only symptoms, not solutions. No one no longer doubts how dangerous Islamist terrorism is. We might not have had to experience it so horribly here at home, if we had long ago condemned Israeli terrorism, conducted with weapons made here at home. http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/264/oped/A_call_for_US_to_be_fair_to_Palestinians.shtml Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is us.f130.mail.yahoo.com This story ran on page A23 of the Boston Globe on 9/21/2001. (c) Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company. ************************************************************* ************************************************************* ************************************************************* WHY AMERICA IS HATED - Part 6 Published on Thursday, September 20, 2001 in USA Today Despair Feeds Hatred, Extremism by Sandy Tolan An hour after the attacks, I was sitting catatonic at my computer screen, trying to get some news, when my neighbor poked his head in my office. "Ever wonder," he asked, "why we're so hated? Fifty years ago we were so beloved. What happened?" His question penetrates the simple facade built in recent days by the mass media: of America in a battle of Good vs. Evil; of the attacks portrayed only as the work of hate-filled religious zealots. The men in the four doomed airliners were filled with hatred and a twisted interpretation of Islam. But this explanation alone is not sufficient. It does not account for the flammable mix of rage and despair that has been building up in the Middle East since the Gulf War's end. Seven years ago, in Hebron in the West Bank, I attended a funeral for a Hamas follower, shot by Israeli soldiers after he lunged at them with acid. In the funeral tent, mourners handed out candy to celebrate the martyr's ascent to heaven. Afterward, in the street, young boys stopped their laughing and roughhousing long enough to tell me that they, too, hoped to grow up and die in such an honorable way. My question then was like my neighbor's on Sept. 11: "Why?" Decades of humiliation As a journalist working regularly in the West Bank and Gaza, I repeatedly witnessed the humiliation and anger of a population living under decades of occupation: Israeli bulldozers knocking over families' ancient stone homes and uprooting their olive groves; military checkpoints, sometimes eight or 10 within 15 miles, turning 20-minute commutes into 3-hour odysseys; the sealing off of Jerusalem and the third-holiest shrine in Islam to Muslims across the West Bank; the confiscation of Jerusalem identification cards, and hence citizenship, from Palestinian students who'd been abroad for too long; the thirst of villagers facing severe water shortages while Israeli settlers across the fence grew green lawns and lounged by swimming pools; U.S. M-16s used to shoot at stone-throwing boys. Again and again, Palestinians asked me: Why does the American superpower support this? Do ordinary Americans know about this? Do they care? Death tolls It was no surprise when West Bank streets later filled with men burning American flags and waving posters of Saddam Hussein, given our country's lead role in sanctions against Iraq. Children there were dying from dehydration and disease -- a half-million excess deaths, according to a 1999 UNICEF study, or 5,000 a month. This is almost the projected death toll of the World Trade Center blasts. Again, the questions: Do Americans know about this suffering? Do they care? At work in the Arab streets is the rage of the weak and ignored. Young men, out of work and nearly out of hope, look for someone to blame. In such an atmosphere of despair, absent any perception of justice or equal treatment, extremism grows. In its most perverse form, it helps turn commercial airliners into flaming missiles, causing unfathomable suffering. It can be comforting to blame it all on the insane religious fervor of The Other. Much harder is to understand that our own failure to witness and address the suffering of others -- the children of Iraq, for example -- has helped create fertile recruiting ground for groups seeking vengeance with the blood of innocents. Now the network theme music pounds out the drumbeat of war. Talk shows speak of "dusting off the nukes" and wiping out entire countries. Last week, the deputy secretary of defense spoke of a "sustained campaign" aimed at "ending states who sponsor terrorism." (U.S. officials later said he misspoke.) But if the attacks on the United States lie just as much in rage and a sense of injustice as they do in religious fervor, will bombing a country senseless make us safer? Or will it help perpetuate more rage, more hatred, more despair -- and, quite possibly, more terror in the United States? Sandy Tolan is an independent journalist and radio documentary producer. He has won numerous awards for his reporting on the Middle East. (c) Copyright 2001 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ************************************************************* ************************************************************* ************************************************************* WHY AMERICA IS HATED - Part 7 ...and this article doesn't consider the effects of the sanctions against Iraq, which have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children in the last decade. Peace, Bill From: "Smith-Ferri" smithferri@pacific.net To: wthomson@umich.edu Subject: Why America is Hated Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 08:25:05 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 The Soul of A Nation September 20, 2001 by David Smith-Ferri, member of Voices in the Wilderness I grew up right outside New York City. The zoo, the parks, the museums, the theaters of NYC were my cultural training ground. I paid for college by working at the NY Stock Exchange, and when I was out of college, I came to NY to live and work. The recent attack on the WTC felt to me very much like an attack on my childhood and early adulthood, on my origins. My first actions on the morning of September 11th were phone calls to my brothers and sisters and other family members who live and work in and around NYC. This took much of the day. The connection with people was vital, and it kept me for a while from going into shock. But eventually the shock came, and for days I moved as though I carried a very heavy weight. When we first learned of the violence in NY and DC, some of us had no words. We felt it was an unspeakable horror, unspeakable that defenseless and innocent people should be brutally attacked and killed. And it was. Let us call it what it is: murder...largescale...a massacre. In the week after the attack on the WTC, I talked with my brother-in-law who is a Manhattan policeman. He said the most remarkable thing is how New Yorkers have pulled together. Taking in strangers who were stranded and putting them up in their homes. On the streets, people breaking down in tears and being comforted by people they've never met before. And of course a great outpouring of goodwill and cooperation for the rescue effort. New Yorkers, he said, have come together like never before. This is a time for coming together, a time for unity, without which we are lost. Unity depends upon respect, tolerance, caring. Surely this is the really positive aspect of all the flags flying around town -- that Americans are united: united in our stand for freedom, respect, tolerance. These flags are a statement that we care about the well-being of our neighbors; that we grieve along with the individuals and families who were most painfully touched by the violence; that we are angry because violence is a threat to our freedom, it creates fear and hatred, it violates the code of respect that freedom rests on. In the midst of this, a question arises -- a question we might like to duck or dodge, but which won't go unanswered. "How far does our respect reach?" Clearly it reaches from one side of this nation to the other, from sea to shining sea. The question is: Does it reach to Afghanistan? Right now, in Afghanistan, tens of thousands of people are leaving or trying to leave their country. Those who have no hope of leaving, especially the women who aren't even allowed to leave their homes, tremble, waiting for the bombs to start falling. In Washington, our leaders are moving forcefully to use death to answer the problems of life. Is anyone talking seriously about how we will wage a long-term military campaign without killing civilians, without destroying the infrastructure that society depends on? Are our leaders doing anything to reassure these Afghan citizens that their lives, their children's lives, their homes, businesses, crops, livestock...are not threatened? How far does the compassion of our leaders extend? Does it extend beyond NYC? In calling for retaliation, our leaders are appealing to what is worst in us: the violence that lurks in our own hearts and in the heart of our nation. Two years ago, I traveled with 7 other Americans on a fact-finding mission to Iraq, a country, sadly, which is a prime example of the devastation that a long-term military campaign will wreak. The day we landed in the Middle East, three bombs from a U.S. fighter jet landed near the grounds of a grain silo in Najaf, in remote south-central Iraq. One of the missiles landed right on the main road, killing 14 civilians and hospitalizing 18. Three days later we visited the town. 10 minutes after we arrived, 150 people had gathered around us. One after the other, they were trying to tell us what had happened that day. And they were bringing us shrapnel and bomb parts from the attack. A sizeable pile built up. And they were definitely angry. Some of them were outraged, for this wasn't the first time Najaf had been similarly bombed by U.S. warplanes. They kept asking: "Why, why is your government doing this? Why is it attacking civilians?" And I thought to myself: "What are we seeding in the hearts of Iraqi people by these bombings?" In the hospital there, we visited injured survivors of the attack: a taxi driver who had lesions all over his body (all three of his passengers were killed; he described trying to pull them out of the taxi when a second missile hit nearby); a badly injured auto repair worker whose two shopmates had been killed; and worst of all, an 8-year old boy whose right arm was severed by shrapnel. I looked at that boy lying in bed with a stump of an arm, his mother sitting silently next to him, his eyes looking right into mine, and all I could think of was Rachael, my own 7-year old daughter. What would it mean if she lost her arm in an act of violence? How would she make sense of it? Would it leave her bitter? Would it leave me bitter? Again in the hospital we heard, "Why? Why is your country doing this?" That day in Najaf was the most frightening day of my life. With bomb parts collecting, with the stories of the missile attack ringing in my ears, with the injured lying before me, I felt like a small animal in the shadow of a beast. I wanted to run and hide. This was a glimpse of what it must be like to be under military threat or attack: I knew I could be crushed as easily as we swat an insect. The people in Najaf could have killed me that day, or worse. It would have been the easiest thing. Before I left for Iraq, concerned people said they were worried about my safety, but during my two weeks there, I never once felt threatened by an Iraqi person. I met Iraqi people in all kinds of situations: in their homes, in formal meetings, in hotels, restaurants, stores, and markets, in taxis, in hospitals, and on the streets. People were unfailingly hospitable and friendly to us. I drank more tea in two weeks than I had in the previous 40 years. The Iraqi people, I have come to realize, were true to what is best in their culture. In the desert, you are gracious and hospitable to strangers and visitors. That is the custom. And with good reason. Today, after the horrific bombings of the Gulf War and eleven years of U.S.-sponsored economic sanctions which have killed over a million innocent Iraqi civilians, the Iraqis are still hospitable and friendly to Americans who visit. They have broken the cycle of violence. They are worthy of their cultural inheritance. Right now in America, the very soul of our nation is threatened. I don't mean this in some quasi-mystical sense, but literally. Our leaders are appealing to what is worst in people and society. We must look inside ourselves and draw on the best of our intelligence, courage, and compassion. If we are going to hold the American flag, if we are going to reclaim it as a symbol of freedom rather than of nationalist militarism, if we are going to stand under it, then we have to be worthy of it. Let our respect reach to everyone in our community, and let our community be one without borders. David Smith-Ferri smithferri@pacific.net ************************************************************* ************************************************************* ************************************************************* WHY AMERICA IS HATED - Part 8 "The price is worth it" By Edward S. Herman Try to imagine how the mainstream U.S. media and intellectuals would respond to the disclosure that at an early planning meeting of the terrorists responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the question had come up about whether the "collateral damage" of prospectively thousands of dead civilians wouldn't be excessive, but that the matter had been settled with the top leader's response: "we think the price is worth it"? Suppose further that the terrorists' leaders then set out to make their case to their followers, arguing that it was extremely important to show the citizens of the Great Satan that they were not immune to attack on their own land--that they could not continue to bomb others freely and support the violent states of their choice without suffering some retaliation themselves. The terrorists argued that, as the Great Satan has been conducting low- (and often not so low) -intensity wars against the Third World and Arab states for decades, the planned attacks would be both just and legal under international law, justifiable under the UN Charter's grant of the right of self-defense, which He has relied on so often to excuse his own unilateral actions. The leaders argued further that since the symbolic value of showing the Great Satan's vulnerability by attacking the WTC and Pentagon would be greatly enhanced by taking out several thousand civilians, this must be regarded as acceptable collateral damage. Finally, imagine the terrorists' leaders explaining to their followers that for the sake of global peace and security, no less than the welfare of peoples the world over, it is crucial to raise the costs of imperial violence, and help persuade the Great Satan's population to ask Him to terminate His wars. This, the terrorist leaders argued, would in the long run save far more lives than those lost in the bombing of the WTC and Pentagon. Wouldn't the mainstream media and intellectuals be wild with indignation at the inhumanity of the terrorists' coldblooded calculus? Wouldn't they respond in one voice that it is absolutely immoral, evil, and indefensible per se to kill civilians on a massive scale to make a political point? And as to the terrorists' underlying argument that the attacks were justified both as retaliation for the Great Satan's ongoing wars and as part of an effort to curb His imperial violence, wouldn't this be rejected as outlandish? Wouldn't establishment spokespersons rush to claim that despite occasional regrettable mistakes this country has behaved well in international affairs, has intervened abroad only in just causes, and is the victim of terrorism, not a terrorist state or supporter of terrorism? And wouldn't it also be stressed that it is immoral and outrageous to even SPEAK of a "just cause" or any give any kind of legitimation for a terrorist action such as occurred in New York and Washington? That the only question in such a case of violence is "who," not "why"? (These last two sentences are a paraphrase of the indignant argument of a U.S. liberal historian.) And in fact, across the board the U.S. mainstreamers have refused to talk about "why" except for superficial denunciations of an irrational enemy that hates democracy, etc. Turning now to the actual use of the phrase "the price is worth it," we come to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's reply to Lesley Stahl's question on "60 Minutes" on May 12, 1996: Stahl: "We have heard that a half a million children have died [because of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And--you know, is the price worth it?" Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it." In this case, however, although the numbers dead are mind- boggling--the ratio of dead Iraqi children to deaths in the WTC/Pentagon bombings was better than 80 to 1, using the now obsolete early 1996 number for Iraqi children--the mainstream media and intellectuals have not found Albright's rationalization of this mass killing of any interest whatsoever. The phrase has been only rarely cited in the mainstream, and there has been no indignation or suggestion that the mass killing of children in order to satisfy some policy end was immoral and outrageous. Since the morning hours of Tuesday, September 11, the civilian dead in the WTC/Pentagon terrorist bombings have been the subject of the most intense and detailed and humanizing attention, making the suffering clear and dramatic and feeding in to the sense of outrage. In contrast, the hundreds of thousands of children dead in Iraq are very close to invisible, their suffering and dying are out of sight; and whereas the ratio of Iraqi children killed by sanctions to WTC/Pentagon deaths was better than 80 to 1, the ratio of media space devoted to the Iraqi children and WTC/Pentagon deaths has surely been better than 500 to one in favor of the smaller WTC/Pentagon casualties. Pictures of sufferers and expressions of pain and indignation have been in a similar ratio. The UN workers in Iraq like Dennis Halliday who have resigned in disgust at the effects of the "sanctions of mass destruction" have been given minimal space in the media to inform the public and express their outrage. The "who" in the case of the Iraqi mass deaths is clear-- overwhelmingly the U.S. and British leadership--but the "who" here is irrelevant because of how the "why" is answered. This is done implicitly. Madeleine Albright said that the deaths are worth it because U.S. policy finds this to be so--and with Albright saying this is "why," that settles the matter for the media. Their indignation at the immorality of killing civilians as collateral damage to make a political point ends, because the Iraqi children die by U.S. policy choice--and in this case the media will not even allow the matter to be discussed. The per se unreasonableness of killing civilians as collateral damage is quietly set aside (reminding one of how the Soviet's shooting down of KAL 007 in 1983 was per se barbarian, but the U.S. shooting down of Iranian airliner 655 in 1988 was a "tragic error.") The media focus on whether Saddam Hussein will allow UN inspections to prevent him getting "weapons of mass destruction," not on the mass death of children. (And of course the media regularly fail to note that the United States and Britain had helped Saddam Hussein obtain such weapons in the 1980s, and didn't object to his using them, until he stopped following orders in August 1990.) Because the media make the suffering and death of 500,000 children invisible, the outrage produced by the intense coverage of the WTC/Pentagon bombing victims does not surface on their behalf. The liberal historian who was so indignant at even asking "why" for the WTC-Pentagon bombings and argued that only "who" was pertinent has said nothing about the immorality of killing Iraqis; he is not interested in "who" in this case, partly because he does not have to see dying Iraqi children every day, and partly because his government has answered the "why" to his satisfaction, justifying mass death. Is it not morally chilling, even a bit frightening, that he, and the great mass of his citizen compatriots, can focus with such anguish and indignation on their own 6,000 dead, while ignorant of, or not caring about, or approving his (their) own government's ongoing killing of scores of times as many innocents abroad? This reflects the work of a superb propaganda system. The U.S. government finding the mass death of Iraqi children "worth it," the media push the fate of these "unworthy victims" into the black hole, thereby allowing that policy to be continued without impediment. With the United States itself a victim of terrorism, here the reverse process ensues: with these ultra-worthy victims, the media feature their suffering and deaths intensively and are not interested in root causes, but only in "who" did it; they beat the war drums incessantly and push to the forefront the most regressive forces in the country, making violence and repression the probable outcome of their efforts. But they will sell papers, get larger audiences, support the "national interest," and prove to the rightwing that they are real Americans.