Why do they hate us?

I've posted my article of 22 July, "Ignoring the Intelligence" in a number of forums, and had some interesting exchanges flowing from that. I thought I post one of those here since it covers a recurring theme in political debate: the question of why "they" hate "us". Here's the comment that was posted on my article, and then my response to that comment. The correspondent began by quoting two paragraphs from my original article...


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comment at 02 Aug 2005 02:48:04 PM


“A recent study of suicide terrorist attacks conducted by Professor Robert Pape and the University of Chicago's Project on Suicide Terrorism came to the same conclusion. According to Pape, "what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective."

”In an article praising the study, Michael Scheuer said that Pape "demolishes the relentlessly repeated assertion ....... that Islamist suicide attacks against America and other counties are launched by .....apocalyptic fanatics who are eager to kill themselves because [we] vote, have civil liberties, and allow women to drive cars. This assertion always has been transparently false....".

The text highlights two contrasting views. However, are they really so contrasting? The following paragraph partially combines the two apparently contrasting views into a synergy:

”Pape's conclusion is that "The root cause of suicide terrorism is foreign occupation and the threat that foreign military presence poses to the local community's way of life. Hence, any policy that seeks to conquer Muslim societies in order, deliberately, to transform their culture is folly". Scheuer notes that "this reality, [as] Pape recognizes, will require changes in America's relations with the Persian Gulf states, getting our military out of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, and the implementation of an energy policy that makes Arab oil production substantially less important to our economy."

Are these two views really that different?

I am a firm believer in the power of social mores and customs. I believe that Thomas Friedman was onto something in his book “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”. I believe in the concept of a thermidorian reaction whenever a society changes faster than the social mores allow. The liberal 1960’s in the US were followed by 25 years of often conservation, or neo-con, Republican presidents, and 12 years of conservation Democrat presidents. The bizarre situation in Iran in the 1960’s and 1970’s, in which a minority of the population was very European and 20th century and the majority was still in a somewhat different time and place, was naturally followed by the “Islamic Revolution”. Chile’s Allende regime (a president elected with 37% of the vote; the other 2 major parties split the remainder) was naturally followed by Pinochet. [Diarist] contends that the US was involved in this but it seems to have been an, almost, inevitable response to the changes Allende tried to institute.

So, in my above quoted paragraphs, I believe that both schools of thought have elements of the truth. Yes, the terrorists want us out of the holy lands, but it is not because of some simplistic resentment of the US flag or foreign military, it is probably more likely a response to all of the cultural things that those things represent or bring with them. They want us out because they want a return to a society free from the 21st century ideas brought in not just by foreign militaries but also by the UN, NGOs, European customs, global groups for women’s rights, children’s rights, etc.

So, if this idea has some truth to it, the problem will not be solved simply by removal of foreign military from the holy lands. There will remain a whole slew of other instruments imposing beliefs contrary to traditional Moslem society. So there will probably continue to be terrorist attacks in countries associated with the NGOs or UN groups, unless we really want to abandon these countries to Wasabism or sharia, or whatever.

The Blair/Bush doctrine is that we can deal with the reactionary forces now and not condemn a generation or 2 or 3 of Arabs/Moslems to fundamentalism. And that the democratic process can help temper the thermidorian reaction. The democratic process will ease the transition to a seemingly inevitable global society. I disagree with [Diarist]’s notion that we are trying to conquer Muslim societies. But if we are, we are wrong.

And the above 2 paragraphs are probably optimistic. Wouldn’t fundamentalist forces want to move beyond just kicking out European influence? Would not the next step be to transform Europe and elsewhere into a more Moslem oriented society?


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my response at 03 Aug 2005 07:30:28 AM


thanks for your comments. In my view your assessment rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the US role in the Middle East and so extends into a serious misrepresentation of antipathy towards the US in that region.

In the 1950s President Eisenhower asked the US National Security Council to look into what he described as a "campaign of hatred against us" in the Middle East. The question he wanted his highest security and foreign policy experts to answer for him was the same one many people ask today: why is there such opposition to the US within that region of the world? The answer the NSC gave him was that the people of the Middle East regarded the US primarily not as a bringer of modernity but as a hostile power that backed the tyrannies oppressing them and denying them their fundamental rights. They believed that the US did this because it wanted the material wealth of the Middle East to be used for its own interests and those of its client regimes, not for the benefit of the ordinary people of the region. The NSC went on to advise Eisenhower that it would be difficult to counter this view of US policy, mainly because it was accurate.

What is not accurate, by contrast and to say the least, is your representation of US influence within the region as being a natural force of progressive modernity. A bringer of human rights, democracy and so forth to the backward races of the Middle East, who then, in their backwardness, resist a force that we know to be benign and progressive but is to them a threat to the primitive culture they cling to. This view only holds so long as the facts are not allowed to intrude.

One example is the fact that the US has backed and continues to back the most repressive regimes in the region; Egypt and Saudi Arabia for instance, whose vicious, torturing internal security forces receive direct assistance from the US.

Another example is Saddam; backed by the US whilst he committed all his worst atrocities.

Another example is Israel, a nation kept on life support by the US, which continues to kill far more innocent Palestinians than terrorists kill Israelis. A nation which continues to keep the Palestinians in miserable deprivation, which continued to build settlements throughout the life of the Oslo accords and then claimed it had no serious "partner for peace". A nation that has stolen land with impunity, ignoring international law even as Iraq was expelled from Kuwait apparently because "aggression" could not be rewarded.

Placing Iran within the 'Islam versus Modernity' paradigm drags this reading of the situation down to new depths. Some basic facts are worth noting, namely the US and the UK's role fifty years ago in toppling Iran's parliamentary government and installing the dictatorship of the Shah. Tehran had upset the British by nationalising its oil industry, having taken the view that Iran, not the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later BP) should be the primary beneficiary of its reserves. Winston Churchill's British government continued covert operations begun by the previous Labour administration to organise a coup with the help of the CIA in 1953. The new US/UK friendly administration was savage in the extreme. Amnesty International reported in 1976 that under the Shah, Iran had the "highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture" which was "beyond belief". In Iran "the entire population was subjected to a constant, all-pervasive terror".

There is therefore a more accurate reading of the 1979 revolution to the one you put forward. You invoke a confused backward majority, in "a different time and place" to the westernised minority, who, as is natural for such simple beasts, rose up against the onward march of history. What is somewhat more plausible is that Iranians overthrew the Shah because they had been "subjected to a constant, all-pervasive terror" from a regime backed to the hilt by the freedom-loving west. Its was only after a widespread popular uprising against the western backed tyrant who destroyed their democracy that the new Iran fell into the hands of the new clerical tyrants. What's certain is that if the west had never imposed its will on Iran in the first place there's every chance that it might have been a relatively liberal democracy over the last fifty years.

You describe "some simplistic resentment of the US flag or foreign military". Given the US record in the region, of consistent and enthusiastic backing for tyranny, its hard to see what your justification for the use of the word 'simplistic' might be. What's simplistic is the idea that people in the Middle East are reacting against the "cultural things that [the US flag or foreign military] represent or bring with them". Are you referring to the million Iraqis killed by US/UK sanctions; including children under-five who were dying at the rate of 4,000 a month (a 9/11 every three weeks just for Iraqi infants)? Are you referring to the Iraqi deaths in the current war, probably far in excess of the best estimate so far; 100,000? Are you referring to the devastation brought to Iraq by the US invasion, where two years on sewage flows in nearly half the streets? Are you referring to the sexual torture meted out to Iraqi prisoners (most of whom were innocent of any crime) by the US forces? Don't Iraqis, Arabs, Muslims and people throughout the world have far more reason for anger at US interference in their affairs than some vague suspicion of modernity?

You may be right to say that fundamentalists might want to "move beyond just kicking out European influence [were they to succeed, and move to] transform Europe and elsewhere into a more Moslem oriented society..". However, the point is that if they were unable to draw upon the deep well of legitimate grievances against US criminality within the region they would end up simply as lonely extremists like Timothy McVeigh or the UK's David Copeland. One of the principle points of my article, (backed up by the UK's MI5, MI6, GCHQ, the Home and Foreign Offices, CIA veterans and eminent independent experts) is that adding to that list of legitimate grievances only plays into the hands of extremists. Treating the Middle East fairly - and consistently with what you say are our values - would not only be right in itself, but would also isolate the fanatics by denying them propaganda material. Whatever expansionist fantasies they still held would therefore be superfluous.

The NSC's conclusions of fifty years ago still hold true today, in my view. As poll after poll has shown, not just in the Middle East but throughout the world, widespread antipathy towards the US government goes hand in hand with admiration, even love for US popular culture. Billions enjoy Hollywood movies, popular music, US literature, but despise the policies of successive US governments; policies which run in direct contradiction to the stated goals of freedom, democracy etc.

Understanding the realities of what people in the Middle East have suffered at the hands of western governments is now essential, in terms of living up to our own moral responsibilities and of combating the terrorism of others. The phrase "Wasabism or sharia, or whatever" used in your comment (you mean Wahhabism, presumably) doesn't inspire much confidence in your willingness to understand these realities. Superficial assessments based on cultural chauvinism and a caricatured picture of a modern west versus a backward orient only serve to obscure the realities we need to understand in order to break the vicious cycle of western oppression and violence on the one hand, and terrorist violence on the other.