“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
till earth and sky stand presently at God’s great judgment seat;
but there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth,
when two strong men stand face to face,
tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!”
So wrote the British poet Rudyard Kipling in 1895 when most Muslim societies were controlled by the Ottoman Turks or by governments of the Christian West. To this day, however, the “two strong men” who would create harmony between East and West have yet to arise.
After the First World War, British, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian and American troops lorded over Muslim populations from Tunisia to the Philippines and from Senegal to Kyrgyzstan. After the Second World War, Muslim countries gained varying degrees of independence from Western domination.
Since the Truman administration, successive U.S. administrations left no doubt that Israel’s wellbeing was more important to Americans than any Arab interests, such as the establishment of a Palestinian state. The neoconservatives called for a “new American century” that would reshape and re-educate the allegedly benighted Arab world.
The leading neocon, Vice President Cheney, thought that, even after being bombed into submission, the Iraqis would cheer the American invaders as liberators. In reality, the neocons’ aggressive designs on the Mideast, more than any other factor, radicalized the most fanatic elements among Muslims. Unable to resist the West’s overwhelming military superiority, they began to protest with the only weapon left to them: terrorizing the perceived aggressors with suicide bombings.
Since the Christian crusades for the liberation of the Holy Land from heathen rule in the 11th and 12th century, Muslims have harbored deep suspicions of the West’s efforts to gain control over part or all of their lands. France conquered Egypt in 1798 and, by 1830, expanded into Algeria and Morocco. The British succeeded the French in Egypt and colonized the Sudan and the small states along the Persian Gulf. In 1912, Italy made Libya its colony. After the First World War, Britain drew the borders of Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine while France governed Syria and Lebanon.
After the Second World War, the United Nations urged the European overlords to get out of the Middle East. Then, in the wake of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the U.S. government established its own control over the region with numerous military bases--the Central Command since 1983--guarding U.S. interests in 27 nations stretching from the Horn of Africa through the Persian Gulf into Central Asia.
Originally, Central Command was designed to protect Israel, to contain the Soviet empire, and to get access to the oil reserves of the Mideast. Now, the Soviet threat is gone. Paying for the oil would be much cheaper than fighting for it. And Israel’s security can easily be guaranteed by NATO’s military muscle.
Neither the President nor Congress ever asked the crucial question whether the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims really want the American military presence among them or near them? The more than 2,500,000 U.S. personnel serving on 737 bases across the planet have spawned what others often call a global empire.
Did any one of America’s founding fathers ever expect the United States to turn into the world’s policeman? Would they want the sons and daughters of millions of immigrants from overseas sacrifice blood and treasure in unending conflicts overseas? What do we Americans gain by pouring billions of dollars into an expansionist foreign policy on the other side of the globe at a yet undetermined cost to our standard of living and quality of life?
Many Muslims genuinely admire the political system and the economic achievements of Americans but most question the wisdom and fairness of the U.S. government’s policies toward Muslims in general and Arabs in particular. If we stay the present course, East and West will endlessly remain at loggerheads, and the twain will surely never meet in mutual goodwill.
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