In his recent speech at West Point, President Obama gave the American people and the rest of the world a welcome assurance: “We do not seek to occupy other nations.” Yet, annually since the Second World War, at least 500,000 Americans have been serving as uninvited or invited occupiers overseas on what are presently as many as 1,000 military bases. While it costs the American taxpayer billions of dollars every year, it is not at all certain that domination over dozens of countries has made us, or the occupied societies, more secure or more prosperous.
I am reminded of a conversation I had years ago with the interior minister of Bahrain, a Muslim nation of one million people on an island in the Persian Gulf where the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet with some 5,000 sailors has been headquartered for at least two decades. The minister emphasized that Bahrainis tend to have friendly feelings toward most Americans and appreciates the large financial benefits of the U.S. presence. Wistfully, however, he pointed out that in reality the dominant power in his country is the U.S. Navy, and nobody knows if and when the Bahraini people will ever again be truly free from foreign occupiers.
In neighboring Saudi Arabia, the U.S. stationed more than 5,000 soldiers for twelve years but in 2003 closed its bases, in part because too many Saudis, particularly the more radical Islamists among them, view the U.S. military presence as symbolic of Muslim subservience to the anti-Islamic and pro-Israeli Christian West. More than once did Osama Bin Laden make it clear that it is the main purpose of al-Qaida’s terrorist attacks on Western targets to drive all non-Muslim occupiers out of the Muslim countries.
Military occupation often tends to generate resistance because it is humiliating, disruptive, and arbitrary, even when the occupying power, as in the case of the U.S., claims to have benevolent motives. Occupied people feel at the mercy of the occupiers who are in full control and inevitably well-armed. Look how Palestinians are beaten, bombed, and arrested by their occupiers if they try to protest or physically resist! If you want to live under oppressive occupation, you have to choke down your anger and put up with the foreigners in control.
In modern times, the American Revolution was the first successful uprising against oppressive foreign rule. It took the British more than a century to learn that colonial domination is undemocratic and counterproductive. The British occupation of Iraq after World War I triggered fierce opposition. In Palestine, British rule eventually faced armed resistance from both Zionists and Arabs. French colonialism in Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, and Indochina spawned violent resistance. The Russians have yet to learn that the Chechen people as non-Russian Muslims have a right to national self-determination.
The negative U.S. experiences as occupying power are hardly unique. As in Vietnam, so in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, our soldiers were not greeted as the liberators they thought they were. Worse yet, our inability or unwillingness to use our undisputed influence over Israel to end it occupation over the Palestinians’ territories is creating us increasingly angrier enemies in the Middle East.
In Afghanistan, we now have no choice but to help the natives rebuild their society. We owe it to them to accomplish what we promised. As much as we may dislike sharia law and the treatment of women under Islam, the anti-Western terrorist resistance is very unlikely to cease until we allow the people of the Mideast what we demand for ourselves: the right to live free from colonial domination.
Let us not forget, moreover, how much our far-flung adventures overseas are sapping our economic resources as we are facing unusually high unemployment, huge trade deficits, crippling business failures and foreclosures, as well as a record national debt.