Anger and resentment among some in the Muslim world has been growing at the US military campaign in Afghanistan aimed at toppling the Taleban regime and rooting out Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda fighters. To these Muslims, the American attacks are an attack on themselves and their religion, something President Bush and other American leaders have tried hard to deny.
As a supporter of the US campaign in Afghanistan, I was recently surrounded by fellow Muslims in my office and grilled as if I were George W. Bush’s personal envoy. Out of this experience I have decided to go through each grievance and try to come up with an explanation of the US position. Here it goes:
1. The US is the sole superpower and thinks it can bomb any country. It’s not fair!
A: Well, all I can say is thank God for that! I’d hate to see what China, Russia or even India would do if they were the sole superpower. The US is bombing Afghanistan because it was attacked first on Sept. 11. The Taleban regime gave refuge to Bin Laden and his fighters for many years, making them a legitimate target of retaliation. Is it America’s fault that the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s?
2. Why is the US bombing Afghanistan?
A: Partially answered above. What some Muslims seem to conveniently forget is that the US was attacked first on Sept. 11 when those hijacked jets slammed into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, into the Pentagon outside Washington, DC, and into a field in Pennsylvania. Around 4,000 innocent lives were taken in one fell swoop, the WTC towers completely destroyed, and the Pentagon heavily damaged. Wouldn’t any nation claim the right to strike back after being so savagely attacked?
It’s a well-known fact that the Taleban regime of Mulla Muhammad Omar had given refuge to Bin Laden and his followers in Afghanistan for many years. Of course, Bin Laden paid the Taleban millions of dollars for this privilege. I doubt if any other Afghan regime would have allowed Bin Laden to stay for so long and enjoy such freedom of movement.
3. But what about the Afghan civilians being killed and injured by the bombing?
A: In war destruction and death are inevitable. The US has tried its best to minimize the deaths of civilians, and is now prepared to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the rebuilding of Afghanistan. Look at Germany and Japan. During World War II they were heavily bombed by the Allies, Japan even had two US nuclear bombs dropped on it. But after they surrendered, their reconstruction began in the 1950s, as billions of dollars poured in from the US government. Today, both are close US allies and are two of the most developed countries in the world. Of course, no one expects Afghanistan to become a Japan of Central Asia, but a good level of development could be achieved with massive global aid and cooperation from Afghan leaders.
4. But the Northern Alliance leaders were brutal rulers in the 1990s when they killed and raped thousands. Why is the US allying itself with them now?
A: It was a choice of picking the lesser of two evils. In comparison, at least to the Americans, the Taleban were worse for helping Bin Laden, even though they had brought relative stability to Kabul after years of Northern Alliance chaos.
The US is, I think, acutely aware of the Northern Alliance’s less than stellar reputation when it comes to respecting human rights and sharing power. That is why it is pushing for a broad-based interim government. As we have seen, the relatively unknown Pashtun leader Hamid Karzai will be heading the interim government. Karzai is part of a new generation of Afghan leaders who are not tainted by corruption and violence like warlord Rashid Dostum (hated for siding with the Soviets when they invaded Afghanistan in 1980) and Burhannuddin Rabbani (who refused to give up the rotating Afghan presidency in the 1990s after his term was complete, helping the Taleban to eventually control Kabul).
5. The Sept. 11 attacks are linked to the US policy of relentlessly supporting Israel’s vicious repression of Palestinians!
A: This theory has many holes punched through it from the very beginning. I do think that some fanatical and misguided Muslims would still hate America even if Israel didn’t exist or if a fully independent Palestinian state existed next to Israel. The degree of freedom experienced by Americans within America scares many people around the world. Call it freedom-envy.
The Palestinians have become the poster-children of all disaffected Muslims, although ironically many Palestinians are not even Muslim, but are Christian.
I do agree though that if the US government showed itself to be fair in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, forcing Israel to withdraw from occupied territories, America would gain immense good-will in the Arab and Islamic worlds, taking the sting from most of Bin Laden’s grievances.
6. Bin Laden represents the resentment and anger that many Muslims feel against their own regimes.
A: Well, why take it out on the US? The US has admittedly supported many dictatorships in the Middle East for its own selfish economic and strategic reasons. Yet, if the real grievances are with local rulers why not take it up with them? There are many nonviolent ways to push for change, Bin Laden has just chosen the easiest way, which is violence.
7. What seems to especially pique the ire of Muslims and others is the over-arching sense of American arrogance. That sense of "we can do anything we like in the world, and if you don’t like it too bad!"
A: Many point to the United Nations having been relegated to merely being a rubber stamp for US foreign actions. This is because the Americans feel the UN is too slow to react to world events, and when it does it is often burdened by being a bloated bureaucracy that needs the consensus of so many players before it even begins moving. This is why most of the time, the US has opted to move first alone and then get the UN to back it up, almost as an afterthought.
The US has long been pushing the European Union to take charge of its own backyard, such as Bosnia and Kosovo, but Europe has been reluctant and slow to rise to the challenge. The US has been forced to lead in these troubled parts of Eastern Europe to stop genocide. That it has been so successful there is a good sign. Now, if only an international tribunal like the one at The Hague, which is prosecuting former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for genocide, could be set up for Afghanistan to try Bin Laden, his associates and the top Taleban leadership, I think the world would appreciate the US much more.
