More Simplistic Nonsense from the United States Government
Rami G. Khouri
December 13, 2014
It is
exasperating to listen to American officials pontificate about events in the
Middle East and offer reasonable sounding proposals to resolve the area’s
problems, when those same officials and the entire political power structure
they represent refuse to acknowledge that they have played a major role in
creating or expanding those problems. This is why it is astounding to watch the
United States now lead the military assault against the Islamic State in Iraq
and Greater Syria (ISIS) by using the same techniques that contributed in a
major way to the birth and growth of the militant Islamist ideology that forms
the core of ISIS and its criminal deeds.
The
latest example of this is a statement the U.S. State Department put out Monday
quoting Secretary of State John Kerry saying that, “The fight against violent
extremism in the Middle East can only truly be won if there are clear and
appealing alternatives.”
This
simplistic statement sounds so logical and reasonable, but in fact is full of
dishonesty and disgraceful critical omissions. I say this because the United
States itself played a direct and clear role in helping to foment the spread of
ISIS-style violent extremism by creating the conditions for it in 2003 when it
invaded Iraq and wiped away the former Iraqi state and government. That war
created chaotic conditions in Iraq that provided an opening for Osama Bin Laden
to send Abu Musab El-Zarqawi into Iraq to set up a local branch of Al-Qaeda.
This small group of killers and anti-Shiite Sunni sectarian extremists expanded
slowly and eventually branded itself ISIS.
Kerry’s
statement is also problematic in mentioning the absence of alternatives. There
are no strong alternatives in large part because for over half a century — and
still ongoing today — the United States and other major foreign powers
enthusiastically have supported Arab autocrats and tyrants whose disdain for
their own citizens has been the single most important reason for the growth of
ISIS-like mentalities and behavior. The status quo in the Middle East that the
United States favored and supported for so long made it impossible for any
alternatives to emerge.
John
Kerry’s simplistic statement Monday reveals either dishonesty or sheer
ignorance, or perhaps a bit of both. That is truly troubling given that he
represents a massive amount of military force that his country unleashes
regularly around the Middle East, most often leading to troubling conditions
such as we witness in Iraq and Syria today. To then follow up with simplistic
statements for public consumption in which he offers solutions to the problems
the United States helped create is an incredible act of disregard for the basic
intelligence and common sense of billions of people around the world who do not
share the kind of political and intellectual dishonesty he displays in this
case.
It is not
the responsibility of the United States or any other foreign power to fix the
problems of the Middle East, which are mainly home-grown problems stemming from
over half a century of autocratic or dictatorial rule, massive incompetence and
mismanagement in governance, rampant corruption, declining education quality,
misguided militarism, environmental irresponsibility, and trampling on the rule
of law and citizen rights. The United States knew about all this and more, but
nevertheless resolutely supported the political systems that ultimately drove
some of their citizens into the realm of Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
How can
anyone possibly take seriously statements such as John Kerry’s? Moreover, why
does the United States keep insulting us and the world by making such
statements that lack so much logic, credibility and veracity? Presumably, the
answer is that the United States feels no real repercussions either from pursuing
the corrosive policies it has for half a century, or from adding insult to
injury by saying that we need attractive alternatives to stem the flow of our
young men into killer movements like ISIS.
This
highlights the wider problem that we continue to suffer from in the Arab
world’s relations with the United States and other major world powers. This is
the perpetuation of colonial attitudes among both American and other foreign
elites who toy with the Arab peoples, on the one hand, and Arab ruling elites
who play the game of dependent colonial subject, on the other. ISIS represents
one of the few fractures in that process that shatters the prevailing
conditions of the past century, and, not surprisingly, frightens both Western
and Arab rulers. Until those same Arab, Western and other foreign rulers accept
that their shared policies were the main underlying reason that allowed ISIS
and other such movements to come into being, statements such as John Kerry’s
this week will only meet with ridicule and disbelief, and zero impact on anyone
other than his poor press secretary who has to disseminate this kind of
ridiculous nonsense.
Rami G. Khouri is published twice
weekly in the Daily
Star. He was founding director and now
senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and
International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter
@ramikhouri.
Copyright
© 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global