One of the most difficult lessons American continue to learn is that what is our super-priority may be to us may not be the same priority to other people in other nations. When the Pentagon and the Twin Towers were slammed into on September 11, 2001, killing thousands, the world was aghast at this terrorist attack. Global sympathy was clearly with us. Most of the world wanted to help, but to most people in the world – excluding the “they staged this to garner power against Arabs” extremists – it was just another headline in the paper – a horror, but not something that had happened to them. Think of how many stories we read about genocide in distant lands, how we react with shock, but then the story fades.
As our government drew lines in the sand – telling the world that they were either with us or against us in a global war on terrorism – people actually didn’t want to get involved in a foreign war (a pretty natural human tendency – look at how long Hitler ran over parts of Europe before we decided to get involved). It just wasn’t their fight. As we invaded Iraq on the pretext of getting Al Qaeda, when most of the war did not see a connection that actually wasn’t there, as we brutalized prisoners, global sympathy was slipping away.
Increasingly, our leaders’ obsession with “terrorism” became an international turn-off for the vast majority of the earth. Sure, we had some allies fighting alongside of us, but those leaders were facing increasing opposition from their constituencies at home. Muslims who were sympathetic after the original 9/11 attack began to believe that the U.S. was blaming all Muslims for the problem; our local discrimination against American Muslims… even people who looked Muslim but weren’t… made matters worse. In the end, we were increasingly viewed as rogue nation obsessed with “terrorism.” Our unquestioning support of clear ally Israel , even when harsh tactics were applied, seemed to encourage Arabs to support horrific rocket attacks against Israel from Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north.
Our efforts became the recruiting tools for real terrorists to increase their ranks. The world didn’t like what we were doing; the Islamic world hated it. Unfortunately for the world, there are real terrorists out there with really harmful intentions to destroy those who do not believe as they do. They use suicide bombers to kill opposing forces, would love to nuke the U.S. and Israel and are wreaking havoc in the Middle East with incumbent governments. However, when “doing it for America ” is replaced with “doing it for ourselves,” the results are staggeringly favorable for us.
Hence Obama’s mission to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, his gestures and his speeches, his pushing Israel for movement, and his choice not to use the word “terrorism” in his recent speech. It is all part of an effort to take the U.S. out of the equation as local Muslims move their thinking away from “if we fight ‘terrorism,’ we are really fighting America’s war with Islam” to “there are extremists in our midst who threaten us that must be eliminated.” Without creating local relevance to battling terrorists, there is not much of a reason why local people want to get involved in our fight.
The best recent example of this reality is Pakistan . Since 9/11, America ’s efforts to get Pakistan involved in helping us always carried heavy local resistance, even as her leaders accepted American “aid” to join “the war on terrorism.” There simply was no grassroots support for the American effort. Rather than deal with conclaves of hotbeds of terrorism, the Pakistani government turned a blind eye, mounted occasional token efforts to comply with their U.S. treaties, and even allowed virtually autonomous regions (the Western Tribal District, the grant to the Taliban to apply Muslim law – sharia – to Swat, etc.) to be run by Muslim extremists. It really wasn’t their battle, and there were factions in the Pakistani military and intelligence services that were actually sympathetic to the Islamist causes.
That was then, and now we are seeing the beginnings of local Pakistani feelings against groups like the Taliban. There is local relevance – once “American interests” are no longer the motivation – fighting an internal force that applies brutality to force their extremist views on local people who simply want to live their lives. When the Taliban took up arms against the government after a “peace” accord allowing them to use Islamic law in Swat… literally launching an all-out attack towards the capital of Islamabad , the Pakistani people began to wake up to the enemy within. As local people lived in a war zone for a battle that was clearly not their fight, resentment against the Taliban rose.
Villagers in the remote Dir district followed suit. The June 10th NY Times: “Villagers are rising up against the Taliban in a remote corner of northern Pakistan, a grass-roots rebellion that underscores the shift in the public mood against the militants and a growing confidence to confront them… More than a thousand villagers from the district of Dir have been fighting Taliban militants since [June 5th], when a Taliban suicide bomber detonated his payload during prayer time at a mosque, killing at least 30 villagers.” Simply put, these locals do not want their area to become another war zone. While there have been uprisings against extremists before, this time the locals have official military support and national sympathy. They are rooting out the Taliban and their sympathizers because it is in their local best interest.
When it rains, it pours. The June 14th Los Angeles Times: “ Pakistan announced [June 14th] that it planned to expand its offensive against Taliban militants into the troubled South Waziristan region. The announcement came just hours after a bomb in a crowded market killed eight people and wounded 38… The area [quite far from Swat or Dir… in the southern region… by the Afghani border] is the stronghold of the country's most powerful Taliban commander, Baitullah Mahsud.” It seems that surging Taliban just became a local issue.
Look at the post-election crackdowns in Iran as protestors battle clandestine and uniformed police forces to plant the seeds of what become the ultimate unraveling of rigid control imposed by the religious leaders of this nation. Could America have done anything more effective to undermine this theocracy? Are we witnessing a revolution in its nascent state? As the violence escalates, as Iranian authorities crush demonstrators and as the government refuses to change the election results despite admitted irregularities, is this the beginning of the end?
While Americans (many of Iranian descent) gather in support to the Iranian protestors, as some American politicians demand a more powerful U.S. position of support of the opposition, President Obama is careful to limit Iran’s ability to blame the revolt on “foreign influences” (most notably the U.S. – the Iranian incumbents are naming Britain as the primary external miscreant); he sidestepped direct confrontation with the Iranian government over this post-election debacle until global condemnation of Iran’s crackdown required a stronger stand. The less such anti-extremist efforts are linked to “following American foreign policy directives,” the more effective they seem to be.
In the end, we advance against our cause against Muslim extremists by removing the convenient target of American policy as the underlying motivation. Moderates must be angry not at us but at the extremists in their midst who threaten their own way of life. As we see that reality occur, we also understand how extremism can truly be extinguished or at least minimized. If those fighting such extremism ask our support, we should give it… but it should not be an American “cause.” This has to be their fight for their own reasons.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.
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