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Opinion: Why Do They Hate Us?

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 29 July 2006
7 comments

Wars and conflicts International USA

http://archive.gulfnews.com/article...

Opinion: Why Do They Hate Us?
07/30/2006 12:06 AM

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, frustrated Americans including top administration officials cried out aloud: Why do they hate us? They were referring to Arabs and Muslims.

Curiously, five years later, during which the US waged and encouraged at least two regional wars, the Americans have yet to get it.

A year ago, Karen Hughes, a long-time adviser to President George W. Bush, was appointed Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, tasked with "leading efforts to promote America’s values and confront ideological support for terrorism around the world". In other words, her job was to improve the image of the United States in the Arab world and win the hearts and minds of Arabs, lost for sometime because of Washington’s blind support for Israel and its bloody invasion of Iraq.

With the outrageous policy Washington is now espousing in the Israeli war on Lebanon, Hughes’ job is indeed a mission impossible.

The US could have seized the opportunity of the Israeli aggression to win back some of the Arab public support. It could have given the impression of an honest broker by forcing its ally Israel to end the barbaric bombing of Lebanon’s civilians. But the Bush administration chose instead to take sides with the aggressor.

In past conflicts, Washington at least tried to look neutral, brokering a ceasefire and pushing all sides to negotiate a settlement. But under the "War President" the administration is oiling Israel’s war machine. It is supplying the Israeli army with laser-guided missiles, aircraft fuel and more importantly an international green light to kill hundreds of Lebanese.

The US has so far refused to even consider a ceasefire. In fact, it is pushing Israel to prolong the war and inflict more destruction on Lebanon for its own primary political aims the defeat of Hezbollah.

There could be no ceasefire until "the root problem Hezbollah is addressed," says Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State. She made sure Israel would have a licence to kill and destroy until the Lebanese resistance is annihilated.

The current war was a chance for the US to make it up to the people of this region, but it chose not to. Instead, it has further inflamed anti-US sentiments. Yet in Washington they still sheepishly ask: Why do they hate us?

Forum posts

  • Bush has lost. America has lost
    Not only do Arabs and muslims hate America and Americans.. so do all other peoples of the earth hate them

  • First of all, learn to read, then read the recent history of the USA and its genocidal pro Israeli foreign policy. Americans are hated and despised by all decent peoples of the world because you thoroughly deserve it.

  • Why do they hate them? Pleas leave me out of They, Us and Them. Stick some petroleum jelly and a well guided missle up the butts of heads of states, countries and religous leaders. Give them a Easy Button wired is series and ask them a stupid question? Someone will push it, end of problem.

    • I agree wholeheartedly. The ’they, us, you and them’ game is for children in recess and not a game for mature adults. Generalizations based on innuendo, biases and prejudices feed fuel to the fires of hate and never aid us in solving any of these hoary dilemmas of world peace.

      The perpetual use of this backward concept of ’us and them’ has been one of humanity’s downfalls since the dawn of time.

      For one thing, the ’they, us and them’ game helps cement obsolete tribal ideas into our heads.
      After brainwashing people since childhood using these age-old and, in my opinion, totally obsolete tribal mechanisms, any nation state [the new modern ’super-tribe’] can easily mobilize their populations against the ’foe/predator’ which may be any other ’super-tribe’ the state has decided to demonize. Those of us who see through this nonsense are then vilified as being ’unpatriotic’, i.e ’anti-tribal’.

      When the term ’group-mind’ is mentioned by many with a longer view of humanity’s future, this term is depicting a more technologically developed form of the super-tribe. One might say that the group-mind is the ultimate human super-tribe as described by our post-industrial society’s ’planners’: a super-tribe devoid of warmth, creativity and truly independent individual components. This global ’super-tribe’ is what ’we’ are all ultimately becoming, no thanks to the globalists amongst us, and from ’world super-tribe’ it will only take a hop, skip and a jump for those very same ’planners’ to succeed in making what they have always wanted: a global human bee hive. Bee hives have only one collective mind. The individual in any bee hive is nothing but another replaceable part to be disposed of when it is no longer found useful by the ’collective mind’.

      It’s the 21st Century and ’we’ , that is the entire human ’tribe’, have yet to come out of the millenia long dark age which supposedly ’we’ grew out of 500 years ago, at the dawn of the modern age. ’We’ still continue to worship our own super-tribe’s totem poles.
      ’We’ will never find peace as long as ’we’ still continue to believe in ’super-tribes’. Peace for all humanity can only be found when every individual’s worth and value are truly honored and defended by all. A super tribe’s purpose is never about the individual, it is always about exploiting the individual to further its perpetual existence. Otherwise super-tribes would find it very hard to oppress or kill any one of us, let alone thousands and millions.

  • The Muslims and Arabs should NOT hate the American people JUST IT’S LEADERS! It is NOT majority of Americans FAULT WE HAVE A WAR MONGERING S.O.B. BASTARDS IN LEADERSHIP THAT MAJORITY OF US HATE TOO!

    • As a common American who knows many common Americans, I have to disagree. A majority of Americans are ignorant and lazy. They pay little attention to world events and make no effort to understand the world. A new Harris poll last week states that 50% of Americans now believe there were WMDs in Iraq. That is up from 37% last year. And 53% of Americans think Isreael is in the right in Lebanon while 11% think Lebanon is. So those numbers show at least 50% of us Americans are stupid. And I’d guess probably half of the remainder didn’t understand the question.

    • According to the latest Zogby poll, only 26% of the college educated in America support Bush and his policies. Zogby polls conduct surveys of literally thousands, this last one had a sample of over 8,000 Americans. On the other hand, Gallup and Harris polls keep using the same size samples, 700 to 800, that they have been using since 1948. Now, how many of you have taken courses in Statistics and Statistical Methods? Not very many, I know. But still, whose survey are you going to believe? Remember that the US population is very close to 300 million people, & 110 million are registered voters. I would think a scientific survey taken from a sample of 8,000 drawing from such a large population would be far more accurate than any poll whose numbers are a tenth of that. This is why Zogby poll error percentages are no more than two decimal points, while the Harris and Gallup polls have error margins of 3 to 4%, 15 to 20 times the error margin of the Zogby polls. In addition, Zogby surveys ask revelant questions that are germaine to the issues at hand. Harris and Gallup polls phrase their questions so as to minimize criticism of those who are in power and are often conducted at the behest of powerful PAC committees, think tanks and media conglomerates whose agenda and interests have often been at odds with the interests of the American people.
      It would behoove any one making a big deal of these poll figures to actually read the surveys, read the questions they ask as well as finding out the number of people polled before passing judgment.