Aaron Schachter

Aaron Schachter

Aaron Schachter is an Assignment Editor for The World, developing and editing stories with staff and freelance reporters around the world. He previously spent 8 years covering the Middle East from Jerusalem and Beirut.

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‘Why Do They Still Hate Us?’

September 19, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment
A protester holds empty tear gas canisters, which was earlier thrown by riot police, during clashes along a road at Kornish El Nile which leads to the US embassy, near Tahrir Square in Cairo. (Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)

A protester holds empty tear gas canisters, which was earlier thrown by riot police, during clashes along a road at Kornish El Nile which leads to the US embassy, near Tahrir Square in Cairo. (Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)

I got the question this past weekend from my mother-in-law. My colleague got the same question from her mother-in-law: “Why do they still hate us,” they wanted to know. “Didn’t we help liberate their countries? And hasn’t President Obama changed our relationship with the rest of the world?”

Considering what’s happening on the streets of Middle Eastern capitals, these are fair questions.

But they’re very American questions.

Perhaps the question we should be asking is, “does what we see on those streets actually represent hate, or something else?”

Karen Elliott House, author of the book “On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines – And Future” believes it’s something else.

“I don’t believe they do hate America,” House told me. “I believe they are incredibly frustrated because all of these countries have enormous numbers of now-educated and unemployed youth, connected to the Internet who know what life is like [elsewhere]. And it’s humiliating to have a society that’s fundamentally been in decline for three or four hundred years.”

House’s book comes out this week. We spoke on Monday about the situation in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East as a whole. Here’s a clip from our conversation. You can hear the interview on Wednesday.

Many Middle East analysts seem to consider, “why do they still hate us” naïve, but not offensive. Another question, posed recently, is a different story.

“Was the Arab Spring Worth It?” wondered CNN in its segment “Situation Room.” And it’s gotten a whole rash of angry responses. Arab Spring activist Nasser Weddady addressed the question, broadly, on The World last week. He’s with the American Islamic Congress.

As he and others point out, America’s transition to statehood wasn’t without bloodshed. There was the American Civil War. Just this week, The World remembered the immigrants, mainly Irish and German, who fought in the battle of Antietam. Then there was the civil rights movement and women’s right’s movement; not exactly shining moments in American history.

Bassam Haddad wrote about the question as well in a brilliant article. It’s published by the Arab Studies Institute. He writes:

“After nearly one hundred thousand deaths since January 2011 when the uprisings started, and after decades of brutal repression that were steadfastly supported and partly funded by Western powers (namely the United States), we wonder about the value of breaking from such shackles, as though it was a bad investment in Facebook stock.”


Discussion

One comment for “‘Why Do They Still Hate Us?’”

  • jovann

    I was annoyed by Ms. House’s insistence in propagating the
    tiered, old, simplistic American cliché for an answer to the question of “why
    they hate us” with the Bush logic of “they hate our freedom”, and the
    Orientalist logic of “they” are the way they are because “they” lack democracy
    and because “they” are too religious. I
    was further annoyed with her comment concerning the Arab Spring, which
    according to her it will give Arabs the opportunity to take responsibly and
    stop blaming other people for their troubles.
    Both you and your host
    demonstrated historical amnesia by completely ignoring nearly 100 years of Western
    domination in that part of the world, and by failing to reflect on the 60 years
    of active American intrusion and manipulation.
    Don’t forget, nearly every Arab country in the Arab peninsula is militarized
    with U.S. forces based there. Were the
    people consulted about having foreign troops on their soil? I assume they weren’t.

    Both missed
    mentioning that the U.S. has and continues to support to dictators and
    autocratic governments in the lands of the Crescent Moon; the same regimes that
    Ms. House says have been holding their people back. For Washington, it seems democracy is only
    good when “the will of the people” goes in favor of U.S. policies. When they don’t, they get overthrown. She also seems to assume that perhaps the greatest
    crime in the 21st Century, the illegal invasion of Iraq and the
    murderous campaign that followed, should be forgiven and forgotten by the
    people in the Middle East. They have no
    reason to be mad about a little boo boo that caused a million lives, and the livelihood
    of millions more. As far as the religious
    part, she seems to forget that our president was talking to God when he decided
    to invade Iraq, and that prominent Evangelical preachers Amen him in that
    decision. Both, the host of the show and
    Ms. House further showed historical amnesia when failing to mention that the
    U.S. is basically the only country standing in the way of fulfilling the 1967 U.N.
    resolution of obligating Israel to recognize the Palestinian State and allow
    its citizens to return –the genesis of Mideast contemporary politics. I suggest when talking about the shortcoming of
    Arab countries, you should also mention the U.S. role in contributing to these
    failures.