June 27 , 2014
Arabs in America
Many moons ago, during my days of student activism in Washington when I had taken up cudgels on behalf of the Palestinian cause, I came to know US Senator James Abourezk, a brave Democrat from South Dakota.
Abourezk was the first of Arab ancestry to enter the US Senate. He asked that I write the foundational speech for the organization he had launched, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), to combat stereotyping of Arabs and counter disinformation. He was spurred, in part, by the so-called Abscam scandal, where FBI agents tried to entrap and suborn unsuspecting Congressmen by posing as fabulously rich oil sheikhs. It inspired the plot of the 2013 hit Hollywood movie “American Hustle.”
Abourezk had brought in Dr James Zogby to run ADC. I later went on to become Abourezk’s law partner, while Zogby set up his own Arab American Institute. That was 30-plus years ago.
So have things since then changed for the better? Not much, according to eminent scholar Professor Jack Shaheen, who gave a talk the other day in Washington. He posited that stereotyping about Arabs and Muslims has become more subtle and sophisticated, with popular TV shows insinuating with disturbing regularity that Arabs and Muslims pose a lethal threat to the US homeland.
Jack Shaheen bemoaned the apathy and incapacity of the American Muslim community in not effectively countering false narratives and “not being present in the system.” He contended that propaganda can be countered with courage, intelligence, decency, and a sense of common purpose. But Mideast myths remain pervasive in US media and society.
The potential of spillover in America looms as the situation in Iraq becomes even more dire. It is essentially a “direct outgrowth,” as Brian Williams of NBC-News pointed out on June 16, of the Bush-Blair invasion of 2003. Ever since Iraq was trapped into invading Kuwait on August 2, 1990, its people have suffered relentlessly without any let-up.
It is reminiscent of what befell Germany after the end of the First World War when it was judged as the guilty party, with punitive and ruthless reparations inflicted on it through the unwisely imposed Treaty of Versailles. The humiliation it bred paved the path for the rise of the Nazi Party led by Hitler.
One of the least understood factors shaping international relations is that you don’t humiliate. Old wounds can erupt with terrifying ferocity. The old adage here applies: “If you break it, you fix it.” You don’t “pivot” from it, as Hillary Clinton has glibly advocated. The Middle East is too central, too fundamental, too strategically located from a geo-political point of view, to choose to pivot from. What governs the value of real estate is “location, location, location.”
Obama’s legacy may be tarnished by what now unfolds in Iraq under his Presidential watch.
Five years after Obama’s landmark speech at Cairo University, promising a new chapter in US-Arab relations, the promise has dimmed and the luster faded. He has 2-1/2 years left of his presidency to define his legacy. His choices shall dictate whether he’ll be remembered as a Churchill or a Chamberlain.
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