Friday, December 4, 2009
Stephen Walt wasn't as impressed with Tom Friedman's latest. Walt writes: Why they hate us (II): How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?
Tom Friedman had an especially fatuous column in Sunday's New York Times, which is saying something given his well-established capacity for smug self-assurance. According to Friedman, the big challenge we face in the Arab and Islamic world is "the Narrative" -- his patronizing term for Muslim views about America's supposedly negative role in the region. If Muslims weren't so irrational, he thinks, they would recognize that "U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny." He concedes that we made a few mistakes here and there (such as at Abu Ghraib), but the real problem is all those anti-American fairy tales that Muslims tell each other to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions.
I heard a different take on this subject at a recent conference on U.S. relations with the Islamic world. In addition to hearing a diverse set of views from different Islamic countries, one of the other participants (a prominent English journalist) put it quite simply. "If the United States wants to improve its image in the Islamic world," he said, "it should stop killing Muslims."...
Get the picture? It's our fault. We interfere, therefore, we get attacked. He then details a "back of the envelope" calculation of the relative body counts dating since Desert Storm (see the link for the table). Well what do you know, it appears we've killed a lot more Muslims than Muslims have killed Americans. There's a problem, of course, and that is that every conflict Walt lists are either outright terrorist attacks or wars initiated by Muslims. It's a bit of a problem when you're trying to make what amounts to an isolationist, non-interference argument isn't it? It's a reversal of cause and effect. We need to help our image by not killing Muslims, but they kill us, so...what? We do nothing I guess.
They hate us for fighting back (effectively), apparently. I think I'll stick with the problem being something going on over there, rather than over here, but thanks anyway.
[h/t: Citizen Wald]
Walt seems to want to surpass his tag teammate, Mearsheimer in ingratiating himself to the Muslim world. Last time I checked, the mountains of Muslim corpses were being produced by other Muslims (Pakistan being the most glaring at the moment). But of course, the Ijtihad folks that Walt rubs shoulders with at his expensive conferences tell him how evil the West is (while sipping their 5 star brandy) and he, dutifully, relays the message to the Academy back home. There's no shortage of whores in the Ivy League. The price is all we're haggling over.
Look to the corpses. Therein lies the answer.