I expected Salim Muwakkil to blame Israel for last week’s atrocities. Instead, he blames the United States, putting himself in league with Saddam Hussein and Palestinians dancing in the streets (“Terror and diplomacy are natural enemies,” Commentary, Sept. 17).
Muwakkil’s drawing an analogy with America’s use of atomic weapons against Japan is flawed history and reprehensible ethics. The United States was seeking to end a war it did not start, and to do so while sparing thousands of American lives that would have been lost in an invasion.
Osama bin Laden is not Harry Truman. He’s Timothy McVeigh with a big family inheritance to spend.
Muwakkil blurs the distinction because he sees the world as being divided between the “haves” (white America, western Europe and Israel) and the “have nots” they persecute (people of color, the Third World). Consequently, despite using phrases like “unspeakable horror” and “despicable terrorism” to describe what was perpetrated in New York and Washington, he suggests a substantial measure of justification when he writes that these are acts of “people with unattended grievances.”
There are millions of people with legitimate grievances in this world. In the Middle East, these should be directed at despotic potentates who live in luxury while keeping their subjects in poverty, denying them basic rights and freedoms. Osama bin Laden and his henchmen do nothing to improve living conditions on the Arab street. Their sole objective is inflicting pain on nations whose commitment to values such as freedom, democracy and the preciousness of human life is an anathema to them.
In fact, they impede progress toward a better Middle East by scapegoating the United States and Israel, thus drawing attention away from the need for reforms that can be initiated only indigenously.
Much the same can be said for other Islamic fundamentalist groups, many allied with bin Laden, who are working to undermine moderate Arab regimes that could make a difference.
God bless America, Mr. Muwakkil. It’s time you understood this.
