Commentary: U.S. Has Long Sided with Arab World
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On three formidable major speech-making occasions since his election – in Ankara, Cairo, and Washington – President Obama stated that America ‘is not and never will be at war with Islam’.
This definitive affirmation ignores the fact that America has been at war with Christians who are at war with Muslims, while the United States has accepted the defeat and death of Christians at the hands of Muslims. Obama actually gave voice to what has been characteristic of U.S. policy in religiously-defined conflicts, for American-Islamic compatibility was a pillar in Washington’s conduct long before Obama made it central to the American political creed.
The history of America’s special relationship with Saudi Arabia, the heart of Islam and its global campaign to reach and preach in the four corners of the world, is well-documented and central in the strategic calculations of the United States for over 70 years. Incorporating Turkey into the NATO alliance in 1952 was also a step toward U.S.-Muslim consolidation, as is the decades-long alliance with Pakistan.
But our concern here is a particular aspect of Washington’s pro-Muslim inclination involving Muslim-Christian rivalries and America’s decision of supporting the Muslim side.
The swath of territory running from south-eastern Europe across Asia Minor and toward the eastern Mediterranean basin was historically conquered and ruled by the Turkish Ottoman Empire for many centuries until WWI. A state system emerged, peoples dotted the map, and Western hegemony dominated the political arena. Islam as a religious-political concept appeared to have been replaced by nationalism and secularism, but it never really collapsed; it mutated, radicalized and politicized, and reasserted the ‘Green Belt’ momentum with American consent and cooperation.
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We can capture the pattern of U.S. policy in areas which Samuel Huntington aptly labeled “Islam’s bloody borders” by drawing upon four illuminating political cases that confirm President Obama’s view when he declared, that America is not a Christian country.
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Cyprus
In 1974, Turkish armed forces invaded Cyprus, capturing 36 percent of its territory, partitioning the island, and leading to the declaration of the northern Turkish Republic of Cyprus in 1983. This act of war and premeditated aggression was taken by an American ally and NATO member-country. At the time of the invasion the United States, whose foreign policy was considerably under Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s stewardship, supplied Turkey with arms and perhaps funding. In supporting Turkey, the Nixon administration was sending a message of enmity to Archbishop Makarios’s government that directed Cyprus along non-aligned lines in the Cold War conflict between the two superpowers. Kissinger punished Makarios, demonstrated Soviet impotence, and sent a message of friendship to the Muslim world.
At the time, only about 20 percent of the population in Cyprus was Turkish Muslim. Fearing a Greek takeover of the island which could harm the Muslim minority, Turkey acted with deliberate military force. In the succeeding years, Turkish forces implemented a policy of “ethnic cleansing” that sent close to 200,000 Greek Cypriots southward as refugees who lost their property; churches and cemeteries were desecrated by Muslim hooligans. Over time the small remaining Greek population of 20,000 people in the northern Turkish republic drastically dwindled, and Turkey transferred thousands of her Anatolian peasants to populate the island.
The 2006 Annan Plan to resolve the political issue of de facto partition and reunite the island foundered on Greek Cypriot opposition to a proposal which did not guarantee the withdrawal of the Turkish army from the north. Washington had come to terms with Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus and with the ignoble and defeated condition of the dispirited Christian community.
Lebanon
The outbreak of war in Lebanon in 1975 between the native Maronite Christians and the alien Palestinians later expanded into a large-scale Muslim/Syrian/Palestinian assault on Christian Lebanon as a whole. Maronite villages and urban neighborhoods were mercilessly targeted, with enormous civilian fatalities, slaughter and devastation. The United States under President Carter sought to accommodate the Palestinians, dealing secretly with PLO operatives, while proposing in 1976 to save the Lebanese Christians, not by defending or arming them, but through their mass evacuation and emigration abroad.
The Taif Accord in 1989 was designed to end the ‘Lebanese War’ misrepresented as a civil war. Arranged by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, this political orchestration of Lebanese political affairs dealt a severe blow to the Christians, by demoting the office of the Maronite-held presidency, and elevating the Muslim-held offices of Prime Minister and Speaker of the Legislature. Particularly insidious was the formula in the Accord that defined Lebanon as an Arab country in brotherly relations with Syria. The United States collaborated with Muslim groups and Arab states, and abandoned the ancient Christians of Lebanon.
Balkans
The war in Bosnia and Croatia from 1992-95 and that in Kosovo from 1996-99 pitted various ethnic/religious communities against each other within the boundaries of Yugoslavia, which dissolved in the 1990s. Serbian hegemony in the former federated state was shattered in each territory. Orthodox Christian Serbs were forced to flee as refugees from what became the independent countries of Catholic Croatia, Muslim-dominated Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the fledgling state of Albanian-ethnic Muslim Kosovo. In addition to the propaganda aspect of the wars that portrayed the Serbs as aggressors, murderers, and rapists, the compelling Serb loss of life and territory, stature and power, constituted the harsh political dénouement of the Balkan wars.
The United States supported the adversaries and enemies of the Serb people, offering them moral sanction and military advice, arms and money; by contrast, the Serbs were defamed, ultimately charged with war crimes and “ethnic cleansing” at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The sweeping obliteration of Serbian religious history and life in Kosovo was consummated with the destruction of monasteries and the desecration of churches, as Serbs ran for their lives.
In 1995 the Americans formulated the Dayton Agreement designed to end the fighting in Bosnia between the majority Muslims and the minority Serbs. But this came about after NATO/U.S. bomber aircraft attacked Serb civilian targets and subdued Serb resistance to Bosnian-Muslim forces. American bombers also strafed Belgrade, the capital of the independent Serbian Republic. While the Saudis and Iranians assisted the Muslim jihad forces, America also chose Islam over Christianity in the Balkans, perhaps to mollify Arab allies in the Middle East, or to deny Russia a Serb victory in the name of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. All this contributed to the strengthening and expansion of Islam in Europe.
Israel
Although there is compelling evidence to substantiate the idea that America has been ‘Israel’s best friend’, and that the two countries enjoy a strategic relationship, the United States has been a great adversary of Israel’s national interests and rights. Since 1967, Washington has opposed Israel’s retention of territories captured in the Six Day War; and since 1993, with the Clinton presidency and the Oslo Accord process, and especially thereafter with the Bush presidency and the Road Map two-state plan from 2002, the U.S. has advocated Palestinian national rights and independence. Israel’s survival will be existentially endangered if the Palestinians have a state on the mountains above Israel, while the gushing thrust of hatred and hostility from neighboring Arab and Muslim countries, along with sedition galvanizing Arabs within the Green Line borders of Israel, threaten the foundations of the Jewish state.
America has been pressing Israel at all political turns, arming her enemies, and relentlessly seeking ways and formulae that will coax and clobber Israel into submission. America is the great friend of the Arab world and the political and military patron of the PLO whose ultimate goal of Israel’s elimination is etched into the fabric of the philosophy and policy of the Palestinian campaign against Zionism and Jewish national sovereignty.
In the eyes of Washington, the Arabs are never expected to accept responsibility for bellicosity and terrorism, mendacity and anti-Semitic propaganda. Concurrently, U.S. General Keith Dayton has supervised the military training and arming of Palestinian Authority army units whose final antagonist is Israel, not Hamas. Supporting Muslims against Jews, the United States actually foments war while brandishing the goal and fruits of peace.
Moreover, the idea of a ‘Palestinian people’ conceals the reality of the majority Muslim element oppressing, persecuting, and intimidating the weaker Christian sector of Palestinian society. Christians have been run out of Bethlehem; Muslim converts to Christianity have been murdered; Christian-owned properties have been ransacked and set aflame. This is the Islam in Palestine of which America finds no fault or flaw.
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In conclusion, the media war has cast the Christians and the Jews as malevolent agents of violence against innocent Muslim civilian victims. Everyone heard about the 1982 Christian Lebanese massacre of Palestinian Muslims in Sabra and Shatila in Beirut, and the Serb massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. But who has heard about the Turkish Cypriot Muslim massacre of Greek Christian Cypriots in Palekythro and the Turkish bombing of Kyrenian civilians in 1974, or the Palestinian massacre of Lebanese Christians in Damour and Ayshiyyah in 1976? Or the 1992 Bosnian Muslim slaughter of withdrawing Serb Christian soldiers in Dobrovoljacka Street in Sarajevo? And while the 2003 Palestinian terrorist bomb-attack murdering 21 Israelis at the Maxim Restaurant in Haifa is consigned to oblivion, Israeli warfare against Palestinians in Jenin in 2002 and Gaza in 2009 created headlines and an international outcry. Only Muslim blood is valued and enshrined in the book of commemoration and glory.
The major modern victims of ethnic cleansing have been Christian populations, highlighted by genocidal campaigns that struck the Armenians in Turkey in 1915-16 and African Christians in Sudan since the 1950s. Paralyzed was America’s power and morality; even her voice was mute.
The sub-text of this historical review identifies the vicious role and expansionist ambitions of Turkey that paralleled the American umbrella of denial of Muslim guilt, demonization of non-Muslim victims, and the demoralization of Western countries facing the amplification of Muslim political assertiveness and demographic proliferation.
The Turks have acted as instigators and aggressors in the Balkans and Cyprus, and recently assumed the role of patron of the Palestinian people’s war against Israel. In the Mavi Marmara naval imbroglio from May 2010, the Turks led the provocative campaign on behalf of Free Gaza. Once a friend of Israel, radical Islamic Turkey recently allied with Islamic Iran has become her slanderous enemy.
As for the Jews, when American jet bombers will zoom over the Galilee, Israel shouldn’t assume they are there to save her from the Arabs and Iranians as it is far more likely they will be coming to save the Palestinians from the Israelis. This scenario fits the pattern and purpose of U.S. strategic preferences, as in the past when Muslim/non-Muslim confrontations exploded.
America is indeed walking hand-in-hand with Islam. This alliance preceded Obama, but became more explicit and more ‘spiritually’ expansive after he entered the White House. The future looks very dark in this twilight era of world affairs.
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*Dr. Nisan teaches Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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