"Fighting an urge to despair in the Middle East"

[TexasLawyer]

From the Daily Star, Lebanon

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=12503

Fighting an urge to despair in the Middle East

By Edward Gnehm

Wednesday, February 09, 2005


Newspaper headlines bannered the deaths of two policemen during a shootout with alleged "criminals." The pictures were gory, the public outcry emotional. Demands that the government take immediate and decisive action dominated private conversations as well as public statements. Days later news bulletins described yet another shootout. This time reports said that security forces had killed two terrorists and were pursuing two others.

The location of these incidents was neither Iraq nor Gaza, but Kuwait, and these events took place within the past two weeks. I was there for the second. I was struck by the intense anger of Kuwaitis, including Islamist parties, toward the "terrorists," as they were being called. I was also struck by the intensity of support Kuwaitis displayed for their own government to forcefully move against these groups. Neither incident involved the United States. These were incidents that involved Arabs on both sides - terrorists and police.

These incidents underscored a fact little appreciated in the U.S. The Arab world, its people, and its leaders are as much targets of terrorism, fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, as Americans are. They are as angry as are Americans. They do not want to see their way of life or the security destroyed by terrorists any more than Americans do.

Don't we have a common cause with these Arabs? I assert that we do. And yet one of the sad consequences of U.S. reaction to terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, is to cluster all Arabs in the same profile. This is but one example of the many misunderstandings driving Americans and the people of the Middle East apart - exactly as Osama bin Laden desires.

Many Arabs are worried about Iraq, but far more concerned about Iran - not about what Iran will do but what the U.S. will do to Iran.

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