(National Interest) Kenneth M. Pollack - The people of the Muslim Middle East saw the preservation of the status quo as condemning them to eternal misery. This, more than anything else, is why so many Arabs admired Hassan Nasrallah, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, and even Osama bin Laden. They at least seemed to be fighting for change, for an overturning of the status quo. And although most Arabs did not like what they stood for, they loved what they stood against - the traditional order that oppressed them. Because the U.S. supported the traditional order for geopolitical reasons, this also put us on the wrong side of public opinion. The writer is director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
2011-03-04 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive