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Who'll Speak Truth to the Arab Street?

[Washington Times] Clifford D. May - The New York Times reported that seven years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the "conventional wisdom" in the Middle East is that "the United States and Israel had to have been involved" in the planning, if not execution, of the mass murder. The report fails to raise the possibility that the persistence of such beliefs may reveal a pathology in the culture of the contemporary Arab Middle East. Instead, it suggests that it is due to the inadequacies of U.S. public diplomacy that the fabled Arab Street thinks Americans incinerated fellow Americans as part of a "crusade" against them. Yet Americans in recent years have repeatedly sacrificed blood and treasure to rescue Muslim communities. Americans intervened in the Balkans to protect Bosnia and Kosovo from hostile Christian neighbors. Americans saved Kuwait from the savagery of Saddam Hussein. America liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban, an al-Qaeda proxy. Then there are the billions in aid that American taxpayers have given to the Palestinians. The writer is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
2008-09-16 01:00:00
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