No Islamic Gratitude towards America

by John Thompson

January 19, 2004

Joseph Stalin is said to have once remarked that "gratitude is a disease of dogs." Many of the masters of statecraft from Machiavelli to Morgenthau have held similar notions so far as gratitude is concerned.

Most individuals (one hopes) are sincere about gratitude for individuals who have helped in their own lives … or perhaps this author is just a hopeless Leo. Still, here and there among the community of nations, once can see gratitude at work in small ways.

The Dutch still send tulips to adorn Ottawa every year — in thanks for the young Canadian men who lie planted in their soil from WW-2. More profoundly, Greece and Turkey have recently let their longstanding animosities relax, partly because of the dedication and selflessness of each other’s rescue workers following a brace of deadly earthquakes. However, the Iranian government has poured cold water on notions that a rapprochement with the Western world (the US especially) will not follow from the aid that was rushed to Bam after its recent earthquake.

This should be no real surprise. While gratitude is seldom expressed between nations, it is even rarer between the Islamic World and the West, particularly when it comes to the US. Kuwait, almost alone, remembers who came to their aid when Saddam Hussein’s army occupied them. The Saudis, terrified in 1990, seem to have forgotten how their own fears were abated.

It is hard to think of any Western nation that has done more to protect Muslim peoples around the World than the US has, but it is easy to guess which Western nation they hate the most. Television cameras have yet to capture a mob in Palestine or Pakistan burning a Swiss or Belgian flag, or record them chanting "Death to Portugal", or "Down, Down, Ireland."

Yet when the Europeans and the UN failed to protect the Bosnian Muslims from the ravages of the Serbs; it took US leadership and US airpower to bring the conflict to an end. There are British, Canadian, French and Russian troops keeping the peace there now, but the mission might not long survive if the Americans pull out. Likewise, the Americans had to lead the intervention to protect the Muslim Kosovar Albanians in 1999. What thanks did they get? Well, for a start, both Bosnia and the Albanians are now riddled with Fundamentalist networks.

From the 1930s, the Americans have supported the Saudi Royal Family and guaranteed Saudi independence — deploying hundreds of thousands of their troops there in 1990 to debar a threatened Iraqi invasion. In return, the Saudis sent their extremist Wahabbi clerics to man Mosques in the US and the Western World, and funded the creation of al Qaeda.

Muslims will scream that American is responsible for protecting Israel (true enough), but forget about all that the US had done to protect Arab nations from Israel. In 1956, Eisenhower single-handedly ordered the British, French and Israelis to back off from their invasion of Egypt. Whatever progress has been wrought in the peace process in the Middle East has been paid for by American money and influence.

When the Somali civil war led to famine (not because of drought, but because every farmer in the country had been dispossessed), aid agencies were unable to deliver food because of the local warlords. It was the US that led the charge so that the UN could stabilize the situation and save the lives of hundreds of thousands of starving Muslims. Nobody said thank you, but at least one tin-pot tyrant took care to see that some US troops went home in coffins instead.

Let’s not forget the routine daily provision of US sponsored aid and assistance, or US efforts to further regional stability — year in and year out — around the world.

It doesn’t take much to spark street riots and mob violence in the Muslim World — one can remember the hasty evacuation of a Miss World competition in Nigeria in 2002, or the death-fatwah style of literary criticism sparked by a novel (written by an Indian Muslim) about Mohammed. There are also the Muslim attacks on Christians from Nigeria to Indonesia, which annually kill hundreds of people.

Compare this to the American reaction to the Muslims living there after 9-11: One Sikh gas station attendant was murdered (which says much about the yahoo who thought he was avenging New York), and a cavalcade of US politicians — led by Bush himself — issued an avalanche of calls for toleration and acceptance. This proves that the US protection of Muslims begins at home.

At what thanks has the U.S. got? Maybe Stalin was right…

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca