Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Farber is Professor of History at Temple University. His books include Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America's First Encounter with Radical Islam (Princeton).

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"These essays highlight what we have long observed from our international polling, that people do not judge us by what we say about ourselves, but by how they perceive we are threatening them.What They Think of Us is a must-read book for Ms. Karen Hughes and Co."--James J. Zogby, founder and President of the Arab American Institute

"This is an important and timely book. To my knowledge there is no other book that does what this one does--collect commentaries on the United States written by foreigners. It is terrifically fresh in its approach and a valuable addition to writing about the post-9/11 world."--Mark Lawrence, University of Texas, Austin

"Offering a broad international perspective on anti-American attitudes, What They Think of Us is timely and provocative. It helps explain why so many educated and even democratic-minded citizens around the world have grown increasingly critical of the United States in the last decade. The essays point to the corrosive effects of American military intervention, economic expansion, and cultural insensitivity. This book allows the reader to understand, if not always sympathize with, the experiences and attitudes of people who see the world very differently from the average American."--Jeremi Suri, University of Wisconsin, Madison

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"These essays highlight what we have long observed from our international polling, that people do not judge us by what we say about ourselves, but by how they perceive we are threatening them.What They Think of Us is a must-read book for Ms. Karen Hughes and Co."--James J. Zogby, founder and President of the Arab American Institute

"This is an important and timely book. To my knowledge there is no other book that does what this one does--collect commentaries on the United States written by foreigners. It is terrifically fresh in its approach and a valuable addition to writing about the post-9/11 world."--Mark Lawrence, University of Texas, Austin

"Offering a broad international perspective on anti-American attitudes, What They Think of Us is timely and provocative. It helps explain why so many educated and even democratic-minded citizens around the world have grown increasingly critical of the United States in the last decade. The essays point to the corrosive effects of American military intervention, economic expansion, and cultural insensitivity. This book allows the reader to understand, if not always sympathize with, the experiences and attitudes of people who see the world very differently from the average American."--Jeremi Suri, University of Wisconsin, Madison

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WHAT THEY THINK OF US

Princeton University Press

Contents

Contributors.........................................................................................................................................viiPreface David Farber................................................................................................................................xiIraqis' Bleak Views of the United States Ibrahim Al-Marashi and Abdul Hadi al-Khalili...............................................................1Beyond the Stained Glass Window: Indonesian Perceptions of the United States and the War on Terror Melani Budianta..................................27Turkish Perceptions of the United States Nur Bilge Criss............................................................................................49Beautiful Imperialist or Warmongering Hegemon: Contemporary Chinese Views of the United States Yufan Hao and Lin Su.................................74From the Cold War to a Lukewarm Peace: Russian Views of September 11 and Beyond Eric Shiraev and Olga Makhovskaya...................................95Nuestro Once de Septiembre: The Kingdom of the Comma Fernando Escalante-Gonzalbo and Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo........................................125The Twilight of American Cultural Hegemony: A Historical Perspective on Western Europe's Distancing from America Federico Romero.....................153Index................................................................................................................................................177

Chapter One

Ibrahim Al-Marashi and Abdul Hadi al-Khalili

First, I (al-Khalili) was carjacked right in front of my home. That was terrifying enough. But then, on April 28, 2004, I was kidnapped. I was riding in a car owned by a friend. Suddenly, a late-model BMW swerved in front of us, blocking our way. Three armed men jumped out, called me by name, and demanded that I come with them. I was handcuffed and blindfolded. They moved me from one car to another and then I was imprisoned in a small house occupied, strangely enough, by a woman and her three children. The kidnappers demanded that my family pay them $500,000. My family desperately negotiated the ransom down to $30,000. They paid and I lived.

Such was life in Iraq a year after the Americans overthrew Saddam Hussein. Kidnappings, killings, and carjackings were carried out in broad daylight. These acts were perpetrated by well-equipped, professional Iraqi criminals organized into gangs. The Iraqi police were, to put it most generously, not committed to stopping this organized crime. After my ordeal, for example, not a single Iraqi official wished to enquire about the details of my kidnapping in order to catch the criminals or to gather information that might help them prevent future attacks. Many middle-class and professional Iraqis responded to this nearly unfettered criminality by fleeing the country or by greatly curtailing their activities.

Here is the tragic irony. Crimes like carjacking, murder, and kidnapping were nearly unheard of during the years of Saddam's repressive police state. The United States successfully dismantled Saddam's government but completely failed to bring a sense of law and order to the nation of Iraq. This failure was disastrous. Worse, the Americans' failure to insure domestic security for Iraqis was and is not the only problem keeping Iraqis from embracing or even accepting the United States as a true friend. Iraq and the United States (as well as Great Britain and Iraq) have an uncomfortable history that few Americans know but that few Iraqis have forgotten. To understand Americans' difficulties in convincing Iraqis that the United States can and should be their ally, some of that history has to be communicated. This historically conditioned perspective combines with the contemporary predicament to explain a great deal about what must be done if Iraqis are to perceive the United States in a more favorable light.

We aim to highlight four key phases during which Iraqis, generally but not totally, came to share strongly negative or cynical views of the United States. The first phase came right after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which was punctuated in Iraq with the Ba'ath Party takeover in 1968. Then, in 1980, Iraqis became focused on the Iran-Iraq War. As a result, the Saddam regime, which had total control of the mass media, toned down its anti-U.S. rhetoric as a means to garner American support for its war against Iran. This stage in Iraqis' perceptions of the United States ended in August 1990 when Saddam, in an attempt to stop the United States from ending the takeover of Kuwait, used his control of the mass media to focus the nation's hatred toward the United States. This era of unrelenting anti-Americanism lasted throughout the 1991 Gulf War and the twelve years of UN-imposed sanctions. The fourth phase began after the American occupation, which resulted in the emergence of an independent Iraqi media and numerous civil society organizations that tended to blast the United States for its mishandling of the occupation or for simply being an aggressive imperialist nation.

These four phases have produced, to put the matter schematically, some common Iraqi perceptions of the United States. Many Iraqis argue, sometime in only inchoate forms, that American policy in Iraq is repeating the same disastrous mistakes British imperialists made in their administration of Iraq after 1920. And a great many people have continued to believe the view of the United States spread so effectively and sometimes quite accurately by the Saddam regime that the United States is a neocolonialist, pro-"Zionist" power that wants to steal Iraq's oil resources.

The Rise of the Ba'ath and Anti-Americanism in Iraq

First, a bit of deep historical context: the modern nation of Iraq since the sixteenth century had comprised three provinces of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. British forces overran these provinces toward the end of World War I, beginning a military occupation that was met with widespread resistance among Iraq's tribes, as well as other segments of the Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish communities. The events culminated in 1920 in what is referred to by the Iraqis as the "Great Revolt." Iraq gained independence in 1932. However, the ruling monarchy had signed an Anglo-Iraqi treaty that allowed Great Britain to intervene in Iraq's domestic affairs. The British interference in Iraqi affairs fiercely alienated many segments of its population. In 1958, Iraqi military officer Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew the monarchy in a military coup and ended its pro-Western stance. Qassim's government was overthrown on February 8, 1963, by elements of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and the military. However, the Ba'ath Party held power for only nine months, until they were purged from the government by factions loyal to General Abdul Salam Arif. Much of the public discourse in Iraqi circles from the 1920s to 1958 expressed hostility toward British control over Iraq's affairs.

This hostility was slowly redirected toward the Americans after the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. After Israel's lightning victory, the United States began to side far...