The outrage over the film “Innocence of Muslims” fired its way through the Middle East, virally spreading from country to country.
The 13-minute short film sparked protests and proved a tipping point for Muslim patience with the United States. It’s cited as being the reason for attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, which resulted in Ambassador Chris Stevens’ murder.
While I deplore what I consider to be an overreaction by the Muslim community overseas, I think the time has come for everyone to realize there is a direct correlation between what we do overseas to the treatment we receive from other countries.
The film may have had an effect on the region, particularly Libya, but we can’t ignore the fact that 72 civilians were killed by the U.S. led NATO forces in Libya last year.
We can’t ignore that the protests in Pakistan could also have been caused by the nearly 2,000 Pakistanis the U.S. has killed via drone strikes.
We can’t ignore that the protests in Tunisia, Yemen, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt could be related to how the U.S. acts in those countries.
The U.S. government sends troops and builds bases in these countries, yet we wonder why they hate us. It must be a movie.
No doubt, the movie plays a role in the protests, but it’s unreasonable to say it’s the sole cause of the protests.
Citizens of this country cannot honestly believe that what the government does in the Middle East is solely to keep us safe. That line may have worked in 2001 but 11 years later, it’s a stretch.
Americans are growing tired of war, and we’re looking for a way out. The largest reason Barack Obama won in 2008 was because he promised to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan and Iraq.
While our troops may be out of Iraq, the U.S. maintains a presence of 5,000 private military contractors in the area. Meanwhile, Afghanistan keeps a cool 68,000 troops.
When is the time that we ask ourselves, “What if it’s us?” What if we do these things to ourselves?
What if Russia put a military base in New Orleans?
Their troops could patrol the streets, “neutralizing” any threats to Russian security. And they’d stop the Saints games to use the Superdome for home base.
I imagine we’d be pretty angry about that. I think some people, definitely some Saints fans, would go mad and start attacking the Russians at every turn.
You should be imagining the movie “Red Dawn” by now.
Now replace New Orleans with Kabul and Russians with Americans. See my point, yet?
There has to be a turning point in the average American’s mind, when he or she thinks maybe the CIA knows what it’s talking about when it says “blowback.”
We have to understand that if we truly want to be the moral majority of the world, then we have to start treating other people how we’d like to be treated. A “golden rule” in foreign policy would be nice.
It would also be nice if we could use conventional wisdom and learn from the mistakes of other countries. Maybe if we looked back about 30 years to what the Russians did in Afghanistan, we’d see a possible outcome for our own involvement.
All I’m asking is for more discourse on foreign policy. People need to start talking about these issues, and not so much about nonissues, like Obama’s school records or Romney’s tax returns.
We have to handle the here and now. We don’t have the luxury, as a country, to disengage from this sort of thing.
As Hayek said, “we shall not learn more until we realize that much that we have done was very foolish.”
