The Muslim eruption
reflects a deep popular anger and blowback from US intervention in both Libya
and Afghanistan
".......About two-thirds of people in the Middle East and North Africa say they distrust the US, polling shows, rising to more than three-quarters in Pakistan. After 11 years of the war on terror, following decades of baleful intervention, the only surprise is that there aren't more violent anti-US and anti-western protests in the region.
Western war in the Muslim world has also fed a
toxic tide of Islamophobia in Europe
and the US.
What is it about Muslims that makes them so easily offended, Europeans and
Americans commonly demand to know – while Muslims point to cases such as the
British 19-year-old who was convicted in Yorkshire last week of posting a
"grossly offensive" Facebook message that British soldiers in Afghanistan
"should die and go to hell", and ask why they're not afforded that
protection.
The events of the last week are a reminder that an
Arab world which has thrown off dictatorship will be more difficult for the
western powers to hold in thrall. The Economist called the deadly assault on the
US consulate in Libya an example of "Arab
dysfunction" and urged the US not to retreat from the Middle East but go in
deeper, including in Syria. As Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya have
already shown, that would only bring disaster."
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