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81 Foreign Aff. 73 (2002)
The Real Roots of Arab Anti-Americanism

handle is hein.journals/fora81 and id is 1135 raw text is: The Real Roots of
Arab Anti-Americanism
Barry Rubin
DAMN YANKEES
SINCE LAST YEAR'S attacks on New York and Washington, the con-
ventional wisdom about the motivation behind such deadly terrorism
has gelled. The violence, we are often told, was a reaction to misguided
U.S. policies. For years, certain American actions-such as the country's
support for Israel and for unpopular, oppressive Arab regimes-had
supposedly produced profound grievances throughout the Middle
East. Those grievances came to a boil over time, and finally spilled over
on September u. The result was more than 3,000 American deaths.
Although anti-Americanism is genuinely widespread among Arab
governments and peoples, however, there is something seriously mis-
leading in this account. Arab and Muslim hatred of the United States
is not just, or even mainly, a response to actual U.S. policies-policies
that, if anything, have been remarkably pro-Arab and pro-Muslim
over the years. Rather, such animus is largely the product of self-
interested manipulation by various groups within Arab society, groups
that use anti-Americanism as a foil to distract public attention from
other, far more serious problems within those societies.
This distinction should have a profound impact on American
policymakers. If Arab anti-Americanism turns out to be grounded in
domestic maneuvering rather than American misdeeds, neither
BARRY RUBIN is Director of the Global Research in International
Affairs Center and Editor of the Middle East Review oflnternationalAffairs.
His latest books are The Tragedy of the Middle East and Anti-American
Terrorism and the Middle East.

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