What Has Been Wrought
Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway in her Open Mind, Open Heart post of learning from the web logs points to Juan Cole’s article on the history of Lebanon.
Things are not always the way they are presented by the media or the government. While he alludes to their actions, Dr. Cole doesn’t specifically mention the names of the two people in modern times, i.e. that last fifty years, who have created the image that people in the Middle East have of the United States.
If you are really interested in learning why they hate us, look at the actions of the Dulles brothers. John Foster Dulles was the Secretary of State in the Eisenhower years, and Allen Dulles became the Director of the CIA during that period. I’m not going to point you to anything, because you need to discover for yourself why people don’t think the US has much credibility when it comes to spreading democracy.
Hint: US officials didn’t always believe that a democratic government was capable of fending off the blandishments of Communism.
On a related note, how bad is it when arts and letters commentators like James Wolcott feel obligated to comment foreign policy? In Second Verse, Same as the First notes the attempt to morph the Hezbollah into the new foreign terrorist threat to the United States.
Mr. Wolcott is certainly worth a daily read for his standard fair of snark about people and the arts, but this administration is becoming so annoying that he felt compelled to comment.
