[ALBSA-Info] NYTimes.com Article: America Inspires Both Longing and Loathing in Arab World

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America Inspires Both Longing and Loathing in Arab World

By JOHN F. BURNS



ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 15 — Of all history's great powers, from
Athens and Rome to Byzantium and imperial Britain, perhaps none has
ever so dominated the globe as America does now.

 Nor has any of these powers aroused such a complex of feelings,
positive and negative, that could go some way toward explaining how
extremists from a distant world could mount an attack of the
unfathomable hatred seen this week in New York and Washington,
followed by the unrestrained outpouring of sadness and support from
some of the very peoples that America's terrorist enemies claim to
represent.

 America, with its daunting economic, political and military power,
its pervasive popular culture, and its instinct to spread the
freewheeling, secularist ways of American life — even to those who
may prefer to shun them — has an impact on people's lives to the
farthest corners of the earth. Just how great this impact is, and
how, in many places, it is resented, may be more than many
Americans can grasp.

 If they consider their country's place at all, many Americans may
see it in uncomplicated terms, as the "beacon of freedom" President
Bush spoke of with moistened eyes this week. But the feelings of
many of the peoples who live in America's shadow are frequently
less sanguine, or at least deeply contradictory. Grievances run
side by side, and often in the same person, with a consuming
passion for things American.

 Outside American embassies, particularly in the poorer parts of
the world, there is almost always a long, clamoring crowd of visa
seekers, desperate for their chance at the American dream. In the
same cities, and often enough outside the same embassies, other
impassioned crowds will gather at the slimmest pretext to protest
against America, and to shout for its downfall. In recent days,
when the crowds have returned, it has been, invariably, to weep,
and to mourn.

 Such paradoxes present themselves almost everywhere, but nowhere
more starkly than in the Arab and wider Muslim worlds. There,
bitter political grievances abound, among them: the United States'
support of Israel; its troop presence in the "holy land" of the
Arabian peninsula; its military encirclement and economic
strangulation of Iraq; and its alliances with governments across
the Middle East and Asia that are widely perceived as corrupt.

 But the complaints are often accompanied by an unquenchable
appetite for Marlboro cigarettes and Levi's jeans and adoration, of
course, of the two Michaels, Jackson and Jordan. These enthusiasms
are inseparable from the deprivation that besets much of the world,
and a yearning for the bounty of America.

 It is, however, not only the tangible things about America that
excite. Freedom, to those without it, is irresistible, too. Among
those who spend exhausting days in visa line-ups in Beijing, Cairo
or Islamabad, it is this sense of America as a place where everyman
can pursue his dreams that comes pouring through, as it has for the
fettered of the world since America's beginnings.

 "America, free!" the visa-seekers say, even if they are the only
two English words they have.

 But to be free, rich and powerful in a world that is mostly none
of these things is, inevitably, to engender resentments. Freedom
itself can be considered deeply disturbing, even threatening, in
many of the world's poorer societies that are anchored to the old
pillars of faith, tradition and submission.

 Much the same can be said for the flood of American popular
culture. When the Taliban began their rule in Afghanistan in 1996
by hanging television sets from trees and outlawing music and
films, they were at the extreme edge of an uneasiness that is
widespread in traditional societies that have begun to feel
inundated by Western, and particularly American, culture.

 Americans, with the richness of intermingling cultures, can find
it difficult to grasp how vulnerable other societies can feel.

 This anxiety has found a ready focus in American rock music, and
in Hollywood movies. But even with the Taliban's draconian
restrictions on Western lifestyles and women — or, just as likely,
because of them — the blockbuster movie "Titanic" became so popular
that it spawned a fad in hairstyles among men wanting to look like
Leonardo DiCaprio.

 Islamic terror groups have their own ideology, rooted in a deeply
conservative reading — and, Islamic moderates say, a distortion —
of the Koran, Islam's holy book. They reject American values like
democracy, tolerance and respect for individual rights, then rouse
their followers by arguing that the United States violates those
principles in its support for Israel, and with the sanctions that
stifle Iraq.

 Osama bin Laden, the Saudi militant based in Afghanistan, rails
against American "falsehood" in claiming that principle drives its
interaction with the world, even as he mocks the values he says
America violates.

 No doubt, organizations like Mr. bin Laden's Al Qaeda group feed
off broader resentments against America. Often, in discussions with
Islamic militants, anger over Israel or Iraq or Bosnia spills over
into a recounting of more personal experiences, sometimes trifling,
sometimes not, in which encounters with America — time spent
working in menial jobs or studying in the United States, or a brush
with United States immigration authorities — stirred resentments
that became a trigger for antagonism.

 But even in these cases, there is sometimes a lingering sense of
kinship with another America, the America of unrequited yearnings.

 It is this duality, in part, that makes it possible for American
reporters to work, more or less safely, in places like the
Taliban-ruled parts of Afghanistan that, on their face, are
profoundly hostile to America.

 During one cold night four years ago spent sheltering with a group
of soldiers at a remote mountain checkpoint, the sight of a
reporter's satellite telephone produced amazed whispers among the
soldiers, and then, in English, a quiet request. "I have a brother
in Detroit," a man said. "Would you mind if I call him?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/16/international/16AMER.html?ex=1001699413&ei=1&en=50e6a74e8291b5bf

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