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A historic transformation is unfolding before our eyes: There is a vast American imperial presence in the Muslim world. The invasion of Iraq was not the beginning, and it will not be the end. From military campaigns in Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo to our war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, we have shown that our power underpins international order. This is America's burden.As a people, we are singularly uncomfortable with the idea of imperial power. You might say we are an empire in denial. But the shattering surprise of September 11, 2001, brought forth a new world. Our willingness to launch wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was born of the recognition that there are plotters against America who have to be struck down lest they bring greater terrors onto our soil.
We entered these wars with justifiable reluctance, not least because anti-Americanism is rampant in Arab and Islamic lands. But this hatred of America should be seen for what it is: a scapegoat for the ills of an Islamic world in the throes of a deep, historic crisis. The dream of modernity in the Arab heartland of Islam has been thwarted. The grace of life in cities that once knew some civility has been overwhelmed by a great demographic explosion. With 41 percent of its population under the age of 14, the Arab region has the highest birthrate on the planet. At the same time, it is in the grip of mass poverty: Consider that 22 Arab countries, taken together, have a smaller GNP than that of Spain alone.
Even the oil lands, once the El Dorado of the region, have not been spared. Saudi Arabia and the smaller oil states of the Persian Gulf have run down their foreign currency reserves, while their populations have doubled over the last two decades.
Awakened to its own decline, the Islamic world searched desperately for someone to blame. The angry mobs and their manipulative rulers found the perfect target in a distant America and a nearby Israel.
Hoping to soothe this "Arab street," in late 2001 Secretary of State Colin Powell pressed into diplomatic service an accomplished Madison Avenue executive, Charlotte Beers, as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Her charge: sell America's image to Arab and Muslim countries.
But the campaign ended in futility. After 17 months on the job, Beers gave up her post. "Public diplomacy" could not convince the young people of Ramallah and Cairo and Casablanca and Amman of America's goodness and innocence. The battle for hearts and minds in Arab lands and Islamic nations is no simple marketing affair.
Nor is it best waged through active American diplomacy on behalf of the Palestinians. That's the conventional wisdom, and it is wrong. In the 1990s, President Clinton ceaselessly courted the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and journeyed to Gaza to give America's blessing to the cause of Palestinian self-determination. The men of Al Qaeda paid no heed. They had their own scores to settle with their own rulers and the United States. For radical Islamists, the plight of the Palestinians is one more excuse, but not one they need.
When all is said and done, the best antidote to anti-Americanism will be an Arab world that accepts responsibility for its own fate. Still, we cannot simply wait for this time to come. We must try to help bring it about.
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