U.S. Through the Looking Glass

Re “America’s Goodness Doesn’t Extend Overseas,” Commentary, Oct. 29: Mushahid Hussain tries feebly to compare terrorism in the U.S. and Israel with terrorism in the Islamic world by flogging the same dead horses of Tim McVeigh and Baruch Goldstein. These two isolated examples are cited ad infinitum against a backdrop of almost daily snipers, suicide bombers and various terror attacks by one or another group affiliating itself with some Islamic/Arab/Muslim organization. The Abu Nidal organization, the Abu Sayyaf group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Fatah Revolutionary Council, Hamas, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, Hezbollah (I’ll stop at the letter H) are just a few examples of the speciousness of this attempt at moral equivalence.

They then cry crocodile tears that the West doesn’t understand the Arab world and the oppressions it lives with. We do understand the Arab world. It must control its own leaders and terrorist criminals or it will continue to live in the conditions it finds itself in now.

Ron Katz

Anaheim Hills

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Hussain hits the nail on the head when he talks about America’s all-out enforcement of U.N. resolutions against Iraq but not Israel. The double standard of American foreign policy is the mother of all Mideast problems.

America’s foreign policymakers totally disregard our values of justice and fairness in their wheeling and dealing with foreign affairs, especially the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Flagrantly executed with American taxpayers’ money, the U.S. gives unrelenting support to Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinian people, a people driven by the desire for freedom and dignity--a right given to them by U.N. resolutions.

Mohiddine Akkad

Anaheim

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Hussain would have us believe that Mao Tse-tung, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh supported revolution in their countries to gain the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, just like the Americans. All this time, the conflicts that America waged overseas were due to “arrogance” or, perhaps, an unfortunate misunderstanding of the motives of these “great” men.

Perhaps Hussain’s worldview reflects the perception of the “Arab street” or the educated Arab. For example, it was the Mossad and Jews who brought down the World Trade Center. Or, Israel is as much a nuclear threat as Iraq. Or, that only Muslims are seen as terrorists. (Which leader of the Western world said that?)

Hussain and his cohort appropriate such terms as “self-determination,” “freedom” and “rights” as if these concepts are divorced from responsibility, accountability and the well-documented truth.

Many people would like to believe Daoud Kuttab (Commentary, Oct. 29) that “the Palestinians have never been more ready or willing to make the compromises needed for a diplomatic solution.” There is virtually no evidence that this is true. People who support and train their youngsters to become suicide bombers, who have trained their young for generations to hate Jews and Western culture and who celebrate the destruction of 5,000 people in a terrorist attack are not people of compromise and negotiation.

Howard Winter

Beverly Hills

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Hussain should remember that the U.S. was the driving force that ended ethnic cleansing of Muslims by Christians in Bosnia and that the U.S. made sincere efforts to relieve starvation in Muslim Somalia, at the cost of dead and wounded American soldiers.

In each instance, there was no significant prior effort by Muslim groups or nations to assist. It was the U.S. that stepped in. Where is the acknowledgment (we do not expect thanks) of these efforts?

Tim Ogawa

Corona del Mar

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Hussain’s commentary points out the exact problem the U.S. is facing. U.S. citizens are great, friendly, open-minded and fair people. However, U.S. foreign policy is not at all a reflection of these qualities. This is why U.S. citizens cannot understand why they are hated abroad. They need to look into foreign policy and world politics to understand this.

Farheen Pasha

San Diego