Nevertheless, The Washington Post had an interesting article in yesterday's edition written by novelist Mohsin Hamid. Entitled "Why Do They Hate Us?", the article examined why it appears that the Muslim world hates America. Hamid contends that one of the primary reasons is America's foreign policy legacy in the Muslim world, but he also believes that America doesn't have to inspire such virulent hatred. Hamid believes that Americans should educate themselves from a young age about their country's foreign policy history and to hold their government accountable for their actions abroad and to ensure that the United States' foreign policy reflects the TRUE values of its citizens.
But, rather than do disservice to the article, I'll end my paraphrasing and allow you to read the article and form your own thoughts.
However, before you run away to read the article, there was something that really jumped out at me at the beginning of the article. When Hamid was discussing the United States' foreign policy legacy as a reason for anti-Americanism abroad, he made the following point:
These policies are unknown to most Americans. They form only minor footnotes in U.S. history. But they are the chapter titles of the histories of other countries, where they have had enormous consequences.
Disclosure: I am a first-generation Greek-American and my parents have done a pretty great job of educating me about Greek history, both ancient and modern. And it is for that reason that the quote above really struck me. My parents grew up in one of the most unstable periods of Greek history. Both of them were born during the German occupation of Greece and they lived through the Greek Civil War, the second reign of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (say that 3 times fast), and then a US-backed junta.
The junta is considered a particularly dark period for Greece, but also for Cyprus, because it is due to their intervention in Cypriot political matters that the island was eventually invaded by Turkey. The junta sponsored a coup against the then-president Archbishop Makarios III, who was a vocal proponent of Cypriot independence. However, the actions of the Greek junta led the Turkish government to believe that their Turkish-Cypriot countrymen were in danger now and they launched the invasion of the island.
To bring this back to the Hamid article, the Raw Story recently published an article that confirms
former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's support of Turkey and their invasion of the island. Like Hamid stated, this is probably a minor footnote in the US' history of foreign affairs, but for Greece and Cyprus, this is a huge part of the modern history of both of these nations. I remember being in Greece during the 30th anniversary of the invasion of the island, and newspapers were filled with retrospectives and one particular newspaper had a long article detailing Kissinger's role in the invasion of the island.
So, clearly, I think many Americans, including my friends, would be surprised to hear about events like these, and Hamid makes an excellent point about how the education on US foreign policy should begin at a young age.
How does this relate to international development, though? Well, I think it has an even greater impact than one might think. USAID and US foreign aid as a whole is supposed to be the "benevolent" arm of US foreign policy and it should reflect the values of the taxpayer and not a small group of ideologues. The opinions in Hamid's article could certainly be tied back to the article regarding the criticisms of US foreign aid that the Post ran on Sunday and it remains to be seen if Congress and the taxpayers will demand accountability from the current administration and future ones.
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