Tonight, I think I gained a true understanding for how much the government of the United States is really despised in this region, and also how hard of a task it will be to repair our image in the Middle East.  This occurred while my host father and I were watching BBC World.

When a clip about a bombing in an Iraqi marketplace came on the screen, it caused my host father to say that “this is all the fault of the United States.”  Now, I was fervently against the war in Iraq and blame my government for unleashing the chain of events that have lead to the country’s current chaos; however, I could not agree with the statement made by my host father.

In reply to his statement, I asked him how the Americans could be blamed for the violence occurring in Iraq when car bombs and guns used by either Arabs or proxies of Iran, not cruise missiles fired from American battleships, are now causing the vast amount of carnage that is consuming Iraq.  Having constantly been asking myself why Arabs do not protest against the Arabs that are killing their fellow Arabs, I was glad that this topic of conversation came up between the two of us.  My host father’s response to the question was “as long as America is in Iraq, it will be blamed for whatever is occurring in the country.”

In my eyes this answer was not good enough, but at the same time it allowed me to see and truly understand the Arab perception of the American government.  Because of its past interactions with the region’s politics, anything that goes badly in the Middle East is blamed on the United States, even if it is a Shiite militia funded by Iran that blows up a car bomb in a market populated by Sunnis.

A recent political cartoon in Al-Ghad, Jordan’s largest newspaper, illustrated well the Arab impression of America as it had the outlines of Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon standing up individually with smoke billowing out the sides of them just as though they were the World Trade Center towers.

Now once again, I am not saying America has not had any hand in [messing] this region up.  It certainly has, and the anger I have seen in regards to America’s invasion of Iraq and its support of Israel has not surprised me.  I expected that and understand it.  What has surprised me though is the way that Arabs look the other way when Arab actors, whether it be Nasrallah in Lebanon or Baathist insurgents in Iraq, are the ones responsible for the current violence and chaos besieging many of the countries in the Middle East.

Arabs need to follow the lead of African-Americans by doing a gut check and begin denouncing “Arab on Arab” violence.