M.D. Nalapat
MANIPUR, India, May 31 (UPI) -- Nature
and the "street" both abhor a vacuum, and even after Sept. 11, 2001,
it is those active in the "War of Revenge Against the Crusades" who
are more adept at crafting tales designed to link the United States with the
unemployment, rage and perception of helplessness that provides recruits to the
jihad.
While conspiracy theories that seek to
"prove" that the United States -- together with those familiar
villains, the "Zionists" -- is engaged in a war against Islam, thus
far such street gossip has permeated only the Muslim countries, principally
Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. The rest of the world has not been infected
with this virus.
Indeed, a case can be made that the
United States is more popular today in the poorer parts of the globe than it is
in Europe. Unlike the period from the 1950s to the 1980s, when the United
States was the target of the resentments and insecurities felt by those
recently freed from colonization, from the time cable television spread in the
mid-1980s,"street" perceptions of the United States outside the
Muslim world have improved steadily. In the words of Jairam Ramesh, an Indian
economist, while the cry may still be "Yankee, go home!", to this is
added, "but take me with you."
For a superpower, the United States has
been demonstrably inept in factoring in psychological attitudes and reflexes in
countries visited by U.S. "experts" only in the safety of
air-conditioned hotel and conference rooms. Thus, in Iraq the United States
appointed an American "administrator" and Iraqi "advisers,"
when common sense would have indicated that it ought to have been the other way
around.