Why they hate us (II): How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?
Foreign Policy / Stephen Walt
02-Dec-2009 (one comment)

New YorkTimes, which is saying something given his well-established capacity for smug self-assurance. According to Friedman, the big challenge we face in the Arab and Islamic world is "the Narrative" -- his patronizing term for Muslim views about America's supposedly negative role in the region. If Muslims weren't so irrational, he thinks, they would recognize that "U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny." He concedes that we made a few mistakes here and there (such as at Abu Ghraib), but the real problem is all those anti-American fairy tales that Muslims tell each other to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions.

I heard a different take on this subject at a recent conference on U.S. relations with the Islamic world. In addition to hearing a diverse set of views from different Islamic countries, one of the other participants (a prominent English journalist) put it quite simply. "If the United States wants to improve its image in the Islamic world," he said, "it should stop killing Muslims."

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yolanda

......

by yolanda on Wed Dec 02, 2009 06:23 PM PST

This part is absolutely sad:

 Even so, the United States has killed nearly 30 Muslims for every American lost. The real ratio is probably much higher, and a reasonable upper bound for Muslim fatalities (based mostly on higher estimates of "excess deaths" in Iraq due to the sanctions regime and the post-2003 occupation) is well over one million, equivalent to over 100 Muslim fatalities for every American lost.

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I am not sure if Obama can change the lopsided ratio...he just ordered to send more troops to Afghanistan......

Thanks for posting the article, it is very sobering statistics!

Delaram Banafsheh (Yolanda)

"Cactus in the Desert"


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