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CNN Crossfire

Target Terrorism: Anti-American Sentiment Justified?

Aired October 19, 2001 - 19:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. I am -- like most Americans, I just can't believe it. Because I know how good we are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TUCKER CARLSON, CO-HOST: Anti-American sentiment is rampant in the Arab and Muslim world. Is the United States to blame, or just misunderstood? Should Americans care? This is CROSSFIRE.

Good evening, and welcome to CROSSFIRE. Of all the things America learned on September 11, perhaps the most jarring was this: Much of the world doesn't like us very much. In the months since the attacks, countless demonstrations have been held around the world. Some have been anti-war. Many have been simply anti-American. The feeling is especially intense in the Muslim world.

I just returned from Pakistan, where I spent a week doing interviews about America war on terrorism. Every person I spoke to, diplomats, cab drivers, students, business owners professed profound suspicion of the U.S.. Many were openly hostile. Should it bother us? Should we care what the rest of the world thinks? And should we trim our foreign policy accordingly by, for instance, rethinking America's unconditional support for Israel?

Tonight we asked two men who have thought deeply about these questions. Georgetown University Professor Rob Sobhani and former Republican Congressman and nationally syndicated radio talk show host Bob Dornan. Bill.

BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Congressman Dornan, let me ask you the basic question. The whole thrust of the show. There is a lot of hostility out there directed against the United States. Should we care?

BOB DORNAN, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Absolutely. Islam rises again. If we want to find out why the Islamic world hates us, first look and analyze why Europeans generally hate us. Jealousy. Jealousy with Europeans. With Islam, it has the overtone office of Islamic fundamental radicalism coming back strong. CARLSON: Mr. Sobhani -- I hate to disagree with former Congressman Dornan here -- but why should we care? We have a very clear objective, to stamp out terrorism. We know who the terrorists are, in this case. Why should we waste our time trying to convince the rest of the world to love us?

PROFESSOR ROB SOBHANI, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: Tucker, I think the point is probably well taken to say they are angry at us, but not necessarily hate us. The people who hate us are the terrorists and the states that sponsor terrorism. Those are the people who hate us. Those are the people with whom we should be at war with. Those are the people whom we should take out.

The rest of the Middle East is angry for a whole host of other reasons that we can talk about later on.

PRESS: Bob Dornan, various people have various ideas about why the United States is the object of such hostility. I was stunned last night to hear Dan Rather give his own idea on our own "LARRY KING LIVE." I'd like you to listen to Dan Rather. Here's what he says about the whole Muslim world, basically.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN RATHER, ANCHORMAN: Now for those who hate the country, there are a myriad of reasons. But one of them is they hate us because they are losers. They see us as winners. And those who see themselves as losers sometimes develop a deep and abiding hatred for those they see as winners.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PRESS: Guess that sums it up, doesn't it? We are the winners. They are the losers.

DORNAN: Whoa, whoa. There was a germ of that in what I said about European jealousy, which is on an economic level only. What the world sees in the United States -- and this is why we shouldn't go after them to love us, to respect us -- but we shouldn't have such hostility that when we send food around the world, when we send rescue teams for earthquake or other natural disasters or when we have missionaries who go to take care of children or fight AIDS they shouldn't be subjected to being murdered and assassinated for things that America has done in other areas.

I guess forgiving this world debt that the pope asked to us do and that U2 and Bono of U2 asked us to do -- maybe that's part of it. But when you have such a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor, there's a huge responsibility on the rich people.

Mother Teresa once took my hand and said, not only help the little ones -- she meant the babies in the wombs -- she said, but help the poor. That's a tough message to a conservative Republican.

PRESS: Is it part of the problem? You started out in television. You went on to Congress. You have your talk radio show now. In terms of communication -- if you look at Bosnia, we were on the side of the Muslims. If you look at Kosovo, we were on the side of the Muslims. If you look at the Gulf War, we were there against Saddam Hussein on the part of some other Arab nations.

DORNAN: Kuwait is a recent example.

PRESS: But nobody knows it, correct? We do a lousy job of P.R..

DORNAN: I wonder what happened to the United States Information Agency, the U.S. Information Service overseas. Where -- one of the things that started was when we stopped putting hands across the sea, the American image of the flag on our care packages around the world and started stamping United Nations on there. We lost a lot about our unilateral and bilateral arrangements to help the poor of the world.

One of the things where we have really been successful -- and it may be backfiring on us is -- Great Britain did this under the colonialism with Oxford and their great universities, we have now more graduate students in every one of our universities from around the world than native born Americans. Where do we brag about this? How do we let the world know and where are these people taking home the message?

CARLSON: For Mr. Sobhani, I think many Americans, perhaps most Americans were confused in the wake of September 11 to find that the world has reservations about America, to say the least. I want to play a clip from the Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld on CNN yesterday. I think it pretty much sums up the way Americans see themselves. Here's the secretary. Here's the Secretary of Defense.

SOBHANI: Sure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: The United States has no interest in any piece of real estate anywhere outside of the United States of America. We don't covet other people's land. We have no ax to grind with any people in the world except for people who are going about the world killing innocent people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Call this self-serving, if you will, but it's essentially true. We are not an imperialist power, we're not seeking to take over Afghanistan for its mineral resources, for instance. I'm still confused as to why exactly people don't like us.

SOBHANI: Because I think something that Bill Press said just a moment ago. We haven't done a good job of promoting America. We have not, for example, in this campaign mentioned that this is a war of liberation for Afghanistan and for the people of Afghanistan, number one.

Number two, though, we do need to take care of business in the terms of why do they hate us and why are they angry at us. Because United States energy security is dependent on the Middle East. Global energy security is dependent on the Middle East. To the extent that the Middle East becomes destabilized, you will see the price of gasoline in this country go from $1.70 a gallon to probably $4 a gallon. That's why we need to be concerned about this issue. It's our energy at issue which is at stake.

CARLSON: That's exactly why we need to drill in ANWR. But let me just make the point here and ask you about this. It's clear that this is a war of liberation we are fighting in Afghanistan. But then we fought a similar war of liberation there in the 1980's. Yet if you talk to people in Pakistan, for instance, the universal line is the United States is responsible for the problems in Afghanistan. Nobody even mentions the Soviets, who of course invaded in 1979. Can you make a case to people who don't accept reason?

SOBHANI: You've hit it on the spot, I think. Let's take the example of Saddam Hussein. Since 1980, Saddam Hussein has gone to war and left a path of destruction. I did a calculation recently. Had Saddam Hussein put his mind into building Iraq, today Iraq would have $4 trillion -- $4 trillion.

DORNAN: It would be a tourist mecca.

SOBHANI: And it would be a tourist mecca.

DORNAN: All the Babylonian sites...

SOBHANI: So I think what needs to be done is the finger needs to be pointed to the Arab world itself. Work with the regimes in the region who are trying to reform. I just recently came back from the small state of Bahrain. This is their constitution. This is the Constitution of Bahrain. It reads like our Bill of Rights. The Emir of Bahrain is trying to gradually reform his country. This is what we need to work with. We need to work with the leaders that are forward looking within the region.

DORNAN: How far is this little island with a new causeway to Saudi Arabia so they all come over to enjoy a better life there on their R&R. When are they going to have a democracy with a Congress, a Knesset, a Duma, a parliament where people are voting? This jealousy is not only economic jealousy. It's political jealousy.

PRESS: I want to pick up on that, because there's been too much agreement here so far in the show. I just want to shake things up a little bit by suggesting it's not just the fact that we are not getting our message out well enough. You and I would agree that this is the land of freedom. We are the beacon of freedom around the world, right?

DORNAN: Right.

PRESS: Then why are we supporting a cruel and repressive and a corrupt regime like Saudi Arabia? Isn't that a total contradiction?

DORNAN: Rob said it. Because of oil. Here's what happened.

PRESS: Ah ha. DORNAN: This is the jealousy of politics. When Osama bin Laden went up to help the Mujahideen, I went there with Democrat Charlie Wilson and Republican Dave Breyer. We were pulling for the Mujahideen. We saw the little toys that the Russians made to blow children's hands off and created wounded, not dead, because that was a burden.

We were just so passionate about the mujs, as we lovingly called them. When Osama bin Laden brought 10,000 Saudi fighting men with him from the poorest provinces in the southwest corner of Saudi Arabia -- his guards are now 200 Saudis, including his sons. What we did was we educated Saudis and sent them home to no chance to run for office, to be part of the political system unless they are a blood prince.

PRESS: But -- that very good. I don't disagree agree with that. But you are not addressing the question, which is our support for this regime. Why don't you listen to something that Edward Djerejian, former assistant secretary of state under first President Bush, said the other day, which I think is right on points.

It's a quote. "The United States can sell its vision of freedom and democracy to Arabs, but only if we are perceived to be not only talking the talk but walking the walk. By that I mean implementing policies that carry out our ideals."

Now if you then look at Saudi Arabia: Women aren't allowed to drive. They cut a person's hand off if they are caught committing a theft. There are public beheadings. There are 6,000 people in this royal family that suck up all the money, leaving the rest of the population repressed and basically living a life of starvation. How can we sell freedom when we are propping up these guys?

DORNAN: I know. It's most difficult. It's why...

PRESS: Shouldn't we change the policy?

DORNAN: It's why -- you laughed a bit when he said drill in ANWR, and I would take the liberal dream that I studied under Carter of wind energy, oceothermal conversion energy. We have to try and get energy independence every single way we possibly can so that we have more pressure. Saudi Arabia has 25 percent of the world's oil. That can all change around the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea of Aral, but we get 17 percent of our oil from this one country.

So that makes us want to respect the status quo and the status quo is no good. They insult all of our military people. You can't have a mass on one of their bases or a Protestant ceremony. I know. I have walked around the streets there. It annoys me.

When I first went there in 1981 they had 3,000 princes. You're wrong. It's now 7,000. It just keeps growing.

PRESS: Professor, do you want to weigh in here?

SOBHANI: Very quickly. I think the fundamental solution here really is to try to work with some of the leaders to promote more democratic, open societies. Norway has oil. Norway sells oil. Norway is a democracy. It doesn't mean -- just because you have oil doesn't mean that you have to be a dictatorship. I think we can work with countries in the Middle East.

Incidentally, the Middle East also is not homogeneous. In fact, the majority of the Middle East is non Arab. Turkey is a model democracy. Turkey has fundamentalism living side by side with Western secularism. I think Turkey is a very good model to work with us.

DORNAN: Then Saudi Arabia has to get whipped in a war to have an Ataturk arise and say, "We're going to change this backward society."

SOBHANI: I think Saudi Arabia has its Ataturk in the name of Crown Prince Abdullah. He is a very forward looking, very religious, pious man. Not corrupt. I think if we work with Crown Prince Abdullah behind the scenes -- not making a big deal out of it --I think we are well on our way.

PRESS: All right. Hold it right there while we take a break. And let's ask the question when we come back: Is this hatred against the United States fueled by certain of our foreign policies? And which of those policies should be changed? More CROSSFIRE coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PRESS: Thanks, Wolf. Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. We have got to do a better job of making our case, the president said just recently. But is it all that easy? Can we make our case without making any changes in our foreign policy or foreign aid? Former Congressman Robert Dornan says no. Full speed ahead. Rob Sobhani, professor of government affairs at Georgetown University says some changes are in order. Here's Tucker. Back from Pakistan.

CARLSON: Thank you, Bill. Professor Sobhani, there has been some talk, and doubtless there will be more, that in the wake of the attacks the United States has to change its policy toward Israel.

Now that is exactly, of course, one of the things that the people who hijacked the planes wanted the U.S. to do -- change the policy toward Israel, with which they violently disagree, of course. Isn't that an incitement to more terrorism? If the U.S. bows to the desires of the people who blew up the World Trade Center, isn't that saying to future terrorists, "Yes, it works. Foreign policy can be changed by terrorism?"

SOBHANI: I absolutely agree with you. I think it is wrong to force Israel to do something that either it can't do right now because of the force of terrorism.

Keep in mind, one of the biggest enemies of Israel is Hezbollah. Hezbollah is the one that is killing innocent Israelis. The umbilical cord of Hezbollah goes back to the government of Iran.

And when we look at our foreign policy, when we try to make changes, one of the things that we need to do is invest in the people of Iran and the people of Afghanistan and the people of Iraq. I think if we work with the people to create more open societies in these countries -- work with them -- it will go a long way in stemming the tide of terrorism.

CARLSON: Yes, but every solution that you have suggested -- all of which strike me as reasonable -- are problematic because they are so reasonable, it seems to me. You are suggesting that we make the case that American foreign policy is good and that we care about the people in these countries.

But there's a high degree of unreasonableness. Throughout the Middle East, as you know, it is taken as Gospel by many, many people -- not just fringe -- that Israelis are responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern people believe this. How can you communicate in a rational way with populations that believe something that outlandish?

SOBHANI: Conspiracy theory is the most entertaining form of media in the Arab world. And unfortunately, that is part of the political culture and it needs to be changed. Which is why we need to do a better job of communicating. More Voice of America. More broadcasts.

But I would like to go back to the point I made earlier on Iran, because it really poses an interesting case study. When September 11 happened and President Bush said, "You are either with us or against us," the people of Iran heard that message. And there were candlelight vigils outside the Swiss embassy, which represents American interests.

The government of Iran sent thugs and they beat up those demonstrators who were pro-American.

DORNAN: And then joined us in this world coalition. When the people wanted to join us for real.

SOBHANI: Exactly. I think we have opportunities in the Middle East to change our foreign policy for the better.

DORNAN: Here's the Achilles heel to the whole operation. Hezbollah -- if you had a brother that was in the American Embassy in April 1983, you would be so livid that Hezbollah is not having its bank accounts frozen. If you had a brother that was in the embassy in East Beirut when it blew up. If you had a brother in the Marine barracks. If my dad or brother was Richard Higgins, the Marine tortured to death. William Buckley, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), the Englishman who they hung...

CARLSON: Robert Stevens.

DORNAN: Or Robert Stevens, beaten, jumped on his chest. The steward on TWA Flight 847 is, "Please tell my family I love them." And then they shoved a gun in his mouth, knocking out his front teeth, and blew him away and killed him and shoved him out the door.

This is Hezbollah. They put suicide together with radical fundamentalism and caused the World Trade Tower disaster. PRESS: But Hezbollah is not the Palestinian Authority.

DORNAN: No. That's Hamas. But now they are Shi'ite, but they're going to make a deal with the Sufis down there for the first time.

PRESS: Here's the point, I guess. I had lunch this week with an Arab leader -- I'm not going to tell you the name, but you would recognize the name -- and I asked him about American foreign policies that might fuel this hostility toward the United States. He mentioned two things.

One is the perception -- I'm not talking about a reality, but the perception on the Arab street -- that we are 100 percent behind Israel. It doesn't matter what settlements they build. It doesn't matter what Palestinian leaders they assassinate. We are 100 percent behind Israel.

And the second thing was, 10 years of sanctions against the people -- not against Saddam Hussein -- against the people of Iraq. I ask you. Aren't they two policies that we should re-examine no matter what happened on September 11?

DORNAN: Yes. And here's an awful tragedy where it could have been handled by unilateralism. One of my longest trip to Israel -- a whole month as a guest of the government -- with great scholars -- some of them are deceased -- took me to all the Palestinian refugee camps in Nablus, Ramallah, down in the Gaza. And they said, "If only American aid could go directly to these Palestinian refugees."

There were only 250,000 in Gaza. Now it's over a million. They said, "If you could help directly, instead of the U.N., the U.N.is screwing this all up." I remember standing on a hill in Ramallah and looking at the refugee camps down in the Jordan valley and all of them had television sets. Every single home. With al Jazeera now running the film of young kids throwing stones at tanks, Israel is in a collapsing public relations situation and so are we.

If they blow up that mosque -- which is the rumor today -- in Mazar-e-Sharif and blame it on us, which they will do in a heartbeat.

CARLSON: Professor, you have said a number of times -- and no one would argue with it -- that the United States needs to sell itself better abroad, especially in the Middle East. This is a country that's great at advertising. We sell Marlboros. Welcome to Marlboro Country. Very quickly. What should the slogan be that the United States government to foreigners?

SOBHANI: Absolutely good question, Tucker. I think it's about time that the United States and our State Department put together a tour called "Free Islam," because what has happened is that the fanatics have taken Islam hostage. What we need to do is have 50 leader of the Muslim community in America -- Muslim Americans representing each of our 50 states -- to get on a plane.

Start in Egypt, because most of those hijackers were Egyptians. Tell the people of Egypt they were criminals. These are not heroes. Go to al Jazeera in Qatar, these 50 Muslim leaders. Again, Americans. And tell the people of the Arab world that Saddam Hussein is responsible for the death of these children. That Iraq could today have $4 trillion in wealth, in assets. Then go to Pakistan. And in Pakistan, directly address Osama bin Laden. And say Mr. bin Laden you are a coward, you are a terrorist. Again, American Muslims.

DORNAN: It takes charismatic leaders to sell that message, and Islam has to do what the Catholic Church did over the Spanish Inquisition. Damn it. Condemn it. Find the peace in their religion. Because what I see is the violence from the Koran coming back again and trying to change the whole world as they try to force...

CARLSON: We have to leave it there. Congressman Dornan, Professor Sobhani, thank you both very much. Bill Press and I will be back in just a moment to sum it up where should America go. Should it change its foreign policy? We'll address it in our closing comments. We'll be right back with CROSSFIRE.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(INTERRUPTED FOR BREAKING NEWS)

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