Dr. Bassam Hamdan
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Wars, hate, bloodshed, and savage events started in Iraq and the Middle East more than 1,400 years ago, long before the discovery of America and the establishing of the United States of America. The hate culture had been the real problem in the Middle East for hundreds of years. Certainly it is not the USA, even in the case of the Arab-Israel conflict in modern history. It is well-known that the various American administrations tried to find a peaceful end to this conflict. Unfortunately,the Arab leaders always give the public an impression that they are very close to defeating Israel, and they put the blame for not doing it on the USA. The Arab leaders and the media ignore that the Israelis have had nuclear weapons since the ’60s. Only a naïve person would think that the Israeli people will follow the steps of the crusaders by boarding ships and leaving the Middle East. The Israelis will not keep their nuclear weapons in boxes and leave, asking the Arab leaders to dust them occasionally. They will use them to defend their existence, and a new map for the Middle East will emerge.
The Arab government officials still cannot see that Iran-Syria and its associates in Iraq and Lebanon are the enemy and the real threat to them and the whole world. The Iranians used thousands of twelve-year-old Iranian Muslim children to walk through the mine fields to clear the way for the regular Iranian military forces during the Iran-Iraq war. Also, they used chemical weapons, political assassinations, and international terrorism. The hate culture directed toward Israel—along with the corruption, oppression, and all other aspects of the hate culture—cloud the judgment of the Arab officials and the public.
The author, Dr. Bassam Hamdan, is a permanent resident in Texas, USA. He left Lebanon during the civil war.
He earned a PhD in finance from the University of Alabama (Alabama, USA) and worked for more than twenty years in Saudi commercial banks and teaching finance at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Kindly note that even though the Lebanese people live in a small geographical area and are of a limited population size, the religious discrimination and wars persist after thousands of years. The hate culture still dominates the country, while in the USA we see that immigrants from different countries with different languages, races, religions, and cultures managed to unite and merge together in one great nation over a period of three hundred years only, even though they had wars against the British, French, and the Mexicans. Also, they suffered from a civil war and several assassinations of American presidents. But all of these events did not prevent them from establishing the greatest and best country in the world. The idea of the American dream succeeded in providing happiness, security, freedom, and success to the people.
Also maybe we will understand the difference between the Jewish people and the crusaders. The crusaders were Europeans. That is why they returned to Europe later. But the Jewish tribes lived in the Middle East. At a certain point, they were not strong enough and lost their ground. Today they are strong enough to keep their ground.
Another problem in our attitudes about the Middle East is the way some Arabs consider the USA and the American presence in the Middle East unwelcome. Kindly bear with me and assume that the American people decide next week that they want to keep their sons and daughters safe at home. So the USA decides to take out of the Middle East all their bases and military forces. Also the White House indicates that America will not interfere in the Middle East anymore.
I have no doubt at all that within a few months there will be a new map for the countries in the Middle East. Somalia and Iraq will be nice, good places to live in compared to what most of the countries and cities in the Middle East are expected to be in the absence of the USA military and political presence.
