US Role in the Arab World

According to my dad, from a talk given at the Alameda (California) Public Affairs Forum, July 16, 2005.

Dad sees two forms of American influence in the Mideast since the early 19th century - the missionary model and the CIA model. His description of the American missionary movement in the Middle East makes me sorrow for the loss of our ideals in this country.

American missionaries brought education and printing presses to the Arab world, influencing several generations of Arabs in favor of democracy, equality, and America itself. The CIA model, in my father's view, has been much more harmful.

"(In the 1860s the Presbyterians) began building schools and clinics in Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East. In Beirut, they established in 1866 the Syrian Protestant College that included a school of medicine and a hospital. The college changed its name to the American University of Beirut in 1925 (Known by AUB since then). The missionaries moved also into the hinterland and established schools from Kindergarten through high school in other centers of population ...

"As a result of this endeavor, thousands of Lebanese and other Arab Students flocked to the American Institution to learn and to model after the American model of freedom and democracy. Beirut became the Mecca of learning and the center stage for national movements. The press mushroomed. In less than a couple of decades, Beirut had more than a dozen of dailies, several magazines dealing with science, economic and education. As a consequence of this new development, the Ottoman (Turkish) occupier tightened the screws of oppression. The Lebanese flocked in droves to Egypt, which was outside of the Ottoman control, to Europe and the Americas carrying with them the spark of enlightenment. The Lebanese emigres opened schools, established dailies, magazines for propagating science and all kinds of knowledge and encyclopedia in Egypt and other parts of the world. All of this happened within half a century or less as a direct consequence of the founding of the American University of Beirut and other institutions of learning in the region."

"What was the benefit to the US of the missionaries' work? With a cursory look, one could dare say that the prestige of the United States ran supreme among the Arabs. In 1922 when the League of Nations sent the King-Crane Commission to poll the Palestinians and the Lebanese as to what country they would opt to have as their mandatory power, ninety five percent of the Palestinians and eighty percent of the Lebanese named the US as their choice. Compare this with what you have already read about the present perception concerning the US among the Palestinians and Lebanese if we were to poll them now!"

Full text of Elias Abu-Saba's speech.

Comments

[Donna]

Your dad's characterization is so right on.

[Marc Jamal]

Dear Leila,

My name is Marc, I'm from Barcelona and I'am interested on palestinian graffitis. I spend a lot of time searching the web but with no results.

I didn't find your email adress, Because of that I have decided to write here, excuse me.

Do you know any web or any book, or any information that coud help me?

Thank you very much,
and congratulations for the culture seccion of your Blog!!!

Yours,
Marc

[Leila]

Glad you like my blog, Marc. No, I have no info on Palestinian graffiti. Sorry!