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AAI in the News

Zogby: US presence in region more a problem than help

By Habib Toumi
Gulf News
Posted on Tuesday November 8, 2005

Manama: The United States presence in the region is increasingly being perceived more as a problem than assistance, the president of the Arab-American Institute has said.

“The initial presence of the military here in the Gulf was because of concerns by the Americans and regional countries about Iran.

“However, the US has weakened its position in the region by its unilateral military intervention in Iraq and its behaviour with Israel,” James Zogby yesterday told Gulf News in an interview on the sidelines of the Parallel Conference of the Forum for the Future where he was the keynote speaker.

“The US is in fact increasingly losing its credibility in the world, not just in the region. Look at the reception President [George W.] Bush got in Latin America.

“The Bush administration has dropped the Kyoto agreement, rejected the international criminal court and froze talks on arms reduction.”

He said that socially the Americans were not directly interfering in the region. “They are talking about reform, women empowerment, but they are not imposing anything,” he said.

Arab-Americans have had problems with Vice-President Dick Cheney and the Department of Defence because of the foreign policy championed by the neo-conservatives, he said.

Internally, the major problem for Arab-Americans was with Attorney General John Ashcroft on issues that included the registration programme and deportation.

“We were not cowards, and we fought back. There was a bounce-back from civil society that changed the way the government dealt with us.

“We made the Homeland Security and the Department of Justice respond to our concerns, and now the situation has improved a lot,” Zogby said.

Bush also helped, he said, through his calls not to target Arabs and Muslims. “The people who threatened to kill me after September 11 are now in jail,” he said.

“I am confident today because thanks to our work and the support we had, Arab-Americans are today better protected than before. However, we must always focus on the problem and never turn our backs because they might come back,” he said.

The activist said that there were about 400 elected Arab Americans holding offices in the US. “There is one senator, five members of Congress, two governors and scores of city councilors,” he said.

Comparison with Jewish influence in the US was not fair, according to the second-generation activist whose Lebanese father was an illegal immigrant.

“They have been around longer. They have money and a focused agenda and deal only with one country. When their immigrants first came, they were urban, intellectual and politically aware.

“Our first immigrants were peasants, were not into politics and had no identity since they did not feel they were Arabs. Our new immigrants have that new ideology, so there is hope,” he said.