The Blob Blames Its Victims

One of the symptoms of working in Washington, D.C. is the tendency to believe one’s own press releases. That is especially the case in foreign policy. Members of the infamous blob, from the president on down, are convinced of their own virtue and indispensability. As President Joe Biden infamously declared a couple months ago, he was busy “running the world.”

He is only following precedent. Although as a candidate George W. Bush called for a “humble foreign policy,” President George W. Bush sought to transform the Middle East and Central Asia. President Barack Obama imagined he could liberate Libya and Syria. Even President Donald Trump, despite challenging the blobby status quo in Afghanistan and Europe, wanted Uncle Sam to play the heavy in the Middle East. Biden believes he can do it all, managing Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Equally ambitious are most of the apparatchiks and factotums who fill Washington. Their sanctimony tends to match their arrogance. For instance, Elliott Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations was recently shocked, even scandalized, to discover that Palestinians are not fans of Washington. Who knew? Abrams, a card-carrying blob member, criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for telling the Turkish parliament, “America is the plague, and the plague is America.” Worse, Abrams complained, the U.S. was nevertheless providing financial aid to the victims of its policies. The State Department recently announced another $404 million in humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere. The indignity! 

The latter could be seen as a minor down payment of blood money by Washington after decades of backing Israeli occupation and military policy, and especially Israel’s Gaza war over the last year. Not by Abrams, though; he was, well, outraged: “Perhaps it is too much, in the rough and tumble of international politics, to ask for or expect gratitude. But it is more than a little surprising to see the leader of the Palestinians say ‘America is the plague, and the plague is America’.”

How could any serious person be surprised at Palestinian criticism of Washington’s hostile policies? 

There are plenty of analysts like Abrams, prepared to defend treating Palestinians as something less than human. (Actually, a lot less than human.) Yet the only rational response by those who suffer the consequences—living in territories that amount to war zones, open-air prisons, and militarized apartheid states—is anger against their oppressors and its main foreign backer. Washington’s willingness to provide buckets of cash to slightly ease people’s suffering isn’t going to change their view of Israel or America.

Nor is this just a Palestinian issue. Imagine you are a Yemeni, who suffered from years of attacks by Saudis and Emiratis dropping U.S.-supplied munitions from U.S.-supplied aircraft. Or you are a Bahraini democracy advocate imprisoned by the dictatorial Sunni monarchy ostentatiously backed by Saudi troops and implicitly supported by Washington. 

You might be an Iraqi—a Sunni whose relatives were murdered by Shiite militiamen, a Shiite bombed by al-Qaeda in Iraq, an Assyrian Christian driven abroad by jihadists, or a Yazidi turned into a sex slave by ISIS—after the Dubya administration went to war on a lie and blew up your country. Or a rural Afghan Muslim whose relatives were killed by forces of a local warlord or distant national government backed by the American military. Or an Egyptian, whether Muslim Brotherhood member or democracy activist, imprisoned by the U.S.-subsidized al-Sisi government. Or a Libyan whose family died in the low-grade regime change war fomented by the U.S. and European NATO members in the name of humanitarianism.

Go back a few more years. Perhaps you are a Vietnamese who lost his or her family to bombing, battle, or other causes during America’s lengthy intervention. Or an Iranian tortured by SAVAK agents under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, empowered by a U.S.-backed coup. Or a Chilean imprisoned after Augusto Pinochet’s putsch, welcomed by Washington. Or a Bengali killed by the Pakistani military when the American government “tilted” toward Islamabad during its 1971 war with India. Or a regime critic who languished in prison under the U.S.-friendly Somoza dictatorship. Or—the list goes on and on.

Of course, one can argue that Washington’s policy was justified in every case. Sometimes hard decisions must be made. The Second World War was perhaps the most dramatic example of choosing an evil, the Soviet Union, over a greater evil, Nazi Germany. Washington feared hostile domination of Eurasia. Adolf Hitler was more aggressive and unhinged than Joseph Stalin, pursuing a horrific policy of Jewish genocide. Although Stalin’s murder toll was prodigious, Hitler was far more dangerous to people in other nations.

But rarely is the case for evil so clear. In fact, there often is no need to choose between evils. Doing so is more likely to harm Americans than standing aloof, dealing with awful regimes when necessary without officially backing or implicitly endorsing them. Terrorism demonstrates that blowback is common, perhaps inevitable, as victims of U.S. foreign policy strike civilians out of weakness in retaliation for American military and political actions against entire nations and peoples out of strength.

Why, then, shouldn’t those victimized by America view it as a plague? It doesn’t matter how policymakers view themselves or what they intend to achieve. Or that most Americans are blissfully unaware of what Washington does in their name and the sometimes devastating impact of its actions on others. Intentions don’t matter to those impoverished, imprisoned, or killed. Results do. And those results can be terrible. As the Palestinians learned, again and again.

Yet Abrams blames the victims. He is outraged not at their mistreatment, but at their anger over their mistreatment. Such is the view of the blob: Why should we, the masters of earth and embodiment of all that is good, have to put up with others’ ingratitude? Wrote Abrams, “Abbas should not get away with this. A retraction and apology should be demanded, and until it is received not one more dime should move. No self-respecting country should permit itself to be treated this way. We are happily past the ages when such comments led to duels among men or wars among nations. But paying for such insults ought to be out of the question.”

Actually, no “self-respecting” government should do what Washington does so often, and no “self-respecting” people should allow their government to behave so disgracefully. There is a much better answer than demanding an apology. Washington should change its policy and stop terrorizing others and backing those who do the same. Innocent foreigners should no longer pay the price of American foreign policy.

Many U.S. officials imagine themselves to be exempt from original sin and acting on behalf of all humanity. Many Americans view their country as being inherently righteous and virtuous, forgetting that Washington is run by human beings, among the nation’s most ambitious, selfish, and ruthless. The result is often ugly, a virtual “plague” on the rest of the world. Americans should stop turning people into victims rather than, like Elliott Abrams, demanding that others apologize for their victimhood.