It is not only Bush that led many in Egypt and the Arab world to reject America, writes Salah Eissa* In the first half of the 20th century Egyptians had a rosy image of America. Now the image is getting bloodier with every passing day. America was a distant dream, a promise from afar, but only as long as it kept its hands off the region, which at the time it did. The US was not party to the rivalries that sent France, Britain, Italy and Germany into a frenzied quest to grab colonies overseas, an effort that resulted in the demise and consequent partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. It kept to itself, staying out of European trouble, its foreign policy fashioned after the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. For decades, the US had the aura of a country that has no interest in occupying our land, robbing our wealth, or killing our national heroes. The news from America was always heart-warming, and dutifully reported in our media, especially the pictorial magazines. Everyone spoke of the great advancements in the "New World" -- the name by which the US went at the time. Our media was full of pages upon pages of the "wonders" of that world, "new inventions", and all "fashions" and "fads" coming straight from American life. The skyscrapers, the agricultural equipment, the scientific and medical discoveries became the staple of enthused reports. Fascination with US life soared as Egyptian media correspondents -- most of which Levantine immigrants -- waxed lyrical about the wealth and freedom of America. Since the mid-1920s, American films took Egyptian theatres by storm, portraying -- with a coat of unabashed glamour -- a people vibrant with energy, motivated, daring, and free; their women slim and gorgeous, mingling about in a man's world with no fear or reservation; their men destined to greatness. Even the poorest of the poor could turn into a millionaire overnight: no social stigma attached to one's past, no barriers to one's upward mobility. Sitting in the dark, watching glamour and adventure on the silver screen, Egyptians -- burdened by occupation, poverty and backwardness -- pictured America as the land of dreams, an Alice in Wonderland waiting to happen. American exports to Egypt were few at the time, but the sewing machine Singer made it big. The Singer became an article of envy in every Egyptian home, a sign that the family has arrived. And women who wanted to increase their income suddenly had a machine to help them do so. American Protestant missions, settling in the south of the country in the late 19th century, met with no suspicion or disapproval, not even from Copts. Their contribution to education and charity was welcomed. Many saw them as a catalyst, helping the Egyptian church wake up from its slumber. The first blemish crept into that rosy picture in 1910. Former US president Theodore Roosevelt, just out of office, made a particular remark during a lecture in Cairo that many found hard to ignore. He said that Egyptian demands for a constitution and self-rule were premature, and that Egyptians needed decades to qualify for constitutional rule. Mohamed Farid, leader of the nationalist movement at the time, sent a protest cable to the former US president and organised a rally for his National Party at a theatre in Emadeddin. Demonstrators walked to the Shephard Hotel, where Roosevelt was staying, and heaped insults on the US dignitary. A few days later, Roosevelt had his revenge. Speaking in London, he congratulated British officials for giving Egypt the "best" government it had in history. He advised the British colonialists to treat the Egyptians firmly, saying that it was in the interests of "civilisation" to treat "uncivilised" nations thus. The incident prompted Egyptian nationalists to look for international support elsewhere. They had hoped for French help, but in 1904 France reached an understanding with Britain on how to divide the Ottoman Empire and immediately lost interest in the Egyptian national movement. For a while, Egyptians thought Germany would be the answer, but it lost the Great War. Suddenly, America flickered with hope. In January 1918, Woodrow Wilson announced his Fourteen Points, asserting the right of former Ottoman states for political autonomy and territorial integrity. Hopes were soon dashed, however, when the US president declared his support of Britain as it declared Egypt a protectorate. Wilson pointedly declined to receive Saad Zaghloul when the latter travelled to Paris with his famous Wafd, or delegation. Once again, the US withdrew from the international scene and Egyptian nationalists waited for another world power to peg their hopes on. And when Hitler's career started picking up, many started rooting for Nazi Germany. By the end of World War II, the US emerged as a potential saviour. Franklin D Roosevelt had reiterated Wilson's Fourteen Points, pledging to honour the rights of all nations, including the colonies, to freedom and independence. That seemed good enough for most Egyptian nationalists, and even the king. In February 1945, King Farouk called on president Roosevelt to help bring about a withdrawal of British forces from Egypt. And for a while, hopes were up. The US objected to the Sidqi- Bevin Treaty of 1946, which substituted occupation with joint defence. What Egyptian nationalists didn't know was that Washington opposed joint defence only because the US wasn't included. Doubts resurfaced when the Truman administration pushed for the partitioning of Palestine at the UN General Assembly in 1947. That Washington twisted the arms of its minor allies to make them vote for the partitioning was a blow to Egyptian and Arab patriots. Since then, successive US administrations failed, and consistently so, in grasping the damage their bias to Israel was causing US-Arab relations. The revolutionary officers who overthrew the monarchy in 1952 came from disparate political backgrounds, but most of them had hopes that the US would help Egypt in its efforts to rid the country of British occupation and start a programme of economic and social development. Washington humoured the young officers at first, figuring that their regime would serve as a bulwark against communism. The Eisenhower administration pressured Britain and France to withdraw from the Suez Canal after the 1956 war. Yet the revolutionary officers felt betrayed when Washington failed to provide them with weapons -- which they needed to repulse Israeli raids on Egypt's eastern border -- and finance the High Dam. The US made its assistance contingent on Egypt meeting a number of conditions, such as joining certain military pacts, fighting communism, and using financial aid to promote domestic capital. The Nasserist regime, rejecting all of the above, edged closer to the other superpower, the USSR. Egypt signed several military and economic agreements with the Soviets and became a pioneer of the Non- Aligned Movement, a loose coalition of newly independent nations that aspired to act as a counterpoint to the world's two major blocs. The first honeymoon between Cairo and Washington was over fast. But Egyptian-US relations resurged between 1959 and 1964 due to the power struggle that erupted between Gamal Abdel-Nasser and the communists. This second honeymoon didn't last either. Once the Yemen revolution broke out, Washington started doing everything it could to keep Egypt from lording it over the oil- rich countries of the Arab peninsula. The Arab world was divided down the middle, with pro-US conservative regimes pitted against pro-Soviet revolutionary ones. Tension between Cairo and Washington continued until 1967 when the Johnson administration backed Israel during the war and then stopped the UN Security Council from ordering the opposing armies back to the lines preceding the war. Egypt reacted by severing all ties with the US. In 1974, President Anwar El-Sadat turned Egyptian foreign policy around. Claiming that the US has "99 per cent of the cards in the Middle East conflict", Sadat ended Soviet presence in Egypt, reinstated a market economy, introduced a form of political pluralism and sought to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict through the recognition of Israel. Nixon's administration didn't seem to appreciate the magnitude of the concessions Sadat made, nor did it notice the effort state-owned Egyptian media made to clean up the US image in Egypt. The same mistake was committed by the Carter administration during the Camp David negotiations. The Americans pushed Sadat into making concessions that compromised the interests of other Arabs, especially the Palestinians. Meanwhile, Egypt walked a thin line between its relations with Arab countries and its relations with Israel, trying to have special ties with the US while cultivating friendships in Europe, Asia, and with members of the former socialist bloc. The Americans, for their part, encouraged Sadat to use Islamists as a bulwark against leftist and pan-Arab opposition. In the late-1980s, Washington asked Egypt and other Arab governments to allow volunteers to go to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Consequently, Islamist militants learned how to make explosives and wage urban warfare, an experience they used later to harass their own governments. The US disclaimed any responsibility for this turn of events, not even after 9/11. But it went on to rally the countries of the region behind its war on terror. Not for once has the US administration deigned to admit that its pro-Israeli policies, and the crimes Israel is still committing against the Palestinians, gave the terrorists a pretext to stay in business and earned them public sympathy. A century or so has passed since Theodore Roosevelt told us that we were unfit for democratic rule. And still the US claims to be the guardian of civilisation in today's world. The Americans are to this day telling us how to live, sometimes at gunpoint. This is why Egyptians have turned their back on everything America stands for. This is why so many have subscribed to the mediaeval dream of a theocratic state. The whole thing reminds me of a scene from Youssef Chahine's film Alexandria, Why? When his ship finally approaches New York shores, the protagonist looks up at the Statue of Liberty and sees not the face of a beautiful woman but the rotten teeth and ugly smirk of a disfigured witch. * The writer is editor-in-chief of Al-Qahira weekly newspaper.
