Zogby is a lively and intelligent speaker. I hope this summary does him justice.
Why did I write this book? Because I hear the debate about Arabs and Muslims in the American press, but it does not reflect the Arabs that I know in the Middle East. I wanted to point out that Americans should care about the Middle East because we’ve committed more money, troops, and resources to it than any other region in the world since Vietnam.
It also gave me the opportunity to poll Arabs and use actual data about the perceptions that Arabs have and then separate it by gender, age, and country if I wanted to. It’s interesting that as American troops entered Iraq in 2003, we (Zogby International) polled Americans to see how many could identify Iraq on a map: 11%. In 2008, we did the poll again: 37% of Americans could identify Iraq on a map.
Thousands of American troops have died in the last 8 years in a country that only one-third of Americans can even find on a map.
We also polled Iraqis during the last years of the Bush Administration and they were clearly unhappy with the way they had been treated by American troops and the polls showed their discontent. A few days later, Dick Cheney goes on “Meet the Press” and talks about how this great polling company called Zogby has data that shows the Iraqis are perfectly happy with the way things are going. He completely falsified the results and once again, lied to the American people.
A poll of Americans in 2010 shows that 80% think that Arabs hate Americans. In a poll of Arabs, 63% stated that they like American freedoms, education, democracy, movies, and science, but more than 90% do not like American policies towards Arabs. Therein lies the fine line: the Arabs like Americanisms, but feel slapped by our policies. Zogby says, "One Arab told us, I feel like a jilted lover.”
Why? Because of the Palestinian dilemma. Arabs see videos of Palestinian (predominantly Arab) children suffering in refugee camps and those children look just like their children. Do they obsess about it? Some do, but many are just like you and I: they go to work, they watch movies, they have family gatherings, they worry about their health and their loved ones. But they also see the news and unlike American news, which rarely if ever, depicts Palestinians suffering, Arab news stations show the Palestinian families watching their homes being destroyed by Israeli bulldozers to make room for more Israeli settlements. Do most Americans understand the significant of these actions in the Arab mind? No and so we don’t understand a region of the world with which we have so much to do.
Zogby pointed out that the American education system has a severe knowledge gap. The simple fact that the vast majority of Americans cannot even identify Iraq on a map makes a pretty strong argument for a review of our education system. He advocates for a new National Defense Education Act that would encourage study of critical languages such as Arabic and change the American historical viewpoint that first there was Europe and then there was America and that’s all you need to know. Don’t forget how much the Arabs contributed to European cuisine and the Arab scholars who helped generate the Renaissance. As Zogby stated, “There are 350 million people who are a freaking mystery to us.”
Why aren’t Arabs living in the United States being utilized to help shape policy or at least understand the Arab mindset and culture? Zogby’s answer: “Politics. And it’s a shame. I wish more were involved in shaping policy. And, I wish the career Foreign Service officers were making policy decisions, but they don’t and they know what’s going on over there.”
(From the back of the room, “They write good cables!”)
His take on so-called “Middle East” experts on news stations: “Many of those “experts” have written a book about the Middle East, but have never in their lives actually traveled to a country there and often have had little interaction with people who grew up in the Middle East.
Final Thoughts: I haven’t read Zogby’s book yet, but judging from the variety of points he wanted to get across, it’s bound to be a good read and is certain to have some great personal stories in it. The gist of today for me was that we Americans can point the finger and ask, “Why don’t they understand us? Why are we the ones looking like failures? Because, as Zogby stated, ‘The problem starts at home.’ Let’s educate ourselves on the Middle East, its history, its cultures, its people and…ahem…its geography.
