As the locals know, I'm a fan of the show "The West Wing" on NBC. In the fourteenth show of the third season ("Night Five"), Toby Zeigler (Richard Schiff)has to defend a speech that he has written for the President to give to the General Assembly of the United Nations wherein Bartlett is set to announce a tougher foreign policy.One of the things that Toby has to defend is the usage of the phrase Islamic fanaticism. The idea is that by using this phrase, somehow, Bartlett would be calling all Muslims fanatics that resort to violence. Toby goes on to say that it is about time that Islamic fanaticism be called by it's name. He make an anology to World War II in saying that he didn't recall having to tell Italians that America's problem wasn't with them, but rather Mussolini.
Congresswoman Wyatt (Toby's ex-wife and the third ranking member of the House Foreign Relations Committee) then proceeds to convince Toby to take a look at a paragraph that she and some members of her committee would like inserted. It leads with the idea that Bartlett doesn't want to preach nor proclaim American values. Toby says that it is our goal to advocate American values. The question of what Egypt or Pakistan might think and Toby retorts that "democracy is coming to a theatre near them." Wyatt replies, "This is why they hate us." Toby's response: "You know when they will like us? When we win."
You see, Congresswoman Wyatt wants us to just "be nice to the arab world." But as Toby points out, this NEVER works: instead of blowing Iraq up in Gulf War I, we encouraged sanctions and were reviled for "not giving them a global charge card and a free trade treaty. What was the reaction from the Arab world when we pressured Israel to give up land for peace? How about when we sent American soldiers to protect Saudi Arabia and the Arab world told us we were desecrating their Holy land while ignoring the fact that we were invited."
Side note: One of the things that strikes me about the conversation that Toby has with Congresswoman Wyatt is that he alludes to Iraq as developing nuclear weapons and harboring terrorists. This episode aired on February 6, 2002 - so there is no way for the writer to have known any differently...and quite frankly, this was the common position of most rational people at the time; let alone every intelligence agency on the planet. And it turns out, that Iraq did indeed harbor terrorists.
You may be asking yourself just what my point in going through all of this. That is a good question. Feel free to take a guess in the comments section...
