Why Is the Middle East Still in Thrall to 9/11 Conspiracy Theories?

[Valin]

The New Republic:

Eric Trager
September 3, 2011

The 9/11 attacks catalyzed a tremendous shift in American foreign policy in the Middle East. Rather than prioritizing petrol, Washington targeted terrorist organizations, dethroned a dictator, and lobbied throughout the region for liberalization. Yet despite the billions of dollars spent policing Baghdad and protecting Benghazi, the unpopularity of the United States in the Arab world continues to be fueled by the belief that Islamist terrorists had nothing to do with 9/11, with many claiming the attacks were an American, Israeli, or joint American-Israeli conspiracy. In this sense, overcoming 9/11 revisionism is, perhaps, the greatest challenge facing American public diplomacy in the coming decade: So long as such conspiracy theories persist, Arabs will continue to view American policies aimed at preventing “another 9/11” as thoroughly illegitimate since, as they see it, 9/11 is just a big American lie.

In a report on Muslim-Western relations released on July 21 of this year, the Pew Research Center asked Muslim respondents in eight countries—including Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan—whether they thought groups of Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks on the United States. In every country, less than 30 percent of respondents professed their belief for the idea, and in Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey the level of acceptance is lower today than it was in 2006. Indeed, the same revolutionary Arab Street that toppled Mubarak in Egypt also registered the highest level of denial among all the countries surveyed, with a full 75 percent of respondents recording their disbelief.


(Snip)

Of course, not every Egyptian with whom I spoke subscribed to 9/11 revisionism. For example, prominent leftist Egyptian activist George Ishak ascribed blame for 9/11 in four easy words: “Al Qaeda, of course.” But sadly, people like Ishak are the exception—and, given the overwhelming public consensus that blames America for 9/11 while absolving Al Qaeda, they are typically too timid to correct the revisionists in public.

The difficult task of fighting 9/11 revisionism thus falls to Washington, which must view the pervasiveness of Arab 9/11 conspiracy theories as a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of our ongoing fight against terrorism. The more deeply that 9/11 revisionism becomes ingrained in Arabs’ views of history, the harder it will be to advance policies for preventing another attack.

Eric Trager, the Ira Weiner fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is writing his dissertation on Egyptian opposition parties.


H/T Jihadology