It is extraordinary to find the embassies of the world’s most influential power shutting down in much of the Islamic world for almost the entire month of August. Friday’s announcement by the US state department to this effect betrays the tenuous nature of American influence in countries where billions have been poured in to buy friendship. This is the state of affairs when, at the beginning of his first term, US President Barack Obama had pointedly said that mending ties with the Islamic world was a priority.
An Al Qaeda threat to US’ interests has been cited for closing the US missions. While this Islamist outfit has shown itself to be a menace to the entire world, perhaps most to the regions inhabited by Muslims themselves, it is time the US undertook an examination of its own policies to ascertain what’s gone wrong.
Iraq was invaded on false pretexts. Why Libya was attacked remains a mystery. Nothing much has happened on the US side to make Israel adopt reasonable postures in negotiations on the Palestine question. Syria has been turned into a battleground by the US and its allies. In Egypt, America made a seriously flawed choice in differentiating between “moderate” and “extreme” factions of the Muslim Brotherhood and has now turned its back on those it chose. America has made friends with dictators but not with the people of Muslim countries. That’s no way to check extremism.