From a Muslim perspective, this whole “war on terror” has to look a whole lot like a “war on Muslims.”
We’ve invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Innocent civilian deaths in the Iraq war – and that’s just innocent civilian deaths by themselves – run overall between an estimated 110,000 to over 600,000 lives. Can there be many people over there who haven’t lost a friend or relative to the Iraq war?
Life under Saddam Hussein was actually pretty pleasant for a majority of Iraqis. He was a secular Muslim. The Shia Muslim minority was terribly oppressed. But the Sunni majority had the good life.
We come in and topple Saddam, fire all the Ba’ath party members from the army and civil service positions, kill as many as 600,000 innocent people, install an unpopular puppet government, torture people, lock up people for years and years in Guantanamo without filing any charges or giving them any due process, steal their oil, plunder their economy. Is that the way you make friends and influence people?
To the Iraqis we must come across as a bunch of Nazis.