Khalidi warns America of becoming imperialist

CHICAGO -- Adnan Al-Janabi

February 2005

Rashid Khalidi warned in his latest book of the transformation of the United States into an empire, following in the footsteps of former Western empires whose fate was colonial failure after a bitter and failing confrontation with the colonies’ natives.

Published in 2004 slightly after the American liberation of Baghdad, Khalidi’s book, Empire, can be divided into five main parts. The first part criticizes the American war on Iraq saying that it was uncalled for and waged by people driven by their personal interests more than their claims of defending America against the danger of terrorism.

In the second part, Khalidi highlighted the failure of British and France to colonize most of the Arab world saying that behind this failure, there was popular determination to win independence.

In this part, historian Khalidi committed a lot of anachronisms. He failed to put what he termed the national struggle in its greater regional and international context. Was the Palestinian revolution against the British out of national motives or was it instigated by the growing power of the axis countries that were trying to win back colonies they had lost to Britain and France in WWI?

Khalidi’s emotional description of what he sees as struggle for national sovereignty is perhaps the only drawback in his book.

Khalidi then moves to describe the growth of relations between the United States and the Arab world ever since the 1919 post WWI Versailles Conference delegated what came to be known as the King-Crane Commission to learn about the Arab peoples’ whishes. The committee astoundingly founded that Arabs thought, if mandate was their only option, they would go for American mandate.

The Arab perspective of America changed drastically, however, especially with the growing interest of American oil firms in the region.

The anti-American Arab sentiment grew even further with America heavily interfering in favor of the Israelis in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

According to Khalidi, the United States failed to deliver all the promises that it would pressure Israel to stop “its aggressive policy of settlement of Palestinian land” during Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations.

Khalidi also fell heavily on late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat accusing him of sabotaging the peace process in favor of his personal interests and the interests of his corrupt entourage.