They feel under siege, living through what the Canadian Arab Federation has called “psychological internment,” referring to the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians during World War II. For American Muslims, the post-9/11 period has parallels with the infamous McCarthy era of the 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy led a witch-hunt of suspected Communists and ruined the reputation and lives of many innocent Americans.

Muslims, therefore, had good reasons to be angry at George W. Bush, as polls have shown.8 But their quarrel with the US predated him, emanating from several policies:

• American support for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, Israel’s suppression of Palestinian resistance and its 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which left 15,000 Lebanese and Palestinians dead;

• American alliances with undemocratic and oppressive Muslim, particularly Arab, regimes;

• The 1991-2003 US-led economic sanctions on Iraq, which caused the slow death of about 1 million Iraqis, half of them children under the age of five.9 In 1996, Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state, was asked if so high a price was worth the American goal of “regime change” in Baghdad. Her chilling reply: “We think the price is worth it.”10

• Washington’s silence over Russia’s two wars on Chechnya (1994-96 and 1999-2005), which killed between 100,000 and 200,000 Muslims.11

The US did garner goodwill among Muslims for its humanitarian interventions in Indonesia following the tsunami disaster (2004), and in Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999) in the former Yugoslavia, where 250,000 Muslims were killed under Serb ethnic cleansing.

The September 11 terrorist attack engendered as much sympathy for the US and Americans in the Muslim world as elsewhere; there was a candlelight vigil even in Tehran. The United Nations-approved war on Afghanistan, the base of Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorist network, was supported by several Muslim states. What turned the tide of Muslim public opinion were Bush’s policies, starting with his strong backing of Israel’s brutal crackdown of the second Palestinian intifadah(uprising), from 2000 to 2003, and the 2006 Israeli invasion and indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon that killed more than 1,000 people and destroyed much of the civilian infrastructure, including residential buildings.

Then there was Iraq.

The War on Muslims

As most of the world feared then and knows now, Bush — enthusiastically supported by then British and Italian prime ministers Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi — ignored the United Nations and invaded and occupied oil-rich Iraq under false pretenses by exploiting public fears over Muslim terrorism. When every one of the reasons cited for the war was proven wrong — Saddam was not responsible for 9/11; had no connections to al Qaeda; and had neither nuclear, chemical or biological weapons nor the Scud missiles and pilotless planes to hit anyone — Bush and Blair changed their tune. They had gone to war to get rid of a dictator and bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East.