At a well attended forum held in the Blue Room of Frank Dining Hall on Monday, a panel of Pomona politics and history professors tried to explain the political and religious history of the United States’ involvement in the Middle East, as well as current possibilities for U.S. foreign policy. The panel members were Ken Wolfe, David Arase, and Matt Taylor. They spoke for about forty-five minutes.

Arase, coordinator of Pomona’s International Relations Program, and Taylor began by discussing the United States’ influence on the Middle East during the Cold War. "The U.S. is responsible for creating many [anti-U.S.] organizations and regimes" said Arase, citing as examples the revolution in Iran in which the U.S.-backed Shah was overthrown by the extremist Ayatollah Khomeini, and the rise to power of Saddam Hussein. Osama Bin Laden was also trained, funded, and armed by the CIA during the Cold War as a means to prevent the Soviet conquest of Afghanistan, Arase said.

While all the panel members stressed the extremist nature of groups responsible for terrorist attacks on the U.S., there was agreement that the United States oil-based relationship with the region was the stimulus for the attacks of September 11, and that U.S. foreign policy in the region is heavy handed.

Wolfe asserted that the U.S. approach to the region is to "take what it needs and paint it any color for the electorate." Taylor, while not refuting this, noted that, "America’s role in the Middle East has not always been something to be ashamed of… there would be no Middle East peace process without the U.S."

Regardless of the U.S.’s justification for its actions, no one on the panel expected America’s role in the Middle East to diminish any time soon: "As long as our interests are wedded to oil, we will be involved in the region," Wolfe said.

All three panelists spoke with considerable apprehension about the methods the U. S. may take to combat terrorism. "This is not total war," said Arase, elaborating that, "there isn’t any territory. And while I agree that we’ve got to punish who’s responsible for this, it’s our policies that have created the reality from which this crisis grows. We’ve got to make sure it doesn’t grow again."

When asked whether he thought that the rest of the world was truly behind the U.S. in combating the terrorists responsible for the bombing, Arase replied, "All our allies can [say] is ‘yes, we’re with you one hundred percent, George.’ But in politics, words are cheap."

The panelists were also concerned about the recent bonds that America has forged with Pakistan. Sanctioned by the U.S. until a few weeks ago, Pakistan’s military leader Pervez Musharraf has now brought Pakistan- U.S. ties closer with a promise of cooperation. Previously due to a vocal hard-line Islamic faction, Pakistan was one of only a few countries that recognized the Taliban’s legitimacy. Arase characterized Musharraf’s cozying to the U.S. as a "survival strategy" for his regime, but one that might well backfire, destabilizing the nation down the line.

"When the military government allied itself with the U.S., it lost a lot of its perceived legitimacy" Arase said, adding that an unstable Pakistan would be good for no one. "U.S. leaders need to ask themselves carefully about what our security interests really are, and how that fits into our long term policy in the region".

The panel arrived at a consensus that most Americans have not considered the United States’ role in the Middle East enough, a role that is partially responsible for the circumstances which engendered the attacks.

In a recent meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister, Tomiichi Murayama, President Bush portrayed the issue as a fight against "evil people who hate freedom and legitimate governments," but the members of Monday’s panel declared that it wasn’t that simple.

Wolfe’s comment that "there hasn’t been much improvement in Western understanding of Islam [since the days of the Crusades]" was closely echoed by Arase’s statement that, "the American public is sadly uninformed about our foreign policy."

When asked by an audience member what the world would be like with less U.S. intervention in the Middle East, Arase and Wolfe both responded, "We’d be paying a lot more for gas," a quip suggesting that the primary objective of U.S. policy in the Middle East has been to ensure a steady supply of cheap energy. "The wealth from oil comes from the value added to it," Arase said, pointing out that refining is done almost exclusively by Western oil companies.

"This is one of the main sources of Arab rage against the U.S," Arase said

Arase sees U.S. priorities in the region as fundamentally flawed. "Terrorism is the unintended negative consequence of our policies in the region", said Arase in a later interview, "and I think that the current U.S. approach to terrorism is just more of the same. The question is whether we’re going to give up our civil liberties to drive SUV’s. Are we going to sacrifice democracy at home for the sake of running an empire?"