Rescuing Muslims?

Tom Friedman gives his take on the murders at Ft. Hood:

Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America — the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by “The Narrative.”

But then he goes on to say this:

Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.

Although most of the Muslims being killed today are being killed by jihadist suicide bombers in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia, you’d never know it from listening to their world. The dominant narrative there is that 9/11 was a kind of fraud: America’s unprovoked onslaught on Islam is the real story, and the Muslims are the real victims — of U.S. perfidy.

What a strange thing to say.

Something seems wrong here. I really don't think that one can accurately describe our foreign policy for the past 20 years as "largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims". The biggest three military interventions in the past 20 years were invasions of Muslim countries by American (and other non-Muslim) military forces--Afghanistan and Iraq. The last two were not done with the intention of 'rescuing Muslims', obviously. (And even the first invasion of Iraq was done ostensibly to rescue the wealthy Kuwaiti sheiks who ran the place and owned everything.) Whatever our intentions and goals (revenge, oil, control of the Persian Gulf, etc.) it wasn't that. That's not what American foreign interventions are about.

Listen, we're the big dog in the neighborhood (the world). Our military power dwarfs anyone elses. We have made it our business to be 'the' global hegemon, and as part of that, we have interfered in everyone's business, Muslim and non-Muslim. Our NATO allies were colonialist powers in the Muslim world were many years after WWI, and we have been involved there as well, making sure that we have free access to their oil. We've changed their governments through covert action, sometimes defeating proto-democratic movements in Middle Eastern countries. We propped up many of their dictators, as long as they toed the American line. And in the largest Muslim nation in the world, Indonesia, we were directly involved in helping to overthrow their leader (Sukarno) and installing a very pro-US one (Suharto). I have mentioned our near-total support of Israel during this same time?

We have never been more active in that part of the world than in the last 20 years, in ways that have infuriated many people (most of them Muslim). Why shouldn't they think poorly of us? If I were in their shoes, I would.

Obviously, none of this justified Major Hanan's violence. But at the same time, Friedman's incomprehension as to why they don't appreciate and love us seems crazy to me.