The 2016 Election, Through the Eyes of Our Arab Allies
Major General Eric T. Olson, USA (ret.) commanded U.S. Army units at every level from platoon to division, served as a battalion commander in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the multinational joint task force commander during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and on operational deployments in Somalia, Kuwait, and the Balkans. He now lives and works as a defense consultant and adviser in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates.
It should come as no surprise that the citizens of other nations are watching the events that are unfolding in the US during this election season with a mixture of bemusement, trepidation, and not just a little incomprehension.
Of course, there are voters in our country who don’t care what foreigners think about our elections. These Americans will never be asked to explain or justify to a citizen of another nation some of the inflammatory statements or hostile positions that have been expressed by some of the presidential candidates, especially Donald Trump.
But we who are expatriates — Americans living and working abroad — cannot fall back on the remove of the oceans that separate America from most of the other nations of the world. We live in the midst of populations where people ask questions and voice concerns. And they expect answers and explanations that make sense.
This is especially the case for a group of us — mostly senior retired US military officers from all services — who are undertaking a project to assist the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with an ambitious program of improvements and reforms that they have been pursuing for the past several years.
The UAE is exactly the sort of predominantly Muslim ally that the U.S. must be able to work with to protect our national security. And it is exactly the sort of ally that Donald Trump’s vitriol insults and terrifies.
Some background: The UAE is a federation of seven emirates, located on the Saudi Peninsula on the coastline bordering the Persian (or as they would prefer, Arabian) Gulf. Collectively the Emirates is one of the wealthiest, most advanced nations in the world — and a critical US ally helping America deal with the countless issues it faces in the Middle East. The U.S. works closely with the UAE’s military, which is capable and professional. It is battle tested, having conducted multiple military operations, both in the region and beyond. It is equipped with some of the most modern weaponry, and is well-versed in current training methods and techniques.
Most of their combat experience comes from operations in the Middle East and North Africa where they oppose hostile forces that threaten the vital interests of the United States and the UAE — extremist groups in Yemen, Syria, and North Africa. Emirati pilots have flown missions against ISIS side-by-side with US pilots and those of other NATO nations. UAE air, naval, and amphibious forces have fought in the coastal areas of Yemen against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Most poignantly for me, the UAE is one of the longest standing members of the coalition in Afghanistan that is supporting the government in Kabul in its war with the Taliban and extremist groups that support them. I was the combined/joint task force commander of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM from 2004–2005, just a few short years after the 9/11 attacks. In the immediate aftermath of that horrible day, one of the first nations to support the US invasion of Afghanistan, and to send troops to take part in the subsequent operations, was the UAE.
The Emirati Special Operations forces I worked with were excellent soldiers. I could count on them to stand and fight and accomplish the mission. They were critical in counterinsurgency operations, where they had a special feel for the people of Afghanistan, and were able to understand their specific needs, ways, and customs based on a critical common bond that tied Emirati soldiers with the Afghan population — the bonds of a shared religion.
These soldiers — with whom I literally entrusted my life and mission in Afghanistan — are the people Trump wants to turn into the “other,” that he wants to alienate.
The official religion of the United Arab Emirates is Islam. The people of the UAE, and no doubt most other Muslim nations, are well aware of the stands that Trump has taken with respect to Islam — a discriminatory immigration policy, special surveillance and monitoring of Muslims entering or staying in America, his insistence that violent extremism be referred to as “Islamic”, a turn of phrase that he and his supporters herald as a courageous stance against “political correctness”, but which sounds like a slur on their religion to the Muslim world.
So it’s not a surprise that the people of the UAE ask how a blatant Islamophobe can be so popular with the electorate in the United States. They have legitimate concerns about how such a hostile stance can be taken in a nation whose coalitions and military task forces they have supported time and again since 9–11. And they wonder how it can be that such venom can be directed against the religion of a nation and a people who have sent their sons to fight and die in common cause with and shoulder-to-shoulder with US soldiers.
In all likelihood, Mr. Trump doesn’t care about the effect his rhetoric has on the U.S.-UAE alliance. I’m confident that he doesn’t know just how much these allies rely on each other. But we American voters should take our hard-won allies into account when choosing whether Mr. Trump should become President Trump. Watching the U.S. election from halfway around the world, and seeing the damage Mr. Trump’s incendiary Islamophobic rhetoric has already done, my perspective is clear. A Trump presidency would be a disaster for America’s national security.
