Michael sent me this: "Something tells me this will have
you convulsed with indignation or laughter, or possibly both.
"Things were not always so bad
between the United States and Syria. Robert Kaplan’s 1995 book The
Arabists describes an Ottoman-ruled Syria where American Protestant
missionaries arrived in 1820, fifteen years before Washington opened a consulate in Aleppo.
These missionaries did not succeed in converting many individuals to
Christianity, but were nonetheless loved for many other contributions, like the
medical treatment they brought to poor remote villages and their 1866 founding
of what is now theAmerican University of
Beirut (modern Lebanon was then considered part of Syria). In the spirit of
the American Revolution, many of these missionaries supported the movement for
Arab independence from Ottoman rule."
