Gulf War rhetoric and tanks inflamed Muslim populist anger at the US

Evidence

President George H. W. Bush dispatched more than 500,000 US troops to the Persian Gulf in a conflict he described as a military crusade. He reiterated this point in a 1992 speech: “In the Persian Gulf we fought for good versus evil… . ​America stood fast so that liberty could stand tall. Today, I want to thank you for helping, America, as Christ ordained, to be a light unto the world.” … Militant groups leveraged economic and political malaise in the region to recruit disaffected young men who believed that but for US support, their repressive authoritarian leaders would fall. Despite Saddam Hussein’s notoriety as a brutal dictator, the images of American tanks in Saudi Arabia triggered Muslim populist angst. Public opinion turned sharply against the United States as most Arab citizens saw the US military not as liberators but as occupiers seeking to steal Arabs’ oil and occupy Islam’s two holiest cities. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 688

Categorization

• QUESTION: Bush’s 1992 speech actually quotes Psalms 33:12, not literally identifying himself as Christ—worth verifying the exact source and nuance of his religious framing.