John Foster Dulles, as Eisenhower's secretary of state, called Nasser and other Arab nationalists like him "pathological" for their suspicion of the West and referred to the secular nationalist Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh as "a wily Oriental." Eisenhower himself believed that secular nationalists were little more than Oriental despots. He said: "If you go and live with these Arabs, you will find that they simply cannot understand our ideas of freedom and dignity. . . . They have lived so long under dictatorships of one form or another, how can we expect them to run successfully a free government?"

DEFINE: Illuminates the racialized/colonial mindset of mid-century American foreign policy elites toward the Middle East.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 207