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Who Are The Fanatics?
Paul Craig Roberts
V Dare
Thursday September 6, 2007
President
Jimmy Carter was demonized for pointing out in his book, Palestine:
Peace Not Apartheid ,
that there are actually two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Distinguished American scholars, such as John Mearsheimer and
Stephen Walt have suffered the same fate for documenting the excessive
influence the
Israel Lobby has on US foreign policy.
Americans would be astonished at the criticisms in the Israeli
press of the Israeli government’s policies toward the Palestinians
and Arabs generally. In Israel facts are still part of the discussion.
If the Israeli newspaper,
Haaretz, could replace Fox "News," CNN,
New York Times and Washington Post, Americans would
know the truth about US and Israeli policies in the Middle East
and their likely consequences.
On September 1, Haaretz reported that
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism,
which represents 900 Congregations and 1.5 million Jews, "accused
American media, politicians and religious groups of demonizing
Islam" and turning Muslims into "satanic figures."
[Jewish
leader urges US Muslims to condemn violence, Reuters,
September 1, 2007]
(Article continues below)
Rabbi Yoffie is certainly correct. In America there is only
one side to the issue. An entire industry has been created that
is devoted to demonizing Islam. Books abound that misrepresent
Islam as the greatest possible threat to Western Civilization
and seek to instill fear and hatred of Muslims in Americans. For
example,
Norman Podhoretz proclaims "World
War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism."
Daniel Pipes shrieks that "Militant
Islam Reaches America."
Lee Harris warns of "The
Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West."
Think tanks have well-funded Middle East programs, the purpose
of which is to spread Islamophobia. Fear and loathing pour out
of the Middle East Forum and
the American Enterprise Institute.
In the US it is acceptable, even obligatory in many circles,
to hate Muslims and to support violence against them. Pipes has
been described as a
"leading anti-Muslim hate propagandist."
He is on record advocating the use of violence alone as the solution
to the Muslim problem. This won him the endorsement of the Christian
Coalition, AIPAC, and the Zionist Organization of America for
appointment to the board of the United States Institute of Peace.
President George Bush used a
recess appointment to appoint this man of violence to the
Institute of Peace.
Pipes advocates that the Muslims be beaten into submission by
force, the view that has guided the Bush administration. To brainwashed
and propagandized Americans, Pipes appointment made perfect sense.
Podhoretz believes that Islam has no right to exist, because
it is opposed to Israeli territorial expansion, and that America
must deracinate Islam, which means to tear Islam up by the roots.
While
neoconservatives,
Christian Zionists, and the Bush administration embrace unbridled
violence against Muslims, Lee Harris
warns that America is much too tolerant and reasonable to
be able to defend itself against Muslim fanaticism. America’s
"governing philosophy based on reason, tolerance, consensus
and deliberation cannot defend itself against a [Muslim] strategy
of ruthless violence."
Islamophobia overflows with such absurdities and contradictions.
Harris tells us that the Enlightenment overcame fanatical thinking
in the West, leaving the West unfamiliar with fanaticism and helpless
to confront it. Harris, who fancies himself an authority on fanaticism,
is deaf, dumb, and blind to Communism and National Socialism and
is completely ignorant of the fact that neoconservative fanatics
are the direct heirs of the Jacobins of the French Revolution,
itself a fanatical product of the Enlightenment.
If Americans did rely on reason, tolerance and deliberation,
they might free their minds of shrill propaganda long enough to
consider the "Muslim threat." Muslims are disunited.
Their disunity makes them a threat to one another, not to the
West.
In Iraq most of the fighting and violence is between Sunni and
Shi’ite Arabs and between Sunnis and Kurds. If Iraqis were unified,
most of the violence, instead of a small part of it, would be
directed against the American troops, and the remnants of a US
defeated army would have been withdrawn by now. However much Iraqis
might hate the American invader and occupier, they do not hate
him enough to unite and to drive him out. They had rather kill
one another.
Iran, the current focus of demonization, is not Arab. Iranians
are the ancient race of Persians. Indeed, Iran would do itself
a favor if it changed its name back to Persia. For eight years
(1980-1988) the Iranians and Iraqis were locked in catastrophic
war with horrendous casualties on both sides. Despite its military
exhaustion, Iraq was considered a "threat" by
the American Superpower and was bombed and embargoed for the decade
of the 1990s, one consequence of which was 500,000 deaths of
Iraqi children.
Not content with the complete crippling of Iraq by the Clinton
administration, the Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003 and
has been dealing more death and destruction to Iraq ever since.
Palestine has been under Israeli occupation for decades. Israel
has simply stolen most of Palestine, and the remaining Palestinian
enclaves are ghettos policed by the Israeli army.
The rulers of Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates are Sunni Arabs.
They are more afraid of Shi’ite Arabs than of Israelis. Egypt,
Jordan, and Pakistan are ruled by bought-and-paid-for American
puppets. The Turkish military is also in the American pocket and
suppresses any Islamist influence in the civilian government.
Afghanistan is a disunited country of tribal peoples, each holding
sway in their area. The Taliban were attempting to unify Afghanistan,
and the Bush administration’s fear that the Taliban might succeed
was the reason for the US invasion of Afghanistan. The US allied
with the defeated Northern Alliance, in part a remnant of the
old Soviet puppet government, and turned Afghanistan back over
to warlords.
When the facts are considered—Muslim disunity and the absence
of modern technology, navies, and strategic reach—the Bush/Cheney/
neoconservative/Zionist propaganda that "we must fight
them over there before they come over here" is such a
transparent hoax that it is astounding that so many Americans
have fallen for it.
To the extent that there is any Muslim threat, it is one created
by the US and Israel. Israel has no diplomacy toward Muslims and
relies on violence and coercion. The US has interfered in the
internal affairs of Muslim countries during the entire post World
War II period. The US overthrew an elected government in Iran
and installed the Shah. The US backed Saddam Hussein in his aggression
against Iran. The US has kept in power rulers it could control
and has pandered to the desires of Israeli governments. If America
is hated, America created the hate by its arrogant and dismissive
treatment of the Muslim Middle East.
There is no such thing as Islamofascism. This is a coined propaganda
word used to inflame the ignorant. There is no factual basis for
the hatred that neoconservative Islamophobes instill in Americans.
God did not tell America to destroy the Muslims for the Israelis.
In America today blind ignorant hate against Muslims has been
brought to a boiling point. The fear and loathing is so great
that the American public and its elected representatives in Congress
offer scant opposition to the Bush administration’s plan to make
Iran the third Middle East victim of American aggression in the
21st century.
Most Americans, who Harris believes to be so reasonable, tolerant,
and deliberative that they cannot defend themselves, could not
care less that one million Iraqis have lost their lives during
the American occupation and that an estimated four million Iraqis
have been displaced. The total of dead and displaced comes to
20 percent of the Iraqi population. If this is not fanaticism
on the part of the Bush administration, what is it? Certainly
it is not reason, tolerance, and deliberation.
The Bush supporter will ask, "What about 9/11?"
Even those who believe the fraudulent 9/11 Commission Report should
understand that in the official account the attack was the work
of individuals, none of whom were acting in behalf of Muslim governments
and none of whom were Iraqi, Afghan, or Iranian. 9/11 provides
no justification for attacking Muslim countries.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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