NOTE to readers:  In the following my comments are in red, the article being discussed is in black.

 email sent February 05, 2003 --- Is it A War On Islam

----- Original Message -----

Thanks Carsten:

Recent statistics show that the wealth in the US is concentrated in fewer hands than ever before.  We used to say 5% controls 90% of the wealth.  Now it is 1% controls 95% of the wealth.  The same is true with our propaganda media.  It is controlled by fewer people than ever before and it is still consolidating.  There is something unbelievable happening in the radio bands.  "Conservative Talk Radio" has taken hold in most of the country.  "Conservative" is often an euphemism for racism in the US because White Supremacist espouse Christian Conservative values as they have for centuries of slavery, discrimination and repression: "God says black people are inferior to white people".  9/11 has given more power to America's enemies of justice, fairness and peace.

----- Original Message -----

> Hi Ken,
>
> this may be of interest to you ...
>
> regards
> Carsten
>
> >
> > ZNet Commentary
> > Is It A War On Islam? February 02, 2003
By Pervez Hoodbhoy  (http://www.qau.edu.pk/Physics/fac3.shtml - no email address given)

Street opinion in Pakistan, and probably most Muslim countries, holds that Islam is the sole target of America's new wars. As an extreme anti-religious person, I wish this were so.  I would so love to see Islam, and Christianity, removed from the face of the earth.  They are a scourge that slaughters and enslaves human beings. Even moderate Muslims are
worried. The profiling (this very term came into existence because of our fight to stop police from targeting, framing and killing Blacks and we were winning, a little bit, till 9/11 - welcome to the club and be glad they are not killing you on sight) of Muslims by the INS, the placing of Muslim states on the US register of rogues, and the blanket approval given to Israeli bulldozers as they level Palestinian neighborhoods appear dangerous indicators of a religious war.  (when I remember Palestinians dancing and laughing at 9/11, I lost all sympathy for them.  Israel should remove them entirely.  Remember they were put there by other Arab countries to help destroy Israel) But Muslims undeservedly award themselves special status and imagine what is not true. America's goal goes much beyond subjugating inconsequential Muslim states. Instead it seeks to remake the world according to its needs, preference, and convenience. The war on Iraq is but the first step.

Aggressive militarism has been openly endorsed by America's corporate and political establishment. (Corporate America owns and controls the political establishment) Mainstream commentators in the US press now argue that, given its awesome military might, American ambition has been insufficient. Look at the history of the US.  Aggressive Militarism is what made the US.  They took this land from the natives by trickery, deceit, terrorism, war, genocide and worse.  Then there followed centuries of the most brutal slavery in human history, worse than the brutal slavery still carried out under Islam.  The US has yet to come to grips with its sordid past.  Blacks have tried to sue for reparations every decade since slavery.  Today "Reparations" is still a dirty word among the majority of White people.

Max Boot, editor of the Wall Street Journal, writes that "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets". The Washington Post calls for an "imperialist revival" and the need for Americans to "impose their own institutions on disorderly ones". The Atlantic Monthly remarks that American policy makers should learn from the Greek, Roman, and British empires for tips on how to run American foreign policy.  (Unfortunately the empires of the past are not as relevant in today's level of individual and corporate greed and power.  The driving force of capitalism is greed.  This produces a different dynamic: We are much further up an exponential curve.  See Section 10 at http://www.advancedresearchconsultants.com/fdc_2.htm#10)

Although many Americans still cling to the belief that their country's new unilateralism is no more than "injured innocence", and a natural response of any victim of terror, the Establishment does not suffer from such naivety. Empire has been part of the American way of life for a long time.

The difference after 911 - and it is a significant one - is that America no longer sees need to battle for the hearts and minds of those it would dominate; there is no other superpower to whom the weak can turn. (Few Americans know how much of Africa Russia saved from destruction by the US CIA.  I was lecturing at the University of Lagos in Nigeria during the Biafran war (1968).  Biafra is the oil producing part of Nigeria.  Forces outside Nigeria put hundreds of millions of dollars into trying get control of that oil by making Biafra a new country.  The US now has control of that oil and the oil companies are polluting that entire area of Nigeria.) In today's Washington, a US-based diplomat recently confided to me, the United Nations has become a dirty word. (Why else does the US refuse to pay our long overdue UN dues?) International law is on the way to irrelevancy, except when it can be used to further US (big business') goals.  (Remember BIG MONEY took over the US and installed Bush)
 
Still, none of this amounts to a war on Islam. Some will disagree. The fanatical hordes spilling out of Pakistan's madrassas imagine seeing Richard the Lion Hearted bearing down upon them. Sword in hand they pray to Allah to grant war and send the modern Saladin, one who can miraculously dodge cruise missiles and hurl them back to their launchers.
 
On the other side, Christian-Jewish extremists, extending from the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons to the leaders of Israel's Likud, yearn for yet another crusade.  (most White Supremacist are Christian extremist.  No-one should trust them.  Jewish extremist have a long way to go before the kill and enslave a tenth of the hundreds-of-millions Christianity and Islam have killed and enslaved over the centuries.) They too are convinced that inter-civilizational religious war is not only inevitable but also desirable. Belief in final victory is, of course, never doubted by the faithful.  (They are every bit as sick, in their stupid beliefs, as Islamic extremist.  If only Christianity and Islam could wipe each other out, without destroying the world.)

But the counter-evidence to a civilizational war is much stronger. Between 1945 and 2000 the US has fought 28 major, and countless minor, wars.  (All to helped the corporate bottom line.  This includes the giant illegal corporations trafficking in illegal narcotics - a $30 billion dollar a year industry)

Korea, Guatemala, Congo, Laos, Peru, Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Yugoslavia, and Iraq are only some of the countries which the US has bombed or invaded. The Vietnam War alone claimed a million lives. By comparison America's wars on Muslim states have been far less bloody.

Iraqi deaths during the Gulf War, and the recent victims of bombing in Afghanistan, amount to fewer than 70 thousand. Even if one throws in casualties from the Israeli-Arab wars of 1967 and 1971 and attributes them to the US, Muslim deaths are only a few percent of the Vietnam War total.  (The Vietnam war was a boon to weapons corporations.  It was a proving ground for advanced US weapons which were then sold to the world.  Remember, weapons development, production and sale have long been a major part of the US economy)

Material self-interest, and not antipathy to Islam, has been the driving force behind US foreign policy. A list of America's Muslim foes and friends makes this crystal clear. America's foes during the 1950's and 1960's were secular nationalist leaders.  (NOTE: That material self-interest money, does not go to help ordinary Americans.  The ever increasing numbers of US homeless makes this clear.  "Money for war, but none for the poor".)

Mohammed Mossadeq of Iran, who opposed Standard Oil's grab at Iran's oil resources, was removed by a CIA coup. (The CIA has often been the arm of international corporate espionage.  They wrecked Black Africa.  Any African leaders who came to power who could do some good faced the same fate.  If they could not be bought off, they were killed off.) Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia, accused of being a communist, was removed by US intervention and a resulting bloodbath that consumed about eight hundred thousand lives. Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt, who had Islamic fundamentalists like Saiyyid Qutb publicly executed, fell foul of the US  and Britain after the Suez Crisis.  On the other hand, until very recently, America's friends were the sheikhs of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, all of whom practiced highly conservative forms of Islam but were the darlings of Western oil companies.

Nevertheless, Washington has occasionally misunderstood American self-interests - sometimes fatally so. "Mission myopia", as the CIA now wanly admits, led to the network of global jihad in the early 1980's. 
 
With William Casey as CIA director, the largest covert operation in history was launched after Reagan signed the "National Security Decision Directive 166", calling for American efforts to drive Soviet forces from Afghanistan "by all means available". US counter-insurgency experts worked closely with the Pakistani ISI in bringing men and material from around the Arab
world and beyond. All this is well known. Less known is the ideological help provided by US institutions, including universities.
 
Readers browsing through book bazaars in Rawalpindi and Peshawar can, even today, find textbooks written as part of the series underwritten by a USAID $50 million grant to the University of Nebraska in the 1980's. These textbooks sought to counterbalance Marxism through creating enthusiasm in Islamic militancy. They exhorted Afghan children to "pluck out the eyes of the Soviet enemy and cut off his legs". Years after the books were first printed they were approved by the Taliban for use in madrassas - a stamp of their ideological correctness.

The cost of America's mission myopia has been a staggering one. The network of Islamic militant organizations created primarily out of the need to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan did not disappear after the immediate goal was achieved but, instead, like any good military-industrial complex, grew from strength to strength. Nevertheless, until 11 September, US policy makers were unrepentant, even proud of their winning strategy. It took a cataclysm to bring them down to earth.

But militant organizations have done far greater harm to Muslims, whose causes they claim to promote, than to those who they battle against. Killing tourists and bombing churches is the work of moral cretins and is not just cowardly and inhumane, but also a strategic disaster. 
 
Indeed, fanatical acts can sting the American colossus but never seriously hurt it. Though perfectly planned and executed, the 911 operation was a strategic blunder of colossal proportions. It vastly strengthened American militarism, gave Ariel Sharon the license to ethnically cleanse Palestine, and allowed state-sponsored pogroms of Muslims in Gujarat to get by with only a squeak of international condemnation. (It is only a strategic error if the goal was not to start a religious war. But look at the history of Islam.  It is one religious war after another.  And even when they lose, they've won.  i.e. Islam expanded)

The absence of a modern political culture and the weakness of Muslim civil society have long rendered Muslim states inconsequential players on the world stage. (Soon to change.  They will eventually obtain nuclear bombs. 5 -10 years max is my guess.) An encircled, enfeebled dictator is scarcely a threat to his neighbors as he struggles to save his skin. Tragically, Muslim leaders, out of fear and greed, publicly wring their hands but collude with the US and offer their territory for bases as it now bears down on Iraq. Significantly, no Muslim country has proposed an oil embargo or a serious boycott of American companies.

What, then, what should be the strategy for all those who believe in a just world and are appalled by America's war on the weak?  (What was their strategy to produce justice and human rights here in the US for blacks from slavery to today's White Supremacists' war against Blacks?)

Vietnam, to my mind, offers the only viable model of resistance. A stern regard for morality, said their strategists, is the best defense of the weak. Even though B-52s were carpet-bombing his country, Ho Chi Minh did not call for hijacking airliners or blowing up buses. On the contrary the Vietnamese reached out to the American people, making a clear distinction between them and their government. (It worked eventually, but it got Dr. King killed by the FBI.  Now I am telling this international community to make a clear distinction between the American people and our government controlled by the rich and greedy)

By inviting media celebrities like Jane Fonda and Joan Baez, Vietnam generated enormous goodwill. On the other hand, can you imagine the consequences of Vietnam's leadership being with Osama bin Laden rather than Ho Chi Minh? That country would surely have been a radioactive wasteland, rather than the unique victor against imperialism. (Expect a radioactive wasteland for Mecca and Medina eventually.  Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki to see the mentality involved.)

Only a global peace movement that explicitly condemns terrorism against non-combatants can slow, and perhaps halt, George Bush's madly speeding chariot of war. Massive anti-war demonstrations in Washington, New York, London, Florence, and other western cities have brought out hundreds of thousands at a time. (The media in the US barely mentioned those demonstrations.  The great speeches made by prominent people were very hard to find.  The propaganda media has no intension of allowing public opinion to turn further against war.)

A sense of commitment to human principles and peace - not fear or fanaticism - impelled these demonstrators. (They can be expected to have less effect than the anti-globalist demonstrations against corporate world take over.  A significant reduction in the concentration of wealth world wide could, over time, produce a different kind of world.  See Excess Resources Taxes, Section 11 at http://www.advancedresearchconsultants.com/fdc_3.htm#11 based on the Greed Scale, Section 10.5 at http://www.advancedresearchconsultants.com/fdc_2.htm#105)
 
But why are the streets of Islamabad, Cairo, Riyadh, Damascus, and Jakarta empty? Why do only fanatics demonstrate in our cities? Let us hang our heads in shame. (It may already be to late to hang your heads in shame.  You have allowed Islam to become a dirty word because you have allowed fanatics to take over Islam.  Of course there are those of us that believe fanatics always controlled Islam via terrorism against all dissent.  To disagree with, or leave, Islam has always carried a death sentence.)
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The author teaches at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.  (http://www.qau.edu.pk/index.shtml) 
(Ken Brown - Advanced Research Consultants. Inc.)