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Who Are
The Fanatics?
By Paul Craig Roberts
09/06/07 "ICH" --- - 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.”
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.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate
Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and
Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of
The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
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