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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 12:55:11 GMT -5
Tom Friedman, January 2004: Tom Friedman's scary plan for World War III By Ira Chernus, Common Dreams Tom Friedman wants us to fight World War III. Tom is the influential foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times. He takes the ideas of the liberal foreign policy elite and turns them into simple words that anyone can understand. "Simple" is the operative word here, as in "simplify," "simplification," "over-simplification." Tom just published the first of a five-part series in the Times, about how to save our American lifestyle. Here's what he wants us to believe: We are now fighting Word War III. Just as we fought off the totalitarian Nazis and communists, we must now defeat totalitarian political Islamists. It's a war of ideas. We believe in "certain bedrock rules of civilization." We think it's shameful to give up your life to kill people you hate. The Soviets believed that too, which is why we could deter them from hot war and force them to end the cold war. But "today, alas, there is no bedrock agreement on what is shameful, what is outside the boundary of a civilized world." The militant Islamists hate us more than they love life. They are willing to commit suicide in order to "impose the reign of political Islam." So we can't deter them.We can catch some of them before they act, by Improving our spying techniques. But the more power we give to government snoops, the more we lose our "cherished civil liberties" and stop trusting each other. That would "erode our lifestyle," which is precisely what we are trying to preserve. So, for quite a while, we must "learn to live with more risk," to maintain our open society." The only way to escape from risk and protect our lifestyle is to "get the societies where these Islamists come from to deter them." "Their home societies have not stigmatized their acts as 'shameful.'" So we have to "partner with the forces of moderation within these societies to help them fight the war of ideas. Because ultimately this is a struggle within the Arab-Muslim world, and we have to help our allies there, just as we did in World Wars I and II." In his next four columns, Tom will tell us how to do that. Let's first see why Friedman's own war of ideas is illogical. Then we'll get to why it's so scary. It may feel good to see the "war on terrorism" as a clone of the great 20th century wars. It makes the U.S. look like the good guy and the inevitable winner. But every war has its own unique causes and consequences. To lump them all together is to over-simplify and falsify reality.One obvious example: Osama bin Laden wants to impose the reign of political Islam in countries that are already predominantly Muslim. Contrary to what Friedman, Bush, et al. want us to think, there is no evidence that he wants to force us all to be Muslims, the way Stalin might have wanted us all to be communists. Nor has Osama set out about exterminating whole "racial" groups, as Hitler did.Why was Stalin more "civilized" than Osama? Was he really ashamed of all his murders? Surely, he sent people on suicide missions for the sake of a higher ideal. Just as surely, the U.S. military has done the same. Read Catch-22. OK, technically most were not suicide missions. But U.S. military leaders are always ready to put their forces in death's way, when they think it necessary. And we make our dead warriors heroes, just as some Muslims do. We, too, are taught to admire self-sacrifice in defense of our ideals. To turn this fine line into a chasm separating the "civilized" from the "savages" just doesn't make sense-especially when you are using it to justify a multibillion dollar war against the "savages," as Tom Friedman does. Before we decide who is "civilized," there is the little matter of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention Tokyo, Hamburg, and Dresden. And the Cuban missile crisis, when JFK could only figure the rough odds that he might make a decision to destroy civilization in the northern hemisphere, rather than remove some missiles from Turkey. And the torture chambers of the Shah of Iran, Pinochet, and all the rest that we funded and trained, including Saddam's. Do we get to be the "civilized" good guys because we are more willing to kill others than to kill ourselves?Any good first-year philosophy student could go on ripping Friedman's arguments to shreds. But it is more important to see why they are dangerous. Remember, he is a liberal. This is what we will get in the White House by using all our energy to oust George W. We will get a simplistic world divided into good guys-us and all those who support us (the "forces of moderation")-and bad guys who are not willing to play by our rules.Our rules include freedom of religion and relatively free elections (as long as we are sure no bad guys can win). Those are blessings. But our rules also give multinational corporations and international currency traders the right to do pretty much whatever they d**n please, wherever they d**n please. In Friedman's bible of global corporate capitalism, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he calls them "the horde." He assumes that there is no way to prevent "the horde" from running the world. So we just have to make the world safe for them. Nations ruled by traditionalist Islamists would probably make life difficult for "the horde." That is why we must declare World War III against the Islamists and get Muslim "moderates" to join our side. Of course, there is another way to avoid war, risk, and the loss of our civil liberties. We could tell other nations that they are free to make their own economic and social rules. That is all the anti-U.S. Islamists want. But then we would have to give up the great American dream of a unified corporate capitalist system free to run things in every corner of the globe. That might "erode our lifestyle." And remember, Tom says the ultimate goal of World War III is to preserve our comfortable middle-class lifestyle. But between the lines, Tom suggests that there is another goal: to preserve our belief that we are rational, civilized, and morally pure; that we must teach the rest of the world how to be rational, civilized, and pure. It's the same thing Englishmen believed when they started killing native Americans nearly 400 years ago. Some ideas just won't quit, even after Hiroshima, the nuclear arms race, and the Shah. In fact, that may be why Tom and the liberals he speaks for need so desperately to believe that we are civilized and the Islamists are not. The actual evidence is much more ambiguous. No, I wouldn't want to live in Osama-land, and I hope no nations choose to go his route. But if I were poor, or non-white, or uneducated, or more radical than I am, I might not want to live in the good old USA either. Osama's system sucks. Our system sucks in quite a different way. Osama urges exploited powerless people to fight because they are the only morally pure people. Tom Friedman urges the powerful exploiters to fight because they are the only morally pure people. That way, he can justify the exploitation, the injustice, and the killing needed to keep it going. And he makes it all sound so reasonable, so simple. But the simple truth is that the more Americans believe Tom Friedman's ideas, the more U.S. policy will alienate Muslims around the world. So the war, and the risk to our lives, are sure to continue.Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder chernus@colorado.edu © Copyrighted 1997-2004 www.commondreams.orgReprinted from Common Dreams: www.commondreams.org/views04/0109-01.htm
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 13:25:54 GMT -5
February 2004 Sometimes it seems like we're regressing back to the Middle Ages. According to a St. Petersburg Times letter to the editor by Ahmed Bedier, communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in Tampa, Florida "County Commission candidate Richard Power incorrectly referred to Muslims as 'Mohammedans,' and alleged that not enough have condemned terrorism. Mr. Power went on to add that 'Mohammedans' have 'to abide by our rules,' a statement suggesting that Muslims are foreign guests." Seriously, what is this, the Battle of Tours? Mohammedans? Does Power fancy himself some kind of small-scale, Florida-based Charles Martel (who, interestingly, was known as "The Hammer," just like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay)? www.aaiusa.org/join_now.htm
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 15:55:28 GMT -5
KRAUTHAMMER:
Feb. 13, 2004:
Krauthammer is a super slimy creep--why else would he write such a sinister piece--he wants to scare the hell out of anyone who reads this. Aslo, at one point he slurs the Islamic religion, describing the will of Islamism as diabolical in war--of course, he's trying to convey this as part of a myth, but you know he believes it. Good grief.
The Other Shoe
By Charles Krauthammer
The single most puzzling -- and arguably most important -- question of the day is the one no one raises in public: Why have we not been attacked again?
We are coming up on 21/2 years since Sept. 11, 2001. Think back: On Sept. 11, everybody was waiting for the other shoe to drop -- within days or weeks, but surely within months. When nothing happened, it was said that al Qaeda works on 18-month cycles, with long planning and preparation.
Well, it is now almost a year plus 18 months. And while there have been terrorist attacks against generally soft targets in other (mostly Islamic) countries, we have not had a single attack, major or minor, in the United States.
It is easy to understand why nobody wants to talk about this. The administration dares not take credit for what is on its face an amazing phenomenon, but one that can reverse itself in a flash. And the opposition hardly wants to highlight a development that might shed favorable light on this administration's post-Sept. 11 stewardship.
Even commentators are uneasy about bringing it up. Any analysis could instantaneously turn into embarrassment.
Nonetheless, it seems odd to have a moratorium on so intriguing a question. I ask it of almost every intelligence expert I meet. Their speculations fall along two lines:
The first is that al Qaeda has been so severely degraded and disrupted that it simply cannot do it. It has lost its Afghan base, lost much of its funding and is reduced to going back to where Islamic radicals were years ago: launching minor guerrilla operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and sending operatives out to hit soft targets such as synagogues in Tunisia and consulates and banks in Istanbul.
A variation on this theme is the idea that as al Qaeda's international presence shrinks, terrorism is becoming more regionalized, being taken over by actors such as Jemaah Islamiah (Indonesia), Abu Sayyaf (Philippines) and Ansar al-Islam (Iraq).
That may not be a terribly good development for the world, but it would be an explanation for why the United States has not been attacked. If you are an Indonesian terrorist, your objective is to destroy your government and to take it over. Hitting the Vegas Strip -- no matter how spectacularly -- becomes a distraction.
But I remain puzzled. Let's say that al Qaeda is so badly hurt that it cannot organize another Sept. 11 with 19 hijackers, four planes and years of training. Yet how much training, how much planning can it take to pack a few trucks with explosives and blow them up in crowded shopping malls? Considering the economic and psychological havoc that would wreak, why haven't they done it?
After all, Timothy McVeigh did not need a huge terror apparatus to kill 168 people in the heartland of America. It takes but a primitive level of organization to do that. It is hard to believe al Qaeda is not capable of doing the same. So why hasn't it?
The other explanation is that it is a matter of pride. Having pulled off the greatest terrorist attack in the history of the world, al Qaeda does not want to sully its reputation by resorting to the cheap car bomb.
Or, to put it less psychologically and more strategically: Part of the appeal of al Qaeda -- what it uses to recruit people and funds -- is its mystique. Superhuman feats, brilliant execution, masterful planning. That aura feeds its ideology of historical inevitability, that ultimately it will prevail over Western decadence, because the seemingly high-tech West lacks the diabolical and methodical will that Islamism brings to the war.
Could that be it? For the sake of its own mythology, is al Qaeda biding its time until it can pull off the next spectacular?
I don't know. I tend to favor the second theory. But I have no doubt that reorganizing homeland security, redirecting law enforcement (from locking up bad guys to preventing worse guys from attacking) and increasing vigilance at the borders have had a significant deterrent effect.
Add to that a forward strategy of attacking not only the terrorists but the states that support them. Maybe al Qaeda does lack the capacity for even simple terrorism on U.S. soil. If so, it speaks well for an administration that, immediately after Sept. 11, designed and carried out a radically new strategy, both offensive and defensive, to fight the war on terror.
But no one dares say it. It could prove catastrophically wrong tomorrow.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 16:20:02 GMT -5
Feb 2004: Army Demands list of Texas Islamic Law Conference Attendees The organizer of an Islamic law conference at UT Law School is questioning whether ethnic discrimination brought a Special Agent for Army Intelligence to campus Monday. Special Agent Jason Treesh confronted students at the law school, demanding a list of people who attended a conference about women and Islamic law. The conference, Islam and the Law: The Question of Sexism, included speakers from around the nation and focused on the rights of women under Islamic law. Treesh would not comment about why he was at the law school, but his supervisor, Commander Demetria Marria, said Treesh was following procedure. Army Intelligence was investigating allegations of two Army personnel who attended the conference, Marria said. She said the two reported being approached by three Middle Eastern men who asked questions that were "suspicious in nature." "They felt uncomfortable with foreign students or foreign members at the conference," Marria said. "Nothing is ever obvious. It's just that one question that doesn't sit right, so they report it, and we figure it out." Law student Liz Stephenson said she was intimidated when Treesh began questioning her and others in the office of the Texas Journal of Women and the Law. "The way he was approaching the whole thing was really forceful," Stephenson said. "He gave us just enough information to get us to keep talking with him." Jessica Biddle, another law student who was present, said she felt unnerved by Treesh's methods of interrogation. "I felt like I was on 'Law and Order,'" Biddle said. "He and another woman showed their badges, but we really didn't participate in the conference, so we didn't know what he was talking about. He said he wanted a roster, because he said they were investigating some attendees." Treesh tried unsuccessfully to reach the conference organizer, law student Sahar Aziz, who said since it was an open conference, she had no roster of attendees. "There was a lunch list, because we had limited seats, but that's it," Aziz said. "I don't know what I would do with all of those people's names and contacts." Aziz said she was disappointed that the conference, which she considered apolitical, raised such suspicion. She also said she was skeptical of the allegations. "It was very boring as far as [controversy] is concerned," Aziz said. "I question whether those suspicions are more affiliated with ethnicity than anything else." www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2004/02/12/University/Army-Agent.Questions.Law.Students-605345.shtml
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 16:43:27 GMT -5
Feb 20,2004
The Chicago Tribune reports that Israeli Tourism Minister Benny Elon, "who recently called on Christians to 'go from mosque to mosque and bring the Muslims into the light,'" will present an award, given every year by Israel's Tourism Ministry to an American who has demonstrated strong support for the Zionist state," to televangelist Pat Robertson. But, even before Elon could present it, "the award was already stoking tension among Islamic activists," who say Robertson "is among several evangelical preachers who incite antagonism toward Islam." Elon "praised Robertson...as a leader of a movement that has 'saved Israel's tourism from bankruptcy," and stated in a phone interview: {b]"Our alliance with American Christians is growing[/b]...When the streets of Jerusalem were empty of tourists, the Christian community continued to come." According to the article, "Ties between Christian fundamentalists and the Israeli right came to prominence during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who drew support from the American religious right. While the Christian right's relationship with the Israeli right has experienced ebbs and flows since then, it has strengthened since the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks. Both groups say they are fighting Islamic extremism. Robertson, who for decades has strongly supported Israel, endorses the Christian Zionist movement, which interprets biblical prophecies literally. Members of the Christian Zionist movement have raised millions of dollars for Israeli causes. They also have lobbied the Bush administration and Congress to support Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Many in the movement believe the state of Israel must include all territory in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem--where Palestinians live--before the second coming of Jesus Christ. They believe Israel must retake these lands based on the Bible."
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 16:46:16 GMT -5
HR 3077 Washington Watch February 23, 2004 Silencing Debate Dr. James J. Zogby ©<br>President Arab American Institute Four years ago, Arab American leaders met with a prominent Democratic Senator, who had sponsored and fought to pass legislation that called on the United Sates to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and was now rethinking his views. During the conversation, the Senator made a number of observations, some of which were quite revealing. In closing, for example, he observed, almost apologetically, that during the time he had spent in Israel, he had noted that there was a more vigorous debate over critical Middle East peace questions in the Israeli Knesset than there was in the U.S. Congress. This is, of course, a worrisome reality. There is so little debate in the Congress over issues related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. A handful of members in both houses of Congress press damaging, sometimes bizarre, but always one-sided legislation forward, and only a small number of brave members will risk being heard in opposition. Likewise, hearings called on matters relating to the Middle East will usually feature a very "stacked deck" of witnesses, thereby limiting the diversity of views that are heard. <br> Given the Congress' lack of real debate and lack of tolerance for a diversity of views on the Middle East, it is of interest to note a particular piece of legislation that the Senate is considering in this session. Passed overwhelmingly in the House, the bill is called the "International Studies Higher Education Act" (or House Resolution 3077). HR 3077 requires universities receiving U.S. government grants to promote international studies that "reflect diverse perspectives and represent a full range of views." The Act further establishes a board to monitor these academic programs and report on whether or not they are complying with this "diversity of views" mandate. While all of this might sound harmless, since "diversity of views" is a good thing, the bill's intent is far from innocent. The object of its attention is neither "diversity," nor is it "international studies," in general. As the American Jewish Committee, a strong supporter of the legislation has written in a briefing paper they prepared on the bill, "today, almost all scholars at Middle East centers [are] hostile to American foreign policy and to Israel, and distortedly pro-Arab." The self-proclaimed major promoters of HR 3077 are none other than Martin Kramer, an associate at Tel Aviv University's Dayan Center and Daniel Pipes, the controversial anti-Muslim activist. Kramer's book "Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America" was an indictment of academics as too pro-Arab and left-wing. It was Pipes' obsession with all things "pro-Arab and pro-Islam" that led him to launch his "Campus Watch" website. Pipes has encouraged pro-Israel students to report on "pro-Arab" professor, making "Campus Watch" a type of "black list." <br> In a sense then, HR 3077 can be seen as an effort by Pipes and Kramer to institutionalize their efforts to intimidate and silence professors and Middle East programs that espouse divergent views on Middle East history and politics. Kramer, for his part, has boasted of this. He has been quoted as saying, "Academic colleagues get used to it. You are being watched. Those obscure articles in campus newspapers are now available on the internet and they will be harvested. Your syllabi, which you have posted, will be scrutinized. Your websites will be visited late at night." For his part, Pipes has claimed that what he termed the muted response to the Iraq War on college campuses was probably due to the intimidation created by his "Campus Watch" effort. HR 3077, and efforts promoted by Kramer and Pipes have been denounced by the country's leading Middle East studies programs and by liberal and conservative educators alike. They warn of the dangers to academic freedom posed by creating a governmental "watch-dog" entity. They argue that the legislation's intent is not to promote diversity but to intimidate academics into conformity. One termed these efforts a "witch hunt," while another denounced "right wing thought police...sending spies into classrooms to report on what teachers are saying in class." Now while supporters of HR 3077 single out a few professors or programs to make their case that academia is too one-sided and pro-Arab, the reality is that there are too few programs and course offerings on the Arab world at U.S. universities. And because of "political correctness" that requires an artificial balance, all too often, smaller schools or programs will seek to off-set their one offering in "Arab studies" (covering 22 countries and 300,000,000 Arabs) with an offering in Judaica or modern Israel studies. And on most major campuses very active Arab and Jewish student groups often sponsor competing programs, which, while sometimes contentious, guarantee that "both sides" are heard in campus debates. <br> The fact is that this effort is not about creating balance or diversity in the marketplace of ideas. It is about silencing whatever debate currently exists. What Kramer, Pipes and the sponsors of the HR 3077 seek to mandate in academia is the same lack of diversity of views that is in evidence in congressional hearings and debates on critical Middle East issues--the lack of diversity that my Senator friend observed and lamented four years ago. <br>For comments or information, contact jzogby@aaiusa.org or www.aaiusa.org.
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 16:50:26 GMT -5
A recent opinion piece in the New York Sun finds Daniel Pipes waxing prolific about H.R. 3077, the "International Studies in Higher Education Act," which calls for the creation of an advisory board to monitor federally funded area studies programs at colleges and universities. Many who fear the bill's passage would result in a curtailment of academic freedom have closely linked it with Pipes. However, Pipes claims that his only role in its promotion was writing "one favorable sentence on it eight months ago." Pipes claims that "leftist and Islamist" organizations, "convinced that turning H.R. 3077 into my personal initiative will help defeat it in the Senate," have "imaginatively puffed up my role." Of course, being Daniel Pipes, he doesn't believe H.R. 3077 goes far enough, and thinks "Congress should consider a more drastic solution," such as revoking the post-9/11 "$20 million annual supplement for area studies," or, his favored solution, cutting out funding for area studies all together. "Should the board not come into existence or fail to make a difference, I'll advocate the better solution - defunding - and work to spread these ideas among the public and in Congress. My opponents will then learn what happens when truly I am 'actively pushing' for Congress to adopt a measure." <br>
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 17:53:43 GMT -5
January, 2004: Benny Morris interview in Haaretz: ....Rape, massacre, transfer Benny Morris, in the month ahead the new version of your book on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem is due to be published. Who will be less pleased with the book - the Israelis or the Palestinians? "The revised book is a double-edged sword. It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves. "At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages. So that on the one hand, the book reinforces the accusation against the Zionist side, but on the other hand it also proves that many of those who left the villages did so with the encouragement of the Palestinian leadership itself." According to your new findings, how many cases of Israeli rape were there in 1948? "About a dozen. In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer [in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg." According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948? "Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved. "The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion. "That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres." What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right? "Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]." Are you saying that Ben-Gurion was personally responsible for a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion? "From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created." Ben-Gurion was a "transferist"? "Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist." I don't hear you condemning him. "Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." When ethnic cleansing is justified Benny Morris, for decades you have been researching the dark side of Zionism. You are an expert on the atrocities of 1948. In the end, do you in effect justify all this? Are you an advocate of the transfer of 1948? "There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands." We are talking about the killing of thousands of people, the destruction of an entire society. "A society that aims to kill you forces you to destroy it. When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy." There is something chilling about the quiet way in which you say that. "If you expected me to burst into tears, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I will not do that." So when the commanders of Operation Dani are standing there and observing the long and terrible column of the 50,000 people expelled from Lod walking eastward, you stand there with them? You justify them? "I definitely understand them. I understand their motives. I don't think they felt any pangs of conscience, and in their place I wouldn't have felt pangs of conscience. Without that act, they would not have won the war and the state would not have come into being." You do not condemn them morally? "No." They perpetrated ethnic cleansing. "There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide - the annihilation of your people - I prefer ethnic cleansing." www.counterpunch.org/shavit01162004.html(More next post)
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 17:56:57 GMT -5
And that was the situation in 1948?
"That was the situation. That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on."
The term `to cleanse' is terrible.
"I know it doesn't sound nice but that's the term they used at the time. I adopted it from all the 1948 documents in which I am immersed."
What you are saying is hard to listen to and hard to digest. You sound hard-hearted.
"I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the Yishuv [pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine] was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war.
"Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them."
And morally speaking, you have no problem with that deed?
"That is correct. Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history."
And in our case it effectively justifies a population transfer.
"That's what emerges."
And you take that in stride? War crimes? Massacres? The burning fields and the devastated villages of the Nakba?
"You have to put things in proportion. These are small war crimes. All told, if we take all the massacres and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who were killed. In comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated in Bosnia, that's peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that's chicken feed. When you take into account that there was a bloody civil war here and that we lost an entire 1 percent of the population, you find that we behaved very well."
The next transfer
You went through an interesting process. You went to research Ben-Gurion and the Zionist establishment critically, but in the end you actually identify with them. You are as tough in your words as they were in their deeds.
"You may be right. Because I investigated the conflict in depth, I was forced to cope with the in-depth questions that those people coped with. I understood the problematic character of the situation they faced and maybe I adopted part of their universe of concepts. But I do not identify with Ben-Gurion. I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948. Even though he understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he faltered."
I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that Ben-Gurion erred in expelling too few Arabs?
"If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."
I find it hard to believe what I am hearing.
"If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will be because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer in 1948. Because he left a large and volatile demographic reserve in the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself."
In his place, would you have expelled them all? All the Arabs in the country?
"But I am not a statesman. I do not put myself in his place. But as an historian, I assert that a mistake was made here. Yes. The non-completion of the transfer was a mistake."
And today? Do you advocate a transfer today?
"If you are asking me whether I support the transfer and expulsion of the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and perhaps even from Galilee and the Triangle, I say not at this moment. I am not willing to be a partner to that act. In the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic. The world would not allow it, the Arab world would not allow it, it would destroy the Jewish society from within. But I am ready to tell you that in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves with atomic weapons around us, or if there is a general Arab attack on us and a situation of warfare on the front with Arabs in the rear shooting at convoys on their way to the front, acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential."
Including the expulsion of Israeli Arabs?
"The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified."
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 18:08:56 GMT -5
(Interview continued)
....
Yet we, too, bear responsibility for the violence and the hatred: the occupation, the roadblocks, the closures, maybe even the Nakba itself.
"You don't have to tell me that. I have researched Palestinian history. I understand the reasons for the hatred very well. The Palestinians are retaliating now not only for yesterday's closure but for the Nakba as well. But that is not a sufficient explanation. The peoples of Africa were oppressed by the European powers no less than the Palestinians were oppressed by us, but nevertheless I don't see African terrorism in London, Paris or Brussels. The Germans killed far more of us than we killed the Palestinians, but we aren't blowing up buses in Munich and Nuremberg. So there is something else here, something deeper, that has to do with Islam and Arab culture."
Are you trying to argue that Palestinian terrorism derives from some sort of deep cultural problem?
"There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien. A world that makes those who are not part of the camp of Islam fair game. Revenge is also important here. Revenge plays a central part in the Arab tribal culture. Therefore, the people we are fighting and the society that sends them have no moral inhibitions. If it obtains chemical or biological or atomic weapons, it will use them. If it is able, it will also commit genocide."
I want to insist on my point: A large part of the responsibility for the hatred of the Palestinians rests with us. After all, you yourself showed us that the Palestinians experienced a historical catastrophe.
"True. But when one has to deal with a serial killer, it's not so important to discover why he became a serial killer. What's important is to imprison the murderer or to execute him."
Explain the image: Who is the serial killer in the analogy?
"The barbarians who want to take our lives. The people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacks, and in some way the Palestinian society itself as well. At the moment, that society is in the state of being a serial killer. It is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers."
What does that mean? What should we do tomorrow morning?
"We have to try to heal the Palestinians. Maybe over the years the establishment of a Palestinian state will help in the healing process. But in the meantime, until the medicine is found, they have to be contained so that they will not succeed in murdering us."
To fence them in? To place them under closure?
"Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another."
War of barbarians
Benny Morris, have you joined the right wing?
"No, no. I still think of myself as left-wing. I still support in principle two states for two peoples."
But you don't believe that this solution will last. You don't believe in peace.
"In my opinion, we will not have peace, no."
Then what is your solution?
"In this generation there is apparently no solution. To be vigilant, to defend the country as far as is possible."
The iron wall approach?
"Yes. An iron wall is a good image. An iron wall is the most reasonable policy for the coming generation. My colleague Avi Shlein described this well: What Jabotinsky proposed is what Ben-Gurion adopted. In the 1950s, there was a dispute between Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett. Ben-Gurion argued that the Arabs understand only force and that ultimate force is the one thing that will persuade them to accept our presence here. He was right. That's not to say that we don't need diplomacy. Both toward the West and for our own conscience, it's important that we strive for a political solution. But in the end, what will decide their readiness to accept us will be force alone. Only the recognition that they are not capable of defeating us."
For a left-winger, you sound very much like a right-winger, wouldn't you say?
"I'm trying to be realistic. I know it doesn't always sound politically correct, but I think that political correctness poisons history in any case. It impedes our ability to see the truth. And I also identify with Albert Camus. He was considered a left-winger and a person of high morals, but when he referred to the Algerian problem he placed his mother ahead of morality. Preserving my people is more important than universal moral concepts."
Are you a neo-conservative? Do you read the current historical reality in the terms of Samuel Huntington?
"I think there is a clash between civilizations here [as Huntington argues]. I think the West today resembles the Roman Empire of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries: The barbarians are attacking it and they may also destroy it."
The Muslims are barbarians, then?
"I think the values I mentioned earlier are values of barbarians - the attitude toward democracy, freedom, openness; the attitude toward human life. In that sense they are barbarians. The Arab world as it is today is barbarian."
And in your view these new barbarians are truly threatening the Rome of our time?
"Yes. The West is stronger but it's not clear whether it knows how to repulse this wave of hatred. The phenomenon of the mass Muslim penetration into the West and their settlement there is creating a dangerous internal threat. A similar process took place in Rome. They let the barbarians in and they toppled the empire from within."
Is it really all that dramatic? Is the West truly in danger?
"Yes. I think that the war between the civilizations is the main characteristic of the 21st century. I think President Bush is wrong when he denies the very existence of that war. It's not only a matter of bin Laden. This is a struggle against a whole world that espouses different values. And we are on the front line. Exactly like the Crusaders, we are the vulnerable branch of Europe in this place."
The situation as you describe it is extremely harsh. You are not entirely convinced that we can survive here, are you?
"The possibility of annihilation exists."
Would you describe yourself as an apocalyptic person?
"The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic. It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense its existence is unreasonable. It wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1881 and it wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1948 and it's not reasonable that it will succeed now. Nevertheless, it has come this far. In a certain way it is miraculous. I live the events of 1948, and 1948 projects itself on what could happen here. Yes, I think of Armageddon. It's possible. Within the next 20 years there could be an atomic war here."
If Zionism is so dangerous for the Jews and if Zionism makes the Arabs so wretched, maybe it's a mistake?
"No, Zionism was not a mistake. The desire to establish a Jewish state here was a legitimate one, a positive one. But given the character of Islam and given the character of the Arab nation, it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings."
Which leaves us, nevertheless, with two possibilities: either a cruel, tragic Zionism, or the forgoing of Zionism.
"Yes. That's so. You have pared it down, but that's correct."
Would you agree that this historical reality is intolerable, that there is something inhuman about it?
"Yes. But that's so for the Jewish people, not the Palestinians. A people that suffered for 2,000 years, that went through the Holocaust, arrives at its patrimony but is thrust into a renewed round of bloodshed, that is perhaps the road to annihilation. In terms of cosmic justice, that's terrible. It's far more shocking than what happened in 1948 to a small part of the Arab nation that was then in Palestine."
So what you are telling me is that you live the Palestinian Nakba of the past less than you live the possible Jewish Nakba of the future?
"Yes. Destruction could be the end of this process. It could be the end of the Zionist experiment. And that's what really depresses and scares me."
The title of the book you are now publishing in Hebrew is "Victims." In the end, then, your argument is that of the two victims of this conflict, we are the bigger one.
"Yes. Exactly. We are the greater victims in the course of history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here. We are a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us. So it's possible than when their desire is realized, everyone will understand what I am saying to you now. Everyone will understand we are the true victims. But by then it will be too late."
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 18:16:08 GMT -5
Jim Hoagland , March 3, 2004
A war cry for sure against the "religious fanatics" within Islam.
Islam's Civil War
By Jim Hoagland
Vietnam taught that Rule 1 of getting involved in foreign civil wars is famously and simply: Don't. But the United States today is caught in a civil war within Islam. Al Qaeda's murder by airliner of nearly 3,000 people on American soil in one September day in 2001 leaves Americans without any other option.
Tuesday was another day of religiously inspired atrocities, in Iraq and in Pakistan this time. The latest waves of holy murders should shake from their fantasies the Islamic political leaders and religious authorities who deny that a war for control of Islam is raging around them. The war will claim many more lives if Muslim society does not face up to the cancerous growth feeding on Islam and lead -- not join, but lead -- the fight against that cancer.
The Arab summit to be held at the end of March in Tunis is an important moment for a meaningful recognition of the nature of this struggle, which has been made blindingly clear in the past two days: Peacemakers and killers have each sketched out their paths to the future.
On Monday in Baghdad, the much-maligned Iraqi Governing Council negotiated and agreed to an interim constitution that sets new standards for political freedoms and religious tolerance in an Arab country. Tolerance becomes a fundamental right and condition for Iraqis.
Islam is a source, not the only source, for legislation under this basic law. The right to convert from one branch of Islam to another, or to another religion, is protected. After agonizing debate over whether it could discriminate against Iraqi citizens on the basis of religion, the council agreed that Iraqi Jews can reclaim citizenship and properties taken from them in Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. (Tip to U.S. Special Forces: Get a copy of this document to Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda's uberfuehrer will choke to death on his own rage if he reads it.)
These provisions were written and blessed by 25 Iraqi politicians who were chosen by the occupation authority. But these Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, Kurds and others must answer to constituents soon to be empowered with the right to vote. The head U.S. administrator, Paul Bremer, wisely stayed on the sidelines as the Iraqis wrestled over the substance of the law, according to U.S. and Iraqi accounts of the deliberations.
It will be modest progress if the autocrats, dictators and monarchs planning to meet in Tunis do not sneer at the interim constitution for not having been produced by a more "representative" group. Hypocrisy has never been an inhibited force at these gatherings.
But King Abdullah of Jordan, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and their cohorts must do more than that. They can no longer avoid dealing forthrightly with the words and bloody "religious" deeds proclaimed by al Qaeda and its associates in terror. These leaders must delegitimize religious murder, whether practiced against Shiites, Christians or Jews. They must take away the religious sanctuary the extremists claim. They must validate the spot-on sentiment voiced recently by one professional U.S. analyst of the war against global terrorism: "The jihad will vanish only when the Muslim world sees terrorists as heretics, and not as holy warriors." The American role will then be to "shield moderate Muslims from intimidation and violence" as the struggle progresses.
Iraq is now the center of this epochal conflict. Scarcely 24 hours after the Governing Council finished its deliberations, suicide bombings and other explosions devastated Shiite religious shrines in Baghdad and Karbala and killed at least 143 people. This coincided with a shooting attack on Shiite worshippers in Quetta, Pakistan, where at least 42 people died. Quetta authorities continue to let Sunni extremists use Shiite shrines as shooting galleries.
The reasons why Sunni extremists target all Shiites as "the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy" were spelled out in chilling detail in a recently captured document believed to have been written by Abu Musab Zarqawi, who ran an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before going to Iraq. Zarqawi is now suspected of having staged the car bombing that killed Shiite Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim and about 100 of his followers last August as an initial step in the holy war Zarqawi plans for Iraq.
President Bush has repeatedly said the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam. This has to be the case. But Americans cannot shy away from treating this struggle as a religious civil war, one that will be won or lost within Islam. More important, neither can Muslims.
jimhoagland@washpost.com
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 19:30:32 GMT -5
Dar al-Harb
by Lewis H. Lapham
From Harper's Magazine, March 2004
"Men never do evil so fully and so happily as when they do it for conscience's sake." -Pascal
During the two and a half years since the terrorist attacks on New York & Washington, the country's book publishers have poured forth a steady flow of propaganda recruiting the American citizenry to never-ending war against all the world's evildoers. The edifying tracts come in two coinages - those that praise America the Beautiful (virtuous & just, forever innocent & pure in heart) and those that magnify the threat posed by sinister enemies as numberless as the names for grief - nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korean generals and Pakastani bicyclists, smallpox virus hidden in the luggage or on the person of a gentleman from Bolivia, Arab fanatics spawning in the sewers of the once romantic Middle East. The sales pitch can be inferred from a short but representative list of titles - Taking America Back; Why We Fight; Ripples of Battle; An Autumn War; A Heart, A Cross, and A Flag. I can't pretend to having read more than a few of the hundred-odd books made to the design specifications of a Pentagon press release, but judging by those of which I've read at least enough to appreciate the author's command of the false but stouthearted syllogism, the attempt at persuasion appears to have shifted from the secular to the religious lines of argument.
The books published during the first twelve months of the country's introduction to the concept of its own mortality stated the problem as one open to solution with the instrument of reason, possibly also with some knowledge of history & a passing acquaintance with the socio-economic circumstances confronted by a majority of most of the world's peoples, Asian, African, & Latin American as well as Muslim. The writing wasn't distinguished, but at least it could be said that the discussion was taking place in the vernacular languages of the world in time. The more recent books borrow their inspiration from the verses of the Bible and the suras of the Koran. The authors who decry the sins committed by Americans in America (cynicism, homosexuality, believing what they read in the New York Times) adopt the rhetoric of Jonathan Edwards cleansing the souls of the unfaithful in the seventeenth-century wilderness of Puritan New England; the authors who preach holy crusade against the foreign infidel in modern-day Jerusalem and Damascus issue fatwas in the manner of Osama bin Laden.
To the latter company of vengeful imams we now can add the names of David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, and Richard Perle, member and former chairman of the Defense Policy Board within the U.S. Department of Defense. Their jointly assembled "manual for victory" (An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror) reached the bookstores in early January and was promptly boosted onto the bestseller list because of the authors' elevated rank within the intellectual apparat that supplies the Bush Administration with its delusions of moral grandeur[/color]. Attached to the White House staff in 2002, Frum brightened that year's State of the Union Address with the phrase "axis of evil"; in 2003 he published The Right Man, a hagiography portraying President Bush as a man impervious to doubt, casting his mission and that of his country in the grand vision of God's master plan. Perle has served as an apostle of hard-line power politics since the early 1980s: an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan Administration, closely associated with the troop of visionary ideologues currently directing the course of our militant foreign policy, a resident fellow, together with Frum, of the American Enterprise Institute.
The result of their collaboration is an ugly harangue that if translated into Arabic and reconfigured with a few changes of word and emphasis (the objects of fear and loathing identified as America and Israel in place of Saudi Arabia and the United Nations) might serve as a lesson taught to a class of eager jihadists at a madrasa in Kandahar. The book's title testifies both to absurdity of its premise and the ignorance of its authors. Evil is a story to which not even Billy Graham can write an end; nor can the 101st Airborne Division set up a secure perimeter around the sin of pride. The War on Terror is a war against an abstract noun, as unwinnable as the wars on hunger, drugs, crime, and human nature, and were it not for the authors' involvement with the affairs of state (informed sources, highly placed, presumably knowing why and whereof they speak), the entire press run of their book might be more usefully transformed into a shipment of paper hats.
But ours is an age in which hijacked airliners and precision-guided cruise missiles follow flight paths dreamed of in the minds of men like mullahs Omar, Frum, and Perle, and some of the prospective casualties (most of them civilian) might care to read at least a brief summary of the work in hand. As with all forms of propaganda, the prose style doesn't warrant extensive quotation, but I don't do the authors a disservice by reducing their message to a series of devine commandments. Like Muhammad bringing the word of Allah to the widow Khadija and the well Zem-Zem, they aspire to a tone of voice appropriate to a book of Revelation.
THE WAR ON TERROR - "Has only just begun." "There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust."
THE UNITED STATES - "The greatest of all great powers in world history."
MILITANT ISLAM - Vast horde of Arabs, possibly numbering in the millons, bent on world domination. They intend to "fasten unthinking, unquestioning slavery" on the mind of Western civilization. As insatiable in their thirst for blood as Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
THE CIA AND FBI - Staffed by "faint-hearts" who lack "the nerve for the fight."
THE STATE DEPARTMENT - "An obstacle to victory." Controlled by "complacent" functionaries who seek "to reconcile the irreconcilable, to negotiate the unnegotiable, and to appease the unappeasable."
THE UNITED NATIONS - "Not an entirely useless organization," but one that does more harm than good. It "regularly broadcasts a spectacle as dishonest and morally deadening as a Stalinist show trial, a televised ritual of condemnation that enflames hatreds and sustains quarrels that might otherwise fade away." The United States doesn't require the U.N.'s permission to attack any country in which George Bush, like Teddy Roosevelt before him, notices "a general loosening of the ties of civilized society."
THE MIDDLE EAST - "Fetid swamp" crawling with "venemous vermin." America must cast the whole lot of it into a purifying fire. "The toughest line is the safest line."
THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION OF IRAQ - A triumph. Another six months, and nobody will be able to tell the difference between Baghdad and Orlando.
SAUDI ARABIA - Headquarters tent of militant Islam. "The Saudis qualify for their own membership in the Axis of Evil." Must be purged of ideological infection.
ARABS RESIDENT IN PALESTINE - Must learn "to swallow their defeat." They have as little chance of territorial restoration as the Oglala Sioux who once drifted through the valley of the Little Big Horn.
ISRAEL - Land of heroes, light unto the gentiles. "Everything that liberal Europeans think a state should not be: proudly nationalist, supremely confident, willing and able to use force to defend itself - alone if need be."
IRAN - "The regime must go."
CRITICS OF AMERICA'S WAR ON TERROR - Cowards, "softliners," "Clintonites," "defeatists," pillars of salt.
GERMANY - "Fair-weather friend." An ally no longer to be trusted.
FRANCE - An unfriendly power that "gleefully smashed up an alliance [NATO] that had kept the peace of the world for half a century." Jealous and resentful of America's greatness and goodness of heart. Europe must be forced "to choose between Paris and Washington."
NON-DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS - America not obliged to honor their pretensions. "It's not always in our power to do anything about such criminals, nor is it always in our interests, but when it is in our power and our interests we should toss dictators aside with no more compunction than a police sharpshooter feels when he downs a hostage-taker."
DARK PLACES OF THE EARTH - Any city, town, desert, parliament, or shopping mall where "terrorists skulk and hide." Among the countries eligible for some form of instructive intervention, the authors list Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Venezuela, Paraguay, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, northern Nigeria.
NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION CARD - Necessary precaution. All Americans must learn to inform on one another, to admire the vigilant citizen "who does his or her part." "A free society is not an un-policed society. A free society is a self-policed society."
AMERICAN CIVILIAN POPULATION - Must be prepared to accept losses. The protection of American citizens not as important as the killing of Satanic Muslims. The authors cite General George Patton: "Nobody ever won a war by caring for his wounded. He won by making the other poor SOB care for his wounded."
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 19:35:09 GMT -5
Never having heard the angry teaching in a madrasa or a mosque, I can't make a close or fair comparison to the briefing papers passed around the conference tables at the American Enterprise Institute, but if what I've been told is true (that the sermons depend for their effect on the expression of high-pitched rage) then I don't know how the language differs from that of Mufti Frum and Mullah Perle. Their truths are absolute, their verbs invariably violent - "destroy," "smash," "purge," "deny," "punish," "cut off," "stomp." Provide them with a beard, a turban, and a copy of the Koran, and I expect that they wouldn't have much trouble stoning to death a woman discovered in adultery with a cameraman from CBS News.
Set aside the question as to whether An End to Evil proceeds from a cynical motive (the authors fully aware of the lies told to promote a fanciful dream of paradise), and we're still left with a frightening display of ignorance that doesn't augur well for the future of the American Republic. In place of reasoned argument, we have Stone Age incantation, the sense or knowledge of history grotesquely distorted in the fun-house mirrors of ideological certainty, the observations of two respected and supposedly well-informed civil servants framed in a vocabulary as primitive as the one that informs the radio broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh, the television commentary of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, and the novels of Tim LaHaye and Saddam Hussein.
Historians who study the rise and fall of nations mark the downward turn at the point when the rulers of the state begin to lose faith in the merely human institutions that embody a society's courage of mind and rule of law. They place their trust in miracles and look for their salvation to charlatans who come to comfort them with stories about the end of evil. When the Turks sacked Constantinople in 1453, they found 10,000 people in the church of Santa Sophia, earnestly praying for deliverance in a sanctuary made sweet with the smell of incense and stale with the scent of fear. Authors Frum and Perle trade in the same commodities.
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 20:58:40 GMT -5
NEW BAD GUY ANNOUNCED msnbc.msn.com/id/4524563/Are we any safer from attack? Probably not - and the threat is growing ever more diffuse and hard to fight . The changing nature of terror, and the groups who are targeting the innocent. By Michael HirshUpdated: 3:01 a.m. ET March 14, 2004March 22 issue - Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi didn't start off life as a mystery. And nothing about the shabby two-story house where he grew up in Jordan suggests that it once nurtured a terrorist mastermind. A few weeks ago in this hardscrabble town of Zarqa, 17 miles from Amman, his family held a party at the house. Sitting on flat mattresses on the ground, picking at an assortment of pizza, cake and grapefruit, his sisters said the man born Ahmed Khalaylah (Zarqawi, which derives from his hometown, is his nom de guerre) was popular as a youth and kind to animals as well as very religious. Later, reached by telephone after coordinated attacks against Shiites in Iraq left nearly 200 dead, one sister flatly said: "My brother wouldn't do that." Told that U.S. officials had fingered him, she shot back, "What do you expect from the infidels?" [The scary thing is, many people would more likely believe her first before they would the U.S.] Zarqawi's green-eyed mother, Um Sayef al-Khalaylah - interviewed before her death earlier this month- also scoffed at the idea that her 37-year-old son was a terrorist big shot. "Al Qaeda is rich. If my son worked with Al Qaeda do you think my house would be like this?" she had asked, gesturing at her austere surroundings. U.S. officials insist there's no question Zarqawi is now a major terrorist leader. In fact, Bush administration officials have made a conscious decision to portray him as the Next Bad Guy in the war on terror, possibly the successor to Osama bin Laden, who is said to be on the run in Afghanistan. That's one reason why, in recent weeks, officials were so eager to publicize a 17-page terror memo that Zarqawi allegedly sent to the Qaeda chieftain, and why they were so quick to name Zarqawi as the culprit behind the horrific bombings of Shiites in Iraq that preceded the Madrid train attacks by a week. In addition to numerous attacks in Iraq, Zarqawi was implicated in a bomb plot in Morocco last year - raising questions of whether any link exists between him and the Moroccans arrested in Spain late last week [if you believed the adminstration, he's been a busy man].
But here's the problem. Unlike bin Laden, no one can say what the round-faced Zarqawi even looks like today. Like many current terrorist cell leaders, Zarqawi is a graduate of bin Laden's Afghan training camps, and one thing he may have learned from the master's mistakes is the virtue of staying anonymous. In fact, for a long time authorities haven't even known how many legs he has, much less where he is. Before the Iraq war, one article of indictment against Saddam was that he had supplied Zarqawi with medical treatment in Baghdadóincluding a prosthetic legóafter the latter was badly wounded in Afghanistan. But that appears to have been based on more bad intel [now there's a suprise! who'd a thought the U.S. had bad intelligence?]. Senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad tell NEWSWEEK they are now convinced Zarqawi has two fully functioning legs.
Authorities do know a few things about his network. According to Shadi Abdallah, a Jordanian-born refugee in Germany who became an informant, Zarqawi's group, Al Tawhid, has several cells in Europe. In Abdallah's debriefings with German investigatorsócopies of which were obtained by NEWSWEEK- he said one Zarqawi cell was headed by the spiritual leader of an obscure London mosque allegedly attended by Zacarias Moussaoui, the French-born jihadi awaiting trial in Virginia, and Richard Reid, the London-born petty criminal convicted in Boston of trying to blow up a U.S. airliner using a shoe bomb. But officials are stumped about Zarqawi's whereabouts today- they know only that he is just one of many such threats facing America and its allies "Dozens of such groups exist," CIA Director George Tenet told Congress two weeks ago. "I've identified the Zarqawi network, the Ansar al-Islam network in Iraq, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan."
The Qaeda organization that committed the horrors of 9/11 was, at the time, the only group that had declared global war on America. While it had widespread cells, it was anchored in Afghanistan as well. Al Qaeda also had a well-established history: bin Laden had emerged from the mujahedin movement against the Soviets and unit-ed with his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had cut his teeth on the Islamist struggle against Egypt's secular leaders [funny how bin Laden's links with the CIA and U.S. are left out]. Now, says Milt Bearden, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, "I think the [terror threat] has metastasized to the point where we haven't got a clue where it will pop up next." [Sometimes I think they do because something in the back of my mind makes me think maybe someone in the U.S. is calling the shots]
The last two weeks of mass killings - of celebrant Shiites in Iraq and Pakistan on the holy day of Ashura, followed a week later by the attacks on commuters in Madrid - may some day be viewed as the opening shots fired by this spectral second generation of terrorists. In both cases authorities remain fairly clueless as to which groups were involved and to whom they are linked, whether they take orders from Al Qaeda or merely coexist with it, and whether non-Islamist groups like the Basque ETA have grown new synapses connecting them with otherwise disparate movements [let's just throw in FARC and the IRA while we're at it]. All that is known is that such groups seem to be fueled by ever more virulent anti-American sentiment , and that since the war in Iraq this has often manifested itself through attacks on U.S. allies such as Spain [which makes no sense to me why al-Qaeda would target only members of the coalition. Why haven't there been bombings in, for example, Paris, Toronto or Frankfurt? All nations that supported the U.S. invading Afghanistan], and agencies like the Red Cross or United Nations that work with Washington. In a videotape last fall, bin Laden specifically named Spain as a potential target. Intelligence officials also tell NEWSWEEK that Zarqawi is viewed as a suspect in three major attacks in Iraq last year: on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, on a leading Shiite mosque in Najaf (in which a pro-U.S. ayatollah was killed) and on an Italian paramilitary post.
For Americans, the reality of this new shadow war hasn't hit home yetóeven though the millions who ride commuter trains are queasily aware of how easily a Madrid could happen here. Since 9/11, the clenched fist of American power has struck two mighty blowsóone in ousting the Taliban in Afghanistan, the other in taking out Saddam [here we go, carrying the administration's water again by mentioning Hussein and Sept. 11th in the same sentence as if the two were connected. Any journalist that does this should be fired on the spot for being an obvious shill for the neo-cons]. In doing so, President George W. Bush has reasserted American power in a region where U.S. officials believe that an image of weakness invites attack [we now know who gave Hirsh his direction to write this article from this sentence alone].
The question now, though, is whether that giant American fist has effectively smashed down on a blob of mercury, sending it in myriad directions and making it all but untraceable. NEWSWEEK has learned that the last Orange terror alert in Decemberótriggered by hijacking threats to foreign airliners heading to Americaówas based on what appears to be bad information [no crap! Ridge and Ashcroft were mad because British pilots didn't want to submit to their dictates for airport "safety"]. No arrests or detentions have been made, and no leads remain open. U.S. officials say that, even in the wake of Madrid, the level of intelligence "chatter" about an attack on the continental United States remains low; but if it was "high" in December, does today's lack of intel mean anything? A former senior counterterrorism official in the Bush administration points out that "there have been more major terror attacks in the 30 months since 9/11 than in the 30 months before. I think we may have cut off Al Qaeda's head, but the rest of the body is working fine and has spawned 10 more smaller heads."
(rest at link)
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 21:22:25 GMT -5
www.tmtmetropolis.ru/index.php?aid=131199If enacted, the Constitution Restoration Act will effectively transform the United States into a theocracy, where the arbitrary dictates of a "higher power" can override law. By Chris Floyd One of the sticking points in crafting the just-signed "interim constitution" of the Pentagon cash cow formerly known as Iraq was the question of acknowledging Islam as the fundamental source of law. After much wrangling, a fudge was worked out that cites the Koran as a fundamental source of legal authority, with the proviso that no law can be passed that conflicts with Islam. We in the enlightened West smile at such theocratic quibbling, of course: Imagine, national leaders insisting that a modern state be governed solely by divine authority! Governments guaranteeing the right of religious extremists to impose their views on society! What next -- debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Oh, those poor, ignorant barbarians in Babylon! Well, wipe that smile off your face. For even now, the ignorant barbarians in Washington are pushing a law through Congress that would "acknowledge God as the sovereign source of law, liberty [and] government" in the United States. What's more, it would forbid all legal challenges to government officials who use the power of the state to enforce their own view of "God's sovereign authority." Any judge who dared even hear such a challenge could be removed from office. The "Constitution Restoration Act of 2004" is no joke; it was introduced last month by some of the Bush Regime's most powerful Congressional sycophants. If enacted, it will effectively transform the American republic into a theocracy, where the arbitrary dictates of a "higher power" -- as interpreted by a judge, policeman, bureaucrat or president -- can override the rule of law. The Act -- drafted by a minion of television evangelist Pat Robertson -- is the fruit of decades of work by a group of extremists known broadly as "Dominionists." Their openly expressed aim is to establish "biblical rule" over every aspect of society -- placing "the state, the school, the arts and sciences, law, economics, and every other sphere under Christ the King." Or as Attorney General John Ashcroft -- the nation's chief law enforcement officer -- has often proclaimed: "America has no king but Jesus!"
According to Dominionist literature, "biblical rule" means execution -- preferably by stoning -- of homosexuals and other "revelers in licentiousness"; massive tax cuts for the rich (because "wealth is a mark of God's favor"); the elimination of government programs to alleviate poverty and sickness (because these depend on "confiscation of wealth"); and enslavement for debtors. No legal challenges to "God's order" will be allowed. And because this order is divinely ordained, the "elect" can use any means necessary to establish it, including deception, subversion, even violence. As Robertson himself adjures the faithful: "Zealous men force their way in."
Again, this is no tiny band of cranks meeting in some basement in Alabama, as recent reports by investigators Karen Yurica and David Neiwert make clear. The Dominionists are bankrolled and directed by deep-pocketed, well-connected business moguls and political operatives who have engineered a takeover of the Republican Party and are now at the heart of the U.S. government. They've made common cause with the "American Empire" faction -- Cheney, Rumsfeld, the neo-conservatives -- who seek "full-spectrum dominance" over the globe. The Dominionists provide money and domestic political muscle for the Dominators' imperial ambitions; in return, the Dominators provide a practical vehicle -- overwhelming military might and state power -- for making the Dominionists' dreams a reality.
The Dominionist movement was founded by the late R.J. Rushdoony, a busy beaver who also co-founded the Council for National Policy. The CNP is the politburo of the American conservative movement, filled with top-rank political and business leaders who set the national agenda for the vast echo chamber of right-wing foundations, publishers, media networks and universities that have schooled a whole generation in obscurantist bile -- just as the extremist Wahabbi religious schools funded by Saudi billionaires have poisoned the Islamic world with hatred and ignorance.
One of the chief moneybags behind the rise of Dominionism was tycoon Harold Ahmanson, Rushdoony's protege and fellow CNP member. In addition to establishing theocracy in America, Ahmanson has another abiding interest: computerized voting machines. As reported here last year, Ahmanson, a fervent Bush backer, was instrumental in establishing two of the Republican-controlled companies now rushing to install their highly hackable machines -- with untraceable, unrecountable electronic ballots -- across the country in time for the November election.
The Dominionists also have strong backing on the Supreme Court, Yurica notes. Justice Antonin Scalia, author of the unconstitutional ruling that gave Bush the presidency, declared in the theological journal First Things that the state derives its moral authority from God, not the "consent of the governed," as that old licentious reveler Thomas Jefferson held in the Declaration of Independence. No, government "is the 'minister of God' with powers to 'revenge,' to 'execute wrath,' including even wrath by the sword," Scalia wrote. He railed against the "tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government."
Meanwhile, the tools of dominion keep expanding. Just days after the Congressional Bushists launched their theocratic missile, General Ralph Eberhart, head of America's first domestic military command, said the Regime must now bring the experience learned on foreign battlefields to the "Homeland" itself, including the integration of police, military and intelligence forces, "wide-area surveillance of the United States" and "urban warfare tactics," GovExec.com reports.
Put this juggernaut at the service of democracy-hating extremists with no legal restraints on their enforcement of "God's sovereign authority" -- plus a proven track record of subverting the law to gain political power -- and what would you have? A mullah state? A military theocracy?
Or should we just call it "a second term"?
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