Sunday, March 9, 2008

Muslims hate our foreign policies

While I don't agree with Scheuer on everything -- most important, I don't agree that Muslim extremists pose an existential threat to the United States -- he is correct that Muslim extremists hate America for its actions, not for its "freedom." Until we accept the truth that popular Muslim hatred is blowback from U.S. foreign policies, we will never be able to stem the tide of extremism.

And it only further enrages Muslims when Bush -- whose "freedom agenda" for the world's oppressed peoples figured so highly in his speeches, and was a major reason (proclaimed ex post facto) for his invasion of Iraq -- picks & chooses which democracies he (i.e. America) will recognize as legitimate. If democracy for the world is our goal, then we must accept the results of free & fair elections everywhere, no matter who gets elected.


Hypocrisy never makes for good foreign policy
By Bernd Debusmann
March 7, 2008 | Reuters

It would be hard to believe if it didn't come from the man who ran the unit charged with capturing Osama bin Laden.

Preparations at one point included lawyers from several branches of the U.S. intelligence community. Their task? "To examine rolls of masking, duct and medical-adhesive tape and determine which had the right amount of stickiness to ensure that bin Laden's face and beard would not be excessively irritated if his mouth had to be taped shut after capture."

This comes in a footnote in an angry book by an angry man, Michael Scheuer, a 20-year veteran of CIA covert-action operations who left the agency in 2004 and became a vocal critic of what he sees as the failure of successive U.S. administrations to take seriously the threat of Islamic terrorism.

The beard-and-tape episode dates back to 1998 when, he says, "CIA engineers were required to produce an ergonomically correct chair for bin Laden to be seated in after he was captured. Likewise, well-padded restraint devices were manufactured to avoid chafing his skin."

So much for the ruthless, brutal, cold-hearted officials of popular lore.

The operation was called off because the Clinton administration feared a huge backlash if bin Laden had been killed by accident in the attempt to snatch him.

Also at play, according to Scheuer, was "the first question always asked by the agency's senior-most managers, 'Will it pass the Washington Post giggle test?' " He added that no "operation could be considered if the Post and other media would ridicule it if it failed and became public knowledge."

The giggle test, Scheuer says, was applied throughout his service with the CIA, which included arming Afghan mujahedeen in their fight against Soviet occupation. He was one of the architects of the CIA's controversial rendition program under which Qaeda suspects are seized and taken to third countries.

Bin Laden is still on the run, more than six years after hijackers under his command rammed airliners into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, killing more than 3,000 people.

In his recently published book, "Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam after Iraq," Scheuer argues that the United States faces more trouble because its leaders refuse to recognize what drives terrorism.

President George W. Bush argues that terrorists "hate our freedoms, our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote." But polls show that the bedrock of support for militancy among the world's 1.3 billion Muslims is the detestation of U.S. foreign policies.

Scheuer faults U.S. leaders for failing to acknowledge the grievances that bin Laden laid out in precise detail, which were adopted by the followers he inspired. They were: (1) the U.S. presence in the Arabian Peninsula; (2) unqualified support for Israel; (3) U.S. support for states oppressing Muslims, especially China, India and Russia; (4) U.S. exploitation of Muslim oil; and (5) U.S. support and financing of authoritarian Arab regimes.

There is no reason to believe that the United States is about to change the foreign policies that motivate Muslim extremists in a region where politics and religion are intertwined and where many believe that the "war on terror" is really a war on Islam.

Foreign policy has not been much of a subject in the U.S. presidential election campaign. The candidates differ over when and how to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but none of them has given any indication of policies that would take the air out of the arguments that Al Qaeda and like-minded groups have used to attract recruits.

John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, and the rivals for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, have all pledged commitment to Israel and none of them is likely to loosen Washington's embrace of Saudi Arabia or push President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt toward greater democracy.

Polls show that radicals - potential suicide bombers and hostage takers - and moderate Muslims are in favor of moving toward more democracy, a process stifled in many places by authoritarian rulers who enjoy the backing of the United States.

America cemented its reputation as the superpower of hypocrites after one of the very few democratic elections in Middle Eastern history, the 2006 vote in which Palestinians opted for the Islamist party Hamas over Fatah, the corrupt ruling bureaucracy built up by Yasser Arafat. The closely monitored election was deemed free and fair.

The United States responded by boycotting Hamas and backing Fatah.

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