Fox's ideas on fighting terror are a distinction without a difference

I'm going to quote FoxNews "security analyst" K.T. McFarland at length, with my comments, on her prescriptions for fighting violent Islamists... THINGS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS LARGELY ALREADY DOING:

KTM: "An economic component that bankrupts radical jihad by cutting off their oil revenues  - attacking their oil fields, refineries and tankers  -- while we also develop our own resources to be energy independent of Arab oil."

Me: The U.S. is already energy independent, thanks to Obama's relaxing rules on fracking. We have so much U.S. oil -- and that's a mixed blessing, if you read the WSJ or Bloomberg -- that Obama even ended the long-time ban on exporting U.S. oil.  ISIS does control oil fields in Syria, but they sell it all on the black market, and we are already bombing them. 

KTM: "A banking component that uses the US primacy in international banking and finance to freeze out any country or company that does business with radical Islamists from ISIS to Boko Haram."

Me: Ditto the above.  I'm sure we could do more to root out the middle men trading ISIS's oil, (cough! Turkey!) but again, it's not like ISIS is trading oil on the world futures market.

KTM: "An alliance component that draws together moderate Muslims into an alliance against radical Islam.  If they’re reluctant to join an anti-Islamist alliance, we should let them know they shouldn’t come running to us if things don’t work out.   We should call them out if they have some in their inner circles that play both sides.  

"And we may have to hold our noses and partner with countries we do not always approve of, as we did during World War II."

Me:  Who are the moderate Muslim countries that have the capacity to fight ISIS?  I can think of only one: Turkey.  Saudi Arabia has the capacity but it is not a moderate Muslim country.  The Kurds are everybody's favorite moderate Muslims but they don't have their own state; and moderate ally #1, Turkey, will not allow the Kurds to form their own state. 

KTM: "An anti-hostage component – we will not negotiate, exchange prisoners with nor pay ransom to terrorists. If you take our people hostage, we will turn the tables on you and put a very large bounty on your heads. We promise to hunt down kill anyone who kills our citizens, no matter now long it takes."

Me: Who's the greatest terrorist hunter of all time?  President Barack Obama.  Indeed, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg just revealed that, "killing the so-called caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is one of the top goals of the American national-security apparatus in Obama’s last year." 

And that's not an empty threat, coming from the guy who killed bin Laden and most of Al Qaeda's senior leadership during his term in office.

KTM: "A communications component which champions western values, like we had during WWII and the Cold War. Violent radical Jihad and western civilization are NOT morally equivalent.  No apology tour, no comparing the Crusades to ISIS.  Be proud of America or be quiet."

Me: Communications are a funny thing. Compel somebody to say something they don't believe -- good luck with that! -- and it comes across as lame.  And when the U.S. tries to do it ourselves -- and we do, assiduously -- the results are mixed, because we're even lamer, and nobody there trusts our motives.  The truth is that, in the age of social media and instant viral communication, it's very hard to shape the dialog, especially in a region we understand poorly.  Putin's Russia does the best job of it, with an army of paid trolls and bloggers, but what they mainly accomplish is sowing doubt in the concept of objective truth of events itself to create cover for Putin's maneuvers, not creating a new accepted truth.

KTM: " An Internet component that blocks their online recruiting and training efforts and uses metadata to track and destroy terrorist leaders."

Me: This sounds a lot like more cyber spying.  And who's the greatest cyber spy of all time?  Again, President Obama. 

KTM: "A religious and ideological component which applauds moderate Muslim leaders – like Egyptian President Sisi and the Grand Imam of Al Ahzar Mosque- who speak out against radical Islam."

Me: Ouch.  Egyptian President Sisi is now widely regarded in Egypt and the region as a worse tyrant than President Mubarak.  He doesn't "speak out" against radical Islam, he jails, tortures and kills anybody suspected of associations with such.  That's not exactly clean and neat, and certainly not representative of traditional American values.  Nevertheless... who is Sisi's greatest patron?  Again, President Obama.

KTM: "And finally, a military component which does not, repeat does not, require thousands of American combat forces, but rather gives our allies every inducement and all the arm twisting necessary so they put their own boots on the ground.  And which supplies them with whatever they need to do the job."

Me: This is the only semi-novel and impactful recommendation of McFarland. She's basically saying, arm the Saudis and the Turks to fight our battles for us, because nobody else has the capacity even to accept such help.  Israel does but they don't want to get involved. (BTW, gee, isn't it funny that our bestest ally in the Mideast isn't helping us to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq?  Why is that??) But we have problems with Turkey (see: Kurds); and with Saudi Arabia, which spends millions of dollars all over the world promoting a radical Wahhabist version of Sunni Islam; and which is still more concerned with Iran than ISIS or Al Qaeda.

So in summary, McFarland's prescriptions on how to fight "global jihad" boil down to a distinction without a difference vis-a-vis current U.S. policy. The truth is, there is only so much the U.S. can do in the world, especially in the fractious and conflicted Arab Middle East, and even less our "allies" are willing to do, no matter what bribes or inducements we throw at them.

Finally, I've said it before, but comparing all of these people to the Nazis or the USSR, and saying we can copy-paste what we did in the 40's or the Cold War to defeat them is moronic, stupid, wrong, impractical...I just don't know how else to say it.  Political correctness has nothing to do with this fight either.  Whenever you hear somebody say any of this, know you're listening to an old fogey who doesn't understand "franchised" terrorism and the root of these many regional conflicts -- which have nothing to do with Islam, originally -- that create power vacuums and provide the perfect breeding ground for Islamist terrorism. 


Yes, America, it's war. Here's how we can stop losing and start winning
By K.T. McFarland
March 22, 2016 | FoxNews
URL: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/03/22/yes-america-its-war-heres-how-can-stop-losing-and-start-winning.html?intcmp=hphz01

Bill Maher is wrong about Muslims

For the record, Bill Maher is wrong. And he probably knows it. He's right that all religions are irrational and most of their sacred texts espouse violence and outdated morality.

Where he's wrong is the liberal response. The liberal response to radical Muslims should be the same as what it has been to radical Christians from the days of the Ku Klux Klan onward: condemn the criminals, not the religion. 

Because religion is like human nature. We can ascribe everything bad we do to "human nature." But then there are all the good things we do, like love and charity, that are also human nature. It's the same with religion: the Inquisition and the Sistine Chapel coexisting.

Maher knows that the United States is not really going to single out Muslims for discriminatory treatment, second-class citizenship or the like. That's not who we are. But he wants media attention and maybe enough liberals to say, "Yeah, maybe you're right, maybe these guys are nothing like us."  False enemies like this are like jackalopes inserted to mock the American pageant. 

Remember: 12 million Muslims live in America. Twelve million! 

The "liberal" Maher is wrong that Muslims are not like us just like conservatives are wrong that blacks or Hispanics are not like us. Who is "us" anyway? Guys that look like Bill Maher? Or maybe Mike Huckabee? People that think like Ted Cruz? Or Bernie Sanders?  

Bill Maher on Paris Attack: 'There Are No Great Religions—They're All Stupid and Dangerous'

By Travis Gettys

January 9, 2014 | Raw Story 

URL: http://www.alternet.org/belief/bill-maher-paris-attack-there-are-no-great-religions-theyre-all-stupid-and-dangerous

A recent history of terrorist killers...

A conservative equivalent of what Bill Maher decries among Muslims is when right-wing Christians blow up abortion clinics, shoot abortion doctors, or law enforcement officers. 

The attackers against Charlie Hebdo killed 12 people, including a Muslim policeman. 

How many Americans remember the Atlanta Centennial Park anti-government bomber Eric Rudolph who in 1996 killed two people and wounded 112 others? Or Wade Michael Page's murder of six Sikhs in Wisconsin in 2012? Or Jim David Adkisson who killed two and wounded seven others in 2008? Or the guy who flew a plane into the IRS in 2010 and killed himself and one other? Or the Army of God that murdered two people? Or Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people, mostly children, in Norway with an anti-Muslim motivation? And do I really need to mention Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who murdered 168 Americans and injured over 600 others? 

I'm not recounting recent U.S. history to excuse inexcusable crimes somewhere overseas; I'm just reminding you that crazy people do crazy things, and often for reasons that "upstanding" people would generally sympathize with.

So the response is not to demonize all Arabs or Muslims, or all conservative Christians for that matter, but rather to demonize the alleged murderers, their ideology, and anybody who likewise espouses terror and/or violence against innocents as a means to a political end.

See: "10 of the Worst Terror Attacks by Extreme Christians and Far-Right White Men."

Bill Maher on Paris Attack: 'There Are No Great Religions—They're All Stupid and Dangerous'

By Travis Gettys

January 9, 2015 | Raw Story

URL: http://www.alternet.org/belief/bill-maher-paris-attack-there-are-no-great-religions-theyre-all-stupid-and-dangerous

How Putin is treating Crimean Tatars worse than Stalin did

This is how Russia's "anti-Fascists" have behaved as soon as they took over Crimea. They're despicable, not to mention hypocritical.

Threatened, Raided, And Exiled: Opposing Putin In Crimea

By Leonid Rogozin

September 27, 2014 | Buzzfeed

URL: http://www.buzzfeed.com/leonidr2/threatened-raided-and-exiled-opposing-putin-in-crimea#1fzwxc5

Is it good the Saudis are mad at Obama?

I meant to post this earlier. But it's not too late because we're still seeing op-eds such as this one on Fox: "Saudis lament, 'we have been stabbed in the back by Obama'".

Just like Christianity is pretty diverse, so is Islam. Most people know there are Shiites (such as in Iran, Lebanon and Syria) and Sunnis (most everywhere else). There are further branches of each of those sects. Perhaps it's a crude analogy, but let's call Wahhabism, a branch of Sunni Islam, the Southern Baptist Church of Islam. 

And Saudi Arabia is the home and sponsor of Wahhabism. It sends billions of petro-dollars around the globe to preach this ultra-conservative brand of Islam in Islamic countries that is entirely compatible with Ismalist and terrorist ideology. And it is engaged in a religious conflict with Iran, the #1 sponsor of Shiite Muslims. As Zakaria points out, Saudi Arabia has a sizable Shiite majority located in oil-rich areas that it wants to keep down.  

Risibly, Saudi Arabia, an absolutist monarchy, calls itself the #1 Arab ally of the United States, which is supposedly engaged in a global war on Islamic terrorism.

See the disconnect?  

So kudos to Fareed Zakaria for calling a spade a spade. And if the Saudis are indeed upset with President Obama, then... maybe he's onto something.

The Saudis Are Mad? Tough!

By Fareed Zakaria

November 11, 2013 | TIME

URL: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2156259,00.html#ixzz2ojBAuFe4

Researcher: Suicide bombers motivated by...suicide

Gee, whaddya know?  Sometimes the simple answer is the correct answer.  According to Lankford's research:

Far from being psychologically normal, suicide terrorists are suicidal. They kill themselves to escape crises or unbearable pain. Until we recognise this, attempts to stop the attacks are doomed to fail.

But what about what failed suicide bombers say was their motivation?  They lie, according to Lankford, especially Muslims, and their families are eager to believe them:

Traumatised parents want to believe that their children were motivated by heroic impulses. And suicidal people commonly deny that they are suicidal and are often able to hide their true feelings from the world.

This is especially true of fundamentalist Muslims. Suicide is explicitly condemned in Islam and guarantees an eternity in hell. Martyrs, on the other hand, can go to heaven.

So let's put the myth of the sober-minded suicide terrorist in the "They hate us for our freedom," category of self-serving fairy tales that don't make us any safer.

Martyr myth: Inside the minds of suicide bombers

By Adam Lankford

July 8, 2013 | New Scientist

URL: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929240.200

What really motivated Boston bombers?

No comment. Just read it!

What Motivated the Boston Bombers

By Gary Leupp

April 25, 2013 | CounterPunch

URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/25/what-motivated-the-boston-bombers/

The myth of the murderous Muslim

Let's get educated so we can put an end to all the ignorant Islamophobia in the West!  Here's one myth dispelled:

Somewhere jihadis are killing everyone they come across, more or less, but still Muslim dynasties remain in power, their wealth increases, the urbanisation of their population increases and they leave behind magnificent public and private structures, which suggests they had quite a bit of free time. When the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed at the end of World War I, its capital, then called Constantinople, was over 50 percent non-Muslim. This is not to suggest the Ottomans were liberal democrats. But it also suggests they were remarkably tolerant for their time. Probably no other city in Europe was so diverse. 

The myth of the murderous Muslim

By Haroon Moghul

January 3, 2013 | Aljazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013127211920494.html

Fundamentalists the same everywhere?

You know, if you replace the words "God" and "Jesus Christ" in these people's quotes with "Allah" then they sound just like the Muslim Brotherhood.  Just for fun, I've taken some quotes from this story to show you what I mean:

One indignant worshiper raised his voice, and demanded to know: “Am I trying to start a revolution?  The answer is ‘yes’,” he continued. “I’m not trying to get our guns to march on Washington, but we need to do two things: Get on our knees … and spread the Koran to our fellow men.”

Others responded with: “If we don’t do something now ... We need to get over our fear”, as well as a warning that “America is gonna have Allah coming after her”.

In a chaotic group discussion, I was repeatedly bombarded with a chorus of: “The only answer is Allah."

Brother Jerry said the value of the dollar was affecting his retirement savings, before reaffirming, “We’re fundamental Muslims, and Allah is in control of the economy."

Kevin, a telecom installer, then explained, “When we push Allah aside, he curses the economy. The whole world is suffering because we’ve been disobedient to Allah.”

“When we all get right with Allah, then the economy is gonna be fixed, the country is gonna be fixed, and the world is gonna be fixed.”

"I’m going to vote for Mitt Romney," Kevin said. "But the answer is not Democrat or Republican - it’s Allah.”

Gee, I guess Bible-thumping American fundamentalists aren't that different than religious fundamentalists anywhere else.

P.S. -- But seriously though, the answer really is Allah.

Arkansas voters 'praying for' US president

By Ben Piven

October 10, 2012 | Al Jazeera

URL: http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/americas/arkansas-voters-praying-us-president-0

Tennessee losing the PR war for America

Thanks, Murfreesboro, TN for making Americans look like a bunch of intolerant redneck clowns. Again.

How many America-haters did this town and this bigoted judge create, I wonder?  How many Americans in Afghanistan and elsewhere will face reprisals because of state-sanctioned discrimination against Muslims in Tennessee?

Anyway... happy Ramadan!

Tennessee Mosque Wins Petition To Open

July 18, 2012 | AP

URL:  http://n.pr/OHoKUa 

You're welcome, Tea Partyers, for this opportunity

Since Tea Partyers are the first Americans to ask, "Where are all the moderate Muslims denouncing terrorism?" I'm going to give those same people the first shot at denouncing their racist, anti-American tea party brethren in New Mexico.  The Confederate flag, as I've said before, isn't only a symbol of treason and institutional racism, but it is certainly symbolic of those things.

So, my friends, you're welcome for this opportunity to prove your moderate views.  

(Psst!  Now's the part where you e-mail all your friends, call your neighbors, post to your blogs, confess to your priests, write a letter to the editor, take out an ad in the local paper, staple fliers to telephone poles, etc., etc.  Because if you don't, you are condoning racism!  It's really that simple.)

(P.S. -- The only political float at my home town's 4th of July parade this year was a Tea Party-sponsored Nobama float with "End of an Error" and similar slogans all over it.  These classy fellas picked just the right day of national unity to diss our elected President.  Nice.  Look, I get it that 99.9 percent of the town is Republican, but... didn't that make their overtly disrespectful political statement on our nation's birthday that much more pointless and mean?)

Las Cruces Tea Party Sets Off Controversy With Confederate Flag Display

By Nick Wing

July 10, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/OqxdvW

Poll: 1 in 6 voters admits they're morons

Hats off to the Public Religion Research Institute for taking this poll.  It's not every day that idiots willingly identify themselves as such.  Now we know that at least 17 percent of U.S. voters are morons, politically.  

The stupidest demographic of all?  White evangelical Protestants: 24 percent think Obama's a Muslim.

One in six voters still think Obama's a Muslim: Why?

By Lauren Markoe

May 10, 2012 | Religion News Service

URL:  http://www.religionnews.com/politics/election/One-in-six-voters-still-think-Obamas-a-Muslim-Why

Sirota: U.S. Muslims more loyal than Evangelicals

They used to say the same thing about Catholics: when JFK was elected, non-Catholics were worried he'd take orders from the Pope in Rome. Nowadays it's Muslims' turn.

Why Many Evangelical Christians Are More "Un-American" Than US Muslims

By David Sirota

November 29, 2011 | AlterNet

If you have the stomach to listen to enough right-wing talk radio, or troll enough right-wing websites, you inevitably come upon fear-mongering about the Unassimilated Muslim. Essentially, this caricature suggests that Muslims in America are more loyal to their religion than to the United States, that such allegedly traitorous loyalties prove that Muslims refuse to assimilate into our nation and that Muslims are therefore a national security threat.

Earlier this year, a Gallup poll illustrated just how apocryphal this story really is. It found that Muslim Americans are one of the most — if not the single most — loyal religious group to the United States. Now, comes the flip side from the Pew Research Center's stunning findings about other religious groups in America (emphasis mine):

American Christians are more likely than their Western European counterparts to think of themselves first in terms of their religion rather than their nationality; 46 percent of Christians in the U.S. see themselves primarily as Christians and the same number consider themselves Americans first. In contrast, majorities of Christians in France (90 percent), Germany (70 percent), Britain (63 percent) and Spain (53 percent) identify primarily with their nationality rather than their religion. Among Christians in the U.S., white evangelicals are especially inclined to identify first with their faith; 70 percent in this group see themselves first as Christians rather than as Americans, while 22 percent say they are primarily American.

If, as Islamophobes argue, refusing to assimilate is defined as expressing loyalty to a religion before loyalty to country, then this data suggests it is evangelical Christians who are very resistant to assimilation. And yet, few would cite these findings to argue that Christians pose a serious threat to America's national security. Why the double standard?

Because Christianity is seen as the dominant culture in America — indeed, Christianity and America are often portrayed as being nearly synonymous, meaning expressing loyalty to the former is seen as the equivalent to expressing loyalty to the latter. In this view, there is no such thing as separation between the Christian church and the American state — and every other culture and religion is expected to assimilate to Christianity. To do otherwise is to be accused of waging a "War on Christmas" — or worse, to be accused of being a disloyal to America and therefore a national security threat.

Of course, a genuinely pluralistic America is one where — regardless of the religion in question — we see no conflict between loyalties to a religion and loyalties to country. In this ideal America, those who identify as Muslims first are no more or less "un-American" than Christians who do the same (personally, this is the way I see things).

But if our politics and culture are going to continue to make extrapolative judgments about citizens' patriotic loyalties based on their religious affiliations, then such judgments should at least be universal — and not so obviously selective or brazenly xenophobic.

Dumbing down Muslims to a template we understand

Lately I've been seeing some dumb "theories" propagated, claiming to explain why the world's 1.2 billion Muslims are so darn violent, backward, what have you.

Both the conclusions and the explanations are utter bunk.  Why?  In a word: complexity.  When we try to explain 1.2 billion people around the world with phrases like "sexual rage" or "masochism" we're really doing a disservice to the human race, and our own intelligence.  As Mishra points out:

"It is no doubt comforting to cover a vast socioeconomic terrain and its baffling particularities, oddities, and discontinuities with a blanket explanation like "Muslim rage".  But in a multilayered world of restless identities, the vocabulary of description and analysis must expand.  This is less difficult than it sounds.

"Most of us have an instinctive understanding of how our own societies work: how differences in ability, income and status play out in public life, how material interests are negotiated and racial-religious conflicts managed, or how Lib Dems come to work with Tories.  It may not be asking too much to credit other societies with at least some internal complexity while acknowledging that they might do things differently out there.  The only other option seems to consist of an unattractive moral narcissism, and a rather weird obsession with headscarfs."

To see Muslim discourse in politics as a vicious anachronism is to see very little

By Pankaj Mishra

January 6, 2010 | Guardian

URL:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/06/muslim-discourse-anachronism-rage-sexual

ADL is a sham that supports bigotry when convenient

The Anti-Defamation League says that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all," but let's face it, it's just an arm of Israel's conservative Likud party trying to influence U.S. politics, and if their aims require bigotry, then they're all for bigotry.

The Likud is anti-American because it does not support our ideals of religious freedom, free speech, and free association. They are a pernicious influence on our policy debates. They want to turn us into them: a nation that discriminates against and ghettoizes Muslims, and as a result, is in a permanent state of war.

BTW, the "Ground Zero Mosque" is actually not "at" Ground Zero, it's several blocks away around a corner. You can't see it from Ground Zero; and you can't see Ground Zero from the site of the mosque -- which is not really a mosque but a cultural center where people can pray if they want to. If we give in to the ADL and those who argue for discriminating against Muslims, then bin Laden has won. He will have un-made America.

Anti-Defamation League Comes Out Against Ground Zero Mosque

By David Weiner

July 30, 2010 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/30/anti-defamation-league-co_n_665433.html

1001 Muslim inventions that changed the world

Last month I was fortunate to see in the Science Museum in London the exhibition "1001 Muslim Inventions:"

http://www.1001inventions.com/

You can watch an interesting film starring Ben Kingsley and other British actors to demonstrate more colorfully some of Islamic scholars' more important breakthroughs:

http://www.1001inventions.com/themovie

As the film points out, the era we call The Dark Ages was confined to Europe, while it was a Golden Age for the Islamic world. Many of the advances in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, and architecture that we rely on today came from this period.

U.S. raised $33 M for illegal Israeli settlements

And we wonder what many in the Arab-Muslim world have against America: 28 US charitable groups have made a total of $33.4m in tax-exempt contributions to Israeli settlements and related organisations from 2004-2007.

Surely, the illegal Israeli settlements are one of the most contentious issues in the Mideast, and a sticking point in peace negotiations. If the shoe were on the other foot, with American Muslims funding Palestinian groups, we might call this funding terrorism.

So whether we know it or not, we are involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and not just at the negotiating table between Israelis and Palestinians as an "honest broker."

(This is not to mention the almost $3 billion in military aid that we give every year to poor, broke Israel, which can't afford to buy its own guns, war planes, and attack helicopters with which to menace and murder Palestinian civilians.)

The US cash behind extremist settlers

The Hebron Fund is raising vast sums for Israeli settlements that violate the Geneva convention, with little scrutiny

By Andrew Kadi and Aaron Levitt

December 8, 2009 | Guardian.co.uk

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/dec/08/us-settlers-hebron-fund-israeli

What made -- and un-made -- British jihadists?

Below is the link to a long but excellent article, which shows you why and how some young Muslims in Britain chose violent jihad -- then chose to renounce their former selves. Some takeaways...

In Western countries, the jihadists are like a gang. The gang recruits young men, usually second-generation immigrants, who are looking for an identity, real values, a purpose, and friends. The allure of jihad wouldn't be so strong if the separation between Muslim immigrants and white (and sometimes black) Britons wasn't so big. They don't feel at home in their adopted country, although their parents brought them there to escape the extremism and privation of their Muslim homelands.

We can also thank the strong and well-funded and extremist Saudi Wahhabist influence in Britain for creating so many extremists. "Saudi literature is everywhere in Britain, and it's free," said one ex-jihadist.

One notorious (now reformed) jihadist named Maajid never even attended mosque as the son of liberal immigrant parents. His journey toward extremism started when he and his white friend were attacked by skinheads. One by one, a group of neo-Nazis targeted his white friends and attacked them! From there he started associating with blacks, then read Malcolm X, then met a radical Muslim group when he was in college living among mostly fellow Muslims, and the rest was history.

You should also note how he says it was hard from him to recruit extremists in Egypt after 9/11, because of the people's sympathy for America, but then the bombing in Afghanistan and Guantanamo made recruitment "much easier." His turnaround really started after he was arrested and tortured by the Egyptians, abandoned by his Islamist erstwhile comrades, and forgotten by the British government. Amnesty International, despite knowing who he was and hating his beliefs, fought to have him released on the grounds of free speech. "I felt," he said, "maybe these democratic values aren't always hypocritical. Maybe some people take them seriously." Then he met two of the repentant murderers of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in prison, who told him he had "got the theology wrong," and, "It was always left for people to decide for themselves what interpretation [of the Koran] they wanted to follow." Moreover, he realized that "the idea of enforcing sharia is not consistent with Islam as it's been practiced since the beginning."

Other ex-Islamists all report similar experiences. When Bush invaded Afghanistan and imprisoned Muslims in Guantanamo, world events seemed to confirm their radical ideology. But when they saw white non-Muslims standing up for human rights and protesting the war in Iraq, "their jihadism began to stutter." These British ex-jihadists also couldn't help but notice that "whenever Islamists won a military victory, they didn't build paradise, but hell."

It's not really that complicated. If white Western societies can successfully integrate Muslims, they will not feel alienated and look for a radical identity. (I cannot fail to mention that, for whatever reason, I haven't yet figured it out, the USA is light years ahead of Britain in this regard.) And if white Christians would be, well, more Christian, and embrace Muslims with love and acceptance, there would be many fewer terrorist recruits. That is not to say, "It's all our fault," but we do have a role to play, and a responsibility to build tolerant, loving societies -- as saccharine and heretically un-military as that solution may sound in today's post-9/11 world, where violence is always the answer.

What Makes a Young Person Embrace Death and Murder? Former Jihadists Speak Out

By Johann Hari

November 17, 2009 | The Independent UK

URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/143978/what_makes_a_young_person_embrace_death_and_murder_former_jihadists_speak_out?page=entire

Rich: Conservative hawks' Killeen-Kabul disconnect

Rich makes the simple but brilliant point that the same U.S. conservatives who say you can't trust any Muslim, even a U.S.-born Muslim in American uniform, are the same ones totally committed -- no matter what the cost in U.S. lives or treasure -- to continuing the futile effort to win over Muslim hearts and minds in Iraq and especially Afghanistan.

See the disconnect?

(That feeling you're feeling in your head right now is called "cognitive dissonance." Don't fear it. Learn from it. Let your brain do its thing and then do what it tells you.)

The Missing Link From Killeen to Kabul

By Frank Rich

November 14, 2009 | New York Times

[...]

As their Fort Hood rhetoric made clear, McChrystal's most vehement partisans don't trust American Muslims, let alone those of the Taliban, no matter how earnestly the general may argue that they can be won over by our troops' friendliness (or bribes). If, as the right has it, our Army cannot be trusted to recognize a Hasan in its own ranks, then how will it figure out who the "good" Muslims will be as we try to build a "stable" state (whatever "stable" means) in a country that has never had a functioning central government? If our troops can't be protected from seemingly friendly Muslim American brethren in Killeen, Tex., what are the odds of survival for the 40,000 more troops the hawks want to deploy to Kabul and sinkholes beyond?

Ft. Hood massacre: Different but the same

As usual, Going Postal author Mark Ames is the authority on post-shooting-massacre reportage (see below), although many facts are still sketchy. Predictably, right-wingers are latching onto the facts that the shooter, Major Nasan, was Muslim and didn't want to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, as if these two facts should have been obvious tipoffs to the military to throw Hasan in the brig, intern him at G'itmo, or Lord knows what.

UPDATE (Nov. 10, 2009): There are a lot of reports coming out now about Hasan's connections to Islamists and sympathy for terrorists, but the facts are still sketchy. We also don't know the extent to which the CIA was already aware of Hasan's rhetoric and connections.

But I think other facts of this massacre are more interesting. Apparently, using two handguns, Hasan managed to shoot over 40 soldiers on a military base before two civilian police officers took him down (one a "tough woman" cop no less!). I find that amazing. It's an argument for gun control staring us in the face. Indeed, who should be better trained and equipped to react to a shooting massacre than our nation's soldiers? (On the flip side, who is better trained to kill efficiently?) And yet, it seems, these soldiers were caught by surprise and unable to stop Hasan from killing 13 people and wounding another 38 in a span of 5 minutes. In fact, this mass shooting seems identical to most other school and workplace shootings: people screaming, confused, taking cover anywhere they can, and then the police arriving on the scene either to kill the shooter or find his suicided corpse.

UPDATE (Nov. 13, 2009): It now seems, a la Jessica Lynch, that early reports of a heroic woman cop were overblown. One witness reports all she did was get shot and fall down, and it was a black policeman who "neutralized and secured" Hasan. The black policeman said as much.

Yeah, I'm gonna catch flak for even implying that our soliders are not flawless supermen, but relax. I think the whole thing is entirely explainable: they were on their base, the place where they probably felt safest on Earth; and many of them probably recognized Hasan, or were perhaps even treated by him. What's atypical in this case is that the victims found nothing inherently alarming or scary about seeing someone with a gun -- which was actually to their detriment. Contrast this with a student in his familiar desk at school, or an office clerk in his cubicle: the last place either would expect anything dangerous or out-of-the-ordinary to happen. In the few seconds it takes for the brain to process what is happening -- "hey, isn't that so-and-so, the guy who... hey, is that a gun? no, couldn't be, he's so quiet and I heard that ... oh no! he's pointing it at me and he looks strange, run!..." -- the victim has already been shot, perhaps fatally. The two situations -- military base vs. school or office -- aren't that different after all. Familiarity breeds complacency.

Remember, this all happened in 5 minutes with a few non-military-issue handguns, not M-16s or anything you wouldn't find in anyplace in the USA. Indeed, Hasan's expertise with semi-automatic weapons -- which must have required re-loading, think about that -- meant he could score a higher body count -- another argument for everybody's being an expert with firearms.

I suppose the "More Guns Make Us Safer" crowd will advocate our military's carrying handguns with them at all times while on base, in order to end future shooting rampages more quickly. However, I expect our non-political, no-nonsense U.S. Military will have none of it. Or perhaps they'll caution us all to be vigilant at all times to shooting massacres, but it's just not humanly possible to be always on high alert, even for the world's best professional soldiers.

As usual, reasonable, rational people see one uniting factor in all these massacres, and hence come to one inescapable conclusion: easy access to an abundance of firearms is the problem. So what are we going to do about it? As usual, nothing. Apparently, we hate ourselves, each other, and our country so much that we wish literal "Death to America!"


Fort Hood Massacre: A Brief History of American Violence
By Mark Ames
November 6, 2009 | The Exiled

URL: http://exiledonline.com/fort-hood-massacre-a-brief-history-of-american-violence/