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Multi-Million Dollar Question: What is the best and practical and realistic way to defeat the beast?
Wrong question. Islamicism barely existed before the US started arming the Mujahideen in the 1980s as part of the Warrrr on Commernism. And where it did exist, it had more to do with Oil Sheikhs flexing their political muscles than with any serious attempt to convert the West.
Islamic terrorism barely exists now. The background level threat in real terms in the West is no worse than it has been from other terrorist groups of the last fifty years or so. Iraq isn't suffering from Islamic terrorism so much as local tribalism - which is something very different.
Only someone clinically delusional could seriously believe that Iraq's Sunnis and Shias are at all likely to start attacking each other on the streets of Washington. But still - the US seems obsessed with this ridiculous confrontational narrative in which the West, and especially effete old Europe, is in imminent danger of being over-run by Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
I think this has less to do real Islamicists, and more to do with the fact that the US is charging headlong into economic and cultural decadence and needs a misdirection and a scapegoat to persuade itself that it's still a mighty and colossal military superpower.
Hence these massively assymetrical wars against countries which really shouldn't stand a chance against the US - but against which it still manages to lose, as often as not.
There's some kind of deep masochistic need to be punished and hated twitching around in the soul of the US at the moment. Secretly, Bush and the NeoCons may well realise they're bad, bad people. So they seem to be trying to get away with as much as they can before Mother comes along and spanks them.
(Or maybe not. But as explanations go, this makes as much sense as any other that I've seen.)
But anyway. The US has plenty of real challenges to deal with which don't require a fake Warrrr on scary brown people. If the leadership wasn't drifting along in a doomed and rudderless Zeppelin of political irrelevance, it would be tackling real issues - sustainable energy, sustainable and fair economic policy, sustainable health care - instead of fantasising about the threat from invading barbarian hordes.
With a professional Executive, the pre-9/11 security services were mostly capable of dealing with those invading barbarian hordes.
If the hordes succeeded on 9/11, it wasn't because of some astonishing new fundamentalist virulence. It was because Bush completely fucked up.
The US might want to deal with that reality before it starts trying to eliminate Islamic support from the rest of the planet. Who knows - it might even accidentally end up starving the beast if it goes down that parh.
This isn't really as new as you'd make it though. The Much Olympics, The Iran hostage crisis of 79, the WTC bombing of 1993...
Bush's incompetence is hugely to blame for our current situation. But Islamic fundamentalists did attack our country. At some point, they are responsible for those actions.
I focus on Bush because I can't effect the Islamic world. But I sure hope to god someone is dealing with the insanity on that side of the coin too. Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
Known as Persia until 1935, Iran became an Islamic republic in 1979 after the ruling monarchy was overthrown and the shah was forced into exile. (CIA World Factbook)
In reviewing "All the Shahs' Men" the Economist took a similar perspective about the taking over of the US Embassy to what Colman is saying. The Economist stated that the US embassy was taken over to make sure that the US could not meddle in Iranian history again, as it had w/ Mossadegh.
Fisk, describes how in the early days of the Iranian revolution there was not the blood bath/ reign of terror quality to it, that was soon to come. However, as the religious leaders became more seated in power, then it quickly turned into a killing spree with widespread public hangings.
There is a recording of a talk given by the author of "All the Shah's Men", Stephen Kinzer, on Alternative Radio. Along with asking the question would we(the US) be in the mess it is today had it not overthrown a democratically elected Prime Minister (I think Mossadegh was a PM) Kinzer draws parallels between the intelligence back then and the intelligence leading up to the current Iraq war. Kinzer -or another journalist spoke with several of the foreign service officers who were in Tehran during the rise of Mossadegh. These foreign service officers were sending back information that Mossadegh was associated with Communist and that Communism was growing in Iran. Kinzer states that all other historical evidence does not show this to be the case. When he (or this other journalist) asked these foreign services officers about this discrepancy they replied that they were aware that their reports were overblown, but Washington wanted to hear that Mossadegh was a Communist and that there was a growing Communist threat in Iran.
It is an interesting conundrum for the US. We have been hearing the rhetoric about spreading Democracy in the Middle East, but we never hear about Mossadegh.
This is the United States of Amnesia, and history is for losers. (A friend of mine likes to say that in the Middle East, what happened a thousand years ago is far more important than yesterday's news. Here, they're both irrelevant.)
With greater protections under international law than civilians.
I personally feel entitled to justify those I can identify with in one way or another. To criticise "the other", especially when they are not a part of the conversation, doesn't seem very productive. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. — Euripides
Damn typos. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. — Euripides
"The claim that we lost is unfounded. Half of Lebanon is destroyed; is that a loss?"
However, the Munich Olympics has little to do with Islam. The hostage-taking was made by the Palestinian movements, which at that time were secular (in fact, some of their members were Christians).
"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char
Bush's incompetence is hugely to blame for our current situation.
