Reply #63: this is a ludicrous, vulgar, crass and racist conspiracy theory [View All]

[Douglas Carpenter]

-All too reminiscent of earlier anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. "They're out to take over the world"

Yes there are groups like Al Qaeda who do will us harm. These are marginal movements that may occasionally acquire a certain amount of folk hero status in parts of the Islamic world the same way extremist IRA terrorist would become folk heroes even to many Irish-Catholic Americans in Boston or San Francisco. But their actual political power is minimal. Although their potential is dangerous enough to warrant a real effort to work with Muslim countries and Muslim people and any other allies in insuring that they don't acquire weapons of mass destruction and are neutered in their ability to carry out serious attacks. After all on September 11, 2001 we were attacked by a bunch of young men with wire cutters - NOT a unified nefarious global alliance of the Islamic world.

It is sure nonsense and a preposterous conspiracy theory to attempt to link every form of political Islam; most of which have local agendas, into the vast web of likes of Al Qaeda as if they are all working together in concert guided by their fiendish thirst for American blood.

The very notion that every group from Chechen rebels to Muslim separatist in the Philippines to Hamas and Hezbollah to the Iranian government are all part of the same network with the same agenda and directed by the same global vision simply does not hold up in the world of reality. Iran does indeed seek to become a regional power. Other groups seek their agendas and perhaps political power within their respective countries. Most of these groups have little in common with each other and are miles apart in their ideology and in many cases even their religious beliefs. Most of these groups find their appeal on the desperate street of the subjugated, dispossessed and disenfranchised. Will further subjugation, dispossession and disenfranchisement make the problem all go away?

My gravest worry is why are there people in both political parties in America so anxious to drag America and as much of the West as they can bamboozle into an endless total war against the Arab and Muslim world while completely ignoring the imperative of building the kind of lasting trust and alliances with the Arab and Muslim world that is necessary to reduce the threats that really do exist and prevent future potential and perhaps more deadly September Elevens?
_____________________

Zbigniew Brzezinski calls War on Terror a narrow and extremist vision

The ultimate cold warrior himself, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Adviser under President Carter takes a contrary view regarding the war on terror and has no truck with those calling for a new war against Islamist fundamentalism.

link:

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/10/brzezinski-z-10-31.html

snip: "This phrase in a way is part of what might be considered to be the central defining focus that our policy-makers embrace in determining the American position in the world and is summed up by the words "war on terrorism." War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.

snip:" That failure was contributed to and was compensated for by extremist demagogy which emphasizes the worst case scenarios which stimulates fear, which induces a very simple dichotomic view of world reality. "

snip:" what is the definition of success? More killing, more repression, more effective counter-insurgency, the introduction of newer devices of technological type to crush the resistance or whatever one wishes to call it -- the terrorism?"

snip:"And if we take preemptory action we will reinforce the worst tendencies in the theocratic fundamentalist regime, not to speak about the widening of the zone of conflict in the Middle East."

snip:" Palestinian terrorism has to be rejected and condemned, yes. But it should not be translated defacto into a policy of support for a really increasingly brutal repression, colonial settlements and a new wall. Soon the reality of the settlements which are colonial fortifications on the hill with swimming pools next to favelas below where there's no drinking water and where the population is 50% unemployed, there will be no opportunity for a two-state solution with a wall that cuts up the West Bank even more and creates more human suffering. "

link to full article:

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/10/brzezinski-z-10-31.html