'America's aggression is fuelling extremism', says Iran's ex-president

[IndianaGreen]

Robert Fisk: 'America's aggression is fuelling extremism', says Iran's ex-president

By Robert Fisk in Chicago
Published: 04 September 2006

As the West's "war on terror" burns across the Muslim world, one of Islam's most principled leaders - the former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami - issued a grave warning yesterday from the very heart of America, the country whose troops and allies are fighting Islamists across the Middle East in a war that is costing thousands of Muslim lives.

"The policies of the neo-conservatives have created a war that creates more extremists and radicals," he told The Independent in Chicago. "The events of 9/11 gave them this ability to create fear and anxiety ... and to create new policies of their own and now events are creating an expansion of extremists on both sides. A struggle is under way to dominate this world multilaterally ... We are a witness to war - with suppression from one side and extremist reaction in the form of terror from the other."

<snip>

Addressing 15,000 American Muslims at the weekend, Mr Khatami also made a clear assault on the influence of Israel's political lobby in the US. "We are unfortunately witnessing the emergence of policies that seek to confiscate public opinion in order to exploit all the grandeur of the nation and country of the United States ... policies that are the outcome of a point of view, that despite having no status in the US public arena as far as numbers are concerned, uses decisive lobby groups and influential centres to utilise the entirety of America's power and wealth to promote its own interest and to implant policies outside US borders that have no resemblance to the spirit of Anglo-American civilisation and the aspirations of its Founding Fathers or its constitution, causing crisis after crisis in our world."

When he spoke of "the vast and all-encompassing presence of powers who express concern for the world but implement policies aimed at devouring the world," there was a sense of shock among his audience. They had not expected such an epic denunciation of US hegemony from a divine known for his compassion rather than his anger.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1359829.ece

[Boo Boo]

1. I disagree with Fisk's characterization of Khatami's "clear assault" on

the Israel lobby. It doesn't seem all that clear to me. Those last few paragraphs read as all of one piece to me. It is an attack on "Bushism," an attack on the World According to Dick Cheney. Dirty Dick once said that "God didn't see fit to put the Oil where the Democracy is"---and that's just the way he likes it. As Khatami points out, doing business with Our Bastards is a lot more profitable than doing business with popular regimes like Chavez in Venezuela.

Although, there is a sense in which Khatami's argument is obscure: this abuse of U.S. power outside of the framework of our governing principles is not an emerging phenomenon (neither is the Israel lobby). It may be resurgent under the Bush admin (no big surprise), but it is nothing new. One only need look at the history of Latin America (the overthrow of Democracy in Chile, etc.) to see what he is talking about. Being from Iran, Khatami should know all about U.S.-installed dictators that serve U.S. interests as defined by multi-national corporations and banks.

If Khatami made a clear assault on Israel in his speech, Fisk didn't do a very good job of illustrating that.