SEPT 10: MUSLIM MOBS KILL US AMBASSADOR IN BENGHAZI. SEPT 16: US DRONES KILL EIGHT WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN AFGHANISTAN!
The above headline reflects some recent facts, but was the drone attack a US retaliation? I think not but, I can not speak for what was going through the mind of the so-called drone ”pilot” sitting in a hangar someplace in Arizona who squeezed off the trigger on those innocent women and children who were simply gathering wood in the forest for their breakfast meal. Who knows what his or her motivations were. But killing Muslim women and children, as the world erupts in anti-American demonstrations sure does show a disdain for the Muslims and what they might think of us.
But the headline does underscore the fact that there is more to the story of Muslim rage than the religious insults which have been emanating from the West, now for a long time. The often-reported Koran burnings, use of the Koran as a rifle target, Koran toilet-flushings, Korans found in US trash heaps, and most recently, demeaning depictions of the Prophet Mohammad in a US produced film and French cartoons-designed to have an incendiary effect on the Muslim population--and have.
For this author, the religious insults are but the final straw which breaks the camel’s back---not the cause of the phenomenon. But our American press corps, with a few exceptions, is unwilling and unable to tell these stories like they actually are, and prefers to cast the problem in terms of the religion of the two billion in this world who profess Islam as their faith.
So now for a short review that you can not get elsewhere:
In the print media, Newsweek, apparently desperate to increase its magazine sales, posted on its front page under the heading:”Muslim Rage” in bold black letters, the frightening picture of seemingly screaming Arab men in headscarfs, (apparently the editors were attempting to generate a stereotypical ”rag heads” image) their flashing teeth and dark swarthy faces prominently displayed to scare the ”bejeebers” out of Middle America. The incendiary picture alone, may act as encouragement for the irredeemably violent in our own society, no stranger to anger and anti-moslem sentiment. Perhaps it will generate further attacks on Muslims and presumed Muslims or any dark-skinned members of our society---and to the burning of more mosques. In this manner our corporatist controlled press and media continue to play their role as facilitators for the worst sentiments and ideas in our society--with pitifully few exceptions.
Sometime earlier this year a US film, made in Hollywood by unknown producers was released and marketed with the express purpose and intention of demeaning Islam. Snippets of it translated into Arabic were then placed on the Internet. It was an instant ”success” getting millions of hits all around the Muslim world.
Muslim rage exists, but does it have anything to do its Islam? Probably it does not have more input than the tiny spark that ignites a fire.
You don't have to be a Muslim or an Arab, just a sentient human being to understand why Muslims are angry, and some understandably do hate us. Placed in historic context their feelings are well justified. That anger is the fuel that a spark can ignite.
Poke a stick into an animal's cage--even a normally docile one, and if you do it often enough, the poor critter is very likely to snap at you first chance it gets .
The results, perhaps timed to coincide with the 9-11 observances here in the US, had their desired effects. Demonstrations against US targets began in Egypt and spread across the Arab world to Yemen and Libya where on the night of September 10-11 a mob attacked the US Embassy. Libyan Ambassador J Christopher Stephens was somehow separated from his staff and later found near death in a locked ”secure room” within the ruins of the embassy. He died of asphyxiation and smoke inhalation at a Benghazi hospital, latter that night, being taken there by Libyans who didn't know who he was.
But why do they hate us?
Let’s go back a few years in US-Muslim history. But let us just skim over ancient history like the fact that we were responsible for the overthrow of the democratically-elected prime minister, Mossadegh and WE imposed the despot Mohammad Pahalavi on Iran (he was more malleable and more likely to take USorders) who coined himself the ”Shah of Iran”; and WE were responsible for the imposition of Saddam Hussein on Iraq (yes, he was ”our boy” once.); and WE also helped to establish ”our boy” Mubarak in Egypt who took our money and our orders as well. These men ran their nations for OUR best interests (well for a while). In time some of them had to go, or we got rid of them or we're overthrown by their own people. Our past behavior wasn't what you might describe as neighborly or nice.
For the last decade we have been killing Muslims, hundreds of thousands of them, in Iraq; hundreds in Pakistan, and in Yemen, in Somalia, and in
Afghanistan over the last decade we have killed and maimed thousands of Afghans. Here I am counting only where our misdirected or purposely aimed drone strikes have killed innocent civilians like those women and young girls who were killed on September 16. This is not counting the indirect deaths we are responsible for as when as in Iraq and Afghanistan we degrade a nation’s infrastructure, its electrical grid, its power sources, its sewers and water treatment plants and its hospitals and police forces, its food production facilities. Such degradation leads to hunger, impoverishment, infirmity, sickness, death and infant mortality. These actions and events certainly do not make us popular in those places. The dead and injured have grieving husbands, children and other relatives that can not forget what they see examples of our brutality. I dare say that given the number of Muslims killed and maimed by US actions over the last ten years, there must be many millions of Muslims who have a relative or friend or acquaintance who has been killed or maimed by US actions either directly or indirectly. That is not pleasant reality and certainly helps to explain our lack of popularity.
Finally, for domestic politics and often not our nation’s well-being or best interests we unconditionally support (too often in knee jerk fashion) the State of Israel. We supply it with arms, information and billions of dollars in aid each year. This small, nuclear armed and powerful expansionist nation, with our help and collusion, continues to illegally occupy Muslim lands. It has a policy of active and surreptitious expansion into Palestinian, occupied and vacant land, farms, and olive groves. In the occupied territories it controls and limits scarce water resources, unfairly limiting it the native Palestinians. It brutally humiliates and suppresses the native population. Israel’s domestic policies, seen by others as being supported by the US (who after all continues to supply hardware and money whatever they do to the Palestinians) and it's brutal military attacks (which are supported by military hardware we supply) such as on the Gaza flotilla, and the ”Cast Lead” incursion into the enclosed enclave of Gaza in which a thousand unarmed civilians were killed by the Israeli ”Defense” Force, do not help our image. The world remembers well how President Bush (a good friend of Israel) sat by and watched doing nothing to stop the massacre of innocents. Such behavior is seared into Muslim minds. They do not help OUR image.
Thus it is clear, we are not popular in a swath of the world where two billion Muslims live. When some seeming innocuous, (to us) scrap of a demeaning cartoon, or a snippet of film which demeans the Prophet Mohammed is released in the west, Muslims respond in, what seems to us, inexplicable violence. But viewed in context, a context that our press and media will not or can not provide, their motivations becomes clear. Some of our leaders and the neocons would like us to believe that their rage is caused by THEIR religion. But is it perhaps simply the result of OUR behavior, OUR foreign policy and the actions of OUR leaders?
Get the picture?
rjk
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