How are these two events related? Was this a US retaliation ? I think not, though, I can not know what went through the mind of the 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. But that aside, the US killing of innocent Muslim women and children, at the very time the world was erupting in anti-American demonstrations was either the result of simple stupidity, monumental hubris, and/or phenomenal disdain for Muslims and what they might think of us.
Let us assume that in the Pentagon, and the Halls of Congress they simply don't care what two billion Muslims who make up the second largest religious affiliation in the world--think of us. Religious insults and purposeful humiliation to Muslims have emanated from the West, before. But after the introduction of hundreds of thousands of western troops into the Middle East these events have increased. The often-reported Koran burnings, use of the Koran as a target, Koran toilet-flushings, Korans found in US military trash heaps, US troops urinating on dead muslims, and most recently, demeaning depictions of the Prophet Mohammad in a US-produced film and French cartoons featuring a naked Mohammed have had their effect. A trailer of the offending US film was edited and translated into Arabic and placed on the internet. It was an instant, phenomenal "success", garnering millions of "hits" a day. Demonstrations by enraged Muslims against US targets began in Egypt and spread across the Arab world to Yemen and finally to Libya. There 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 and rescued near death in a locked ”secure room” within the fire-bombed ruins of the embassy. He died of asphyxiation and smoke inhalation at a Benghazi hospital, later that night. The attending physician stated that they had worked on him for nine hours in an attempt to resuscitate him but failed.
After the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, the nation’s media went off on a feeding frenzy focused on ”Muslim rage”. This morning (September 17, 2012 eponymous Joe of "Early Morning Joe" the right wing host of the MSNBC morning show, went into a tirade after discussions of another ”green on blue” attack in Afghanistan which killed several US troops. On air, Joe Scarborough attempting to relate two unrelated events, stated ”they hate us” and ignorantly blamed Muslim rage on "their religion”.
In the print media, Newsweek, apparently desperate to increase its magazine sales, printed an issue with a close up picture of seemingly screaming Arab men in headscarfs, (were the editors attempting to generate the stereotypical ”rag head” image?) their flashing teeth and dark swarthy faces prominently displayed to scare the ”bejeebers” out of Middle America. The irony of this is that the incendiary picture itself, may act as encouragement for the irredeemably violent in our own society, a nation no stranger to violence and anti-moslem sentiment. Such imagery have the potential to generate further violence, perhaps attacks on US Muslims and presumed Muslims, or other 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.
Our press corps and leaders in Washington would like to present these incidents as those of a poorly socialized, backward people affiliated with a violent religion. They would prefer that we do not reflect on our own behavior and that of our government. They wonder why some insignificant film clip, a Koran being torn in two by a bearded yahoo in Florida, or a French cartoon depicting a naked Muhammad can send these "unreasoning" folks into paroxysms of violence. That's what they would like to have you think.
You don't have to be a Muslim or an Arab, just a sentient human being to understand that the causes are more complex. Muslims are angry, and some understandably do hate us. Placed in historic context, their feelings can be seen as "reasonable" and "likely to occur" after a decade and more of economic sanctions, war, devastation and social disruption visited on them by the US and its allies in retaliation for the 9-11 attack.
Why do they hate us?
1- We unconditionally support--in knee jerk fashion--the State of Israel, a small, nuclear-armed, highly militarized, expansionist state which sits on illegally occupied Muslim lands and refuses to relinquish them. Its behavior, its brutal occupation, its humiliating treatment of the Palestinians it governs in the occupied territories are a powerful irritant in the region and generate resentment against the US, which facilitates it behavior, though grants in aid, money, and international support in the UN. We signed the Camp David Accords but preferred to forget them. Our support and silent collusion with the Israelis, though we pay lip service to "peace negotiations", is well known and much resented.
2- We have for many decades used the region as our fiefdom...controlling oil resources, removing unpalatable leaders on our whim, installing others which grew into intolerable despots whom we continued to support as long as they took orders from Washington.
3- For the last decade we have been killing Muslims, hundreds of thousands of them, in Iraq in an illegal war claimed to be over (what was revealed to be non-existing) weapons of mass destruction. While our questionable war against the Taliban in Afghanistan killed additional thousands of civilians (some as recently as September 16, when the eight women and girls were killed by a US drone missile). Other US drone and cruise missile attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Sudan have killed and maimed hundred more innocents in recent years. These estimates of deaths do not include 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, close its hospitals and retire its police forces, and disrupt its farms and food production facilities. Such degradation leads to hunger, impoverishment, infirmity, sickness, early death and infant mortality. These actions 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 as examples of US 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, friend, or acquaintance who has been killed or maimed by US actions either directly or indirectly. That is not a pleasant reality and certainly helps to explain our lack of popularity---and Muslim rage.
Thus it is clear, we are not popular in a wide swath of the world where two billion Muslims live where perhaps we have been less than the best of neighbors. When some seeming innocuous, (to us) scrap of a demeaning cartoon, or a snippet of film which demeans and mocks 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--based on who owns their newspaper or TV station), their motivations becomes clear. Some of our leaders (and the neocons) would like us to believe that Muslim rage is caused by THEIR religion. But is it perhaps more to do with OUR behavior, OUR foreign policy and the actions of OUR leaders?
Get the picture?
rjk
No comments:
Post a Comment