Oh, there he goes again ...
Oct. 6th, 2005 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saavedra77This morning, President Bush declaimed: "In fact, we're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world."
Yeah, there he goes again ...
For the record, I'd argue to the contrary that we're facing a radical fringe of jihadis who feed on existing Muslim grievances over conflicts in Kashmir, the Palestinian Territories, and Chechnya, and over the similarly longstanding U.S. support for Arab tyrannies like the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies and Mubarak's Egypt. The jihadis have long used these conflicts to persuade other Muslims that the West is their mortal enemy, to recruit new militants, and to fuel their ambitions for new Taliban-style theocracies.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq did not of course create Al Qaeda (arguably, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan provided the crucial impetus, there), but President Bush is--perhaps unintentionally--quite right to suggest that jihadis have "now ... set their sights on Iraq"--that is, since the U.S. invasion. Iraq has provided the jihadis with a golden opportunity to tell potential recruits "See? We told you the West was out to destroy Islam!" Hence the now-all-too-routine reports of foreign fighters carrying out suicide bombings and sectarian killings in Iraq. (By all acounts, the foreign fighters are not the most numerous, although they may be the most destructive strand in the insurgency currently tearing that country apart.)
President Bush also alludes darkly to bin Laden's ambition to "establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia." I suppose that this is meant to elevate jihadi terrorism to the level of geopolitical threat posed by Hitler and Stalin--a comparison Bush explicitly makes.
But isn't there something a bit, well, ridiculous about this dream, coming from a Sunni extremist whose followers invest as much energy in blowing up Shi'ites (in Pakistan as well as in Iraq) as they do in attacking Western targets? If I remember my history correctly, it was precisely this kind sectarianism and geographic overreaching that brought down the medieval Islamic caliphate in the first place. Sorry, but I don't see the makings of the jihadi equivalent of Nazi Germany or the U.S.S.R., here.
Yeah, there he goes again ...
For the record, I'd argue to the contrary that we're facing a radical fringe of jihadis who feed on existing Muslim grievances over conflicts in Kashmir, the Palestinian Territories, and Chechnya, and over the similarly longstanding U.S. support for Arab tyrannies like the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies and Mubarak's Egypt. The jihadis have long used these conflicts to persuade other Muslims that the West is their mortal enemy, to recruit new militants, and to fuel their ambitions for new Taliban-style theocracies.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq did not of course create Al Qaeda (arguably, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan provided the crucial impetus, there), but President Bush is--perhaps unintentionally--quite right to suggest that jihadis have "now ... set their sights on Iraq"--that is, since the U.S. invasion. Iraq has provided the jihadis with a golden opportunity to tell potential recruits "See? We told you the West was out to destroy Islam!" Hence the now-all-too-routine reports of foreign fighters carrying out suicide bombings and sectarian killings in Iraq. (By all acounts, the foreign fighters are not the most numerous, although they may be the most destructive strand in the insurgency currently tearing that country apart.)
President Bush also alludes darkly to bin Laden's ambition to "establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia." I suppose that this is meant to elevate jihadi terrorism to the level of geopolitical threat posed by Hitler and Stalin--a comparison Bush explicitly makes.
But isn't there something a bit, well, ridiculous about this dream, coming from a Sunni extremist whose followers invest as much energy in blowing up Shi'ites (in Pakistan as well as in Iraq) as they do in attacking Western targets? If I remember my history correctly, it was precisely this kind sectarianism and geographic overreaching that brought down the medieval Islamic caliphate in the first place. Sorry, but I don't see the makings of the jihadi equivalent of Nazi Germany or the U.S.S.R., here.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-07 05:22 pm (UTC)I certainly didn't argue that jihadis are "mad at the US because we don't completely live up to our ideals": ideologists in the tradition of Sayyid Qutb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb) reject the West as such, and particularly resent the intrusion of Western culture (which they liken to the pre-Islamic "state of ignorance" or Jahiliyya) into their societies.
But many, many less ideological Muslims resent Western countries' support for the tyrants they live under, our tolerance of or tacit support for regimes that have occupied, displaced, or attacked Muslim populations, and the presence of U.S. troops in Muslim countries. "Our ideals" come up in frequent complaints about Western hypocrisy and "double standards", but I seriously doubt that Muslims would feel better about us if we started praising tyranny! The policies themselves constitute the real sore point, here. Terrorism analysts have long been that these policies are contributing to the radicalization of some Muslims, adding to the ranks of those who regard the whole West as an enemy to be resisted.
For example, after the July London bombings, a British government report described Al Qaeda efforts to recruit young British Muslims to the jihadist cause, and found that the U.K.'s foreign policy had contributed to the radicalization of the target population: "The war on terror, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, are all seen by a section of British Muslims as having been acts against Islam. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1688261,00.html)"
Mind you, I supported the overthrow of the Taliban, and continue to have only tactical disagreements over how that war was fought; I'm not saying that Western countries must at all costs avoid offending Muslim sensibilities. I am saying that we could--and should--pick our battles, and our policies, much more carefully.