Washington’s racism and the Islamist trap published September 22, 2001.
Interesting how accurate he was on several levels.
Hoo-boy.
That article was both very informative, & a punch in the gut.
The article shows a very prescient view of the ignorant asses in the White House – but they are not the only leaders Americans have to choose from. There are a number of Dem leaders and even a few … a very few … Repubs who are much more savvy about the Middle East than the Bush Admin.
The American people in general are probably only marginally smarter than Bush and his neocon buddies, so we may yet see more of the uber-stupidity described in the article.
Well, I thought the article got some things right and some wrong. I will note my general agreement with this:
But I don’t necessarily buy this, amongst other points:
Of course 9/11 was a provocation, an act of protest, one might say. It was most certainly not an effective act of war, if one defines war as the taking and holding of territory by military force. Of course the administration has shown itself to be remarkably ignorant an incurious of the cultural background of the people it has chosen to fight, and of the nature of those people’s objections to US hegemony. The author, however, seems to then propose the Islamists as the very sort of all-seeing Fu Manchu character that he ridicules the administration for believing in. There is plenty of misunderstanding on both sides, if you ask me.
There is no question, however, and we’ve seen it numerous times in this forum, that a significant number of Americans have a ridiculously simpliistic and cartoonish view of both Arab and Islamic culture, and that this failure, or unwillingness, to know anything about this culture lies at the heart of our enormous policy mistakes of the past several years.