RHIZOME_RAW: READ WELL...

[Christopher Fahey [askROM]]

> And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly 
> what he wants. That's why he did this.  Read his speeches and 
> statements. It's all right there.  He really believes Islam 
> would beat the west. It might
> seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world 
> into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers.  

  I agree with this theory. We (Americans and the West) are playing
right into Osama bin Laden hands if the inevitable conflicts are
anywhere perceived as a "War Against Islam". 

  To me, the President's calls for "tolerance" of our Arab and
Moslem-American neighbors is totally phony and inadequate. During the
Persian Gulf war, American soldiers were encouraged to use terms like
"Camel Jockey" and much worse to describe the Iraqi enemy. It is a
tradition in wartime to demonize the enemy. But in this war, we don't
even have a name for the enemy. "Osama bin Laden" isn't a big enough
enemy. "Terrorism" is too abstract an enemy. "Islam" itself, I fear, is
what some Americans are latching onto as the real enemy - and the
President is doing far too little to discourage this. I think he
believes that fundamentalist Christians, xenophobes, and racists in the
USA are too important a constituency to alienate, perhaps he is afraid
to say anything divisive to his own people. At least Giuliani went out
of his way on Day 1 to point out that people who discriminate against or
harass Moslems in NYC will be found and importantly they will be
*punished*. Bush has said nothing in his speeches to the nation - he
only ever mentioned this issue once in his phone call to Giuliani and
Pataki. In fact, his overt religiosity only serves to further perpetuate
the idea of this as a religious war.

  Not only is the President's inaction morally reprehensible , but it's
strategically stupid: Islamic extremists would just love to be able to
paint this as a "War Against Islam". Such a PR disaster would certainly
galvanize the Moslem world against the USA. 

  All it would take is one speech. One speech where the President chides
us for our latent racism, where he makes an example of the likes of
Howard Stern (who is daily advocating putting all Moslems into camps),
where he tells us that anger at our Moslem sisters and brothers weakens
us immeasurably, both spiritually and strategically, and that such
behavior will be punished as surely as any other act of treachery. A
speech where the USA claims the moral high ground for our very real
traditions of tolerance and diversity.

  Clinton would have done it.

-Cf

[christopher eli fahey]
art: www.graphpaper.com
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