Who Are The Fanatics?

President

Jimmy Carter was demonized for pointing out in his
book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,
that
there are actually two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian
issue. Distinguished American scholars, such as John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have suffered the same fate
for documenting the excessive influence the

Israel Lobby has on US foreign policy.

Americans would be astonished at the criticisms in the
Israeli press of the Israeli government`s policies
toward the Palestinians and Arabs generally. In Israel
facts are still part of the discussion. If the Israeli
newspaper,

Haaretz, could replace Fox "News," CNN,
New York Times and Washington Post,
Americans would know the truth about US and Israeli
policies in the Middle East and their likely
consequences.

On September 1, Haaretz reported that

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for
Reform Judaism, which represents 900 Congregations and
1.5 million Jews, "accused American media,
politicians and religious groups of demonizing Islam"
and turning Muslims into "satanic figures."
[Jewish
leader urges US Muslims to condemn violence,
Reuters, September 1, 2007]

Rabbi Yoffie is certainly correct. In America there is
only one side to the issue. An entire industry has been
created that is devoted to demonizing Islam. Books
abound that misrepresent Islam as the greatest possible
threat to Western Civilization and seek to instill fear
and hatred of Muslims in Americans. For example,

Norman Podhoretz proclaims "World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism.”

Daniel Pipes shrieks that "Militant Islam Reaches America.“
 Lee Harris warns of "The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam`s Threat to the West.“

Think tanks have well-funded Middle East programs, the
purpose of which is to spread Islamophobia. Fear and
loathing pour out of the

Middle East Forum and the American Enterprise
Institute.

In the US it is acceptable, even obligatory in many
circles, to hate Muslims and to support violence against
them. Pipes has been described as a

"leading anti-Muslim hate propagandist." He
is on record advocating the use of violence alone as the
solution to the Muslim problem. This won him the
endorsement of the Christian Coalition, AIPAC, and the
Zionist Organization of America for appointment to the
board of the United States Institute of Peace. President
George Bush used a

recess appointment to appoint this man of violence
to the

Institute of Peace.

Pipes advocates that the Muslims be beaten into
submission by force, the view that has guided the Bush
administration. To brainwashed and propagandized
Americans, Pipes appointment made perfect sense.

Podhoretz believes that Islam has no right to exist,
because it is opposed to Israeli territorial expansion,
and that America must deracinate Islam, which means to
tear Islam up by the roots.

While

neoconservatives,

Christian Zionists, and the Bush administration
embrace unbridled violence against Muslims, Lee Harris

warns that America is much too tolerant and
reasonable to be able to defend itself against Muslim
fanaticism. America`s "governing philosophy based on
reason, tolerance, consensus and deliberation cannot
defend itself against a [Muslim] strategy of ruthless
violence."

Islamophobia overflows with such absurdities and
contradictions. Harris tells us that the Enlightenment
overcame fanatical thinking in the West, leaving the
West unfamiliar with fanaticism and helpless to confront
it. Harris, who fancies himself an authority on
fanaticism, is deaf, dumb, and blind to Communism and
National Socialism and is completely ignorant of the
fact that neoconservative fanatics are the direct heirs
of the Jacobins of the French Revolution, itself a
fanatical product of the Enlightenment.

If Americans did rely on reason, tolerance and
deliberation, they might free their minds of shrill
propaganda long enough to consider the "Muslim
threat." Muslims are disunited. Their disunity makes
them a threat to one another, not to the West.

In Iraq most of the fighting and violence is between
Sunni and Shi`ite Arabs and between Sunnis and Kurds. If
Iraqis were unified, most of the violence, instead of a
small part of it, would be directed against the American
troops, and the remnants of a US defeated army would
have been withdrawn by now. However much Iraqis might
hate the American invader and occupier, they do not hate
him enough to unite and to drive him out. They had
rather kill one another.

Iran, the current focus of demonization, is not Arab.
Iranians are the ancient race of Persians. Indeed, Iran
would do itself a favor if it changed its name back to
Persia. For eight years (1980-1988) the Iranians and
Iraqis were locked in catastrophic war with horrendous
casualties on both sides. Despite its military
exhaustion, Iraq was considered a "threat" by the
American Superpower and was bombed and embargoed for the
decade of the 1990s, one consequence of which was
500,000 deaths of
Iraqi children.

Not content with the complete crippling of Iraq by the
Clinton administration, the Bush administration invaded
Iraq in 2003 and has been dealing more death and
destruction to Iraq ever since.

Palestine has been under Israeli occupation for decades.
Israel has simply stolen most of Palestine, and the
remaining Palestinian enclaves are ghettos policed by
the Israeli army.

The rulers of Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates are
Sunni Arabs. They are more afraid of Shi`ite Arabs than
of Israelis. Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan are ruled by
bought-and-paid-for American puppets. The Turkish
military is also in the American pocket and suppresses
any Islamist influence in the civilian government.

Afghanistan is a disunited country of tribal peoples,
each holding sway in their area. The Taliban were
attempting to unify Afghanistan, and the Bush
administration`s fear that the Taliban might succeed was
the reason for the US invasion of Afghanistan. The US
allied with the defeated Northern Alliance, in part a
remnant of the old Soviet puppet government, and turned
Afghanistan back over to warlords.

When the facts are considered—Muslim disunity and the
absence of modern technology, navies, and strategic
reach—the Bush/Cheney/ neoconservative/Zionist
propaganda that "we must fight them over there before
they come over here" is such a transparent hoax that
it is astounding that so many Americans have fallen for
it.

To the extent that there is any Muslim threat, it is one
created by the US and Israel. Israel has no diplomacy
toward Muslims and relies on violence and coercion. The
US has interfered in the internal affairs of Muslim
countries during the entire post World War II period.
The US overthrew an elected government in Iran and
installed the Shah. The US backed Saddam Hussein in his
aggression against Iran. The US has kept in power rulers
it could control and has pandered to the desires of
Israeli governments. If America is hated, America
created the hate by its arrogant and dismissive
treatment of the Muslim Middle East.

There is no such thing as Islamofascism. This is a
coined propaganda word used to inflame the ignorant.
There is no factual basis for the hatred that
neoconservative Islamophobes instill in Americans. God
did not tell America to destroy the Muslims for the
Israelis.

In America today blind ignorant hate against Muslims has
been brought to a boiling point. The fear and loathing
is so great that the American public and its elected
representatives in Congress offer scant opposition to
the Bush administration`s plan to make Iran the third
Middle East victim of American aggression in the 21st
century.

Most Americans, who Harris believes to be so reasonable,
tolerant, and deliberative that they cannot defend
themselves, could not care less that one million Iraqis
have lost their lives during the American occupation and
that an estimated four million Iraqis have been
displaced. The total of dead and displaced comes to 20
percent of the Iraqi population. If this is not
fanaticism on the part of the Bush administration, what
is it? Certainly it is not reason, tolerance, and
deliberation.

The Bush supporter will ask, "What about 9/11?"
Even those who believe the fraudulent 9/11 Commission
Report should understand that in the official account
the attack was the work of individuals, none of whom
were acting in behalf of Muslim governments and none of
whom were Iraqi, Afghan, or Iranian. 9/11 provides no
justification for attacking Muslim countries.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Paul Craig Roberts
[email
him] was Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration.
He is the author of

Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider`s Account of
Policymaking in Washington;
 Alienation
and the Soviet Economy and

Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy,
and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of


The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and
Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name
of Justice. Click

here for Peter
Brimelow`s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts
about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.