Rummy says "They" think The Terrorists are victims
Rummy on Tuesday at the Army War College, using his variation the FOXist favorite, "some say...", "some people say...", etc. :
Before September 11, 2001, there was somewhat of a misunderstanding in America about terrorists and in some circles I suppose there still is today. Even today, some folks view terrorists as criminals, not as combatants - some even consider them victims. Some seem to think that the years before September 11th were decades of peace, but that is not so. (my emphasis)
Who is Rummy talking about here? The critics of the Iraq War have said all along, even before the invasion in 2003, that the war was a huge diversion for the real efforts needed to combat jihadist terrorism. And it has been. Rummy is carrying on in the sleazy mode of his party and its Swift Boat Liars, trying to smear Democrats and war critics as sympathizers of The Terrorists.
Suggestion for Rummy: Bite me! Lech mich doch! as they say in German. (It's a little grosser than "bite me".)
I wouldn't say that to Deadeye Dick, though. He probably would actually try to bite me. Or shoot me in the face with a shotgun.
It's the same old dreary propaganda, but it doesn't hurt to pay attention to how Rummy is trying to frame things:
Today there are some who want America to go back on the defensive - to the strategy that failed before September 11th. They say that a retreat from Iraq would provide an American escape from the violence. However, we know that any reprieve would short lived. To the terrorists, the West would remain the great Satan. The war that the terrorists began would continue. And free people would continue to be their target.
From time to time one hears the claim that terrorists’ acts are reactions to particular American policy. That's not so. Their violence preceded by many years operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. And their violence will not stop until their ideology is confronted by the values millions on every continent take for granted. The ideas that liberated moderate Muslims are risking their lives every day to defend - including free systems, individual rights. (my emphasis)
The ever-mysterious They claim that pulling out of Iraq "would provide an American escape" from terrorist violence. Now, I follow criticism of the war pretty closely, at least for a person with a regular day job that doesn't involved following the news constantly. And I can't think of anyone at all who is saying that. The Iraq War has exacerbated - for those in Oxycontin mode, that means "made it worse" - the problem of jihadist terrorism in ways that have made more jihadist-terrorist attacks on Americans effectively inevitable. That damage is done. We would be well-advised to stop making it worse by carrying on fightin a Lost Cause in Iraq. But no one is saying that leaving Iraq would end the threat of jihadist terrorism.
Are any of the Pentagon press pool ever going to jam Rummy on just how this mysterious They are? (Little joke there, we have to try to lighten things up now and then.)
Of more consequence is this notion that Rummy expressed, "From time to time one hears the claim that terrorists’ acts are reactions to particular American policy. That's not so."
The Bush administration and the advocates of preventive war have been insistent that the hostility of The Terrorists is a kind of nihilistic violence, driven by hatred of "our values". In fact, crazy as some of the ways they process reality may be in themselves, jihadist groups are responding to certain issues that do have to do with American policies. It would presumably be obvious to anyone not living in FOXWorld that the fact that a particular policy might provoke hostility doesn't in itself mean that the US should change the policy. But it's foolish in the extreme not to recognize the fallout from the policy as a fact of life.
Certain issues do animate Muslim fundamentalists, which is a far broader group than jihadist, Sunni-Salafist terrorists. Among the better know are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the status of Kashmir, the on-again-off-again Russian war against Chechnya. And, now, of course, the Iraq War. Rummy makes it sound like anyone who recognizes that there are real issues out there affecting jihadist types, irrationally or not, is expressing sympathy for The Terrorists.
But understanding is not the same as sympathizing, and explaining does not mean defending. The Rummys of our world prefer to have us take the posture that Americans are simply the victims and potential victims of irrational nihilists whose hatred and violence is not based in any kind of reality. If you are loooking for a justification for the Long War they say we're in, its a good way to say that only military action is meaningful in fighting The Terrorists.
I wonder how the hunt for Osama bin Laden going these days.
Really, what Rummy's talking here is just recycled cold-war boilerplate. The words have been modified slightly to make it Muslim extremists and The Terrorists instead of Russians and Communists. But the Cold War ideology was good for 40+ years of high military budgets and deference to Executive authority in foreign and military policy. So I guess they figure they'll just recycle it.
I notice Rummy talks about how "liberated moderate Muslims" are opposing The Terrorists. By "liberated moderate Muslims", he means the fundamentalist Sunnis in Afghanistan and the fundamentalist Shi'a in Iraq. And, as Robert Dreyfuss has detailed in some length in his book Devil's Game (2005), the US promoted Muslim fundamentalist parties and groups during the Cold War to offset leftists and nationalist politicians. And in Afghanistan, we actively supported jihadist terrorists, although our politicians and press tended to call them "freedom fighters" then. Our main allies in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't "moderate" Muslims, but fundamentalists.
Except the Shi'a fundamentalists in the elected Iraqi government are getting more and more hostile to the US. But that's a story for another post.
