Those Irrational, Misled, Conspiratorial Muslims, by Glenn Greenwald

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Those Irrational, Misled, Conspiratorial Muslims
by Glenn Greenwald

The New York Times this morning has a particularly lush installment of one of the American media's most favored, reliable, and self-affirming rituals -- it's time to mock and pity Those Crazy, Primitive, Irrational, Propagandized Muslims and their Wild Conspiracy Theories, which their reckless media and extremists maliciously disseminate in order to generate unfair and unfounded hostility toward the U.S.:

Conspiracy theory is a national sport in Pakistan, where the main players -- the United States, India and Israel -- change positions depending on the ebb and flow of history. Since 2001, the United States has taken center stage, looming so large in Pakistan's collective imagination that it sometimes seems to be responsible for everything that goes wrong here. . . . The problem is more than a peculiar domestic phenomenon for Pakistan. It has grown into a narrative of national victimhood that is a nearly impenetrable barrier to any candid discussion of the problems here. In turn, it is one of the principal obstacles for the United States in its effort to build a stronger alliance with a country to which it gives more than a billion dollars a year in aid.

Initially, it's worth asking how these "conspiracy theories" compare to this: from the front page of The New York Times, September 8, 2002:

More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today. . . . In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. . . . An Iraqi defector said Mr. Hussein had also heightened his efforts to develop new types of chemical weapons. An Iraqi opposition leader also gave American officials a paper from Iranian intelligence indicating that Mr. Hussein has authorized regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to put down any Shiite Muslim resistance that might occur if the United States attacks.

From the front page of The Washington Post, April 3, 2003:

Pfc. Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, U.S. officials said yesterday. Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting 11 days ago, one official said. . . . Lynch's rescue at midnight local time Tuesday was a classic Special Operations raid, with U.S. commandos in Blackhawk helicopters engaging Iraqi forces on their way in and out of the medical compound, defense officials said.

Continued ...

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1. I like this quote from Greenwald's link at the update...

Considered historically, it will become clear that the job of Republican governments is to invent novel, ad hoc expansions of state power, while the job of Democratic governments is to consolidate and systematize them. Far from repudiating supposed Bush-era "excesses," the Obama regime has sought--usually successfully--to entrench and to codify them. This is just the latest example.

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2010/05/ratchet-effect-part-infinity.html

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2. Bump

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3. K&R for Greenwald.

"But isn't exactly the same true in the U.S., where our most consequential acts in Pakistan -- from drone attacks to Special Forces operations -- are ones the U.S. Government will not even publicly acknowledge, let alone debate and describe? Here's what Hillary Clinton said when asked last December about the deaths of Pakistani civilians caused by U.S. actions in that country: "I'm not going to comment on any particular tactic or technology." And the NYT should perhaps check its own front page from yesterday, which detailed a secret order from last fall directing a massive escalation in the use of U.S. Special Forces in a whole slew of Muslim countries -- all without any public discussion, debate, or authorization from Congress. We're essentially fighting covert, unauthorized wars in multiple Muslim nations -- including Pakistan -- all while the NYT mocks those silly Pakistanis for failing to publicly discuss their own military policies and for believing that the U.S. is engaged in unknown and unseen conduct in their country."

<snip>

But what the NYT fails to mention is that the U.S. is actually using Blackwater for a wide variety of covert, lethal missions inside Pakistan, as The Nation's Jeremy Scahill has documented at length. They may not be "conspiring to destroy Pakistan," but they are engaged in "targeted assassinations," "'snatch and grabs' of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan," and "assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes."

Given Blackwater's history and the secrecy in which its conduct is shrouded, isn't it more rational to worry about their conduct inside one's country than it is to ignore it or assume it's benign? And if a foreign country were sending its military and intelligence services inside the U.S. to assassinate our citizens, drop bombs on us from robots in the air, and infiltrate our society with shadowy private contractors -- as we're doing to Pakistan -- do you think we would be expressing hostility toward that country and expressing serious suspicions about what else they were doing inside our country? Is it conspiratorial paranoia or rational self-interest that leads one to think that way?"

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/26-7

Do go read the whole article.

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4. Whoo!...broke 100 views!

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5. Bump

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6. Here let me help you bump it up...

Excellent article.

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7. So true. Conspiracy theories run rife in the US... n/t

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8. Bump