While it is true that you can”t kill an idea, it is also true that you can kill the people that hold an idea, and that is what President Obama has set out to do: kill all of the Islamic “fundamentalists,” or to use the now interchangeable term, “terrorists.”
But are they terrorists? When we were organizing and arming them to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, they were “freedom fighters.” When the fundamentalists were beheading Russian soldiers, there was nothing in the American press about barbarity.
Terrorists were the 19 men, 15 of them Saudis; smart, well-educated and well financed, who hijacked four jets on 9/11. There is no way that the mostly illiterate and mostly dirt poor Islamic State fighters are going to get to America. We have got to realize that after more than a decade of slaughtering these desperate souls we are not more secure.
Meanwhile, more Americans get their news from Fox than any other network. Fox news parades pundits who are ex-generals. What is missing is the disclaimer that these pundits, like retired General Anthony Zinni, sit on the boards of defense companies who are salivating at the chance for large defense contracts and large profits. They are not independent. In contrast, in the late 1980s, Russian generals advised their government that the war in Afghanistan was a stalemate, and Russia would be better served to pull out, thus making it easier for Gorbachev to consummate his policy of exiting Afghanistan.
The media, doing their part in this scheme, is beating the drums of war by showing, for example, the prelude to the beheading of men like James Foley. One morning I saw a recent interview with Foley, conducted by the legendary filmmaker Haskell Wexler. Foley, ironically, was against American military involvement in the Middle East.
However, Obama has told us that American interests are at stake. I am an American, and I have no interest in Obama”s Wars. I want the money spent on getting people jobs, free education, stopping global warming, and even restoring Clear Lake, not killing people.
The Obama policy is pretty nutsy: He wants to overthrow Assad, in Syria. However, among the myriad groups trying to oust Assad, are fundamentalist groups like the Islamic State. So, we have to shoot at Assad, and at the same time, shoot at some of the guys who are shooting at Assad. It would be nice if the different groups had different color uniforms, so we would know who to shoot.
Lastly, we need to recognize a simple truth, painful as it is, which is never spoken of by Obama or Fox News: There is a reason many people in the Arab world hate us. It is because we did horrible things to them. We overthrew the government of Iran and installed a dictator who became universally hated, we placed an embargo on Iraq, that while not successful in driving out Sadaam Hussein, did lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of children due to malnutrition and attendant diseases, supplied the arms to Hussein to allow him to attack Iran and begin a war that led to the death of a million people, and on and on.
When Dick Cheney said that “We must fight them over there, or we will have to fight them over here,” the opposite was actually the truth: they attacked us here because we messed with them over there. I am not justifying the senseless, criminal and cruel acts that were 9/11, but, I am saying that if we don”t want it to happen again, we should be clear about the reasons that it happened in the first place.
Dr. Martin Luther King said, during the Vietnam era, that “America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Now we have a president with a different color skin, but with the same “grubby interior” as his predecessors.
Nelson Strasser, Lakeport
