{"id":132371,"date":"2012-11-23T10:00:40","date_gmt":"2012-11-23T15:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=132371"},"modified":"2012-12-26T16:03:18","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T21:03:18","slug":"rumsfeld-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/11\/23\/rumsfeld-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"A Rumsfeld Reminder Of Terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Article:<\/strong> A Rumsfeld-era reminder about what causes Terrorism<\/a> by Glenn Greenwald in Salon.<\/p>\n

The Text:<\/strong> The debate over Afghanistan \u2014 or, more accurately, the multi-pronged effort to pressure Obama into escalating \u2014 is looking increasingly familiar, i.e., like the \u201cdebate\u201d over Iraq. The New York Times is publishing articles filled with quotes from anonymous war advocates. Permanent war-justifier Michael O\u2019Hanlon is regularly featured in \u201cnews accounts\u201d as he all but blames Obama for increasing combat deaths due to his failure to escalate the moment the military demanded it. The New Republic is churning out pro-war screeds. Every option is on the proverbial table except one: not fighting the war. And there\u2019s a widening gap between (a) public opinion (which sees Afghanistan as \u201cturning into another Vietnam\u201d and which opposes more troops, with 49% favoring a full or partial withdrawal) and (b) the virtual unanimity of establishment punditry which, as always, is cheerleading for the war. The only difference is that, with a Democratic President, there seems to be more Democratic and progressive support for this war (though there was, of course, plenty of that for Iraq, too).<\/p>\n

The primary rationale for remaining \u2014 and escalating \u2014 in Afghanistan is the same all-purpose justification offered for virtually everything the U.S. has done since 2001: Terrorism. Apparently, the way to solve the Terrorist threat is by sending 60,000 more American troops into a Muslim country and committing to at least five more years of war there. That, so the pro-escalation reasoning goes, will make us safer.<\/p>\n

In 2004, Donald Rumsfeld directed the Defense Science Board Task Force to review the impact which the administration\u2019s policies \u2014 specifically the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan \u2014 were having on Terrorism and Islamic radicalism. They issued a report in September, 2004 (.pdf) and it vigorously condemned the Bush\/Cheney approach as entirely counter-productive, i.e., as worsening the Terrorist threat those policies purportedly sought to reduce. It\u2019s well worth reviewing their analysis, as it has as much resonance now as it did then (h\/t sysprog).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Task Force began by noting what are the \u201cunderlying sources of threats to America\u2019s national security\u201c: namely, the \u201cnegative attitudes\u201d towards the U.S. in the Muslim world and \u201cthe conditions that create them\u201d.<\/p>\n

And what most exacerbates anti-American sentiment, and therefore the threat of Terrorism? \u201cAmerican direct intervention in the Muslim world\u201d \u2014 through our \u201cone sided support in favor of Israel\u201d; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, \u201cthe American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan\u201c.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just repeat that: \u201dMuslims do not \u2018hate our freedom,\u2019 but rather, they hate our policies.\u201d And nothing fuels \u2014 meaning: helps \u2014 the Islamic radicals\u2019 case against the U.S. more than ongoing American occupation of Muslim countries.<\/p>\n

For that reason, \u201ca year and a half after going to war in Iraq, Arab\/Muslim anger [had] intensified\u201d and the war had thus \u201cweakened support for the war on terrorism and undermined U.S. credibility worldwide\u201d (see. 14-15). Similarly, as of six months into his presidency, Obama had vastly improved perceptions of the U.S. among Western Europeans but \u2014 as Der Spiegel put it \u2013 he \u201chas actually made little progress in the regions where the US faces its biggest foreign policy problems,\u201d particularly the Muslim world (other than Indonesia, where Obama spent part of his childhood, and Egypt, where Obama spoke).<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t combat Terrorism by sending our military into Muslim countries. Doing that only exacerbates the problem, since it inevitably intensifies the anti-American sentiment that enables and fuels the terrorist threat in the first place. All of that is so basic. It\u2019s been empirically proven over and over during the last decade. It\u2019s not Noam Chomsky or Al Jazeera pointing out these basic truths, but instead, a 2004 Task Force handpicked by Donald Rumsfeld\u2019s Pentagon to review and assess the Bush administration\u2019s anti-terrorism efforts, principally the wars they were waging in Afghanistan and Iraq. <\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, there is some small faction of \u201dIslamic radicals\u201d principally motivated by religious fervor which will likely hate the West regardless of what it does, but \u2014 as the 2004 Pentagon-commissioned Report found \u2014 their most potent weapons are American policies that inflame anti-American hatred in the Muslim world, beginning with ongoing wars waged by the U.S. military in Muslim countries. That\u2019s so self-evident it shouldn\u2019t require a report to document it, but since it seems to, here\u2019s a very credible report that does exactly that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Article: A Rumsfeld-era reminder about what causes Terrorism by Glenn Greenwald in Salon. The Text: The debate over Afghanistan \u2014 or, more accurately, the multi-pronged effort to pressure Obama into escalating \u2014 is looking increasingly familiar, i.e., like the \u201cdebate\u201d over Iraq. The New York Times is publishing articles filled with quotes from anonymous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Rumsfeld Reminder Of Terrorism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We can't combat Terrorism by sending our military into Muslim countries. 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