On Point on Hezbollah

Related
Augustus Norton on Hezbollah’s Social Services
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Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007.

Sources

Yesterday, NPR’s On Point aired an hour-long show about my article from this month's magazine, Parties of God: The Bush Doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy (excerpted online). Other guests included Augustus Richard Norton, professor of international relations at Boston University, and author of the new book Hezbollah: A Short History; Anthony Shadid, correspondent for the Washington Post; and Gidi Grinstein, a former Israeli peace negotiator and president of the Re'ut Institute.

As I told host Tom Ashbrook in summing up the story, “In this part of the world we frequently ask if the Islamic world is ready for democracy, and there's this suggestion that they're not quite mature enough or ready for it--when in fact what we might be asking is whether the West is ready for Islamic democracy, because for more than the past decade, there's been a real flowering of Islamic political parties across the Middle East.”

“It's difficult to see how you're going to lead to real democratic reform,” said Shadid, “and real democratic change in these countries . . . without some kind of engagement with Islamic movements.” Shadid recently wrote two terrific pieces (piece 1, piece 2) on the Mubarak regime’s repression of Egyptian democratic movements. “They represent such large constituencies,” he said, “but at this point you don't see any real signal from the Americans that they're willing to engage or have a desire to engage them.”

Click here to hear the show.

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This is On Point on Hezbollah by Ken Silverstein, published Wednesday, March 21, 2007. It is part of Washington Babylon, which is part of Harpers.org.

A Confused US in the Middle East

Editor's note: I am moving over to the other blog(also see new articles below).
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Feb 14, 2007

Loss of US prestige as a super power and its growing image of being an anti-democratic, anti-Islamic regime are increasingly damaging for the Bush administration, argues Abdul Ruff Colachal.


Energy resources -- and not democratic issues -- constitute the focus of US foreign policy, especially in West Asia today. The United States, the most influential power in the world with which countries across the continents seek strategic partnership, is also the most worried nation today because of aggressive foreign policy of an arrogant President leading a failed anti-terror war in Middle East to control its vast energy resources. The horrors of "anti-terror wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq have once again reminded the Americans of earlier US failures. George W. Bush unveiled a new military strategy of enhancement and now is being routinely condemned as one of the worst Presidents ever and his Iraq policy no longer enjoys the support of a large swathe of the American establishment.

Cruel killing of Saddam did cause a slur on the format of the US diplomacy once hailed as genius when the former President Ford withdrew the US forces from Vietnam. Neither the assassination of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein without fair trial, nor the backlashes of invasions of Islamic nations in recent times have made President Bush to change the course of US policy. President Bush, a supporter of neoconservative line of thinking, is still reluctant to revise his views on US national interest, in spite of a weakening US power and influence as well as domestic anger against the US-led war in Middle East.

The situation in West Asia demands immediate corrective steps to rescue the USA from the hostile battle fields. Relegation of diplomatic efforts to sidelines pushed President Bush to be one of the most worried men on the earth today, and the USA itself feels let down by its responsible leaders. By displaying arrogance through their external pursuits in many parts of the world, President Bush and advisers have brought even the USA to the brim of disorder. The war on terror has tarnished the image of the world’s only super power. The so-called liberators have assumed the role of occupiers in Middle East.

Following debacle in Iraq and Afghanistan, the neo-conservatives, like President Bush in world arena, suddenly did find themselves isolated and embattled and were confined to the sidelines. A confused US President directed his forces to Somalia killing innocent civilians in searching for the so-called suspected terrorists. This explains the nature of aggressive foreign as well as the pro-rich domestic policy, including tax cuts regime of the Bush administration. Obviously, the neoconservatives with almost full sway over the decisions of President Bush just don’t permit that to happen.

The Republican Party's rule in USA owes much to the neocons for their opinion of "containment" and wars in its external behavior and well being of the well-to-do on domestic scene. The die hard neocons decline to reckon that the failed US foreign policy doctrines ended up in a sort of confused militarism and useless diplomacy that has marked its dealings with North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Somalia. If the main justification for Nixon's Vietnam War was to prevent the spread of communism, the U.S. defeat then did not prove that point. The war reversals in 1970s made President Ford to flee disgracefully, restrained the USA from stretching itself too far and wide beyond its capacity and thus USA disengaged itself from the world affairs until the collapse of the USSR. End of Cold war, however, rekindled the US desire to showcase its military superiority in action. The neoconservatives hatched plans for "regime change" in West Asia. But actually, precisely for energy and economic reasons the Middle East remains one of the main areas, where the USA has focused its attention requiring military conflicts.

As the neocons misread global trends, President Bush has clearly overlooked the Vietnam experience of the USA and continued invasions and threatening postures causing misunderstanding with its other Western partners. The resultant failure of US aggressive policy in West Asia seems to have created embarrassment for the US-European relations as well. The Bush administration's embrace of unilateralism not only provoked the Iraq-Afghanistan disaster but also hastened American decline. The policy failure in Middle East could also signal decline the case globally as well. Tragic murder of Saddam has complicated US relations with European states, France and UK in particular, while. China and Russia had opposed the ghastly killing. Switch over to Somalia or the tactics of threatening Iran is no solution for current failures and that cannot save President Bush in any way.

The neo-conservatives under Bush believed that the world was ripe for a huge expansion of American power and influence. The CIA and Pentagon networks charted plans of subduing the world by employing concepts like democracy, regime change, WMD, axis of evil, etc. Threat perceptions generated by the CIA-Pentagon network kept the NATO ties fairly intact. And the world is being terrorised. US double speak on disarmament has generated enough suspicion in the world, but Washington went ahead with strengthening its power the world over. This in turn resulted in the US led forces occupying the countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. But now the forces are unable either to quit or to annex them as many other countries have done under similar situations in the past. The arrival of the new UN chief, Ban Ki Moon has not made any shift in US policy in West Asia, but only encouraged the Pentagon to pursue its destructive external policies.

Neoconservatives, therefore, don't do nuance. Their position is crystal clear: what is happening in the Middle East is an Islamist-Israeli war, part of the wider conflict between Islamist "totalitarianism" and liberal "democracy" and moderate Islam. To fight this war, the US has to confront not just terrorist networks but the states that are anti-American.That all anti-Islamic forces should be fighting against Islamic nations that are anti-US/Israel. Thus, Israel is dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah, so America should be going after Syria and Iran, which are Israel's enemies but also the enemies of the US. Accordingly, the US should, as soon as possible, launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, which would weaken the regime and put the country on the road to regime change.

Neocons make no concessions on that account and they want the Bush administration to do what they dictate. Loss of US prestige as a super power and growing image of being an anti-democratic, anti-Islamic regime are increasingly damaging for the Bush administration. The neocons guide the policy formulations of the Bush administration. Active, shuttle and aggressive diplomacy by USA to garner support of the Arabs for its Iran invasion having failed miserably, the Americans have reasons to believe that the Bush administration would rest finally. No, the neocons believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action. Ideology of neocons has remained the basics of philosophy of the Republican Party and has strong supporter in CIA, the Pentagon and the US government.

However, the Bush administration creates the impression that the President deviates from the neocons and executes only the moderated version of the extreme position taken by them who argue for quick invasion of Iran for controlling its energy resources before Russia might get through with the OPEC version of Gas regime. Even with opposition of the democrats to his Middle East policy, Mr. Bush still avoids moving towards the Iraq Study Group (ISG) position and go for, albeit gradual, withdrawal of troops. The plan by the USA-Israel combine to invade Iran would further seek terrible consequences for US. Both the Democrats and Republicans increasingly project US supremacy as the main goals in world politics .His double game only strengthens the neocons’ position of invading Iran as quickly as possible.

History of the USA has not taught Bush any serious lessons as he is still keen to invade Iran, by ignoring the key recommendations of the ISG report to involve Iran and Syria in any Iraqi settlement, including the return of the Golan Heights to Syria and to seek a new agreement between Israel and Palestine are still under vague scrutiny of the Bush administration. G.W. Bush cannot in fact help establish any New Middle East or collective global security. A reckless leader can lead his country to terrible destiny. Apart from US-Israel-UK nexus, most of the economic powers might still accept joint operations against select Islamic nations world wide. Unlike President Ford who gracefully retreated from a dangerous Vietnam War to save US prestige from further erosion, President Bush with his refusal to withdraw forces even after the poll reversals as well as a resistant Congress, has brought the US to the verge of being an insulted nation. The Democrats find it extremely torturous to defend the Bush strategy in West Asia and refuse to cooperate to send extra troops to Iraq.

USA is against a multi-polar world. Unipolarity suits USA to advance its global interests. By shelving unilateralism, the USA would have to share its influence with regional powers like Russia, China and the EU, Iran, India and Syria, but by continuing the confrontational policy, the Pentagon would advance its national interest. Both Russia and China stipulate that the US must act according to the UN rules. Sharing energy resources in Central Asia cannot be replicated in this explosive Middle East region any more. Such a scenario may well mean that the key alliance that has shaped the Middle East since 1956 between USA and Israel under UK mediation could even be increasingly downgraded and, if Iran is invaded, would ultimately be destroyed, besides its devastating consequences for US and Israel.


Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal is a Research Scholar at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Temple Mount construction is worse than a crime

5 comments on the situation

By Yoel Marcus

1. The old saying "it's worse than a crime; it's a blunder," applies to the construction of the new bridge to the Mugrabi Gate on the Temple Mount. The plans drawn up by the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Jerusalem Municipality were okayed by Ehud Olmert, but they were not coordinated with the Waqf and upset the king of Jordan. It didn't take long for the rumor to spread that the Jews are out to destroy Islamic holy sites. From here to an outbreak of rioting, the road is short. The government is not such a hero when it comes to battling its own ultra-Orthodox extremists. It halted work on the Trans-Israel Highway because of a few unidentified bones that turned up in the excavations. In the matter of the Temple Mount, Olmert wants to have it his way. He also thought he was the smartest guy in creation when he initiated the opening of the Western Wall tunnel and set off riots that left 16 Israelis and 69 Arabs dead. Ariel Sharon thought he was the cleverest of men when he went up to the Temple Mount, triggering the al-Aqsa intifada. The problem is that our great brains don't always know how to get out of the fixes that smart people never get into in the first place.

2. The appointment of Prof. Daniel Friedmann as justice minister looks like the revenge of a corrupt political system on the country's law enforcement authorities. Friedmann is considered a brilliant man, but someone who knows him well says that when he moves into his office, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a resident psychiatrist on staff. Last week, Friedmann said that with the illustrious backing of the law, Israel was on its way to becoming a police state. He also said that an indictment always seals the fate of the suspect with the slimmest chances of acquittal, and that cabinet members and MKs were ultimately subordinate to an attorney general, who could destroy them. This totalitarian depiction of the country is galling. What interests the public is not who is for or against Dorit Beinisch or Nili Cohen, but the endless foot-dragging in the courts, the lame attempts to enforce the law, the absence of a functioning bailiff's office, the shoddy efforts to fight crime and public corruption, and the loss of our sense of personal safety. A justice minister should be concerned about quality of life in an organized state, not the petty affairs of the social elite and the political activists. Just this week, Olmert got up in the Knesset and called on the police to continue their probes and crackdown on corruption. Then he goes and appoints a contentious justice minister who will clip the wings of the law enforcement system.

3. Releasing the names of Shin Bet chiefs has also released their tongues. Now they do more talking than we want to hear. At a meeting with military correspondents this week, Yuval Diskin came out looking like a champion worrywart. He expressed concern about the possibility of a military campaign in Gaza. The terror organizations in Gaza are growing stronger, he said. So let's say we win in Gaza (with the emphasis on "let's say"). What then? The clash between these organizations is a danger to Israel. It will bring terror in the long run. Sinai has become their strategic front. He can't sleep at night thinking about the tunnels. And then a little poke in the army's ribs: One of the major achievements of the Lebanon war - distancing Hezbollah from the border -has eroded. The countdown for a Hezbollah attack has begun. Thank you, Diskin, thank you. Two tranquilizers, and I'm going to bed.

4. If Ramon had apologized and said he was sorry, there would have been no indictment, says Menny Mazuz. Now that's odd. Either he's guilty or he's not. Would saying "sorry for shooting you," or "sorry for breaking into your house" get anyone off the hook? If Mazuz really wanted to give Ramon some good advice, he should have suggested something more practical: Add some baking soda to your tea every morning.

5. Shuki Forer, Yitzhak Rochberger and Eliezer Hisdai, the mayors of Rehovot, Ramat Hasharon and Alfei Menashe, have formed a trio. They will be singing at a national mayors convention in Haifa, to be attended by all big shots in the country. The "Three Towns," as the group was dubbed in Maariv, may add Ron Huldai and become a permanent band. With the local authorities in such a rotten mess, with employees going unpaid for months and mayors exempt from paying municipal taxes, I can't help wondering what they have to sing about.

Hundreds of Israeli police stormed Islam's third-holiest shrine Friday, firing stun grenades and tear gas

Related
Israeli police confront worshipers at Al-Aqsa
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Hundreds of Israeli police stormed Islam's third-holiest shrine Friday, firing stun grenades and tear gas to disperse hundreds of Muslim worshippers who hurled stones, bottles and trash in an eruption of outrage over Israeli renovation work nearby.

The clash at the end of noon prayers came after days of mounting tensions over the work and raised concern that protests at the site could spread to the West Bank and Gaza, as they did at the start of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000. No serious injuries were reported.

About 200 police streamed on to the hilltop compound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount, to try to quell Muslims rioting over the repair work, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Clouds of tear gas rose up at the holy site and stun grenades set off sharp booms. A doctor treating some of the injured, Dr. Khalil el-Baba, said officers fired rubber bullets at protesters, but police denied that.

Riot police with the visors of their helmets pulled down scuffled with worshippers, some of them middle-aged or elderly. Medics tended several injured people lying on the stone pavement. Jewish worshippers were evacuated from the Western Wall plaza at the foot of the compound.

The situation grew especially volatile after some 150 protesters barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa mosque at the complex.

But police did not enter the mosque, and about 90 minutes after they holed up inside, the protesters began to leave, following negotiations between officers and Muslim representatives, negotiators said.

At that point, police pronounced themselves in full control of the situation.

Still, passions remained inflamed.

"There is no justification for what they did today, and we think it was pre-orchestrated to bring fears to the spirits of the worshippers angry about the Israeli dig," said Adnan Husseini, chairman of the Waqf, the Muslim trust that oversees the shrine.

Israeli authorities promised that the replacement of a centuries-old ramp leading to the compound, which was damaged in a 2004 snowstorm, would not harm the holy site, about 60 yards way. But as work began earlier this week, it drew fierce protests in the Arab world, where many leaders accused Israel of plotting to harm Muslim holy sites.

"This is an aggression against the mosque," Mohammed Hussein, the mufti of Jerusalem, said by telephone from inside the walled compound. "I don't know what impact this aggression will have on the Palestinian territories, but past experience has shown that every time there were clashes at the mosque, it engulfed the other parts of the West Bank and Gaza."

When Israel opened a tunnel alongside the compound in 1996, it touched off clashes that killed 80 people. In 2000, when then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the site, the ensuing riots were followed by years of violence.

In the alleys of the Old City, Palestinians pelted police with rocks, bottles and garbage. In the West Bank, youths hurled stones at Israeli security forces at a major checkpoint leading into Jerusalem. Scheduled protest marches went ahead peacefully elsewhere in the West Bank, and demonstrations were planned in Gaza.

"This is a great danger. We can't remain silent," Nizar Rayan, a Hamas leader, said at a celebration of a power-sharing agreement Hamas signed with the rival Fatah faction in Saudi Arabia on Thursday.

"We ask God to unite the Palestinians, with their rifles and tunnels, to be able to cleanse Al-Aqsa of the ... excavations," Rayan said.

The tunnels he referred to are tunnels Palestinian militants use to smuggle weapons into Gaza.

Israeli Arabs planned a rally against the repair work in the northern town of Nazareth later Friday.

Seventeen protesters and 15 police officers were slightly injured in the melee, and 17 rioters were arrested, Rosenfeld said. Officers shut all of the Old City gates leading to the complex, and disconnected loudspeakers there that they said were used to incite worshippers.

The complex, home to the golden-capped Dome of the Rock shrine and Al-Aqsa mosque, is sacred for Muslims, who believe that it is where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

The compound is venerated by Jews as the site of their biblical temples.

Police had braced for possible riots during the prayers, a frequent flashpoint for clashes, deploying 3,000 officers around the city — about triple the usual number.

Israeli officials have said Muslim extremists are using the renovation work as a pretext to stoke anger against Israel. Speaking during a visit to Spain on Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni accused "political extremists" of trying to "exploit this situation."

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Look who's talking. Livni is the extremist. It's his PM Olmert who is backing the excavations which are igniting protest.

Israel 'playing with fire' by digging near Al-Aqsa mosque

L ast update - 14:15 05/02/2007

City of David tunnel excavation proceeds without proper permit

By Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters

The excavation of a tunnel under Jerusalem's City of David has gone on for months without a license from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), as required by law.

In addition, there is no operative plan for developing the site by the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority (INNPPA), which legally administers the area.

Nevertheless, no steps are being taken against the two IAA archaeologists who violated their license; instead, they are being allowed to dig in an area extending another 100 meters, to "explore" the site.

The archaeologists, Professor Gabi Reich and Eli Shukrun, began the dig in the area of the village of Silwan a few months ago, following the discovery of part of a road that may have been Jerusalem's main street in the Second Temple era. The dig is being financed by Elad, an association that, inter alia, works to settle Jews in East Jerusalem.

Late last year, the archaeologists showed senior government officials a plan to continue tunneling under Silwan to the Old City's Dung Gate, some 600 meters away, and perhaps even as far as the wall around the Temple Mount.

The goal, they said, was to expose the entire length of the Roman road, on the assumption that it originally led from the Silwan spring to the mount. Shukrun told Haaretz last week that the project would take about three years.

This is a very sensitive region for a dig. Should it approach the Temple Mount wall, it will certainly elicit angry reactions from the Muslim Waqf (religious trust), which has repeatedly accused Israel of trying to excavate under the holy places on the mount.

Moreover, most of the excavation site is inhabited by Palestinians, and thus far, no effort has been made to get their permission, as required by law, for digging on and under their property.

But on top of all that, it recently emerged that the dig violates the terms of the license that the archaeologists received in January 2006, and has not been approved by the INNPPA.

Dr. Gideon Avni of the IAA discovered this situation when he visited the dig in December. The current excavation, he wrote the archaeologists, "is not included in any way" on their license application. "Therefore, this is an unlicensed excavation."

At about the same time, Dr. Zvika Tsuk, the INNPPA's chief archaeologist, informed the IAA that the dig had received no permit from his organization. "In 2004, you received a permit, but never submitted a report," he wrote. "In 2005, you received a permit, but never filed a report, and in 2006, you have been digging in the City of David without a permit. I demand that the excavations be halted immediately."

Senior archaeologists told Haaretz that usually, archaeologists who violate the terms of their license are punished by being denied the right to continue excavating. But in this case, the IAA decided to extend Reich and Shukrun's license to dig in Silwan.

IAA spokeswoman Osnat Goaz said that following a "comprehensive inquiry," and in light of "the INNPPA's intention to develop the site being excavated for tourism purposes, the area of the dig was enlarged in the license granted for 2007."

But INNPPA spokesman Moshe Gabay said that there is currently "no operative plan" to develop the area for tourism, nor did the organization approve an expanded dig. Instead, he said, it approved only an "exploratory dig" of 50 to 100 meters, after which a decision will be made.

Hamas: Israel 'playing with fire' by digging near Al-Aqsa mosque
The exiled political leader of Hamas on Sunday condemned excavations by Israeli archaeologists near Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque and warned they were "playing with fire."

"I have a stern warning for the enemy," Khaled Meshal said at a news conference in the Syrian capital.

"Sharon's desecration of the Aqsa sparked the 2000 uprising. The Israeli leadership must learn from this lesson. We have confidence in our people, its masses, all of its groups and military wings," he added.

A Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000 after a visit, condemned in the Arab world, by then opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the mosque compound in East Jerusalem, which Israel conquered in the 1967 Six Day War.

"Israel knows what its violation of the holy Aqsa will bring. It is playing with fire," Meshal said.

The exiled Hamas leader accused Israel of exploiting internal Palestinian strife, saying, "We are facing a dangerous action. Jerusalem's Muslim and Christian holy sites are dear to all Palestinians. Israel is trying to take advantage of the Palestinian internal conflict to commit its crimes," Meshal said.

The Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques sit above the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, in an area referred to by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the al-Haram al-Sherif.

The Aqsa Mosque is Islam's third holiest shrine and has been a flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the past.

In the 1980s, Israel uncovered a plot by a group of Jews to blow up Aqsa in the hope that a new Jewish temple could be built at the site.

Muslim scholars say the excavations violate Aqsa's sanctity. Israeli officials say the work would not harm the structure of the mosque, which dates from the seventh century.

Stuck in Single Frames of a Terrorism Movie

by Rami G. Khouri

Released: 30 Jan 2007

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Boston -- The United States broadly as a whole -- citizens, government, media and academia -- has had a difficult time coming to grips with the terrorism phenomenon that struck its shores so traumatically on September 11, 2001. A two-week journey throughout the United States this month suggests that the pendulum is not shifting decisively towards better or worse analysis, but rather that American society in general is polarizing on this issue.

Some Americans have generated some first-class analysis on why various groups around the world use terrorism more frequently as a means of political expression, resistance or offensive warfare. Other quarters of American society -- especially popular media and politicians -- have slipped into panic and racism mode. They focus almost exclusively on terror committed by Arab-Islamist groups, and wildly tar all Islamist political groups as mortal threats that have stealthily penetrated American society, without differentiating between criminal terror, legitimate resistance and peaceful political action.

The worst news is in the public arena -- at airport and center-city bookshops, in the mass media, in conversations with officials and ordinary people. Here the prevalent image is of evil Islamic and Arab terrorists who work hard to undermine and destroy American and Western civilization, or “the civilized world,” (contrasted to the 'barbaric' Arab-Islamic realm).

The proliferation of books and television specials with this theme is particularly worrying. They build expansive, frightening scenarios on the basis of small facts or the deeds of a handful of individuals. Of course, there are individuals and some very small groups of Arabs and Muslims who speak evil of the United States, and a few of them have attacked American targets. Rather than being treated as the exceptions to the rule of rather passive, non-violent Arabs and Muslims, who make up the vast majorities of our societies, these handfuls of freaks and criminals are exaggerated into a global conspiracy that is a direct, immediate, mortal threat to the United States.

Such scare-tactics journalism and political nonsense allow otherwise reasonable people and rational institutions to dwell in a manufactured world of fear, ignorance, hysteria and racism. This is not new. The same ugly side of American culture did this in the early 20th Century, when the target of their ignorance and hatred was the Jews, who were portrayed as planning to control American society and then the world.

The good news in the United States is that more thoughtful individuals and institutions have started to generate some high quality, accurate research and analysis about terror groups. I was fortunate to absorb some of this at a two-day conference last week at the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University. Excellent papers were presented by a range of mostly American scholars and analysts, including Robert Pape, Peter Bergen, Fawaz Gerges, Steve Simon, Mia Bloom, Ian Lustick, Richard Shultz, John Esposito, Ayesha Jalal, Sumantra Bose, As’ad Abukhalil, Hisham Melhem, and others. I mention many of the authors simply to highlight the availability in the United States of so many good, honest scholars and journalists who grapple with this important issue.

The main conclusion of their presentations is precisely that there is no single theme or causal reason that explains the different kinds of terrorism that assorted groups employ all around the world. Nuanced, comprehensive and fact-based analyses of the individual, social and strategic motivations of terrorists provide a clear picture of a movie that is made up of many individual frames. Understanding the individual frames allows us to make sense of the entire movie.

Terrorists are variously motivated by many different issues that often mesh together in varying patterns across the world -- in sharp contrast to the simplistic, one-dimensional, quasi-racist gibberish about America-hating, hostile Islamic terrorists that dominates popular and political culture in the United States.

Some of the motivations of terror groups that emerged from the Tufts conference were: foreign military occupation of their homeland, domestic political repression and humiliation, revenge, religious interpretations, social prestige and status, alienation at home and in Western societies, aggressive foreign policies of Western powers, “civil war” within Islamic societies, charismatic leaders like Osama Bin Laden who mobilize their followers, assorted temporal political concerns that are perceived through the lens of religious obligations, issues of lack of dignity and hope for a better future, and weaving together national, historical and emotional narratives while appealing to domestic, regional and global audiences simultaneously.

The more honest debate about America's actions in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East seems now to be joined in places by a deeper, more analytical examination of why terrorism has expanded around the world. Let's hope the policy-makers in the United States, Russia, Israel, the Arab world, and Europe read and absorb some of this material, so that we can start to wind down the terror cycle that has only grown in recent years.


Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

Demagoguery Posing as Scholarship

January 29, 2007

Dinesh D’Souza, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has raised a ruckus in his new book The Enemy at Home. In the book, he contends that the 9/11 attackers were motivated by neither U.S. foreign policy abroad nor by a hatred of U.S. freedom, as President Bush has repeatedly argued. Instead, D’Souza declares that Osama bin Laden hates the liberal U.S. culture that promotes contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. In a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post defending the book, D’Souza says that he doesn’t “hate America.” No, he just hates liberal America and is reprehensibly trying to use the horrible 9/11 attacks to score points against the Democrats of the left.

D’Souza is not the first person to try to turn the 9/11 attacks to his advantage. President Bush disingenuously tied them to Saddam Hussein and invaded Iraq. In fact, D’Souza is not even the first person on the right to try to pin the blame for 9/11 on the left. Jerry Falwell blamed gays, pagans, and the ACLU for the attacks. Although D’Souza seems horrified to have been compared with Falwell, they both end up at the same place. Falwell argued that God was punishing the United States for the activities of these liberal groups, and D’Souza argues that bin Laden has been enraged by American liberal groups’ overseas distribution of contraceptives and lobbying of non-Western countries to liberalize laws against homosexuality and abortion. Although Falwell’s explanation is religious and D’Souza’s is more secular, they both blame the left. Because D’Souza is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, however, he claims that he is not an “unqualified right-wing hack.”

But D’Souza’s qualifications for commenting on the causes of 9/11 are suspect. D’Souza’s biography on the Hoover Institution’s website indicates no scholarship expertise in fundamentalist Islam. In fact, D’Souza’s biography indicates no expertise on terrorism, foreign affairs, or national security policy. His Hoover Institution biography lists his expertise as follows: “Social and individual responsibility, civil rights and affirmative action, economics and society, higher education.” All previous books he has authored are on domestic subjects, and he was a senior domestic policy analyst at the White House during the Reagan administration. Academically, he earned a B.A. in English. After 9/11, everyone wants to be a foreign policy expert.

As a result of minimal credentials in the fields about which he is speaking, D’Souza, unsurprisingly, gets it wrong on the causes of 9/11. D’Souza writes in the Washington Post:

Contrary to the common liberal view, I don’t believe that the 9/11 attacks were payback for U.S. foreign policy. Bin Laden isn’t upset because there are U.S. troops in Mecca, as liberals are fond of saying. (There are no U.S. troops in Mecca.) He isn’t upset because Washington is allied with despotic regimes in the region. Israel aside, what other regimes are there in the Middle East? It isn’t all about Israel. (Why hasn’t al-Qaeda launched a single attack against Israel?) The thrust of the radical Muslim critique of America is that Islam is under attack from the global forces of atheism and immorality—and that the United States is leading that attack.

To evaluate D’Souza’s view, an examination is needed of bin Laden’s original motives for undertaking his war against the United States. Most terrorism experts—not just liberals—have concluded that bin Laden’s original motive for attacking the United States was seeing non-Muslim U.S. forces in the Islamic holy land of Saudi Arabia when he arrived back there after fighting the “infidel” Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan. In the Islamic world, it is the duty of every Muslim to do what he or she can to help evict non-Muslim occupiers from Muslim lands. This is what fuels Muslim resistance in Chechnya, Palestine, Afghanistan (both against Soviet and American occupiers), and Iraq. In fact, exhaustive empirical research on suicide terrorism by Robert Pape, a national security expert at the University of Chicago (hardly a bastion of liberalism), indicates that suicide terrorism has much less to do with religion than it does with the “nationalist” impulse to evict foreign occupiers from the homeland. Pape’s research shows that al Qaeda’s activities fall into this category because the group wants to evict the U.S. military presence from the Persian Gulf.

In addition, bin Laden’s other original motive for attacking the United States was its support for despotic, corrupt regimes in the Middle East. Just because there are many of them there doesn’t mean that this was not one of his prime motivators. His greatest hatred is for the autocratic government in his home country—Saudi Arabia. D’Souza, however, is right that bin Laden was not originally motivated to attack the United States because of its support for Israel. This justification was added later merely to gain more support for bin Laden’s cause in the Arab world.

In addition to most expert opinion, based on bin Laden’s original writings, and Pape’s empirical research, repeated public opinion polls in the Arab/Islamic world discredit D’Souza’s unsubstantiated musings. Those polls indicate that people in Islamic countries like U.S. technology, political and economic freedom, and even culture (which polls high even in Iran). The numbers start going south only when U.S. foreign policy toward the Islamic world is mentioned. As D’Souza even admits, the opinions of the Islamic mainstream are important because it has been the traditional recruiting pool for Muslim extremists.

Since D’Souza has few qualifications in the field and has little empirical data or expert opinion on his side, one has to conclude that he is, in fact, a political hack in scholar’s clothing, who is exploiting 9/11 merely to pillory his political opponents. His demagogic bloviation, like that of Falwell and Bush, is dangerous because it obfuscates the demonstrated link between interventionist U.S. foreign policy and blowback terrorism and lets politicians and pundits avoid the most obvious solution: a more humble U.S. foreign policy.

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Ivan Eland
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Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
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