We played by Osama bin Laden’s rules. Even in killing Osama, we lose. Osama knew that, but Americans were stupid enough to play right into Osama’s agenda. We Americans (as a country and as citizens) have lost money, lives and our moral highground. Like Osama planned, we are going the way of the USSR.
The more I think about this, I don’t think it was an accident. I know the average American isn’t as well informed and thoughtful as they should be. But I was wondering how the political elite were also so clueless as to not understand Osama’s agenda when he spelled it out very clearly and in great detail.
I just now realized that the political ruling elite (i.e., corporatists, plutocrats, and the military-industrial complex) share the same basic agenda with Osama bin Laden. They both don’t like nor trust the populist ethos of American democracy. The reason is because only a functioning democracy (that actually represents the public and where the population isn’t disenfranchised) can challenge the authoritarian power structures represented by corporatism and by fundamentalism.
Because of corporate media, most Americans don’t comprehend that the corporatists are at least as dangerous if not more than the terrorists. Now that Osama is gone, will Americans see the enemy in their midst?
Wow that video and report are comical and sad. 45 muslem as opposed to 80 non muslem domestic terrorist activities. You have an instance ~30% of all domestic terrorist attacks being committed by one particular unified demographic of people and its doesn’t warrant interest because its not ‘pc.’ And you are seriously reporting to me as contrary to my view? If you want an educated opinion on muslims in America consult colonel allen west.
And…
right wing hate groups are a stratified remnant of a bygone era, and do not represent people like myself. Muslim terrorist activities are representative of the fact that it is statistically easier for a muslim to ‘misconstrue’ the words of the Quran. This is occurring at a per capita rate several times higher than in the EVIL RIGHT WING RACIST BIGOT PARTY and its growing because in America free speech is only ok if its pc anymore. Also when you label me a bigot I win.
The comment was in response to this video I shared with this person:
It’s the general ignorance of this person (happykillmore88) that bothers me so much. But, in his mind, if I point out the fact that he is an ignorant bigot, then he wins. Huh? Ignorance is bad and bigotry is bad, but there is something immensely worse when the two are combined.
I’ve noticed how rightwingers (and the media as well) tend to treat all Muslims as a single group. Any Muslim violence is the responsibility of the entire world’s Muslim community. If someone commits an act of violence an they are Muslim, it must be because they have a Muslim agenda and that somehow that Muslim agenda is inherent to all or most of Islam. Christians, on the other hand, commit acts of violence all the time and rarely does it get blamed on the entire Christian community or the entire Christian religion. Often it doesn’t get blamed on Christianity at all. Every Christian is unique and yet every Muslim is the same.
In reality, there is no singular Islam that unites Muslims all over the world. When a terrorist who is Muslim commits an act of violence, their reasons are diverse: personal revenge for loss of family or friends, perceived defense of their particular ethnic community or nation, to uphold the ideology of the sect they belong to, etc. Not all Muslims agree about anything, especially not about their ideological views of Islam. The Muslim in Afghanistan fighting US soldiers to defend his country and family isn’t the same as the 9/11 terrorists. Neither of those is the same as the oppressive Saudi royal family that is the ally of the US govt. And none of those are the same as the average upper class Muslim who has peacefully lived their entire life in the US. There is no Islam that is a “one particular unified demographic of people”. As such, there is no singular Muslim terrorism, just diverse acts committed by diverse people for diverse reasons. To think otherwise is the worst kind of bigoted ignorance.
Let me use an example on the non-Muslim rightwing side. Jim D. Adkisson who shot several people (and would’ve have shot everyone if he hadn’t been stopped) at a Tennessee UU church was a rightwinger. He shot the UU people simply because he hated liberals and gays (the exact same things Muslim rightwingers hate). That shooting incident only received brief media attention and most people probably don’t even remember it. If he had been a Muslim shooting those people because they were Christians or Americans, the media (especially and ironically, the rightwing media) would have obsessed over it for months and no one would ever forget about it. It’s a double standard even seen in the so-called ‘liberal’ media.
Consider Scott Roeder as another example. He was a Christian who killed Dr. Tiller for ideological reasons of stopping abortion. After the event, all over the web and in the media there were rightwing Christians who praised Roeder’s actions or who made excuses for it. I was shocked by how supportive so many on the right were of terrorism when it fits their own agenda.
Similarly, consider the recent hearing on Muslim radicalism and terrorism. It was started by Peter King who in the past has supported and helped raise money for the IRA which is a Christian terrorist group. The IRA killed many innocent civilians in shootings and bombings. The innocents killed included British who are our political allies and also an American. King has never renounced his ties to the IRA nor criticized the IRA’s terrorist acts. Also, to get back to an earlier point, no one in the US media has portrayed the IRA as representative of all Christianity.
The Muslim hearing demonstrates a problem within the media. The American Muslim community has helped stop many of the terrorist plans. The American Muslim leaders have numerously criticized terrorism. But the media ignores all this. Then those in the media wonder why we don’t hear about Muslims speaking out. Well, we don’t hear it because the media (including the ‘liberal’ media) rarely reports it and when reported it ain’t front page news. The best example of this involves the planned Islamic center some distance away from Ground Zero. The guy who has been promoting it is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. He had been officially working with the government to help build bridges to the Islamic communities in the US and in other countries. He was doing exactly what rightwingers claim Muslim Americans aren’t doing. Even so, both rightwing and liberal media almost entirely ignored Imam Rauf’s activities until the plan of the Islamic center came to public attention. The Islamic center was designed with the intention of being a community center that would help the Muslim American community be less isolated. But rightwingers attacked the plans because Imam Rauf was a Muslim just like the 9/11 terrorists.
So, why do Christians get to build Christian churches and community centers near the locations of violence committed by Christians and the media says nothing? Why are Christians considered innocent until proven guilty but Muslims are tried in the court of public opinion?
To get back to the YouTube discussion, according to happykillmore88, “rightwing groups are a stratified remnant of a bygone era, and do not represent people like myself.” Let me break that down. Bygone era? The militant rightwing emerged strongly in the 1990s and only died down for a time after 9/11. The 1990s isn’t exactly a bygone era. Also, the rightwing terrorism of that time included the largest domestic terrorist attack in US history. Still, even after 9/11, rightwing terrorism was far from being insignificant:”The terrorism preventions for 2002 through 2005 present a more diverse threat picture. Eight of the 14 recorded terrorism preventions stemmed from right-wing extremism” Also, it should be noted that domestic rightwing terrorists (unlike domestic leftwing terrorists and like Muslim terrorists) have tended to pursue “targeting people.” And if you thought rightwing violent radicalism was decreasing in the US, you would be sadly mistaken:
Christian terrorism has returned to America with a vengeance. And it is not just Roeder. When members of the Hutaree militia in Michigan and Ohio recently were arrested with plans to kill a random policeman and then plant Improvised Explosive Devices in the area where the funeral would be held to kill hundreds more, this was a terrorist plot of the sort that would impress Shi’ite militia and al Qaeda activists in Iraq. The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded by Morris Dees, which has closely watched the rise of right-wing extremism in this country for many decades, declares that threats and incidents of right-wing violence have risen 200% in this past year—unfortunately coinciding with the tenure of the first African-American president in US history. When Chip Berlet, one of this country’s best monitors of right-wing extremism, warned in a perceptive essay last week on RD that the hostile right-wing political climate in this country has created the groundwork for a demonic new form of violence and terrorism, I fear that he is correct.
“The report is deliberately more inclusive of Muslim violent extremists. The Muslim dataset accounts for both U.S. and foreign-originated plots. The nonMuslim dataset is restricted only to U.S.-originated plots.”
“There were 80 total plots by U.S.-originated non-Muslim perpetrators against the UnitedStates since 9/11. In comparison, there have been 45 total plots by U.S. and foreign-originated Muslim perpetrators since 9/11.”
“Evidence clearly indicates a general rise in violent extremism across ideologies.” “Yet, there is little evidence of rising ideological extremism among Muslim Americans.”
“Muslim communities helped U.S. security officials to prevent over 4 out of every 10 Al-Qaeda plots threatening the United States since 9/11. Muslim communities helped law enforcement prevent three-quarters of all Al-Qaeda related plots threatening the U.S. since December 2009.”
The first point seems odd to me. I don’t know why they included foreign-originated Muslim plots but not foreign-originated non-Muslim plots. Even with that discrepancy, the domestic non-Muslim plots still outnumber almost by twice the Muslims plots with domestic and foreign combined. Unlike like rightwingers, there is little evidence that Muslim American extremism is increasing… and, in fact, Muslim Americans have been a major force in preventing terrorism.
It just seems odd and hypocritical that the media and politicians focus so much on Islamic terrorists when the worst acts of domestic terrorism have come from rightwingers who aren’t Muslim. The Oklahoma City bombing to this day remains the largest and worst act of domestic terrorism in US history.
The fact that the 168 deaths at Oklahoma were the result of Americans killing Americans in the name of America has made the incident in some ways harder for the nation to process than 9/11 and the less complicated enemy, al-Qaida. “It made a terrible difference that this was homegrown terrorism,” says Almon-Kok. “It left you with nothing to trust or believe in, apart from my faith that this city did everything it could in the aftermath, and that we have a legal system which, for the most part, works. But that doesn’t answer why fellow Americans wanted to come killing our kids.”
Perhaps this is why the Oklahoma bomb is not as centre stage in America’s collective memory as it should be. When Al Gore was interviewed about the extreme right by Larry King recently, there was no mention of Oklahoma. Coverage of last month’s arrests of militants belonging to an offshoot of the same Michigan militia that McVeigh belonged to omitted to mention the bomb, days away from its 15th anniversary. There is extreme awkwardness around this enemy within, but also current concern about reverberations of McVeigh’s cause: war against the American government.
Even with this horrific history of rightwing extremism and violence, rightwingers can get away with all kinds of statements that no other group could get away with. Hardly a day goes by where I don’t hear in the media or see online some rightwinger inciting revolutionary overthrow of the government, promoting the killing abortion doctors, suggesting President Obama needs to be eliminated, or some other equally incendiary rhetoric. Could you imagine the outrage if a Muslim American made the exact same kind of statements as do these rightwingers do on a regular basis? Could you imagine a Muslim American politician putting crosshairs on his/her opponents as Palin did? Could you imagine a Muslim American politician talking about 2nd Amendment remedies as did Sharron Angle? Could you imagine a Muslim American pundit praising, justifying or making light of the murder of an abortion doctor killed by a Muslim American? So, why is all this acceptable for rightwingers? Is it because the rightwingers see themselves as the majority, as “Real Americans” and therefore above the law, above common decency?
It really does seem to be a double standard of how American rightwingers and the American media treat minorities, whether the minority is Muslism or blacks or any other group. Frank Schaeffer noted this double standard in relation to how black Christians are treated differently than white Christians:
When Senator Obama’s preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father — Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer — denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.
Let me go back to one part of what happykillmore88 wrote:
Muslim terrorist activities are representative of the fact that it is statistically easier for a muslim to ‘misconstrue’ the words of the Quran. This is occurring at a per capita rate several times higher than in the EVIL RIGHT WING RACIST BIGOT PARTY and its growing because in America free speech is only ok if its pc anymore.
Considering the actual data, what does he even mean by these statements?
How is it statistically easier for a Muslim to ‘misconstrue’ the words of the Quran? If you put a bunch of Muslims together, you’d unlikely find any more agreement between them than you’d find with a diverse group of Christians. When I hear statements regularly made by American Christians, I don’t think they have any statistical difficulty in ‘misconstruing’ the Bible to fit their ideological agendas.
How is Muslim ‘misconstruing’ occurring at a per capita rate several times higher than rightwingers? When someone uses ‘per capita’ in making a statement, it would seem they are referring to some specific data… but he offers no data. I don’t get how free speech isn’t politically correct anymore nor how being politically correct increases Muslim ‘misconstruing’ of the Quran which I guess then supposedly increases Islamic terrorism.
He seems to imply that my demanding factual correctness is somehow my forcing political correctness. This seems to be another case of rightwing projection. Rightwingers seem to believe it’s politically incorrect when someone states the actual facts about rightwing violence, but rightwingers are incapable of seeing this demand for political correctness in themselves. So, when someone points out that a rightwinger’s claims aren’t based in facts, it’s actually the other person who is being pc for not allowing the rightwinger to make false statements.
Oh, silliness.
For further data on rightwing violence and rhetoric, see:
Posted on February 2, 2011 by Benjamin David Steele
Here is a story about a terrorist attempt by a US veteran who is white. The story has been conveniently ignored or underreported by most of the mainstream media. I tend to watch the news closely from various sources. I haven’t seen this story in any local or national media. The only media report I was was from RT.
Last week an ex-Army veteran from California was arrested for driving to Detroit’s largest mosque with a trunk full of explosives. Police then found Roger Stockham inside his car, outside the Islamic Center of America with a load of M-80′s and other explosives in his trunk. The mainstream media has ignored this story. Alyona asks Georgetown University Professor Christopher Chambers why the media only cares about Muslim Terrorists.
Roger Stockham arrested with explosives outside major US Mosque. Thom Hartmann discusses the story with Ibrahim Hooper, the director of CAIR Michigan.
please, spare me any suggestions that this guy, Roger Stockham, should not be charged with terrorist offences due to the fact that his explosives were legally obtainable, or “not very explosive”. terrorism is not merely determined by death tolls, it is to create fear among the targetted group (just ask the IRA).
the terrorist who tried to blow up The World Trade Center in 1993 didn’t have anywhere near enough explosives either.
A California man is in jail on a terrorism charge after he was arrested in Dearborn for allegedly trying to blow up the biggest mosque in metro Detroit, Dearborn officials said today.
The suspect was arrested in the parking lot of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn on Monday, while hundreds were inside the mosque that sits along Ford Road, police said. He came to the city because of its large Arab-American and Muslim population, police said.
There’s been little discussion by the mainstream media of a California man who was arrested for plotting to attack a mosque in Michigan. Roger Stockham was arrested in the Mosque parking lot with his car packed full of high end explosive fireworks as 700 people attended a funeral service inside the largest Islamic Center in Metro Detroit. Stockham targeted Detroit because it has one of highest populations of Arab-Americans in the country. He was stopped thanks to the diligence of a local bartender who had earlier heard Stockham discussing his violent plans. This story brings up an important question – and is our poll of the day – what do you think Americans should be more fearful of, an attack by a Muslim extremist or one carried out by a disillusioned non-Muslim American?
Posted on December 1, 2010 by Benjamin David Steele
Here is further evidence of how people become socially conservative when in a social situation that causes fear and stress. I’ve brought this up before because it explains why social conservatives have motivation to fear-monger.
As the researchers concede, these experiments aren’t proof that thoughts of terrorism have a uniquely negative effect on parenting. Exposure to images of an attack might simply have increased the parents’ stress level, “which could then translate into harsher and more controlling social interactions with their children.”
But they note previous research has found a link between terror threats and authoritarian political beliefs. The notion that this mindset could slop over into domestic decision-making seems entirely plausible.
Either way, it’s one more example of how fear can inspire behavior one may later regret. So in turbulent times, perhaps it’s wise to avoid reading the newspaper before heading to the nursery. It’s never a beautiful day in Mr. bin Laden’s Neighborhood, but that doesn’t mean you and your children need to live there.
Posted on September 7, 2010 by Benjamin David Steele
After listening to this video, I commented that the Islamic fundamentalist guy wasn’t making any sense. Someone responded to me by saying that he was being consistent. I considered it a bit further and responded with this:
I guess it’s self-consistent. If only fundamentalists matter and fundamentalists don’t vote, anyone who votes isn’t a fundamentalist and so isn’t a real Muslim. So, fundamentalism is popular among Muslims if being a Muslim is defined by being a fundamentalist. And, so, fundamentalism is popular if anyone’s opinion who isn’t a fundamentalist doesn’t count meaning that fundamentalism is popular among fundamentalists who don’t vote because anyone who votes isn’t a real Muslim. Got it.
Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of Hiroshima day. I’d actually been thinking about that event off and on recently. It’s representative of what is wrong with Americans specifically and humanity in general.
A lot of people were killed in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The sad part was that the bombs were designed to kill a lot more, but for two reasons the death toll was lower. As I recall, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima failed to cause as big of an explosion as was designed to cause. So, instead of killing as many people, it left many of them severely injured. And, as I recall, the bomb targeted for Nagasaki was accidentally dropped on a nearby village and so the people of Nagasaki didn’t get a direct hit.
Still, the death and suffering caused was immense. More importantly, it was unnecessary. The Japanese military was decimated to the point of non-existence. The Japanese had practically no defense. Many Americans like to rationalize that the bombings were necessary, but such rationalizations have absolutely no validity. The people who espouse such rationalizations are brainwashed by patriotic propaganda.
The rationalization is two part. First, the rationalizers say that Japan wouldn’t surrender. This is only partly true. The emperor and many others wanted to surrender, but some leaders didn’t want to surrender. However, it didn’t really matter. Since they couldn’t defend themselves, surrender was inevitable and it wouldn’t have taken long. Secondly, the rationalizers argue that we would’ve had to send troops onto the Japanese islands in order to force them to surrender. This would’ve caused many more deaths and so killing all the innocent Japanese civilians helped reduce the death of innocent American soldiers. This is utter bullshit. We didn’t need to do anything. The Japanese were stuck on an island. They were trapped and defenseless. All we had to do was surround them with our navy in order to create a blockade and wait until the people started to starve.
At the point we dropped the nuclear bombs, we had already been firebombing their major cities to oblivion. The war was over at that point. The nuclear bombs accomplished nothing in terms of practical military tactics. These cities were civilian populations. Dropping bombs on cities in order to terrorize the population is the very definition of a war crime. This bombing was the largest and most horrific terrorist attack in all of the world’s history. As Americans, we should be ashamed. We have absolutely no moral superiority over anyone.
The reason why this has occupied my mind is because I personally know of someone who has made these very rationalizations (I first discussed this in a much earlier post: Morality: Christians vs. Jesus). This person considers themselves to be a good Christian and tries to live a good Christian life. Still, this person is able to blindly accept this propagandistic rationalization. This person’s national pride is greater than their personal sense of morality. If someone can rationalize such a horrendous act of terrorism, there is absolutely nothing that such a person couldn’t rationalize. That is scary. This person is completely normal by society’s standards. In fact, this person would be considered a respectable community leader. I understand that people of other nationalities just as easily rationalize the war crimes their own governments have commited. That is what is sad. This ability to rationalize anything is normal for humans. This is the state of humanity. There is nothing humans won’t do to other humans, nothing that humans can’t rationalize.
I’ve heard many people say that Japan deserved it because they attacked us first. Sure. And the serial killer says the whores deserved being killed for being whores. In terms of an eye for an eye, we all deserve horrible punishment. But, as a wise man once said, an eye for an eye leads to everyone being blind. Forgiveness and understanding is a better option. I can promise you that Americans better hope that America never gets what it deserves. The US govt has committed genocide, supported dictators, and of course obliterated whole cities. If America ever gets what it deserves, the entire US will be wiped from the face of the earth.
Here are two videos that show the problem with extreme rightwing thinking. When the world is seen through absolutist morality, everything becomes black and white and every person becomes either good or evil. Taken to the furthest extreme of fundamentalism, this attitude becomes a Manichaean vision of Cosmic War.
It’s what led someone like Bush to think he was on a mission from God and that fighting the terrorists was a crusade. It’s an attitude that doesn’t allow for compromise and makes bipartisanship impossible. If you think Obama is a Commie, a Nazi and/or the Anti-Christ, you don’t seek agreement with the person who you believe is destroying all that is good in America and in the world. This attitude goes back to the beginning of modern movement conservatism. Barry Goldwater, who believed in an unchanging Law of God, said:
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”
(source: “Goldwater and Pseudo-Conservative Politics”, Richard Hofstadter)
What is interesting about this kind of statement is that it resonates with what Muslim terrorists preach.
I was impressed that the guy at the 5:00 mark made a very intelligent and insightful point while everyone else was just trying to turn it into yet another partisan story. I’m always shocked when someone who is actually fair and balanced gets on Fox News.
Is O’Reilly clueless? If addicts are successfully treated, drug demand decreases. If drug demand decreases, the drug black market decreases. If the drug black market decreases, drug trafficking across the border decreases. If drug trafficking decreases, violence against Americans decreases. Conservatives need to look at real data. Dealing with drug addicts directly is more successful & cheaper than dealing with the results afterwards. Like abstinence only education, the Drug war is a failure.
Conservatives need to think of this the way they think about guns. Not all countries with high gun ownership rates have high gun violence rates. A large percentage of gun violence is from illegal guns and so illegalizing or more tightly controlling gun ownership doesn’t by itself solve the problem of gun violence. Similarly, in countries where drugs are legal and where there are easily available drug addiction programs, drug use and addiction are lower than in the US.
This video is long, but very much worth watching. The guy speaking offers the best analysis of terrorism that I’ve ever heard. He doesn’t say anything that I haven’t thought myself, but it’s the first time I’ve heard this view voiced in such depth & detail in a mainstream public forum.
Here is further proof of a view with which I concur. Afghanis don’t want us or any other military force to occupy their country and their tribal lands. The longer we remain there the more we actively turn them against us.
Instead of decreasing the terrorist threat, we are polarizing them to allign with terrorists. By killing Afghanis, we create new terrorists. Every person we kill has a father, brother, son, cousin or fellow tribal member who quite likely will seek retribution.
During the Cold War era around the world, the US government committed immoral actions or participated in the immoral actions of others. These included the School of Americas, death squads, assassination attempts, coups, puppet governments, and on and on. The two most relevant incidents was our financial and political support of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. This support, of course, included buying weapons for these people (such as the chemicals Hussein used to kill his own population).
So, why is anyone surprised that this led to negative repercussions? People like Bin Laden and Hussein were tired of being manipulated by the US government and didn’t want to be told what to do. They were evil when we aligned ourselves with them and they continued to be evil when they no longer served our purpose, but the US government is far more evil in that it helped put them in power where they could commit great acts of evil. Do you want to fight the greatest evil in the world? If so, you’d have to start with Washington, DC.
What is the US government’s response to the evil they created? They wage massive wars against Bin Laden and Hussein, and in the process go back to the Cold War era methods of nation-building. Before the US attacked Iraq, the country wasn’t a threat nor were there any international terrorist organizations located there. Now, the country is filled with terrorist organizations plotting against the US. We’ve lost numerous American lives and we’ve lost our moral standing in the world. In seeking revenge for those who died in the 9/11 attack, we killed more innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq than innocent Americans have been killed by terrorists.
We are fighting wars that can’t be won and we’ve polarized a whole generation who will grow up to be a largescale organized force of terrorism that will be a threat to the US for decades. Just like during the Cold War, we’re just creating a new generation of enemies to fight.
Why do we or rather why do politicians do this? There are only two possibilities I can think of. You could just consider politicians to be stupid and ignorant, but that seems naive to me. Or you could take the cynical route and consider that it probably is an intentional plan. Even as American soldiers die, corporations with government contracts are making money hand over fist. Eisenhower warned about the Military-Industrial Complex and he apparently was correct. Corporations who make money off of war don’t want war to end because then their profits end. Military spending is the biggest chunk of the budget. In fact, it’s the biggest chunk of the economy in the entire world as the US spends massively more money on our military than all other governments combined.
Right now, some child in Afghanistan or Iraq is watching his mother or some other loved one die during an attack by US soldiers. That child will grow up with hatred towards the US and will join others whose lives were also destroyed by our military. One day, that child will commit some atrocious act against Americans. Right now, some politician or leader is being supported by our military and yet feels resentful at being manipulated. One day, that person will see an opportunity to use his power to do harm to the US. When that day comes, the American public will respond with its usual ignorant fear and the government will start the whole cycle over again… and the corporations will once again make huge profits.
