American Foreign Policy and International Islamism
Paolo Bassi
2005/10/17
There are two basic reactions to Islam in the
United States
. The majority view Islam as a religion like any other, peaceful and humane but
one which has been hijacked by extremists–notably Bin Laden and his
international cohorts. This view is the quasi-official view of the Bush regime
and incessantly reinforced by the politically correct culture of the media and
educational institutes. We all recall with bemusement President George W. Bush,
standing in a D.C. mosque days after September 11, claiming that Islam was a
religion of peace. Whether this is true or not, Bush, who had barely traveled
outside the
US
before his presidency, was uniquely unqualified to make such a claim. However,
he had political reasons for making this statement.
The opposing view is an irrational hostility to Islam and
Muslims–a view often expounded by evangelical ministers in their meg-churches.
Both views are deeply flawed and limited. Islam is what the Koran and Sharia Law
say it is–above all Islam is what Muslims have done for 1,400 years. Sadly,
few seem interested in these rather obvious sources. However, there is one view
that is almost never discussed in the American media—the political analysis of
how Islamic radicalism become such a world-wide phenomena in the last 25 years.
In light of the recent upsurge in Islamic fundamentalism, surely this is the
question to ask. There can be no reasonable doubt that poverty, lack of
education and employment and above all the support of Islamism by nervous
Islamic governments, hoping to detract attention from themselves, has been
instrumental in radicalizing young Muslims. This is only part of the
explanation. American foreign policy has played its own part in this tragedy.
Muslims from all backgrounds, agree on one thing–namely
that
US
policy seeks to keep Muslim nations weak, with particular venom reserved for
Israel
. They are both disingenuous and wrong. They are disingenuous because Islamism
is itself a profoundly political force, with a historically based ambition of
its own to restore Islamic imperialism anywhere and everywhere. They are wrong
because the
US
has almost single-handedly, but inadvertently, helped to establish radical
Islam all over the Middle East and
Asia
. Radical Islam of the late 20 th Century had no better friend than
Washington
. The
US
, obsessed with the
USSR
during the Cold War and wanting to expand the interests of its own capitalist
elite, pursued a foreign policy blind to and ignorant of the Islamist monster it
was nurturing. That monster has now become an international hydra whose victims
are not American policy-makers but ordinary Americans, British commuters on
London's underground, Australian tourists in Bali and of course thousands of
innocent Muslims seeking only a peaceful life.
The
US
began nurturing radical Islam as early as the 1930s when it supported the rule
of the Wahhabi Saudi family over
Arabia
in exchange for oil concessions. The Saudi royal family became obscenely
wealthy in exchange for entering
America
's security arrangements. In exchange for American patronage, the Saudis ensured
a reliable flow of cheap oil. But oil was not all that is being exported.
Saudi Arabia
is the world's largest exporter of Islam and young Muslim men devoted to
unrelenting jihad against the infidel. Their theology is Wahhabi Islam, an
uncompromising and aggressive form of Islam, bent on conversion and promoting
hatred of non-Muslims. By allowing this the Saudi government, whose power is
increasingly tenuous, has so far insulated itself from direct confrontation with
the Wahhabi establishment.
The Saudis, while denying legal equality and freedom of
religion to non-Muslims, arrogantly fund mosques and Islamic centers in the
US
and
Europe
. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and related charities, being
beholden to Saudi money, are only too willing to carry out the Wahhabi agenda.
One can only imagine the disbelief shudder if the world's Christian countries
formed a similar international organization to spread Christianity.
It is remarkable that the US Government, usually so eager
to berate uncooperative nations over civil rights, is silent when it comes to
Saudi Arabia
. Neither George Bush nor Tony Blair, both born-again Christians who reportedly
pray together, has ever addressed the rights of religious minorities in
Saudi Arabia
. Nor would
London
or
Washington
ever dare to directly blame the Saudi government for Saudi sponsorship of
Islamic terrorism. Perhaps the billions of dollars in arms sales to the Saudis
is simply too good a business to upset. Was it Kruschev who once claimed that in
the end the western capitalists would sell the very rope with which they would
be hanged?
The picture is equally depressing in other parts of the
world where the US Government has supported political Islam. One of the worst
massacres of the 20th century was the genocidal attack, begun in 1975, by the
Indonesian government against the tiny Christian minority on the former
Portuguese colony of
East Timor
. In 1975
Indonesia
, the worlds' largest Muslim nation, was led by the vehemently anti-communist
Suharto regime. This was good enough for the
US
, who supplied Suharto with weapons and training. Both President Ford and Henry
Kissinger were directly involved in giving
Indonesia
the nod of approval to invade
East Timor
. What happened next was pure genocide. The US-trained Indonesian army butchered
a third of the East Timorese people. The invasion was not a mere land grab but a
war to erase the East Timorese Catholic church and Portuguese cultural
influence. Throughout the
East Timor
genocide the American media and both the Ford and Carter administrations stayed
silent–a silence tantamount to supporting the massacres. For a greater account
of Kissinger's role in the
East Timor
massacre, see Christopher Hitchens' book "The Trial of Henry
Kissinger".
The debacle of
Yugoslavia
's breakup in the early 1990s was again a textbook case of
US
foreign policy promoting the growth of radical Islam. The war in
Bosnia
in 1991 started with the breakdown of the Serb-Croat-Muslim coalition. The
Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, who had publicly declared that Islam could
never be at peace with non-Islamic societies, broke from the coalition after the
customary nod of approval from
Washington
. The situation was aggravated beyond repair when Serbian President Slobodan
Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman of
Croatia
, both sent in their paramilitaries to bolster their respective causes. There
can be no excuse for the lunacy of these two men who ensured the conflict became
religious. However, the much maligned Milosevic was far from being the only
guilty party. In the ensuing war, the Muslim majority, with American support,
gained the sympathy of the world and prevailed.
The US government, under Bush I and his successor President
Clinton, had decided that Milosevic would not be a obedient client and thus the
Serbs had to be painted as the aggressors, while the US and NATO would be
present itself as fair arbitrators of Muslim affairs. No doubt such a view would
aid the
US
in its then confrontation with
Iraq
. The
US
media set to work demonizing the Serbs while generally ignoring Muslim
atrocities. The war was presented as a holocaust by the Serbs against innocent
Muslims, while the
US
was presented as the moral force determined to prevent another European
holocaust. The truth is that it was a war of nationalism and religion in which
all sides committed the gravest violations. The
US
media not only ignored Serb suffering, but also omitted to discuss the influx
of radical Islamists from all over the world who had come to
Bosnia
to fight in the jihad. Many of these radicals stayed and became part of
Al-Qaeda's contribution to Islamic causes in other parts of the world.
The situation was repeated in the late 1990s in Kosovo when
Milosevic tried to hold
Serbia
together with a show of aggressive militarism in Kososvo. Again he played into
US hands.
The
US
and NATO, effectively bombed
Serbia
into submission and proudly announced they had done so to protect Muslims
against the Christian Serbs. The end result was the same as
Bosnia
–the establishment of a de-facto Islamic state in the heart of the Balkans
from which the Serbs have been largely driven out. Since then radical Islamists
have become entrenched in Kosovo and have begun making inroads into
Macedonia
.
Pakistan
is one the most troubling of
Washington
's "allies". The British, just prior to their withdrawal, carved
Pakistan
out of N.W. India in 1947 to meet the demands of Indian Muslims for an Islamic
state. Since that time
Pakistan
has been dominated by an elite plutocracy, the army and the mullahs.
Pakistan
was adopted by the
US
during the cold war as a reliable anti-communist bastion–after all the
Pakistani elites and mullahs hate socialism more than they hate the infidel
west. For most of its life,
Pakistan
has been the recipient of US weapons and financial support. The two nations
were at their closest during the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan
and throughout the 1980s both the Pakistani army and the CIA trained and armed
the Afghan resistance against the Soviets. After the expulsion of the Soviets in
1989, the close relationship between Pakistani military intelligence and the
Afghan Taliban flourished. This close bond continues to this day, despite
Pakistan
's outward alliance with the
US
' war on terror. Like
Saudi Arabia
,
Pakistan
is an ostensible ally of
America
, however, it is also a breeding ground of Islamic terrorists.
The above is a simple overview of some of the major
countries where
US
foreign policy has aligned itself with the Islamist agenda. Unless
America
policymakers realize the dangers or promoting the Islamist agenda, it is not
only the
US
but the entire world that will pay the price. Many nations have already begun
to pay that price. The
US
must realize that Islamism is a political force that is utterly at odds with
every notion of humanist tradition, be it western or eastern.
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