The ITT List
Monday Nov 29, 2004 2:10 pm
Pentagon Report: “They hate our policies, not our freedom.”
The Christian Science Monitor has summarized articles written from around the world that detail a report released the day before Thanksgiving titled Strategic Communication (need Adobe Acrobat to download) that was released by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board.
Quotes from the report include:
The board also called for a strategic communications overhaul.
Definitely read the CS Monitor article if you can't download the report for more details. This report should be spread far and wide.
Quotes from the report include:
'Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies [the report says]. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing, support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.'
The board also called for a strategic communications overhaul.
If we really want to see the Muslim world as a whole [the report states], and the Arabic-speaking world in particular, move more toward our understanding of moderation and tolerance, we must reassure Muslims that this does not mean that they must submit to the American way.
Definitely read the CS Monitor article if you can't download the report for more details. This report should be spread far and wide.
15 comments ·
Please Login to Comment register a new account »
To participate in discussions, please register an account.
SAVE 53% OFF
Comments
Oh great…NOW the Pentagon decides it needs to analyze the roots of America’s troubled image in the Middle East.Maybe they should have given it some thought BEFORE they turned Iraq into Hell-on-earth.
That is assuming that it hasn’t been US policy since the 1970s to create a pretext for occupying Iraq at some point.
Iraq was a “hell on earth” before the war. One can now hope it will improve. Of course, those who kill their fellow Iraqis (not to mention destroying Iraqi infrastructure) are a big problem.
Conditions in Iraq were bad before this blatantly bogus and illegal invasion/occupation by the US, but it just so happens that the worst thing about pre-invasion Iraq was the deprivation caused by the US/British “no-fly zones” and the US-forced UN sanctions.It turns out that those sanctions were based on the same false pretexts regarding non-existent weapons that the recent invasion was based upon, and hence the unnecessary deaths of approximately a million Iraqis from 1992-2003 were also largely the fault of the good ol’ US of A.
Before that the worst things about conditions in Iraq were the death & destruction of the country wrought upon it by the US military machine during Desert Storm - another eminently avoidable conflict in service of long-term US economic and political aims - and the subsequent US-inspired Shi’ite and Kurdish rebellion.
Before that the worst thing about life in Iraq was the Iran-Iraq war, an eight year long conflict which was begun under US coaxing and could have been ended in two years or less if the US and its allies had resisted the temptation to pump BOTH of the combatant nations full of unbelievable amounts of war materiel, a conflict which would have continued indefinitely if not for Reagan’s near-inpeachment experience involving something called Iran-Contra.
Before that, in the 1970s, things were pretty good in Iraq, over 2/3rds of the people had middle class or higher living standards, Iraq was controling its own wealth and investing in its own institutions and infrastructure, education was becoming universal, women had legal equality and were full participants in civil society, ethnic and religious tensions were at a low ebb, President al-Bakr and President Asad were negotiating the unification of Iraq and Syria…obviously such ominous developments could not be allowed to continue…
This is not to say that the US and its allies hadn’t been undermining Iraq in the 1970s and 1960s as well.The Shah, Israel and the US had been supplying the Kurdish rebellion in Iraq ever since the fall of the Iraqi monarchy, and thwarting all of the considerable peace efforts various Iraqi regimes made with the Kurdish rebels(although the Shah lost interest in 1975).Even the fall of the monarchy itself was largely due to Britain’s refusal to allow Iraq to control its own oil wealth and the US insistence that Iraq join an illogical strategic monstrosity called the Baghdad Pact.
No region on earth except possibly Africa has suffered as much from western neo-colonialism, imperialism and hegemony as have “the former territories of the Ottoman Empire”.The Arab nation could have been one of the wealthiest, most stable, most peaceful, diverse and tolerant socities on earth if the West had fulfilled its promises of unity, independence and self-determination proferred by the Paris Peace Conference, the League of Nations Covenant and earlier promises by His Majesty’s Government, rather than assiduously following the blueprint laid down at San Remo and Cairo in 1921-22 which represented the greatest betrayal of the 20th century and is the father of all of the political woes of the region down to this day.
Iraq was “hell on earth” before the war.
Puleeeze…don’t try and justify this war as some kind of noble effort to improve the conditions in Iraq and as some kind of human rights crusade.
If you actually believe that this was done in the interest of some greater good you are either a liar or a fool.
Wow. . .
Did i read that the sanctions were **unnecessary**? And thus the US was at fault for the tragedy in prewar Iraq (and the invasion of Kuwait)? Hmmm, what about the $Billions that Saddam stole that could have fed and clothed the populace? And is the author unaware of the WMD programs that existed in Iraq, that were (apparently) destroyed in secret (Saddam wanted to have his cake and eat it too - but his bluff failed, bad for him, good for most everyone else). Does anyone here doubt the WMD programs would have resumed as soon as Saddam thought he could pull them off? Or perhaps he had a change of heart, LOL!
And if Iraq does become a democracy (ala South America, perhaps), will the war still have been in vain? If it actually brings about “the greater good” can we dismiss it due to the US not being altruistic enough?
These are weighty issues that do not have simple answers. Those who watched Kerry may have come to appreciate the subtleties of these issues. Others can just stick with “War is Bad” or the flip side “The US right or wrong”. Me i like the shades of grey that are ever present in the politics of real situations.
Anyone wanna defend the “oil for food” stealing program - you know, the reason that France (and Germany and Russia) opposed the war? It surely was good for Kofi’s son. Speaking of which, anyone here fond of Kofi? Talk about stupid and corrupt! But that pretty much describes the state of the UN, which by comparison makes the US look perfect (a huge feat, considering the US itself!).
You “obviously” watch Fox News too much.
The UN oil for food “scandal” is the biggest phony investigation the Republicans have cooked-up since “Troopergate”.The timing of it - the fact that the Congressional investigations were pushed into overdrive immediately after the Secy Gen finally found the guts to pronounce the invasion/occupation illegal - is just so convenient.
Four or five billion dollars being unaccounted for out of a program in which over a hundred billion in goods and services were exchanged, and which saved countless lives, does not constitute a major scam.The rest of the billions the investigators are claiming were illegal kickbacks and so forth were documented, OK’d and signed at the time the transactions occurred. And what country received the bulk of Iraq’s oil under oil for food? Not France, not Russia, not Germany, but the US:We got 40% of it and our recipients signed on to the same surcharges and fees as the rest did.
Your European villains wanted to lift the sanctions completely.It was only US obstinacy and utter callous disregard for the suffering of the Iraqis which forced the UN to come up with the oil for food program as a compromise.And isn’t it just barely possible that the ‘Euro-weasels’ understood the deeply anti-imperialistic tendency of most patriotic Iraqis well enough to realize that the US invasion was going to result in just the sort of catastrophe that is happening?
And what “cake” was that rascally Saddam supposedly having, and eating, too? The cake of having CIA and Mossad informants roaming Iraq at will for years looking for non-existent weapons while his people starved? That’s cake? In hindsight Saddam destroyed his weapons prematurely, hoping to avoid the necessity of having inspections at all.It is also obvious in hindsight, and to astute observers at the time, that the threat of Iraq’s weapons was always hugely inflated for propagandistic purposes by Iran, Kurd separatists, Israel, Britain and the US - the usual suspects.
Why is it when anyone disagrees with a leftist, they immediately say nonsense like “you watch too much Fox news”? Is this is in the liberal handbook, along with other silliness (conservates “hate” the poor and blacks, etc)?
For the record, my main source of news is papers and the BBC (mostly NY Times, Washington Post, and my local paper, with a healthy mix of Internet news like ITT as well).
Can leftists fathom that very smart, very well informed people hold differing opinions than the left for very good reasons? Or is it all just a religious argument? You either believe the TRUTH as told by the left or are damned?
Was Iraq’s sponsering of terrorism the US’s fault? The suffering of its people? It war with Iran? Or was there **someone** else who led that country into such folly (Baathism being the last refuge of real Nazis, Islamic style)?
Do you really have faith in the UN? Did it occur to you that Kofi might have been attempting to nudge the election in the US, with his declaration of the “illegality” of the Iraqi war? Is there a more corrupt body in the world (that is not imprisoned) than the UN? The UN that has a hard time even saying that genocide is taking place in Sudan, for instance?
How well-informed can you be when you call Ba’thism an “Islamic” movement? Ba’thism was founded primarily by Christian intellectuals in Beirut and Damascus and is strictly secular and non-sectarian.It is also a progressive movement, not at all Nazistic (Nazism is inherently conservative), although many revolutionary movements which become entrenched in power and lose sight of their principles do tend to take on an authoritarian cast, and Saddam even in the best of times was hardly a good example of Ba’thist tendencies.
Iraq has been the sponsor of precious little international terrorism since the 1980s, as far as I can tell.Saddam unwisely made a big show of compensating families killed in the Palestinians’ resistance to occupation, but that’s a pretty thin pretext for invasion, unless Israel wanted to try it - and Netanyahu had already turned that plan down in 1998 when Perle and co. offered him their “Clean Break” proposal, which morphed into the current US-led scenario as soon as they got back from Tel Aviv.
What is there besides that? Ollie North’s dreaded nemesis, Abu Nidal? He was inactive since the 1980s.
Abu Abbas, who was accused (also by the Israeli/Iranian agent Ollie North) of being the mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking, and who died last winter due to mysterious health problems at the US Camp Cropper torture center in Iraq?He was convicted of lesser charges and pardoned by the Italians for his minimal culpability in the Achille Lauro affair, and there was zero evidence of his subsequent involvement in terrorism.
The supposed assassination attempt on the Bush clan in 1992? That was a probable PR scam by the Kuwaitis.
Or is the connection to international terrorism Iraq’s ‘scarlet pimpernel’, the incredibly elusive, formerly deceased, one-legged Jordanian retard, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the ready-made excuse for any brutal policy the occupation wants to carry out in the northern half of Iraq? The report from the famously infallible James Bond-esque British Intelligence that he had his leg sawn off in a Baghdad hospital in 2002 was based on one cell phone call overheard in London in which someone, calling from somewhere, who might have been Zarqawi, said he was in Baghdad.But there is far firmer evidence that he transited through Iran, a hearty supporter of both al-Qaeda and US policies among its Arab neighbors, and settled in Iraq along the Iranian border, under the friendly US air umbrella, with a 90% Kurdish Islamist group called Ansar al-Islam.I’m sorry, but that is a connection with Iran and the US, not Saddam.
What else is there to tie Saddam to “terrorism of global reach”? The reports of such unimpeachable sources as Laurie Mylroie, Judith Miller, or Ahmed Chalabi, perhaps?
As for US policy, how ‘bout if we quit acting as though the Israelis have a God-given right to occupy the entirety of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and to stomp on anyone else who gets in the way?
Oh wait, that’s exactly what they say they have, isn’t it?
If there was ever an argument against Biblical inerrancy…
From http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/baath.html
“Here, in the 1930s, the two founders of the Baath Party were educated at the Sorbonne University. They were middle-class Arabs from the then French colony of Syria.
Michael Aflaq was a Greek Orthodox Christian and would become the main ideologue of Baathism, preaching freedom from Western colonialism, Arab unity and socialism. And Salah al-Din Bitar, born of a Muslim family in Damascus, would be the practical politician, later becoming prime minister of an independent Syria.”
I really don’t think that Baathism being a Nazi Islamic construct is conroversial. Perhaps all of the many MANY web sites that define Baathism are wrong?
I would not phrase it: “Iraq has been the sponsor of precious little international terrorism since the 1980s, as far as I can tell.Saddam unwisely made a big show of compensating families killed in the Palestinians resistance to occupation”
“Compensating families killed in the Palestinians resistance to occupation?” By this do you mean offering $25K to suicide bombers? I apparently do not use English the same way you do. . .
I can see from the tenor of tihs discussion that any terrorism Iraq was involved in was not really Saddams fault. He was an innocent victim of the mean ole USA. Poor guy.
I do wonder if you hold the UN in higher esteem than the US? If so, i imagine that would explain why we see things so very differently (gotta love Libya or pre-war Iraq being in charge of Human Rights comissions!).
Opps, I probably should have included the following 2 paragraphs, for those too lazy to follow links. . .
“Back home in French Syria, they became teachers by day and political intriguers by night. Early Baathist ideas were strongly fringed with fascism, as you might expect from a group of men whose ideas were formed in France in the turbulent Thirties.
The movement was based on classless racial unity, hence the strong anti-Marxism, and on national socialism in the scientific sense of the word, such as nationalised industry and an autarkic economy serving the needs of the nation. Hence, the antipathy towards Western capitalism.”
Actually I knew that there are MANY web sites that describe Ba’thism in exactly the way that your Mr Katz from ‘eretz yisroel’has.(here’s a hint:CONSIDER THE SOURCE!)There are MANY anti-Arab Zionist propaganda sites on the web spreading a great deal of misinformation about Arabs and/or Muslims.
(In case you haven’t caught my drift yet, Zionism’s greatest enemy is secular, anti-imperial, pan-Arab nationalism, not Islamism, not the Ikhwan, not Jihad, certainly not theocratic Shi’ism. Ba’thism is nothing if it is not anti-imperial, secular, pan-Arab nationalism.That’s why Mr Katz and his ilk wanted the US to take down, not Islamist/Islamic governments which did support al-Qaeda, such as Pakistan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Sudan or Iran, but Iraq.And that is why Syria is next.)
If you want to take Israel’s propaganda at face value then you are going to have a serious problem ever understanding the Middle East.
Mr Katz’s assertions about the early Ba’th movement are only that: Assertions, shallow, baseless assertions.One might assume with greater reason that Bitar and Aflaq’s studies at the Sorbonne imbued them with French political ideas, not Italian or German ones.One might reasonably also assume that when they returned to Syria they were shocked by the disparity between France’s high political ideals and their excellent treatment in Paris compared to their status as abused colonial subjects in their own homeland.This, not Mr Katz’s interpretation, would be the correct one.
There is nothing racist about Ba’thism, as the phrase “strong emphasis on racial unity” implies.Any idiot knows (Katz & present company excluded) that modern Arab nationality is a linguistic identity, not a racial one.It would also seem to me that “nationalized industry and an autarkic economy” and “antipathy towards western capitalism” add up to anti-imperialism. I don’t see why anyone who has no imperialistic designs on the Arab region would find that terribly sinister.
And not even Katz offers you any cover on your “Islamic” point, so I won’t bother belaboring that, besides asking if you heard someone blathering about “Islamo-fascism” and you figured it was an indirect reference to Ba’thism, or a way of creating a nexus between Islamists and Ba’thists, ‘cause that’s what I thought when that phrase was having its debut in the corporate media.Only difference is, I knew it was propaganda.
As for the UN, it’s no better than the sum of its parts, and the most influential of those parts by far happens to have the initials USA.If you don’t like Mr Annan, you should at least recognize that he was America’s choice.Personally, I would have preferred that Boutros-Ghali stay longer, but Senator Helms and like-minded lobbies of influence did not want him for various reasons, some more explicitly stated than others.
Furthermore, if Mr Annan - who was supposedly elected based on his expertise in solving problems in sub-Saharan Africa - didn’t lose his office over his handling of the Rwanda genocide, then why should he lose it over a few billion dollars missing from a program that saved lives?
Where is the moral outrage, the street protests over the French atrocities in Ivory Coast? No blood for chocolate, ne pas?
Billy Buffaloe
My information about Abu Abbas was incorrect on one point: He was not pardoned after conviction by the Italian courts for his role in the Achille Lauro hijacking.He was convicted ‘in absentia’ after having been released from Italian custody.
Sorry.
——-