In their refusal to ask the question of why, really, Muslims are being radicalized, President Obama and Prime Minister Brown are no different from their immediate predecessors.
When George “Dubya” Bush and Tony Blair ruled the world and were pressing ahead with their “war on terrorism”, I used to ask this question: Are they ignorant of history and don’t know what they are doing and therefore stupid, or do they and/or some of the powerful vested interests which pull their strings want a Clash of Civilizations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic?
Obama’s and Brown’s responses to the failed attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Denver on Christmas Day suggest to me that the question is still valid.
Obama pledged to build on America’s success in “eliminating” terrorist leaders and “disrupting plots”. Brown pledged to step up security activities on all fronts including “tracking people and explosives”.
In other words, like the moronic Bush and the deluded Blair, the new bums on the seats in the Oval Office and Number 10 Downing Street are only prepared to deal with the consequences of the radicalization of Muslims. The causes are not to be examined.
If this remains the case, it seems to me that the prospects for averting a Clash of Civilizations at some point in a foreseeable future, and whether or not any parties actually want it, will be greatly reduced.
Why, really, are Muslims everywhere being radicalized?
The best short answer to the question of why British Muslims were being radicalized was set down in a letter written (and subsequently leaked) in May 2004 by the British Foreign Office’s most senior official, Permanent Secretary Sir Michael Jay. His letter, a warning to Prime Minister Blair and his ministers, was addressed to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull.
This letter stated that British foreign policy was a “key driver” behind recruitment by extremist Muslim groups. It said that a “recurring theme” among the underlying causes of extremism in the Muslim community was the “issue of British foreign policy, especially in the context of the Middle East peace process and Iraq.” It added: “British foreign policy and the perception of its negative effect on Muslims globally plays a significant role in creating a feeling of anger and impotence among especially the younger generation of British Muslims.”
What the Foreign Office was effectively saying to Prime Minister Blair was roughly the following: “If you want to stop Islamic radicalization, you must change your foreign policy and, in particular, you must put some distance between yourself and the Bush administration by ending your support for the Zionist state of Israel right or wrong.”
Blair subsequently signalled his complete rejection of that advice and his contempt for it. He did so with his statement that “Muslims have a completely false sense of grievance against the West.” (That to me was proof that Blair was as deluded as any Zionist).
In 2004 when Sir Michael Jay wrote his letter, it could have been said that the substitution of “American” for “British” foreign policy in his text would have explained why more American Muslims were on their way to being radicalized.
Since then and from the global Muslim perspective things have got much worse.
We’ve had American, British and other Western approval of two Israeli demonstrations of naked state terrorism – Israel’s wars on Lebanon and then the Gaza Strip. And today we’re witnessing the escalation by Western occupation forces of the killing of Muslims in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan while, at the same time, all the major powers are complicit, by default if not design, in Israel’s on-going blockade of the Gaza Strip.
American and other Western foreign policy is not, however, the only cause of the radicalization of Muslims everywhere.
Throughout the Arab and wider Muslim world the ruling regimes, almost without exception, are loathed by their masses (their streets). With good reason the regimes are perceived as being corrupt, impotent, repressive and, effectively, stooges of America-and Zionism.
The Arab and wider Muslim world is truly an explosion of hurt, anger and humiliation waiting for its time to happen.
Why oh why can’t Western leaders see this?
It seems to me that either they are stupid or they and/or some of those who pull their strings want it, the explosion, to happen.
If there’s another answer, I’d like to know it.
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There is so much denial in both British and American politics that it is astonishing. I think a lot of it actually comes from the silly exceptionalism that is the collective psyche of these societies more than anything else, and this exceptionalism effectively drops blinders over the eyes of the politicians as well as the citizens.
To always see oneself as better, smarter, more culturally advanced, more enlightened, and more civilized than anyone else is dangerously arrogant and foolish. I believe the refusal of Britain and the US to see themselves clearly prevents them from understanding that their policies are at the root of the world's bloodiest ongoing conflicts. For example, Obama's Nobel Prize acceptance speech was a portrait of denial in all its splendor; he cloaked the aggressiveness and bellicosity of US foreign policy in florid rhetoric, speaking of America's duty to defend the less fortunate (while simultaneously exterminating them!). The pervasiveness of the exceptionalist mindset was painfully evident in the lack of criticism of the speech by anyone in the mainstream media or by any western world leader. Reading the text of the speech, I easily convinced myself that the words had been uttered by George W. Bush and not Barack Obama, who still receives more kid-gloves treatment by the press than he deserves.
Power corrupts. And, when one defines the term "corruption" correctly, ie broadly, this is seen as any decline of a politician's behaviour, not just in those behaviours that may be seen as criminal.
When a politician has become so conceited, as I saw in my own country when the PM had been in power for 9 years and dripped conceit, such a person is corrupted, even if they never took a bribe in their life.
They aspire to power and office, so they have to believe that what they aspire to is good and noble when in fact it is merely to be at the summit of a heap of ordure.
So nothing they do or those they seek to emulate did will ever be wrong.
Hence when one's native self righteousness is inflamed by holding or seeking political office, all critics are regarded by these as being without basis, and all opponents of the life style they advocate are in their thinking terrorists or headed that way.
They dont ask why because they assume they know why, in the light of their own self righteousness.
Which is why I will flee the possibility of a life in politics, and it was once suggested to me, like the plague.