The War on Islam Terror

UPDATE: 19:00 GMT. Please see the bottom of this article.

Perhaps you missed that latest controversy around Sarah Palin. Here’s what she had to say from her Twitter Account on Sunday afternoon:

All of this hubub is surrounding a plan to erect a Mosque near the World Trade Center site, ground zero for the 9/11 attacks. Many have come out and protested the plan, but this is the first time a politician of this stature has come out and condemned it.

Is she right on? Is she racist? Is she looking out for the sensitivities of the 9/11 victims and their families? That’s what the media is asking.

But I’ve got a different question.  Is Sarah Palin’s thinking on this issue connected with the the neoconservative  school of thought on foreign policy for the last 10+ years. And is the neocon hawk actually making our country less safe?

Immediately after 9/11, people jumped to the conclusion that this horrific act was committed by radical militant Muslims. They were correct. Interestingly enough, immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing, the same conclusion was reached, for quite some time, until it was discovered that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were responsible.((Also interesting, during the D.C. Sniper incident, everyone was convinced that this was the act of a crazy white man. Why do we get blamed for everything?)) And yet, one of the first things out of President George W. Bush’s mouth after the attacks was a blanket condemnation of racism or discrimination against Muslims. In fact, Bush repeatedly made claims that the “War on Terror” was not a war on Islam.  He claimed that the attacks were not the result of a new front of a holy war, nor the result of a culture clash, but the 9/11 attacks were committed because terrorists “hate our freedoms.”  Not so, says Osama bin Laden, which is why they haven’t attacked Sweden. But, ignoring that (another thing Bush was good at, ignorance), Bush maintained that Islam was not to blame. Despite this, tens of thousands of American Muslims have been arrested, questioned, or deported in the wake of September 11th, 2001. Very little to none of that activity has resulted in actionable intelligence that has stopped a terrorist attack.  And, also, we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, where we failed to find the terrorist leadership (except the 4 #3′s) or the WMD’s.

Which brings me to my first point. Sarah Palin simply implied what George Bush deliberately danced around, that the neocon line of thinking for the last 10 (or 20)  years has been that this is a new Crusade. America is G.I. Joe, the Muslims are mostly Cobra, and we need to bomb them into the stone age.

Now that I’ve probably alienated my own conservative base, let me offer my point.  IF the neocons are wrong, then this line of thinking is pushing our civilizations closer to a real holy war. That’s overly dramatic, of course, but let’s keep in mind that there were only 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, so it doesn’t take a massive shift in ideology among Muslims to create dire results.  IF they are right, then we have a billion enemies out there, and we can’t win through traditional methods. Didn’t we learn this in Iraq, and then Afghanistan, when we adopted the “Hearts and Minds/Three Cups of Tea” approach?

Either way, perhaps a mosque at Ground Zero would be the perfect first step to putting out the fire. Wouldn’t that signal to the world, and our own Muslim citizens, that we were serious about being the model for democracy and pluralism, not to mention forgiveness and understanding?

Apparently not. I’ve been “refudiated” by Sarah Palin.((But who gives a $h!t, because she doesn’t know that “refute” and “repudiate” are two different words?! And the “heartland” only has one heart.))

The arrogance and ignorance of the neocon way has failed us in another way, though. In defiance of the “know thy enemy” tenant of military strategy, despite the fact that we have a massive, disjointed, and poorly organized intelligence system, hardly anyone in our government reads, writes, or speaks Arabic. So much for reaching out to the Muslim world.

Our xenophobia and isolation is, frankly, a massive disadvantage in the 21st century. And it is increasingly a disadvantage unique to the United States, because the educated people in the other countries in the world spend their whole lives studying us, learning about us, and learning how to cooperate (at best) or deal (at worst) with us. And they speak English better than Sarah Palin.

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Update: One of my associates on Twitter, @CelottoCellini, brought the following to my attention. There is room for debate on this issue, plenty in fact, but there are also plenty of examples of SCARY racism. Jonathan Turley finds an excellent example here of a GOP group that has sponsored an anti-Muslim ad.