Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Let's begin with the terrorists themselves and then move to their causes. If you ignore the contradictory details, if you twist and stretch it enough, the overall picture of the "Muslim" terrorist conflict presented by our corporate- and government-controlled media seems to fit the shape of the president's assessment. The Bush administration is certainly to be commended for acknowledging the existence of evil in our world. But viewing "Islamic" terrorists as innately and unalterably aggressive simply does not square with the facts.

Even "Muslim" terrorists exhibit some good qualities. For instance, despite the neoconservative image of them as inveterate liars and cowardly, "Islamic" terrorists demonstrate a sincerity, truthfulness and valor. This is apparent in their willingness to publicly take credit for their attacks. Members of the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers, the Islamic Army in Iraq, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, Tawhid and Jihad, Soldiers of the Prophet's Companions, Karbala Brigades, Armed Islamic Group, Battalion of the Martyr Abdullah Azzam, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hizballah, and numerous other "Islamic" terrorist associations thruout the Middle East have claimed responsibility for hundreds of deadly attacks. Two things are remarkable about these claims. First, they tend to be accurate regarding the misdeeds of the United States and Israel, which they often state as reasons for the crimes; we have indeed been responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people in the Middle East, have practiced economic and military imperialism, and have "polluted the lands of Islam" with the degradations of our Western culture. Second, by fearlessly taking credit for their acts, the terrorists have risked lifelong imprisonment, torture, or even instant death at the hands of US intelligence agents and armed forces. Owning up to a crime you have committed requires courage. If the terrorists were cowardly, they would deny any involvement in their offenses.

"Muslim" terrorists also have a degree of respect for human life. If terrorists are totally depraved, evil beings, we would expect them to go on murderous rampages and slaughter thousands, or tens of thousands, of people. Instead, the number of innocent civilians killed in all terrorist crimes worldwide between 1968 and 2007 is far lower than the number of terrorists themselves. Roughly half of all terrorist attacks worldwide, and large numbers in Israel and Iraq, fail to kill or injure anyone. In contrast, a single US cluster bomb dropped in Afghanistan in 2001 during Operation Infinite Justice killed hundreds of innocent people. The large number of such bombs we exploded caused thousands of innocent Afghani lives to be sacrificed for mere dozens of terrorists. During the entire length of Israel's war against Lebanon, the detested terrorist network Hizballah killed only 200 civilians; the Lebanese National Resistance Front executed a scant 9; and the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction knocked off just 4 innocent people. In contrast, the Israeli forces pounded southern Lebanese villages and the capital city of Beirut itself, killing thousands of innocent civilians, not to mention that Israeli General Ariel Sharon was blatantly responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Beirut refugee camps. Finally, the attacks of September 11 still stand unmatched as the largest massacre of its kind in history, yet it pales in comparison to the death toll from our nuclear bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II. If terrorists really were intent on exterminating all the upright people of the world, as our president has said, then why do not they behave like mass murderers?

Another flaw in President Bush's portrayal of "Islamic" terrorists is that they are striving to achieve noble and upright goals. As the president himself admitted in his lengthy speech on September 20 after 9/11, "There are good and bad causes". All the evidence shows that "Muslim" terrorists are using an evil method to produce good results. For example, the notorious Taliban terrorists used religious compulsion, mutilation, censorship, house arrest, murder, and other forms of cruelty to preserve Afghanistan from the Western evils of abortion, divorce, immorality, materialism, corruption, and godlessness. Obviously the Taliban was right to condemn these evils and try to keep them out of their culture, but they were wrong to use abusive and inhumane means toward that end. In fact, the causes of "Islamic" terrorists are the same as the provocations to terrorism described in No. 3. Osama bin Laden and all "Muslim" terrorists wish the United States to exit the Middle East because of the social disturbance caused by our insatiable economic appetite, our continual warmongering, and our cultural filth. No wonder Osama bin Laden hates America: we have supplied him with a terrible picture of crimes against humanity. It is gravely wrong for him to preach the murder of innocent Americans as the cure for US evil. At the same time, he is right to join Pope John Paul II and our Catholic bishops in condemning this list of US actions as unmistakably evil.

The view which I share with the "antiwar activists of the Democratic left" is not naïve and out of touch but accurate and realistic.