We Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Political Program

Let me be straight about the war thing. I am not for it in any fashion, whatsoever. I did not have the knee-jerk reaction to invade a Muslim country because of 9/11. I was never a believer in WMD and the Iraq connection that was concocted in order to invade that country. I did not believe in the escalation of the invasion (I refuse to call it a war, because no war was ever declared by Congress), and I am not on board with sending more troops to Afghanistan (not to mention being opposed to sending drones into Pakistan -- and using Blackwater Ops alongside CIA agents to basically assassinate whomever we disagree with).

I think, as usual, Glenn Greenwald has a good piece up on Obama's furtherance of the Bush policy of attack them there so we don't have to fight them here, and the current use of isolated incidents of alleged Muslim home grown terrorists. Plus, I find it interesting that the white supremacist groups that advocate overthrowing the government and who show up at political functions armed to the teeth these days are not considered political terrorists, home grown at that. The double standard, the Christian v. Muslim ideology, i.e., Christian good, Muslim bad, reflects on the stupidity of this nation as a whole, and is an embarrassment to me as an American.

There is clearly a concerted effort by the Government to claim loudly that the threat posed by radicalized American Muslims is increasing.

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At least from all appearances, these claims are being made exclusively on the basis of a handful of recent episodes involving American Muslims accused of having links to Al Qaeda and/or the Taliban. There is no data whatsoever offered to corroborate the claim of a "trend."

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Waging wars, occupying, and dropping bombs in Muslim countries is the single most counter-productive step that can be taken to combat Islamic extremism (indefinitely imprisoning them without charges is a close second). It's akin to advising a lung cancer patient to triple the quantity of cigarettes he smokes each day. Yet we continue to do it over and over, and then point to the harms we cause as reasons we need to continue doing it. Our "counter-terrorism" campaign basically consists of three steps repeated endlessly:

(1) Interfere in or otherwise act aggressively in the Muslim world.

(2) Provoke increased anti-American sentiment and fuel terrorism as a result of Step 1.

(3) Point to the increased anti-American sentiment and terrorism as a reason we need to escalate our interference and aggression in the Muslim world. Return to Step 1.

Read the whole thing, I dare you.