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Fearing Fear Itself: Krugman, Cockburn on Islamofascism Nonsense
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
The New York Times - Oct 29, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/opinion/29krugman.html
Fearing Fear Itself
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In Americas darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation
not to suc***b to nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror. But that
was then.
Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president " including
all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the
Republican nomination " have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the
centerpiece of their campaigns.
Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani
is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to
start bombing Iran as soon as it is logistically possible.
Mr. Podhoretz, the [former] editor of Commentary and a founding
neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the main center of the
Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.
The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating
a world shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes. Indeed,
Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st
century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which
they give the name Eurabia.
Do I have to point out that none of this makes a bit of sense?
For one thing, there isnt actually any such thing as Islamofascism "
its not an ideology; its a figment of the neocon imagination. The
term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss
over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked
America, to Saddam Hussein, who didnt. And Iran had nothing whatsoever
to do with 9/11 " in fact, the Iranian regime was quite helpful to the
United States when it went after Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in
Afghanistan.
Beyond that, the claim that Iran is on the path to global domination is
beyond ludicrous. Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in
many ways, and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear
weapons. But lets have some perspective, please: were talking about a
country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose
military budget is roughly the same as Swedens.
Meanwhile, the idea that bombing will bring the Iranian regime to its
knees " and bombing is the only option, since weve run out of troops "
is pure wishful thinking. Last year Israel tried to cripple Hezbollah
with an air campaign, and ended up strengthening it instead. Theres
every reason to believe that an attack on Iran would produce the same
result, with the added effects of endangering U.S. forces in Iraq and
driving oil prices well into triple digits.
Mr. Podhoretz, in short, is engaging in what my relatives call crazy
talk. Yet he is being treated with respect by the front-runner for the
G.O.P. nomination. And Mr. Podhoretzs rants are, if anything, saner
than some of what weve been hearing from some of Mr. Giulianis rivals.
Thus, in a recent campaign ad Mitt Romney asserted that America is in a
struggle with people who aim to unite the world under a single
jihadist Caliphate. To do that they must collapse freedom-loving
nations. Like us. He doesnt say exactly who these jihadists are, but
presumably hes referring to Al Qaeda " an organization that has
certainly demonstrated its willingness and ability to kill innocent
people, but has no chance of collapsing the United States, let alone
taking over the world.
And Mike Huckabee, whom re****ters like to ****tray as a nice, reasonable
guy, says that if Hillary Clinton is elected, Im not sure well have
the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat
this countrys ever faced in Islamofascism. Yep, a bunch of lightly
armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power " which arent even
allies " pose a greater danger than Hitlers panzers or the Soviet
nuclear arsenal ever did.
All of this would be funny if it werent so serious.
In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration adopted fear-mongering as
a political strategy. Instead of treating the attack as what it was "
an atrocity committed by a fundamentally weak, though ruthless
adversary " the administration ****trayed America as a nation under
threat from every direction.
Most Americans have now regained their balance. But the Republican
base, which lapped up the administrations rhetoric about the axis of
evil and the war on terror, remains infected by the fear the Bu****es
stirred up " perhaps because fear of terrorists maps so easily into the
bases older fears, including fear of dark-skinned people in general.
And the base is looking for a candidate who shares this fear.
Just to be clear, Al Qaeda is a real threat, and so is the Iranian
nuclear program. But neither of these threats frightens me as much as
fear itself " the unreasoning fear that has taken over one of Americas
two great political parties.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
***
Counterpunch - Oct 27-28, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn10272007.html
Thank You, David Horowitz
So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
In America awareness never sleeps and has been on particularly active
duty this October, designated as Breast Cancer Awareness Month
(proclamation of President George Bush); as Domestic Violence Awareness
Month (proclamation of President George Bush); as Energy Awareness
Month (proclamation of President George Bush and the Environmental
Protection Agency); and--we speak here specifically of October 22-29 --
Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (proclamation of David Horowitz, a fat
and hairy ex-Trot living in Los Angeles).
Cautionary interpolation: Horowitz was certainly fat last time I
clapped eyes on him and he s****ts a beard which waxes and wanes in
outreach depending on which Google image you look at. And yes,
Christopher Hitchens is also a fat and hairy ex-Trot, is also a known
associate of the man Horowitz, and also thunders against
Islamo-Fascism. Nonetheless we speak here of Horowitz.
When I first saw Horowitz he was neither fat nor hairy nor apparently
aware of Islamo-Fascism. This was in the late 1960s in London and he
was working for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, studying at the
feet of Isaac Deutscher and Ralph Miliband. About a decade later I saw
him again, this time in Wa****ngton DC presiding over a well-publicized
"Second Thoughts" conference, announcing his departure from the Left.
He spoke harshly of his parents' decision to make him watch uplifting
features about the Soviet Union and forbade any Doris Day movies, a
common blunder in child-brain-wa****ng techniques among the comrades at
that time.
Since then, like other Trotskyist vets, such as the above-mentioned
Hitchens, Horowitz has thrown his energies into crusading on behalf of
the American right, fuelled in his efforts by copious annual
disbursements from the richer denizens of that well populated sector.
Richard Mellon Scaife--apex demon in the "vast right-wing conspiracy"
identified by Hillary Clinton amid the Lewinsky scandal--has poured
millions into Horowitz's organizations, as have other well-heeled
conservative foundations. Every now and again Horowitz will raise some
spectacularly nutty alarum, like the Los Angeles Times being taken over
by pinkoes, and I always assume that Horowitz must be filling out his
annual grant applications, and reminding Scaife that others may snooze
and idle, but he, Horowitz, is unceasing in his vigilance against
sedition.
In Horowitz's bestiary, sedition comes in all the traditional forms,
from commies on campus to commies in the press and he's churned out
endless bulletins charting their insidious reach. Some of his specific
accusations have no doubt been useful to fearful school administrations
eager to harry and expel the few radical teachers able to find
employment in these bleak times.
But the problem for Horowitz is one of supply. The left in America is
really in very poor shape: near zero Commies, and really only a
sprinkling of radical black profs, militant Lesbians and kindred
antinomians to beat up on. The notion of pinkoes in the media is
laughable to all except the fearful imaginations of millionaires like
Scaife. Hence the spotlight on Islamo-Fascism, a gloriously vague term
whose origin is the topic of a tussle between Malise Ruthven, who used
the term in 1980 to describe all authoritarian Islamic governments, and
Stephen Schwartz, yet another fat, bearded former Trotskyist who says
he was the first to use it in its specific application in 2000,
eventually receiving a tap on the shoulder for so doing from
Christopher Hitchens and John Sullivan. Arise, Sir Stephen!
Islamo-Fascism Awareness week has been featuring Horowitz and big-name
ranters of the right like Anne Coulter and Fox's Sean Hannity, plus
former US Senator Rick Santorum, and noted Islamophobe Daniel Pipes.
They descended on various college campuses to be received by
Christian-Fascists and the curious while they hurled imprecations at
the left for being soft on sons of the Prophet stoning women to death
for adultery.
The reaction of the left has been mixed. In some ways it always takes
Horowitz's antics far too seriously, though the latter's effect on
timid college administrations cannot be entirely gainsaid. On the other
hand, Awareness week is having a galvanizing effect. Coalitions have
formed to combat Horowitz's version of Awareness with superior
Progressive Awareness about what is good or not so good about Islam.
Since Santorum and others have ripe records of intolerance for women,
the air is usefully thick with shouts of "hypocrite". Horowitz is
probably the best organizer the left has these days. He's an Energizer,
apt to the beseechings of Energy Awareness Week, though the target in
that instance was probably that other insidious element in the American
way of life, the incandescent light bulb.
*
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