We Have Always Been At War With Terror
by digby
Billmon brings up something that’s been bugging me for a while. When, exactly, did George W. Bush officially make the US an ally of the Sunnis in a quest to crush the Shi’a crescent? Was it before or after we took down Saddam Hussein, who (with our help) kept the Shi’a in his own country thoroughly repressed and fought the Shi’a in Iran to a bitter standstill over the course of a bloody decade? Between the purple fingers and the cedar revolution babes I guess I lost track of which “terrorists” we like and which ones we don’t.
Billmon says:
The Daily Telegraph explains what we’ve been fighting for these past five years:
White House aides have said they consider the Lebanon crisis to be a “leadership moment” for Mr Bush and an opportunity to proceed with his post-September 11 plan to reshape the Middle East by building Sunni Arab opposition to Shi’a terrorism. Yesterday Mr Bush cited the role of Iran and Syria in providing help to Hezbollah. (emphasis added)
The question is whether this astonishing statement is the product of bad writing, the slack-jawed stupidity of the Telegraph’s Washington correspondent, or a deliberate Eastasia/Eurasia switch by our fun-loving Orwellians in the Cheney administration.
If it’s just bad writing or stupidity – if the phrase “building Sunni Arab opposition to Shi’a terrorism” doesn’t actually modify “post-September 11 plan,” but instead is just another way of pretending that Shrub is capable of the kind of leadership that has its “moments,” then the sentence is only unintentionally hysterical. However, given the current situation on the ground (all 18 zillion square miles of it) it may well be precisely the lie it appears to be, to wit: that fighting “Shi’a terrorism” was the point of Shrub’s post-9/11 master plan all along.
It may just bad writing from the Daily Telegraph in this case, but it’s certainly indicative of the themes we’ve been hearing from right wingers over the last couple of weeks, not to mention the Israelis themselves. Billmon excerpts this astonishing quote in a different post:
An adviser to Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz told The Observer: ‘We are finally going to fight Hizbollah on the ground. The Israeli people are ready for this, and the Sunni Muslim world also expects us to fight Shia fundamentalism. We are going to deliver.’
Manichewitz tastes a little bit like kool-aid, but it’s still a mistake to drink too much of it. It’s hard to believe that any Israeli has actually bought into that absurd rationale, but maybe they have. To put it mildly, it’s a really big mistake to think that just because Washington is assuring them that the “arab moderates” are on their side that their people agree.
The truth is, I don’t think it matters a damn anymore which “terrorists” we are fighting today or what the goals allegedly are. This is the GWOT and the enemies of “non-terror” are whomever is deemed “terrible” today. It’s irrelevant that the terrorists we were supposed to be fighting yesterday are now our allies against the terrorist we are fighting today. It’s all good.
And the press has signed on without even a second thought. Here’s Newsweak:
While Washington was sleeping the night before, yet another corner of the Middle East had erupted into violence, after Hizbullah launched a deadly ambush on an Israeli patrol. The summit, which was supposed to focus on Iran’s nukes and Russia’s democracy, had just been hijacked by the war on terror
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So you see, we have always been at War with Terror. (Or, at least Israel has been, since its inception.)
The US managed somehow, against the best efforts of Karl Rove, to separate the Iraq war from the broader “War on Terror.” It looks as though they are taking another crack at it and are now trying to conflate every problem in the mideast with its alleged fight against terrorism. This, I believe, is purely for domestic political consideration. It must be, because it is completely incoherent on the substance: we simply cannot be “fightin’ terrorism” as allies of the Israelis and Sunni muslims against the Shiites while we occupy Iraq and say we are promoting democracy. The mind reels at the cognitive dissonance embodied in that statement.
Unfortunately, while the nutty rhetoric must have the rest of the world wondering who put the acid in the sweet mint tea, here in the US it makes perfect sense. We’re fightin’ em over there — whoever those Ayrab/Jews/terrorists are — so we don’t have to fight ’em over here. Don’t worry your pretty little heads about the details — here’s a tax cut, go out and buy one of those big screen Teevees and watch you some American idol. Republicans will keep you safe from all of ’em.
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