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FBI Knocked...He's Not Home But You Can Find Him at the White House
October 8, 2001
MID-EAST REALITIES © - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 10/08: Now the world will become much more confusing and dangerous, and the opponents of the American Empire will obviously be forced even deeper underground -- both literally and figuratively -- becoming even more insular and isolated among themselves leading to who knows what kind of future blowback. The same U.S. that 22 years ago made the Afghan's into target fodder for the Soviets (by secretly actually urging on the Soviet invasion), then abandoned the decimated Afghans when the Soviet Empire fell, then watched in complacency as starvation and disease began to grip the country, then radicalized the Afghans as the Saudis and Paks helped bring the Taliban to power, and now having tremendous exxacerbated the refugee and famine crisis is dropping a little food aid at the same tme it is bombing them into submission...and planning on who is next.
In recent history, going back to that crucial historic year of 1967, the United States, or its main regional ally Israel, has at one time or another bombed the following Arab Muslim countries in the Middle East region: Libya Lebanon Iraq Iran Syria Jordan Egypt Sudan Palestine Afghanistan Somalia
And this doesn't even begin to deal with covert matters relating to the CIA and black off-the-record ops; nor with the U.S.-instigated invasion of Iran by Iraq shortly after the Iranian revolution leading to nearly a decade of terrible blood-letting at that time; nor with Chechnya or the Balkans. By conservative count, more than 3 million Arabs and Muslims have been killed by actions directly attributable to either the U.S. or Israel during this period of history, the number of wounded and destroyed lives far greater.
It is in this context that the events of the moment can be better understood rather than thinking of everything in a historical vacuum a la CNN. And it is this context that these two interesting articles make sense:
MUSLIM LEADERS STRUGGLE WITH MIXED MESSAGES
By Hanna Rosin and John Mintz [Washington Post, 2 October 2001]: On Sept. 20, FBI agents showed up at the house of Hamza Yusuf, a Muslim teacher and speaker in Northern California. They wanted to question him about a speech he had given two days before the Sept. 11 attacks, in which he said that the U.S. "stands condemned" and that "this country has a great, great tribulation coming to it." "He's not home," his wife said. "He's with the president." The agents thought she was joking, Yusuf said. But she wasn't. That day Yusuf was at the White House, the only Muslim in a group of religious leaders invited to pray with President Bush, sing "God Bless America," and endorse the president's plans for military action. "Hate knows no religion. Hate knows no country," Yusuf said that day outside the White House. "Islam was hijacked on that September 11, 2001, on that plane as an innocent victim." Yusuf's mixed message created awkwardness for the White House -- and revealed a dilemma for the suddenly very visible Muslim leadership in America. The president invited Yusuf because he is one of the "leading Muslim clerics," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. When the president meets with a group, "you should never assume . . . that he would ever agree with anything anybody in that group has said," added another Bush spokesman, Ari Fleischer. Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Yusuf's speeches would occasionally stray into anti-American rhetoric, hitting apocalyptic themes. At least one other Muslim leader invited to the White House since the attacks also has made provocative remarks about America. But now Yusuf has joined other American Muslim leaders as they have closed ranks behind the message that Islam is a peaceful religion and that extremists are outside its fold. No one suggests that Yusuf had anything directly to do with the attacks, and he has not endorsed violence against American targets. But some Islamic experts said Yusuf is one example of a Muslim leader who speaks of peace to the American public though he has used incendiary language in private. The contradictory idioms are, in part, an outgrowth of the American Muslim community's reluctance to air its disagreements in public, said Ali Asani, an Islamic studies professor at Harvard University. Muslims "are so sensitive about the perception of Islam," Asani said. "Even when there are disagreements within the Muslim community about extremism, they will project to the outside that we are all monolithic and peaceful." Asani, who has watched the spread of rhetoric such as Yusuf's with dismay, added that it was time for a reckoning. After Sept. 11, the more extreme leaders went "on alert," said Asani. "They realize that they are part of the problem, that the Sept. 11 incident can be the result of this kind of thinking they have been propagating for so many years." Yusuf said he partly regrets the speech, adding that it was "tragic timing" and that he would never give it now, after the attacks. "I don't want this country to be destroyed," he said. "I don't want to have punishment come to this country. I'm not a wrathful person." Yusuf was born in California to an American Catholic father and a Greek Orthodox mother. He converted to Islam at age 17, and studied with Muslim scholars in the Middle East. Then he returned to college in this country and began teaching Arabic and Islamic affairs at a center in California. He is known among his students as a charismatic teacher who can speak to the experiences of young second-generation Muslims. His Sept. 9 speech was not the first time Yusuf drew criticism. In 1995 he said, "the Jews would have us believe that God had this bias to this little small tribe in the middle of the Sinai desert, and all the rest of humanity is just rubbish. I mean, that is the basic doctrine of the Jewish religion and that's why it is a most racist religion." "Those are old speeches," Yusuf said yesterday about those remarks. "I've spent 10 years in the Arab world and I've learned their language. . . . Anti-semitism, anti-anything does not reflect my core values. If people were fair, they would see my spiritual growth, as a person, as a religious scholar." He gave his Sept. 9 speech in Irvine, Calif., to a gathering to support Jamil Al-Amin, a Muslim cleric facing charges in the slaying of a sheriff's deputy during an Atlanta shootout and the wounding of a second deputy. The case of Al-Amin, known previously as the 1960s black radical leader H. Rap Brown, has rallied Muslim activists around the country who say he is being railroaded. "He's a man who by necessity must speak the truth," Yusuf said of Al-Amin in the speech. "That is a dangerous man. . . . Within this government are elements who will do anything to silence the truth. They'll assassinate either the person or the character." He told his audience that that was merely one example of the injustice and immorality rampant in America. "This country is facing a very terrible fate," he said. "The reason for that is that this country stands condemned. It stands condemned like Europe stood condemned because of what it did. And lest people forget that Europe suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands. . . . [Europe's] countries were devastated, they were completely destroyed. Their young people were killed." Yusuf also mentioned the conviction of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted of sedition and sentenced to life in a U.S. prison in connection with a plot to bomb Manhattan's Lincoln and Holland tunnels and other New York landmarks. "That sheikh was unjustly tried, was condemned against any standards of justice in any legal system," Yusuf said, citing Rahman's lawyer, former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark. "Now [he] sits in jail because it was a foregone conclusion." Yusuf said yesterday that the attacks had taught him a lesson. "One of the things I have learned is that we in the Muslim community have allowed a discourse of rage," he said. "This has been a wake-up call for me as well, in that I feel in some ways there is a complicity, that we have allowed a discourse centered in anger." Another popular Muslim cleric invited to the White House after the attacks also has made controversial remarks. Muzammil Siddiqi, who also spoke at a service at the Washington National Cathedral after the attacks, harshly criticized U.S. support for Israel at a rally outside the White House last October, at which marchers chanted in praise of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group. "America has to learn," Siddiqi said at the rally. "If you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come. Please, all Americans. Do you remember that? Allah is watching everyone. God is watching everyone. If you continue doing injustice, and tolerate injustice, the wrath of God will come." Siddiqi could not be reached for comment.
INSIDE STORY OF HOW BUSH DECIDED TO OPEN HUMANITARIAN FRONT
[TIME Magazine advance - New York - Sunday, October 7]: The inside story of how President George W. Bush decided to open the humanitarian front begins in the first few days after the attacks, TIME reports. In peace, even the worst Presidents have time to plan; in war, the best barely have time to react. The food aid idea came together in what an official calls an "organic" fashion, meaning in no particular order at all. But sources tell TIME that the package has its roots in the vengeful attacks on Arab Americans right here at home in the days after Sept. 11. Details appear in TIME's new issue on newsstands Monday, October 8th.
"The war on Osama bin Laden is being waged not just with guns but also with butter," report Washington bureau chief Michael Duffy and a TIME team who offer a behind-the-scenes look at how Bush decided to open the humanitarian effort. To understand the timing and intent of the bombardment, a senior Pentagon official says, look at the back side of a dollar bill. The eagle clutches an olive branch in its right claw and arrows in its left. Food aid and firepower, the official says, "are going to happen very nearly simultaneously. We want to send two images to the world at once."
Two weeks ago, a senior Administration official told TIME, the President asked National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to tackle the hunger problem. After consulting with Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other allies in the region, the Bush Administration decided that the most effective way to hold the coalition together would be a campaign to convince skeptical Muslims of Americais compassion. "It is one thing to talk about it; it's another thing to do something about it," says a senior White House official.
By Tuesday of last week the Administration realized it could get the biggest p.r. lift by combining the U.S.is existing $170-million-a-year Afghanistan aid program with a new $320 million package, and rolling it out all at once. "Wednesday we were still making sure we could move the money around and get something big," says an Administration official. "The public impact had to be large, so we went from numbers in the area of $100 million to $125 million, to $320 million. Let's do it right." That figure is largely for effect -- the U.S. is distributing only $25 million now, and holding the rest until after the start of bombing, TIME reports.
"We have to make sure the food drops help starving people and don't fall into the Taliban's hands," a senior Pentagon officer said Saturday. "And we can't put our troops delivering the food at too great a risk." Pentagon experts charted routes for the planes to avoid Afghan antiaircraft batteries, and planned to destroy those they couldn't avoid. Said an official as the plan was coming together, "It is not a simple operation."
Airlift experts expect it may take weeks to drop the food and medicine in all the right places in Afghanistan, and Washington will want as many Pakistanis and Muslims as possible to hear about the airlift over the coming days and weeks, TIME reports.
Bush's gambit -- filling the skies with bullets and bread -- is also a gamble, Pentagon officials concede. The humanitarian mission will to some degree complicate war planning. What the brass calls "deconfliction" - making sure warplanes and relief planes do not confuse one another - is now a major focus of Pentagon strategy. "Trying to fight and trying to feed at the same time is something new for us," says an Air Force general. "We're not sure precisely how it is going to work out."
The joint humanitarian and p.r. campaign is likely to be carried out, U.S. officials say, at the same time that air strikes on Taliban positions begin - if not in the same hour, then at least within the same news cycle.
U.S. officials tell TIME that their immediate plan is to scare bin Laden and his aides out of hiding; gather as much intelligence as possible about their whereabouts; deploy commandos in and around Afghanistan to strike quickly if bin Laden can be found; and reassure Muslim leaders constantly that American war aims are limited.
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| Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/10/447.htm |