July 7, 2014
Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt: Exporting international Muslim terrorists to the Islamic world
Prof. Dr. Mohamed Elmasry
More by this author...The current Muslim terrorist crimes in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt have this in common: they are supported politically, militarily and financially by the U.S. and its regional clients, directly by Qatar and Turkey and indirectly by Israel.
What’s happening today in these countries fulfills American national interests: to export international Muslim terrorists to the Islamic world keeping them so busy from even thinking to attack American interests in the U.S. and/or in the Middle East, and not to commit any terrorist acts against Israel. The international Muslim terrorists include local Muslim extremists in each country and others with different nationalities including citizens of the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.
This American policy is working with great success – but resulting in the death of countless men, women and children, turning millions into refuges and causing massive destruction and misery. Children are paying a high price in the loss of nutrition, education and health care. Terrorists are denying them any future.
This American policy, of divide and conquer was hatched during the pre-9/11 era and was accelerated following 9/11 and especially after the invasion of Iraq over 10 years ago. The credit for its execution and planning goes to few people: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and behind them, the masterminds of that policy Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove were from the American Christian Right and Wolfowitz and Perle were hard core Zionist Jews.
'Rove and Bush came to an important strategic conclusion,' wrote Lou Dubose, Rove's biographer back in the mid 1990s. 'To govern on behalf of the corporate Right, they would have to appease the Christian Right.'
On September 11, 2001, militant Islam became a new piece of political raw material. During the pre-9/11era, Rove and Bush had been isolationists, wanting as little to do with the Middle East as possible. But suddenly there was a new arena in which to work for political results: and, as Rove entered it, he met and was greeted by a group of people who had for years been as busy as he in crafting their political model; exporting of unchallenged American power to the Middle East and at the same time causing internal bleeding to the enemy.
Canadian conservative Bush staff speech writer David Frum recalled the approach of the presidency towards Islam after the 9/11 attacks and criticized Bush as being 'soft on Islam' for his emphasis on a 'religion of peace'. Frum was another hard core Zionist Jew.
Rove, writes Frum, was 'drawn to a very different answer'. Islam, Rove argued, 'was one of the world's great empires' which had 'never reconciled... to the loss of power and dominion'. In response, he said, 'the United States should recognize that, although it cannot expect to be loved, it can enforce respect'.
Rove's position dovetailed with the beliefs of Paul Wolfowitz, and the axis between conservative Southern Protestantism and fervent, highly intellectual, East Coast Zionism was forged - each as zealous about their religion as the other.
Wolfowitz was a Jewish son of academe, a brilliant scholar of mathematics and a diplomat. When he joined the Pentagon after the Yom Kippur war in 1970s, he set about laying out what the U.S. policy in the Middle East should be.
In 1992, just before Bush's father was defeated by Bill Clinton, Wolfowitz wrote a blueprint to 'set the nation's direction for the next century', which became later the foreign policy of George W. Bush. Entitled 'Defence Planning Guidance', it put an onus on the Pentagon to 'establish and protect a new order' under unchallenged American authority.
The U.S., it said, must be sure of 'deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role' - including Germany and Japan. It contemplated the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry pre-emptively, 'even in conflicts that do not directly engage U.S. interests'.
Wolfowitz's group formalized itself into a group called Project for the New American Century, which included Cheney and another old friend, former Pentagon Under-Secretary for Policy under Reagan, Richard Perle.
The Project pondered that what was needed to assure U.S. global power was 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor'. The document had noted that 'while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides immediate justification' for intervention, 'the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein'.
At a graduation speech to the Military Academy at West Point, Bush in 2002 affirmed the Wolfowitz doctrine as his official policy. 'America has, and intends to keep,' he said, 'military strengths beyond challenge.'
At the Pentagon, Wolfowitz and his boss Rumsfeld had set up an intelligence group under Abram Schulsky and the Under-Secretary for Defense, Douglas Feith, both were old friends of Wolfowitz. The group's public face was the semi-official Defense Policy Board, headed by Perle.
Perle and Feith wrote a paper back in 1996 called 'A Clean Break' for the then leader of Israel's Likud bloc, Binyamin Netanyahu; the clean break was from the Oslo peace process. Israel's 'claim to the land (including the West Bank) is legitimate and noble,' said the paper. 'Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights is a solid basis for the future.' At the State Department, the 'Arabist' faction of regional experts favoring the diplomacy of alliances in the area was drowned out by the hawks, markedly by another new unit with favored access to the White House.
And in Rove's White House, with his backing, the circle was closed and the last piece of the jigsaw was put in place, with the appointment of Elliot Abrams to handle policy for the Middle East, for the National Security Council.
Abrams was another veteran of Reagan days and the 'dirty wars' in Central America, convicted by Congress for lying alongside Colonel Oliver North over the Iran-Contra scandal, but pardoned by President Bush's father.
Rove and Wolfowitz have worked for decades to reach their moment, and that moment has come with the invasion of Iraq. Bush used to call Rove, 'Boy Genius' or 'Turd Blossom'. Rove was one of a new political breed - the master craftsmen - nurturing a 24-year political campaign of his own design, but careful not to expose who he really was.
Rove’s Christian faith was a weapon of devastating cogency, but he never discussed it; no one knew then if his politics were religious or politics were his religion. A Christmas Day child born in Denver, as a boy he had a poster above his bed reading 'Wake Up, America!' As a student, he was a fervent young Republican who pitched himself against the peace movement.
His first bonding with Bush was not over politics, but the two men's ideological and moral distaste for the Sixties - after Bush's born-again conversion from alcoholism to Christianity.