Fallacies of the Anti-Islam Crowd
By
Jacob G. Hornberger
February 23, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Ever since the 9/11 attacks, there has
been a fringe element in American society that
has claimed that the attacks were part of a
centuries-old religious war between Islam and
Christianity. They’ve claimed that Muslims
constitute a grave threat against everyone in
the United States and the Western world because
Muslims are supposedly determined to establish a
world-wide caliphate, which would necessarily
entail conquering the United States, taking over
the federal government, and running the IRS, DEA,
Federal Reserve, Social Security administration,
CIA, NSA, Pentagon, and all the other parts of
the federal government.
This
fringe element has now surged to national
notoriety owing to the fact that there are now
people within the Trump administration who
appear to subscribe to that philosophy.
However, there have always been big problems
with the anti-Islam mindset. Let’s review three
of them.
1.
During the entire Cold War, the people who
subscribe to the anti-Islam paradigm never —
repeat never — brought up anything
about this so-called religious war between Islam
and Christianity or anything about the purported
quest by Muslims to establish a worldwide
caliphate, one that would include the United
States.
Doesn’t
that seem rather odd? Here the Muslims have
supposedly been coming to get us for centuries
and not one single person in the anti-Islam
crowd expressed even a tiny iota of concern
during the entire 44-year history of the Cold
War.
That’s
because during the Cold War, the official
bugaboo for the American people, as set forth by
the Cold War-era national security
establishment, was not Islam or terrorism but
rather communism (or as conservatives used to
say, “godless communism”). Throughout those four
decades, it wasn’t the Muslims who were coming
to get us, it was the communists. Or it was the
Soviet Union, which was led by Russia (which has
now been restored to semi-official bugaboo
status, in conjunction with the Muslims) that
was hell-bent on conquering the United States.
It was in Moscow, Americans were told, that the
international communist conspiracy to take over
the world was based.
From
the first grade in the public (i.e., government)
schools to which state law forced their parents
to send them, American schoolchildren had their
minds indoctrinated and molded about how the
Russians were coming to get us and force America
to become a communist state. And it worked. By
the time American children reached 18 years of
age, most of them were absolutely convinced that
America was in grave danger of falling to the
communists. That’s what propelled them to
blindly support the Cold War, the conversion of
the federal government to a national-security
state, the Korean War and the Vietnam War (both
of which were waged without the constitutionally
required congressional declaration of war),
ever-growing support of foreign dictators,
ever-growing interventions in foreign countries,
ever-growing assassinations, ever-growing
expenditures for the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA, and
ever-growing infringements on the rights,
liberties, and privacy of the American people.
Through
it all, not a peep — not a single peep — about
the supposed quest by the Muslims to establish a
worldwide caliphate or about their supposed war
to enslave Americans and force them to study the
Koran and to establish Sharia law in the United
States.
In
fact, it was the exact opposite. When it was the
Soviet Union, rather than the United States,
doing the invading and occupying of Afghanistan,
U.S. officials actually partnered with and
supported some of the most extreme and fanatical
Muslims who were fighting to oust the Soviets
from Afghanistan.
When
that happened, there wasn’t a peep of protest
from anyone who is a part of the anti-Muslim
crowd today. On the contrary, they cheered the
partnership with radical and fanatical Muslims
because, again, communism, not Islam, and the
Soviet Union (Russia) were the official
bugaboos.
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2.
Those in the anti-Muslim crowd today were among
the most ardent supporters of the U.S. invasions
of Iraq and Afghanistan, notwithstanding the
fact that Bush had not secured the
constitutionally required congressional
declaration of war against either country.
The
anti-Muslim crowd cheered and celebrated the
many years of deadly and destructive occupations
that followed the invasions of both countries.
By this time, their mindsets had shifted from
communism as the official bugaboo to Islam as
the official bugaboo. So, every time that U.S.
soldiers bombed, shot, killed, maimed, or
tortured people in Iraq or Afghanistan, the
anti-Muslim crowd made it a point to thank the
troops for “their service” in both countries,
notwithstanding the fact that neither the Afghan
government nor the Iraqi government had ever
attacked the United States or even threatened to
do so.
To this
day, the anti-Muslim crowd continues to support
the U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
All
that support for the Pentagon’s and CIA’s
interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, however,
poses a big problem for the anti-Islam crowd,
one that they have never addressed and maybe not
even considered.
That problem is this:
The U.S. invasions and occupations succeeded in
installing official Islamic regimes in both
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Don’t
believe me? Then take a look at the following
two websites, which feature the official
constitutions of Afghanistan and Iraq. You will
immediately notice something important: Pursuant
to the constitutions of both countries, the
regimes are both official Islamic regimes.
Constitution of the Islamic
Republic of Afghanistan
Iraqi Constitution
Needless to say, this remarkable “achievement”
by U.S. troops places the anti-Islam crowd in a
very unenviable and quite awkward position. Do
they renounce their longtime support for the
invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and
Iraq, given the fact that the interventions gave
rise to two official Islamic regimes, ones that,
according to the anti-Islam crowd, are coming to
get us as part of the supposed quest by Muslims
to establish a caliphate on the United States
and the rest of the world?
So far,
there have been no renunciations or
denunciations of the U.S. invasions and
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan on the part
of the anti-Muslim crowd. In fact, they continue
to thank the troops for their service in both
countries.
Indeed,
it’s still not too late for the U.S. government
to effect new regime-change operations in both
Afghanistan and Iraq, where U.S. troops continue
to intervene. Have any of the anti-Muslim crowd
called on the Pentagon and the CIA to oust these
two official Islamic regimes, either with bombs
or assassination, and replace them with
Christian or Jewish or pro-Western regimes?
Nope.
Not one call for a new regime-change operation.
The anti-Muslim crowd continues to support the
troops, who continue to fight to preserve the
existence of these two official Islamic regimes.
The anti-Muslim crowd continues to thank the
troops for their service in Iraq and
Afghanistan, which succeeded in bringing into
existence two official Islamic regimes.
3. Very
few in the anti-Muslim crowd are going out and
killing Muslims here in the United States. They
are wise not to do so, even if they are behaving
contrary to their own “we are at war with the
Muslims” paradigm. The reason is that if they
were to start killing Muslims, they would be
arrested, indicted, prosecuted, and punished for
murder. During their trial, if they tried to
tell the jury, “But we are at war with the
Muslims, who are coming to get us part of their
centuries-old quest to establish a worldwide
caliphate,” the judge would silence them and
refuse to permit that to be considered a
legitimate defense to the murder charge. The
killers would ultimately end up spending many
years of their lives in the penitentiary as
convicted murderers or even possibly be executed
by the state under the death penalty. One thing
is for sure: They would not be celebrated by the
judicial system as courageous heroes who were
defending their homeland from the billions of
Muslims who were supposedly coming to get them,
force them to study the Koran, and live
according to Sharia law.
So,
what’s really going on here?
After
the Cold War suddenly and unexpectedly ended,
the U.S. national-security establishment lost
its official bugaboos — communism and the Soviet
Union, which caused some Americans to question
why it was necessary to continue devoting so
much taxpayer money to fight a Cold War that was
no longer in existence. To solve the problem,
the Pentagon and the CIA intervened in the
Middle East and began killing lots of people,
many of whom were Muslims and many of whom were
innocent children of Muslims (through the
U.S.-enforced sanctions on Iraq).
When
the inevitable “blowback” came in the form of
anti-American terrorist attacks, including, but
certainly not limited to, the 9/11 attacks,
those people whose minds had been indoctrinated
and molded into looking at communism and the
Soviet Union as official bugaboos could not
bring themselves to even consider the
possibility that the U.S. national-security
establishment was the root cause of the
anti-American terrorism. By this time, the
Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA were their gods
— their everything. At the same time, given that
so many of them looked upon the federal
government as their provider (e.g., Social
Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other dole
programs), the last thing they wanted to do is
question or antagonize their welfare provider,
their sustainer, their daddy, their god.
So,
while U.S. officials were claiming that the
terrorists just hated America for its “freedom
and values,” the mindsets of some the people
who, as children, had been indoctrinated and
molded into seeing communism and the Soviet
Union as the official bugaboos simply replaced
those official bugaboos with Islam and Muslims
as new official bugaboos. (Of course, Russia has
now returned as a semi-official bugaboo, along
with communist China, Iran, and North Korea.
Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are
probably not far behind.) The obvious
contradiction between their new anti-Islam
mindsets and the gratitude they express to the
troops for establishing official Islamic regimes
in Afghanistan and Iraq doesn’t even occur to
them — or the fact that they’re obviously not
out killing Muslims here in the United States
who are supposedly waging a centuries-old war
against them.
Once a
critical mass of Americans recognizes that these
official bugaboos are nothing but bunk and just
a way to keep the old Cold War apparatus known
as the national-security establishment (or
military industrial complex) in existence and in
high cotton, that will bring us ever closer to
the restoration of a constitutionally limited
government republic, a free-market economy, and
a free, peaceful, harmonious, and prosperous
society.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of
The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born
and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his
B.A. in economics from Virginia Military
Institute and his law degree from the University
of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve
years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor
at the University of Dallas, where he taught law
and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the
practice of law to become director of programs
at the Foundation for Economic Education.
http://www.fff.org
