The RW created modern day Islamic Extemism

[ck4829]

They messed with my religion to hurt people of all religions. It's atrocious! Everything was just right in the early to the middle of the 20th Century. I personally believe there would have been a general attitude of secularism in Islam if it weren't for somebody or a group of people messing it up.

I don't know if the RW didn't know Al Qaeda would do 9/11 or other terrorist attacks, but it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that they knew they were murdering innocent people back then. It's like Negroponte and the Contras, just on a greater scale. He knew, and they also knew what was really going on.

Afghanistan and the 'Freedom Fighters'
"Ronald Reagan bears substantial responsibility for September 11. He and his administration were so gung ho to roll back Communism that they funneled billions of dollars to scruffy far rightwing radical Muslim mujahidin in Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Orrin Hatch even flew to Beijing for Reagan in 1985 to ask the Chinese to pressure Pakistan to allow the US to provide the Mujahidin with ever more sophisticated weaponry. Even the Pakistani military had initially balked at this crazy idea, knowing who the *Gulbuddin Hikmatyars* and Usama Bin Ladens really were (unlike clueless Reagan, who called them freedom fighters). But the US twisted the Pakistanis’ arms, and they gave in. Likewise, Reagan forced the timid Saudis to match US contributions to the Mujahidin. (And then after Sept. 11 the former Reagan officials who had twisted the arms of the Saudis, like Richard Perle, turned around and blamed Riyadh for spreading radical Muslim ideas!!) It was the CIA that first established terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, to hit the leftist government in Kabul. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the camps used by al-Qaeda had been built originally by the Reagan administration.
...
The Christian Coalition and other rightwing religious groups supporting Reagan even had a “biblical checklist” by which they wanted all senators and congressmen to be judged. And one of the items in the “biblical checklist” was “support for the Afghan ‘freedom fighters.’ The rightwing Christians were saying in the 1980s that if you didn’t support al-Qaeda and its Mujahidin allies, you didn’t deserve to be in Congress!" http://www.zackvision.com/weblog/archives/entry/000539.html

Gulbuddin Hikmatyar - His followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil... He was head of the Islamic Party and he hated the United States almost as much as he hated the Russians. His followers screamed "Death to America" along with "Death to the Soviet Union", only the Russians were not showering him with large amounts of aid. http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/reagan.html

A "favorite tactic" of the Afghan freedom fighters was "to torture victims by first cutting off their noses, ears, and genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another", producing "a slow, very painful death". Among the non-Soviet victims: a Canadian tourist and six West Germans, including two children, and a U.S. military attaché was dragged from his car and beaten http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/reagan.html

Howard Ruff (Head of Free The Eagle) boasts that he and Oliver North persuaded President Ronald Reagan to send Stinger missiles to the Afghan freedom fighters, who were battling the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the mid-80’s.
http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display_printable/90982/index.php

In early 1984, soon after being transferred to ISI from the Pakistani army, Yousaf entertained a visiting delegation of private American advocates of the Mujahedin cause. Groups such as the Federation for American-Afghan Action, Free the Eagle, Committee for a Free Afghanistan, and the Freedom Research Foundation played a key role in boosting U.S. aid for the rebels by calling media attention to their struggle and advising conservative members of Congress. http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display_printable/90982/index.php
Federation for American-Afghan Action - The FAAA was founded in 1983, with the help of Paul Weyrich and his Coalition for America, the Heritage Foundation, and the Committee for a Free Afghanistan, of which it was a de facto arm. The first executive director of the Federation for American Afghan Action, which was based at the Heritage Foundation, was Andrew Eiva. http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2241_mujahideen_control.html

Committee for a Free Afghanistan - CFA was founded in 1981 in the aftermath of a trip by Prime Minister Thatcher and Radio Free Kabul founder Lord Bethell to the United States, dedicated to building U.S. support for the mujahideen. The founding executive director of CFA, Karen McKay, was reputed to be the mistress of Lord Bethell. From its inception, the CFA acted as the U.S. arm of Bethell's London-based Radio Free Kabul. Fundraisers for the CFA included the Bush-linked televangelist Pat Robertson, former Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke, and former U.S. Attorney General Eliot Richardson.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2241_mujahideen_control.html

"Can we turn a deaf ear to the cries for material help from those brave freedom fighters in Angola, in Afghanistan, in Mozambique, in Nicaragua, who would take to the field of battle at the risk of their own lives to bring freedom and democracy to their people?" - Pat Robertson, 1986 http://www.patrobertson.com/Speeches/PresidentialBidLaunched.asp

Saddam Hussein
Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82

PNAC
PNAC was founded by none other than Cheney, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and other former Reagan and Bush administration hawks. PNAC had written "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources," a report released by the Project for the New American Century in 2000, stated that the United States needed a catastrophe - "a new Pearl Harbor," as the authors called it - to jump-start the neocons' blueprint for all-encompassing military and economic world dominance. Then came the attacks of Sept. 11 - just nine months after the Bush administration took office. The events of that day provided the perfect excuse for Cheney and company to finally see their plans to fruition. Top on their list of targets was Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Within 24 hours of the planes hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - and without so much as an inkling of evidence as to who had carried out the attacks - Attorney General John Ashcroft was already calling for war on Iraq, according to a report by Bob Woodward in the Washington Post. www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/reagan.html

Iran-Contra
Carl R. (Spitz) Channel pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the government by soliciting contributions for military aid to the Contras under the cover of a tax-exempt charitable foundation. Channell said he accompanied NSC-staffer Lt. Col. Oliver North to a quarterly meeting of the CNP held in Dallas on Sept. 13-14, 1985. North’s briefings of CNP members began in 1983, and a tape of a CNP meeting held in Nashville, in 1983, was obtained by the Washington Post. Bentley Elliot, a former Reagan speech-writer, told The Post, "Let us remember that Ollie North’s undying passion for the success of the Reagan Doctrine kept the flame of hope burning in the heart of the conservative movement..." By virtue of his NSC position, he became the conservatives’ principal source of what one called "inside" information. The members of the Council for National Policy (CNP) include Nelson Bunker Hunt, Joseph Coors, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Marion G. (Pat) Robertson, Richard Viguerie, Paul Weyrich, Arnaud de Borchgrave and Henry Salvatori. http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display_printable/90982/index.php

And then they use fear-mongering and bigotry to cover their tracks. Let's expose these people for whom they are!

[burythehatchet]

1. The universe seeks balance

the more one society moves off center and travels to a more extreme ideology, so will there be a counter-effect.

[Sapere_Aude]

3. theory

The problem is this:

the Left is supposed to set the trend. remember that Conservatism is simply the reaction to liberalism. the problem is that we on the left seem to be a little.... disoriented. i will admit i supported the war in Iraq when it started, and i will also admit I'm sick every time i see these war protesters running around with flag draped coffins. i don't think that we are going to be the trend setters again by being shock jocks. we need to reach out to the middle America that went for bush last year, and then we can push our agenda.

am i right?

[Zenlitened]

4. Please, not the "we should be more mild-mannered" angle again

We need to sharpen our message and stand up for what's right, not coddle the mythological "republican moderates" with soft words.

Kow-tow to Bush voters now, and then try to put our values into action later?

Puh-leeze.

[Deja Q]

5. I must agree.

The 'middle' that chose Bush likely did so out of fear; not taking the past 4 years into account.

I can only hope it costs them as much as it will cost the rest of us. Such freedom should be for all.

And looking at *, his idea of freedom of all is "the untamed fire of freedom". In other words: Thermonuclear Armageddon.

BTW: Welcome to DU. :toast: :party:

[burythehatchet]

7. Are you familiar with the term "dis-economy"

It's an economics that basically states a model will work until there are circumstances that lead to an "override" of the model. An example would be farm subsidies, something that certainly doesn't fit in the capitalist model.

What we have in our political model is a dis-economy. By that I mean the ideas of the left have always been correct, but circumstances that prevent the natural progress of our society come into play. Some easy examples are stolen elections, lack of a independent media, corporatism, and there are many more examples. And remember the RW has been coordinating this strategy of theft and deception since Goldwater lost. That's why they have a game plan. We don't think in those terms, maybe we should, I haven't dwelled on that.

So I'm sorry to say that in my opinion you are way off base. As soon as you talk about moderating our message you are basically setting aside all of the engineered circumstances that I mentioned earlier.

btw...please don't forget the coffins, our military families probably want us to remember...mmmmkay

[KG]

9. 'we on the left'

yeh, uh-huh.

[coloradodem2005]

2. Interesting.

And very sad. Thank you Ronald Reagan. NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. How do I know if these sources are accurate?? How do I know... do I

need oh, I don't know... Mr. Gannon to vet it for me??? GREAT POST, imagine if this page, AND ALL OF THESE ARTICLES could end up on the front page of every Amurkan newspaper across the country on the same day... say, next Monday. :)

[Igel]

8. Seems a mite simplistic.

The first suicide bombing of note to come along was under Reagan, Marines in Beirut. But note that this was probably encouraged by forces abroad, not a purely home-grown phenomenon.

The Afghanistan business was the US *supporting* an insurgency that already had decent support. It would have taken longer, but the US helped fund, train, and supply some of the jihadis that were already there. Truly a stupid idea, even though I rather liked it at the time. I looked upon the folk fighting the occupation that I didn't like as "freedom fighters" and viewed them through the lens of my own ideology and goals, without regard to what they did on the ground or what their actual motives were. I sort of forgot they weren't fighting for what I wanted, but what they wanted.

The Palestinian terror spree was a purely anti-Israel thing, with the first PLO operations occuring before the '67 war, but that's a subject for a different forum. Let's just say by making it a non-anti-Israel activity, it launched a bunch of different sorts of terrorism.

The easiest source for most of the Sunni terror? Muslim Brotherhood. And that was a Middle Eastern concoction with a bunch of European ingredients; the US was at best tangentially in the Middle East at the time, and not the dominant oppressor it would later be interpreted as being.

Of course, the entire jihadi enterprise received gobs of intellectual and theological support from Salafi ideology, spread widely through mosques since the 1960s, with financial and human support forthcoming.

[ck4829]

10. Of course

I am not trying to imply that Americans were in some secret base trying to create terrorism as an issue.

But, 'western' or actually what I call modern ideas were being exported to Islamic lands. Some of these ideas were carried by Communism, and the Christian Right and Right Wing abhorred even the possibility of Communists peacefully existing.

I agree with you when I say that the Palestinian terror spree was of it's own and did not have American input.

The RW did some input in today's Islamic extremism, we can all agree on that. Certainly not all, but too much.

The RW'ers also have to learn this, that this is their fault. And, the RW'ers also have to learn that they can't atone for this by calling all Muslims evil