3 March 2010
By Jacob G. Hornberger Yesterday’s New York Times had an
interesting news story about a young Pakistani man
named Umar Khundi, who was recently killed in a
shootout with police. He had been attending medical
school but he ended up becoming a militant who
participated in terrorist attacks in Pakistan. The element in American society that claims that
terrorism has nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy
would undoubtedly point to Kundi’s terrorist activity
as proof that Muslims are engaged in a worldwide
campaign of violence in the quest to establish a
global caliphate, as required, they say, by the Koran.
Yet, when one gives a careful read to the Times’
story, a different, more realistic picture emerges,
one that is consistent with what libertarians have
been saying for years: that Islamic terrorism,
including both the 1993 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the 9/11 attacks, is “blowback” or
retaliation for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle
East. Why did the 29-year-old Kundi abandon medical
studies to become a terrorist? NYT: “Al Qaeda has harnessed their aimless ambition
and anger at Pakistan’s alliance with the United
States, their generation’s electrifying enemy.” Now, notice that there’s nothing in that sentence
about wanting to establish a worldwide caliphate or
that the Koran requires Muslims to embark on a quest
to conquer the world. Notice also that the anger is
directed toward their own government — a Muslim
government — and because of its alliance with the
United States. NYT: “Such jihadi groups had become part of
mainstream society in Pakistan in the 1980s, when the
United States was financing Islamic radicals fighting
the Soviets in Afghanistan, and when an
American-supported Pakistani general, Muhammad Zia al-Haq,
empowered hard-line mullahs and injected Islam into
school textbooks.” Now, that’s an important paragraph because it
raises a point that the Caliphate Crowd never
addresses and actually just ignores when one brings it
up. When it was the Soviet Empire that was occupying
Afghanistan, that didn’t sit well with the U.S.
Empire. So, the U.S. Empire partnered with Osama bin
Laden and other Islamic extremists who were determined
to oust the Soviet occupiers from Afghanistan. In
fact, that U.S. foreign policy intervention actually
sowed the seeds for what ultimately became al-Qaeda
and other jihadist groups who many years later were
just as determined to end the U.S. Empire’s
interventions as they were to end the Soviet Empire’s
interventions. Was the Caliphate Crowd opposing the U.S. Empire’s
partnership with bin Laden and other Islamic
extremists? Were they saying, “Don’t do this. The
Muslims are trying to establish a worldwide caliphate,
with the U.S. as their headquarters. The Koran
requires them to do this.”? No, they were either fully supportive of the
partnership or remained silent about it. The
Caliphate/Koran/Conquest position didn’t arise until
the militants began opposing the U.S. Empire’s
interventions and retaliating against such
interventions with terrorist attacks. Moreover, re-read the part about the U.S.
government’s support of Pakistani President Zia. He
took power in a coup. That made him a dictator — a
military dictator — one who brutalized his own people
and was fully supported by the U.S. Empire. NYT: “Despite [Kundi’s] zeal for jihad, it was a
relatively quiet time in Pakistan. The war against the
Soviets was long over, and most of the country’s
jihadi groups were drifting. All that changed when the
United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, jolting
young Pakistani jihadis who saw it as a war against
Muslims.” NYT: “‘That was the beginning,’ said a security
official in Karachi. ‘They went from small local
targets, to a much bigger global one, the United
States.’” NYT: “When Al Qaeda came to Pakistan, Mr. Kundi did
not have to go far to find it. The American invasion
had pushed many of its leaders over the border,
including Abu Zubaydah, a member of Osama bin Laden’s
inner circle. In 2002, he surfaced in Allied Hospital
in Faisalabad, where Mr. Kundi was working. He was
seeking treatment and preaching against Pakistan’s
government for supporting the United States. His
audience loved it, Muhammad said.” The good news is that the Caliphate/Koran/Conquest
position remains the fringe position in America. After
all, not even the U.S. Empire takes the position that
Muslims are engaged in a Koran-mandated holy war of
conquest against the world. The Empire’s
justifications for its interventions in the Middle
East are partly based on its purported love and
concern for the well-being of Muslims. The sanctions,
invasions, occupations, and embargoes, Empire
officials say, are intended to bring “freedom and
democracy” to Muslims, or at least those who survive
the interventions. Moreover, let’s not forget that the
Empire continues to provide millions of dollars in
foreign aid to regimes in Muslim countries, including
Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt.
Would the Empire be doing that if it bought into the
Caliphate/Koran/Conquest position? The better news is that increasing numbers of
Americans are now embracing the libertarian position
on foreign policy, one that is fully consistent with
the NYT’s story about Umar Khundi and his fellow
militants. U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East,
both before and after 9/11, has produced the anger and
hatred for the United States among Muslims, which has
manifested itself in the form of terrorist
retaliation. As Kundi himself would have said had U.S.
foreign policy not diverted him from a medical career
to the life of a militant, arriving at a correct
prescription for a problem inevitably depends on
arriving at a correct diagnosis of it. Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The
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