Is it possible that a single metaphor, one that has
dropped from the lips of a serving American general, can offer some
forbidden insights into the dynamics of America’s relations with the
Islamic world?
On July 28, 2003, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez,
commander of US ground forces in Iraq, while talking to CNN, blamed the
"multi-faceted conflict" Americans face in Iraq on "terrorists," "former
regime leadership," "criminals" and "hired assassins." Then he volunteered
an explanation that I think, perhaps unintentionally, was daring in its
clarity. "[There] is what I would call a terrorist magnet where America,
being present here in Iraq, creates a target of opportunity if you will."
Is it really necessary to pick bones with the General’s
description of the Iraqi resistance as "terrorist activity"? The Iraqis
have not attacked any American civilians, inside Iraq or elsewhere; they
have only targeted American troops. Nor are they not attacking just any
American troops. They are attacking only those who have invaded and
occupied their country. Why then does the General call the Iraqi
guerrillas terrorists, criminals and hired assassins? Perhaps, this is
another semantic ploy we have borrowed from the Israelis. The Palestinians
are terrorists even when they attack Israeli tanks and armor, even when
their only weapons are stones.
It is all the more stunning, after this dissimulation,
when General Sanchez offers his theory of "a terrorist magnet." It claims
that the presence of American troops inside Iraq has become a "magnet" for
"terrorist activity." It is the presence of American troops in Iraq
that is the source, the cause of this "terrorist activity." Moreover, this
is natural. What else would you expect if you placed a "magnet" among iron
filings? The iron filings would all be drawn towards and stick to the
magnet.
This theory of "a terrorist magnet" is disconcertingly
heretical. Although no one seems to have noticed, it undermines two key
arguments the Bush administration has used, both ex ante and ex
post, to sell the war on terrorism. First, the war on terrorism has
been based on the premise that the terrorist attacks by Arab extremists
are an ontological phenomenon. It is in the nature of the
attackers, a nature instilled by their societies and in particular
by their religion, to attack America. They fear America’s virtues: its
freedom, prosperity, and the rights it grants to women. The terrorist
attacks are motivated by the ontological rage of an inferior and flawed
civilization – Islam – against the superior, dynamic, Christian
civilization of the West. It is a thesis that has been advanced
assiduously by Jewish and Christian Zionists. And it is this thesis that
President Bush embraced when he declared war against the attackers of
9-11.
The theory General Sanchez offers contradicts this. It
substitutes a Newtonian explanation for the ontological postulate favored
by the Bush administration and much of the American media. The Iraqi
resistance is not rooted in Iraqi nature, or in Sunni Iraqi nature, or
Baa’thi Sunni Iraqi nature. The Iraqis have not sneaked into the United
States to attack American troops. As the Iraqis see it, the American
troops are being attacked because they are in the wrong place (Iraq),
doing the wrong thing (illegally occupying Iraq), for the wrong reasons
(capturing Iraqi oil and deepening Israeli hegemony over the Arabs).
The theory of a terrorist magnet would seem to run afoul
of a second rationale for the US war against Iraq. In the first weeks
after the official end of the war, when it appeared that no WMDs were to
be found – and there was a risk that the earlier claims about WMDs would
be seen as weapons of mass deception – we invented a new buzz word:
Liberation. The WMDs were not the only reason for invading Iraq. We went
in to liberate the Iraqis from Saddam’s tyranny. Conveniently forgotten
was our support for this tyranny before the First Gulf War, our betrayal
of the Kurdish resistance and Iraqi uprising, and the deaths and suffering
we had inflicted on the Iraqis over thirteen years of bombings and
sanctions.
Why then have the liberators become "a terrorist magnet"?
Admittedly, the armed resistance is not national yet; it is confined
mostly to Iraq’s Sunni Arab population. But if the Iraqis leading the
armed resistance are "former regime leadership," "criminals" and "hired
assassins," they could not hide among an Iraqi population well-disposed to
their American liberators. However, to this date, no Iraqi has yet
betrayed members of the Iraqi resistance.
If the toll of American dead and wounded continues to
mount, this will raise more troubling questions. Why had we not seen this
going in? Why had we not foreseen that 150,000 Americans deposited amidst
a hostile population – a population that we had bombed and besieged for
thirteen years – would become a magnet for "terrorists"? It is true that
Muslims have a poor record of resisting local tyrannies, even when they
are proxies for foreign powers; but we should have known that they have
unexceptionably resisted foreign occupations. We should have known that
Mujahideen ("terrorists" for their enemies) from all corners of the world
would soon be entering Iraq to fight the foreign occupation, as they had
done in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Kashmir, and Palestine.
So, if ordinary young Americans are dying today in Iraq –
and many more recover from war wounds – that is not because the
administration, the neoconservative ideologues, and the media could not
have foreseen this. They did, but chose to ignore these concerns. In their
calculus, the lives of a few ordinary Americans were expendable, compared
to the great prizes before them. Arab oil had to be secured; and the Arab
world had to be made safe for Israeli hegemony.
The thesis of a terrorist magnet raises a broader
question, one that is at the heart of America’s relations with the Islamic
world. General Sanchez’s remark – about Americana troops in Iraq serving
as "terrorist magnets" – has drawn few comments from the media. The
Newtonian connection he drew between an American action (insertion of
troops into Iraq) and the reaction (Iraqi resistance) was perhaps too
obvious to deny. And who would dare impugn the patriotism of the General
commanding our forces in Iraq? Perhaps, that is why his remarks were
quickly laid to rest.
However, no one in America’s mainstream media, much less a
general or a politician, will dare to make a similar connection between
America’s foreign policies towards the Islamic world and the anti-American
forces that now proliferate in that region. The American political
establishment promotes the ideology that the United States can do no wrong
in its dealings with foreign countries. The United States is not only the
most powerful country that has ever existed; it is also the most
benevolent.
As a result, it is heretical to suggest that 9-11 may have
been a blowback from our policies towards the Middle East. To suggest such
a connection is not to justify 9-11. Yet most Americans are unwilling to
separate the morality and causality of 9-11. Until we learn to do so there
can be no rational discourse on the etiology of the growing conflicts
between the United States and the Islamic world. And if that does not
happen soon, the civilizational war which the Zionists – Christian and
Jewish – and some Islamic extremists so avidly project may become a
frightening reality.
