The Politics of Terrorism :: Response to the 9/11 Commission Summary ::

The President and other public officials ought to stop legitimizing self-declared "civil rights" and "mainstream" Islamic organizations that in fact operate as propaganda and political arms of Islamic fundamentalist movements." "How to really fight terrorism"

— Steven Emerson, Wall Street Journal, August 24, 1998

There are no special civil or religious rights that causes a person to be, or not to be Muslim. No special type of racism, or prejudice defines the ill treatment that many Muslims have experienced since 9/11 at the hands of some law enforcement, and in some of America’s prisons, and also in the media. Following the September 11th attacks many Muslims and Arabs were rounded up and detained, and held in prisons without charge, and denied access to attorneys, and many also report that during these periods of detainment they were physically and psychologically abused. The Justice Department admits that many unidentified Muslims and Arabs have been detained and held without bond, and denied access to an attorney, even though such acts violate the US constitution. A Justice Department investigation, headed by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, Glenn A. Fine, concluded that there were no violations of Muslim civil liberties, or rights "specif! ically related to the Patriot Act." According to his report, 1,266 complaints have been filed charging various forms of abuse. Along with obvious abuses of the Act, Muslim organizations have been subjected to unconstitutional searches and seizures, and now the Senate is requesting that the IRS release donor’s lists and other confidential information aimed at targeting Muslims who support Muslim political activism, and charities. These searches and seizures of private property and other assets seem to be part of a well-orchestrated policy to intimidate the leaders of Muslim organizations, and to frighten Muslims away from exercising their first amendment rights. Muslims, like other religious, racial and political groups enjoy a first amendment right to contribute to Muslim charities, and to contribute financially to Muslims internationally. We share with other citizens a right to political speech, activism, association and other first amendment rights, all of which are increasingly threatened, not because of the war on terrorism, but because of a misdirected and ill advised war against what Daniel Pipes calls, Islamism, or political Islam.

Muslims are not a special interest group. You will not find Muslims mounting protests or movements seeking to attain special recognition, privileges, etc., simply because of being Muslim. Yet, in 1994 a controversial documentary, written and produced by Steven Emerson entitled, Jihad in America, caused Muslim Americans to be distinguished, and treated somewhat differently than other citizens, but not due to any special beliefs or religious practices. The Emerson documentary, which was aired nationally over the PBS television network, sought to make the case that there is an international Muslim, or "fundamentalist Islamist" movement within the United States that is out to destroy the nation. Controversy and suspicion resulting from this documentary caused life for Muslims in the United States to change even before 9/11. Suddenly, in fact almost overnight, Americans who were born in the United States, and who had exercised their right to choose their r! eligion freely, and to practice that religion freely, were treated as enemies, or rather as potential enemies of the state simply because they were Muslim. Immigrant Muslims, who were actually the target of the documentary, experienced more of the hate and discrimination resulting from the documentary than other Muslims, yet that is no consolation to Muslims generally, and should not cause Americans to feel any better about what is happening to Muslims in our country. In fact, prior to the airing of the controversial documentary, Muslims in America were almost exclusively devotional and non-political. Few if any were knowledgeable about the politics of the Middle East, most specifically the Palestine/ Israel conflict. Muslims were caught completely off guard by the charges made against Muslims and Islam in the documentary, and were shocked by the now obvious extent to which the Palestine/Israel conflict would shape Muslim life in America. The brutality and total disregard fo! r human or constitutional rights employed by the Zionist Organizations of America (ZOA) and many of the other so-called religious leaders who collaborate with them, has shocked Muslims and many other conscientious Americans. It has also been disheartening to observe how easily many U.S. political figures surrender Muslim rights to the ZOA and others who believe that it is within their interest to strip Muslims of rights. Individuals from these groups, seem to have combined their hatred for religious and political diversity in the United States and employed dubious legal schemes through which they have launched, and perhaps are carrying out "religious cleansing" in the United States. The 9/11 Commission Summary unfortunately appears to be a testament to how successful these people have been.

Shortly after PBS’s airing of the Jihad in America documentary, the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma exploded, killing almost everyone who was in the building that morning, including children who were being cared for at a daycare center housed in the building. Immediately following this tragedy, the media began to suggest that Muslims, who were supposedly part of the so-called international Islamic movement mentioned by Emerson in the documentary, had blown up the building. Emerson became an overnight success, and was touted as a terrorism expert, appearing on almost every news program in the nation. Up until an arrest was made of a young white American male, who was later convicted of that crime, the media continued to use Emerson’s documentary to validate accusations, and charges against American Muslims. Emerson even went so far in one instance to say that Oklahoma City was a hotbed of radical Muslim militancy, a claim that was later prov! en to be false. One of the overlooked ironies of the Jihad in America phenomenon is that Steven Emerson’s background was never an issue. His credibility as a journalist and terrorism expert was seldom challenged, or questioned. No one told the public that this man was a trained and skilled propagandist, polemicist and lobbyist. No one mentioned that according to reliable reports, Emerson had studied Hitler’s Germany carefully as a graduate student, and actually wrote his Master’s thesis on the media techniques and strategies employed by Hitler to demonize and vilify the Jews in Germany prior to the Holocaust. Seldom if ever was it mentioned that Emerson, along with members of the Israeli Likud party, lobbied the US Congress, in opposition to the US sponsored peace process. It wasn’t until September of 1995 that The Nation magazine reported that Emerson was in fact a lobbyist for Israel. According to The Nation, " Emerson was part of a gang of three, along with Y! igal Carmon, a ranking member of Israel’s intelligence and military establishment that spent much time lobbying the Congress to derail the Middle East peace process."

Considering statements previously made by Emerson concerning Muslims and Arabs, along with his complaints that our constitution is an inconvenience in what he called then, fighting terrorism, his background should have been important. In the ten years since the airing of his suspect documentary the United States has been subjected to three types of anti-terrorism legislation, all closely linked to horrific acts of violence, and passed in haste. All three appear to have been written by Emerson and his colleagues, and used almost exclusively to incriminate, detain, and deport Palestinian activists and their supporters, Arabs and Muslims. This type of legislation has significantly impacted the character of the US judiciary, and our values and traditions as a free people. First there was the Secret Evidence Act, followed by the Omnibus Anti-terrorism legislation, and now the Patriot Act. All are perhaps aspects of what Emerson and his supporters had called "a wa! r against terrorism" long before the attacks of 9/11.

As mentioned earlier, the first World Trade Center bombing occurred after Emerson, and his colleagues, which included Daniel Pipes and members of the pro-Israel think tank community in the United States, began their campaign to expand the Israeli war against the Islamic movement in Palestine into the United States. The war in the states would be a propaganda war, and to win the war required that Israel’s opponents be silenced. The only way to accomplish this is to change the laws that protect dissent and free political speech. As we will see, there is good reason to believe that perhaps extraordinary steps may have been taken to accomplish that goal.

According to Executive Intelligence Review, a Village Voice article written shortly after the first WTC bombing, suggested that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad was involved in the first World Trade Center attack. More than ten years later, the Peace and Justice Foundation, reported in an occasional paper written by its Executive director, Mauri Salakhan, that an Egyptian undercover operative named Emad Salem, posing as a renegade Islamic movement extremist, recruited the first World Trade Center bombers. The report says that Salem planned and helped carry out the bombing, with help, and financing from Israel. Salakhan referred to this relationship again in a speech given at a Muslim conference held in Washington DC, Jan.10, 2004.

This technique, where governments create a fake insurgency army that carries out horrific acts that are blamed on a legitimate insurgency, hoping to defame and isolate such movements is called COIN, or Counter Insurgency Strategy. It has been used successfully against Muslim reform groups, and others in the Muslim world prior to being implemented here in the U.S. Algeria and perhaps even Egypt are examples. Emerson is well read on this topic, and testified before a Senate sub-committee about the GIA in Algeria, stating that GIA was a terrorist group, and part of a terrorism network, and the Islamic movement. In a book later published by three credible Algerian human rights workers, it was stated that the GIA is actually a government sponsored paramilitary group whose mission was to commit brutal acts of terror against the Algerian people that would later be blamed on Islamists. This was done in an effort to tarnish the movements, and to paint all movement ac! tivists as terrorists, or potential terrorists. By so doing, activists became government targets, and police actions such as illegal detainment. Muslims, who had previously supported the democratization movement as an alternative to the military government in power, turned away from the movement out of either fear, or loathing. Muslim activists, who had for years enjoyed growing support among the people of the Muslim world, were more threatening to the status quo than ever before, since they had garnered the people’s respect and affection, and were winning democratic elections. Those governments and other interests, who knew that the status quo could no longer compete with the growing popularity of the Islamic movement, resorted to forming paramilitary groups who would carry out vicious attacks against civilians. They sometimes killed as many as 350 people per night in Algeria. After these massacres, the counter insurgents released public statements claiming to be Islamic gr! oups. This caused the entire world to view any challenger to a status quo regime in the Muslim world, who would use a religious reference, no matter how benign, to be tagged terrorist and extremist. The situation in Spain might be another example, where a well-timed Al-Qadea bombing pushed one government out, and brought another to power, simply due to people’s fears. Isn’t it interesting that once Al-Qadea objectives are achieved, which are pretty sophisticated objectives, that bring about extraordinary results, like the change in the Spanish government, the deconstruction of US judiciary and society based upon fear, and also the war in Iraq, that the violence ends.

The common enemy that seemingly brought these two together, the Mossad, and Egypt’s intelligence agency in the first WTC bombing, if it is true that they collaborated in that bombing, might be their common enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Having established itself in the United States as various service oriented and religious organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood was a growing influence among Muslims in the United States. Emerson statements made alluding to an alliance between Israel and Egypt supports this theory. Emerson wrote: " The only definite details known about the backgrounds of the suspects (in the World Trade Center Bombing) are that they are united by a zealous Islamic fundamentalist ideology, a bitter hatred of the West and its perceived surrogates, such as Western allied Arab regimes and Israel." On more than one occasion, both before and after the bombing, Emerson refers to collaboration between Egypt and Israel in a war against what he! called, "Islamic fundamentalism." In testimony presented before a US Congressional hearing, Emerson said: " Radical Islamic militants see the very existence of pro-Western nations, such as Israel and Egypt a threat…" In a Wall Street Journal article on the topic, Emerson wrote: " Thus far, the only factor definitively known to link suspects is a zealous Islamic ideology, a bitter hatred of the West and its perceived surrogates such as Western allied Arab regimes and Israel." It’s also interesting that an Egyptian named Abu El Fadl, who claims to be an Islamic legal scholar was the first to announce, prior to 9/11, that Al-Qadea would use suicide bombings as a technique, even though they had never done so prior to 9/11. Ironically, this same supposed Egyptian scholar, had also stated in that same interview with the LA Times, that the Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, who was killed by the Egyptian government under the Nassr regime, seduced young Muslim men to ! commit suicide by promising them that after death they would be allowed to have sex with mystic beings in paradise. The Muslim Brotherhood has never used suicide bombings, and there was no armed confrontation between the Brotherhood when Qutb was executed. Abu Fadl, also claimed in his interview, that this idea originates in the Qur’an. Abu Fadl is also the only Muslim who testified before the 9/11 Commission where he no doubt reinforced the arguments presented by Egypt and Israel against the Muslim Brotherhood, and all other Muslim reform movements in the Muslim world, who they refer to as "Islamists." This might explain the 9/11 Commission’s assertion that 9/11 was carried out by Islamists.

To better understand what is happening in the United States of America, and why the 9/11 Commission insists that Islamists are responsible for the 9/11 attacks, we need only refer to a few of the provocative statements made by Emerson, and his colleagues such as Michael Horowitz. It was Horowitz who initiated the Christian Evangelical and Zionist relationship that became a powerful anti-Muslim and anti-Islam voice in the United States. Horowitz was the strategist behind the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act that called for US economic sanctions against Muslim governments found guilty of what Horowitz claimed is persecution of Christians and Jews. Horowitz initiated his campaign by claiming to be a champion of Christians in the Middle East, who according to Horowitz were being persecuted in Egypt and Sudan. Horowitz wrote:

In today’s battle for the soul of Islam, vulnerable Christian communities are the battlegrounds in which the struggle is waged. Protecting them protects the Muslims, who now struggle to date without support, to leave the Dark Age prisons of the modern day Kharajites and to enter the 21st century.

On its face this seems an honorable enough sentiment on behalf of Christians and Jews, yet when we consider what is actually said, it could mean much more. It’s not until the real agenda of the Christian persecution movement led by Horowitz becomes apparent that we realize that it is just another attempt to shut off Muslim charities, and specifically Muslim Brotherhood charities, and to demonize Muslims and Arabs generally. Also, economic sanctions has become the weapon of choice for bankrupting Muslim countries, and retarding Muslim economic growth, and killing large numbers of Muslim people from starvation and diseases, which is less expensive and bloody than wars. Ironically economic sanctions never impact the rulers of these countries, just the people. Many suspect that the actual aim of such punishing is to set an example, rewarding and punishing Muslim countries as explained in the Israeli strategy outlined in "Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing ! the Realm." This carrot/ stick approach is designed to reward those governments who will follow the Israeli dictate, and not challenge Israel’s dominance in the region. Other familiar themes in this document include, Israel’s close relationship with Jordan, and Egypt, removing Saddam Hussein from power to appease Jordan, and what it calls "hot pursuit" into Palestinian territories as self-defense, and nurturing alternatives to Arafat.

Horowitz wrote: " while Christians in Islamic countries are increasingly imperiled for their beliefs, the US government has deliberately ignored their plight." Hororwitz may have had some success in his efforts to pit the East against the West and vice versa. On September 17, 1998, the House created a National Commission on Terrorism (H.R. 4536). The Commission was supposedly established to examine national anti-terrorism policies and to recommend ways that the US government can be more efficient in protecting Christians overseas. The formation of the committee was the result of an amendment to a 16 billion-dollar package to fund US aids programs overseas. Daniel Pipes, Ed Badolato, Steven Pomerantz, Fouad Ajami and Riad Nachef, were the team recommenced for the committee, all seemingly Emerson associates.

Weekly Planet newspaper columnist John Sugg investigated accusations made by Emerson against Muslims and Palestinians in an article written by Emerson that appeared in Florida’s Tribune newspaper, accusing US Muslims again of being terrorists. Sugg wrote about what he learned through his investigation in an article that appeared in the Weekly Planet on October 28, 1998, "Dissection of a lie." Sugg wrote: "I had always hoped that the Tribune was merely misguided by Emerson. Emerson applauds the silencing of Muslims, not because of any action they have taken, but because whoever is backing Emerson does not want the Muslim voice to be heard…I have to conclude that something far more sinister is going on."

In a New Republic article, published June 12, 1995, in the article, "The other fundamentalists: A look inside the radical Islamic network," Emerson said, ‘Muslim organizations are increasingly succumbing to the influence of militant Islam. Islamic fundamentalist now control many of the Muslim organizations in the United States." In testimony before the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, (August 1, 1994) Emerson stated: " These radical extremist have been able to set up a vast international network of supporters throughout the world, especially in the West where they have amassed money and weapons, established recruitment centers, and even established a command center and control facilities." Most people recognize these statements as part of an elaborate scheme that would result in the scapegoating of Muslims and Islam for the tragedy of 9/11. Reading the 9/11 Commission Summary it is almost impossible to ignore the similarity be! tween the Commissions findings and statements made by Israeli and Egyptian propagandist, and operatives, operating in the United States. Such statements served to color all Muslim activism as "terrorism or potential terrorism" and "extremism" and to make our mosques, and adherents all "potential terrorists" a category of citizens that found its way into various so-called "anti-terrorism" schemes that caused Muslims to be subjected to many injustices. Emerson and others laid the intellectual and political foundation for implementation of that part of the Clean Break strategy. A strategy that calls for "containing, destabilizing, and rolling back, some of the more dangerous threats," to Israel’s plan to dominate the Middle East, which no doubt included pro-Palestinian activism in Muslim, and other communities located here in the United States.

Emerson’s charges have never been proven, even though the FBI has conducted repeated searches and seizures of computers, and assets of Muslim organizations in the United States, targeting almost exclusively those organizations affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Palestinian resistance movement. Interestingly, Emerson had also initiated the propaganda campaign against Iraq that may have resulted in the March 2003 attack against Iraq, as far back as 1991. Emerson suggested years ago that Iraq posed a threat to the United States, saying: " If war breaks out, American institutions in Europe and the Middle East will face terrorist attacks…by…terrorists controlled by Saddam Hussein." This statement might be the basis for Bush administration insistence that Hussein is linked to 9/11. Even though the United States and Iraq did become involved in the Desert Storm War, this war was fought as a result of Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, and was never linked to ! any type of response to, or threat from terrorism.

Emerson’s emphasis on US Muslim organizations as covers, or supporters of the so-called "international terrorism network" continues until now. One of his most blatant accusations was made in 1998, in a Wall Street Journal article were he wrote:

In the US militant Islamic movements raise tens of millions of dollars a year, much of it through tax exempt charitable organizations- which in turn transfer money to overseas militant Islamic groups or which directly fund militant Islamic activities in the US.

There are some obvious relationships that can be made in respect to Emerson and his colleagues that reveals quite a bit. Their methods and their message in respect to Muslims and Arabs are very telling. Perhaps the most obvious relationships to be made are their access to our countries leading newspapers, especially the Wall Street Journal, and also their access to the US Congress. One of the most disturbing observations that one can cite in this respect, is that whatever Emerson wants from our Congress, he seems to get. If we follow Emerson and his colleague’s rhetorical trail from the newspapers to the Congress, we find a resulting trail of legislation that erodes civil liberties, and that undermines the US constitution, and that also misled our nation into war in Iraq. We also see a pattern that suggests the diversion of funds through amendments to various bills to projects headed by Emerson and his comrades, is primarily how they fund their anti-M! uslim, and anti-Islam campaign in the United States and the Middle East. Another reoccurrence resulting from their propaganda and activism is the freezing of assets that belong to Muslim organizations, and peoples, indictments against US Muslim and Palestinian activists, and also sanctions against Muslim and Arab countries, all accused of being either rogues, or terrorists, or threats to Israel. Asked to make a guess based upon the obvious, with a certain amount of confidence, it could be suggested that their goal is the preeminence of Israel through the destruction or domination of the Muslim countries, and the subjugation of Muslims in the United States. This is accomplished through anti-terrorism legislation that chills Muslim activism, while it undermines our Constitution and years of progress in respect to individual liberties.

In January of 2004, the war against Muslim organizations in the United States took on another face. This time the US Senate, as part of an ongoing investigation, has requested that the IRS give confidential tax information, financial records, including donors’ lists to the committee overseeing the investigation. According to a Washington Post article, the Senate committee making the request is looking for information about Muslim American charity ties to al-Qadea and Hamas. Uproar arose in our country over the fact that our government was attempting to erroneously blame Saddam Hussein for 9/11, but not much has been said about attempts to do the same with Hamas. Hamas had nothing to do with 9/11, yet whenever the media or our politicians speak of "terrorism" and the so-called "war against terrorism" they mention the Palestinian resistance, which by most standards, is a legitimate liberation movement, not akin in any way to Al-Qadea.

The investigation of Muslim organizations in the US has ostensibly been ongoing since PBS first aired Jihad in America, yet assaults on these organizations are supposedly being conducted now as an aspect of the larger war on terrorism that ensued following 9/11. Almost exclusively, the organizations targeted by the Senate committee, and others are organizations that are part of the Muslim Brotherhood network, and not associated in any way with al-Qadea, or terrorism. Most of these organizations were established originally in the United States during the 60s as the Muslim Student Association (MSA). The MSA was formed to serve immigrant Muslim students in the United States, providing religious programs, and establishing community mosques, while also establishing publications that spoke openly about the plight of Muslims living under repressive regimes in the Middle East. Contrary to assertions made by Emerson, and others, whose agenda has become very ob! vious, these groups were the first to initiate reform programs that sought to democratize the Middle East. Democratization is an objective that we have realized actually works in our favor, even though it perturbs the hell out of Israel and Egypt and some other Muslim countries. It was the members of the Muslim Brotherhood who were the first to suffer, and give their lives as a result of launching reform and democratization movements in the Muslim world. For their efforts we tag them terrorists, and persecute them, and the brutal regimes they sought to reform, we call them our allies.

Another reason that Zionists have targeted these organizations is that they have been leaders among human rights organizations and other private citizen groups and NGOs that have sought to expose Israeli injustices against the Palestinian people. They had increasingly and successfully organized protests, and to petition the US Congress on behalf of the Palestinian people, calling for a balanced US policy in the Middle East, and an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine. According to Roger C. Simmons, the attorney for Global Relief Organization, in respect to the US Senate request for lists of donors to US Muslim organizations, " This kind of blanket request is aimed at chilling the tendency for American Muslims to give money. As far as the organizations themselves are concerned, I’m not sure what else they can do to them that has not already been done."

Zionist are succeeding at silencing the Muslim voice in America which is what John Sugg had suspected was their objective years ago. They have succeeded at driving a wedge between the Muslim and Arab people and the American people, which is what it appears Michael Horowitz was attempting to do through his Christian persecution campaign. Zionists have also succeeded at taking our country to war in Iraq, for the sole purpose of improving Israel’s status in the Middle East. They have succeed at undermining the US Constitution, claiming that we need a new law for a new war, and a country forever changed by 9/11. Interestingly the war is always diverted from Al-Qadea and redirected to whoever is next on the Zionist hit list, whether Iraq, Iran Syria, Sudan or the Islamic movement. The only aspect of their suspected agenda at which they have not succeeded is the complete destruction of our Constitution. Yet, the Secret Evidence Act, the Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Act,! and now the Patriot Act, if not fine tuned and subjected to strict Congressional oversight, could be significant steps in that direction.

At the World Economic Forum, held in Davos Switzerland, Attorney General John Ashcroft made a moving statement. He said that the war on terrorism is as much a war of ideas as it is a military and law enforcement issue. He mentioned human dignity and said that the war on terrorism is being fought in the market place of ideas, and that the market place must be a place of free exchange where ideas are accepted based upon merit and not imposed. This takes us back to what John Sugg said about the work of Steven Emerson and other neo-conservatives, which are actually neo-liberals, and their objectives. Some suggest that their goals have always been to silence Muslims and Arabs in the United States, and to prevent the acceptance of any view contrary to the Zionist view of the Palestine/Israel conflict from being heard in the US. Historically, US foreign policy has been conducted in the dark, with few American people being aware of exactly what our government does i! n the Middle East, or how our tax dollars are spent in the Middle East, and if these expenditures are in concert with American values and interests. Anti-terrorism legislation that does little to fight terrorism, and looks more like war against the people of the US, when used irresponsibly, or ideologically can prevent the Muslim and Arab voice from reaching this market place. It is arguable that the very idea that our government enjoys such vast surveillance powers, access to the media, and has the ability to lurk behind private citizens and secretly ruin their lives, defame them and destroy their reputations, without oversight or accountability, that this is not a war against terrorism, but rather it is a war against political activism, and Constitutionally protected dissent.

The Israeli effort to end dissent, and free speech in the United States, masked as a war on terrorism, has practically stilled the Muslim and Arab voice in respect to Palestine. Daily we hear reports of Israeli bombings in civilian areas where they carry out extra judicial killings of activists, and the world is tolerant of this criminal activity. It is interesting that Sudan is targeted for sanctions for genocide in Darfur, while Israel has escaped any punitive action taken by the international community for Israel’s decades of murders, destruction of private property, etc. in the occupied territories.

Ten years have passed since the airing of Emerson’s controversial documentary, which seems now to have been a first step, in a progressive assault on Muslim and Arab civil and religious rights, and the Constitution of the United States.

The book, The Agent, Truth behind the Anti-Muslim Campaign in America,

Says the following:

A bad Muslim, according to Emerson statements, is likely to be Arab, Palestinian, politically active, and against the continued Israeli occupation of Palestine, the peace process and American foreign aid to Israel. "Bad" Muslims also give to Muslim charities, especially those that serve the Palestinians in Palestine. They join Muslim organizations and see Islam as an international brotherhood, rather than a nationalistic religious _expression. "Extremists" are vocal and activist is Emerson’s opinion.

The 9/11 Commission Summary says that "Islamist" extremist or bad Muslims attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Yet, there are sound eyewitness reports that say that the attackers did not appear to be Muslims, since they frequented strip clubs and whorehouses, and drank alcohol, all of which is prohibited in Islam. "Religious" extremism suggests that such people are overly, or obsessively religious, not the opposite. So why does the 9/11 Commission Report insist, even in the face of well-publicized eyewitness reports that the attackers were not Muslims, use this term, "Islamist?" Could it be because Emerson, and other pro-Israel propagandists suggested as far back as the mid 90’s that this is the term that should be used to describe anyone who carries out an act of political violence that is tagged "terrorism."

Is the 9/11 report just another piece of pro-Israel propaganda that is aimed at further demonizing Islamic activism in the United States and overseas? The 9/11 Commission report appears to be an honest attempt to describe what happened September 11, 2004, and to explain who carried out that act of war against the United States and why. It seeks to advance, even through its recommendations, the idea that we have all made serious mistakes. Beginning with our government’s previous ambiguity about Middle East government corruption and abuses of power, and these government’s approval of media propaganda in their countries that demonizes the US as a way to distract attention from their own crimes, is by far our biggest error in that respect. Where the report fails is in its inability to recognize and speak to the real internal threat to US security. This threat is not posed by Muslim, or Palestinian activism, or Islamists, but rather by a zealous cadre of pro-Isra! el and anti-Islamic operatives planted in our country by foreign governments to undermine US liberties and religious freedoms, and to stifle the activism of pro-democratization and pro-Palestinian movements in the US.

Attorney General John Ashcroft was right when he said that the war against terrorism is as much an ideological battle as a military battle, but the enemy ideology is not any breed of Islamism. The enemy ideologies that are anathema to US values and that threaten our national security are greed for wealth and power by Arab governments, and a racist and violent brand of Zionism. The only way to defeat these gathered threats is with the truth. The 9/11 Commission made the mistake that both the Clinton and Bush administration’s made before and after 9/11. They limited our access to the truth, and also our country’s choices to the views of a few foreign governments, and self-interested voices that have now brought us into their war against Islam, under the guise of fighting terrorism, WMD, and other lies.

Our war, the real war against terrorism, is actually a war against political violence and the government corruption and violence that breeds young men and women who see us as their enemy. There are people in the international community who blame us for not caring about how our tax dollars are used to support militarism and violence. They blame us for not listening, and not standing up for their rights to speak out and to protest and to change their destinies, as we did. They blame us for not using our resources to bring peace to the world, and for supporting cycles of violence which cost us billions of US dollars, to accomplish nothing. The 9/11 Commission missed one important recommendation that we add, and that is that the US must open up to the people of the world and listen. We have to stop getting too cozy with corrupt governments that oppress, and kill the human spirit, and who have no respect for human life, and dignity. We must reach out to the poor,! and the oppressed, and use our influence to free, and to empower people. This was the purpose, and power of the American Revolution, which was not just a military battle, it was also a war of ideas. The prevailing revolutionary idea that has fueled US success, is arguably this…"that all men (human beings) are created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."