Jihadists and the US Elite

In order to create an enemy to justify their many politico-economic motives, the US elite have blown the reality of these ragtag “Jihadists” way out of proportion, given them worldwide media coverage and presented them as an equal opponent. This has not only created an image among the poverty stricken masses in the ‘third-world’ of a Robin Hood like group, battling an empire, it has provided direct legitimacy when the US treats them as a foe it is on an official war with (on the mass media). The “Jihadists” and the American elite thus have a symbiotic relationship with each other, they mutually feed and grow in their perversions based on each other’s actions. The former are the petty barbarians (terrorists) the latter the higher barbarians (terrorists).

Islam is not described by what its alleged followers do or do not do; you can find them doing anything under the sun. Rather it is described by what is contained in its only authoritative text, the Quran. The agenda-driven corporate media picks on the acts that it can capitalize on while ignoring the vast majority of the rest of the acts of Muslims. That is like saying that America is defined by the acts of the rapists that rape around 1 million women a year in this country. [1] We wouldn’t use that criteria for the latter case but use lower numbers and instances to describe the former. That is the nature of subjective agenda-driven reporting.

Second, Islam had as its source from the beginning the Quran. Other items, like the hadith whose volume and content grew with every succeeding generation, is not its source, and can never be its historical source. The political/economic elite in order to justify their perversions attributed them by hook or by crook to the prophet so they could justify them to the people because religion was the most influential institution in society.

Take the case of how the US media presents Muslim women. As fact, women in Western societies are oppressed, as much or more (given social indicators of rape and domestic abuse) than Muslim women (who are oppressed more by their traditions than anything Islam or the Quran teaches). The West makes a big deal (for propaganda reasons) of the "Muslim veiling of women" (even though there is no such ruling concerning that veil in the Quran) yet it is busy veiling its own women by making everything about them invisible (about their personalities) both to themselves and to others, except their physical appearance judged by male standards of attractiveness. If all that is valuable about you is your physical appearance, everything else about you is effectively veiled from social consciousness, from others and from yourself. Social psychologists describe personality development similarly: The ‘looking glass self’: you see yourself as others see you.

The ‘Cold War’ and the ‘War on Terror’

The Soviets lost 20 million in the 2nd World War defeating Hitler, the US lost less than a fraction of that, after the war this "Cold War" not only ensured US domination and hegemony over the globe, gearing its economy on similar war footing, the end was known in advance to these Neo-Colonials that the Soviets were in no position to outspend or outsmart them. They affectively altered the agenda of the Soviets to international militarism, rather than what they should have been concerned with at home. After the war, when the allies ganged up against the Soviets, having lost so many, their reactionary nature was to be expected. The structure that existed in most areas of the world gave a greater advantage to the former colonizers and the new hegemonic power, the US that consolidated these spoils. The US and the Soviets were unequal opponents but not as unequal as the rag tag ‘Jihadists’ are compared to the US. The "war on terrorism" is a bigger farce than the "cold war", which was a farce nonetheless.

The Cold War helped the US elite, the commanders of the capitalist world system to more effectively install a Neo-Colonial setup and combat and contain the desires of the majority world to free themselves from their domination, while benefiting immensely from the militarism that resulted, towards which the US economy was geared, and still is.

World War 2 was pivotal in this form of a ’permanent war based economy’. Before that, these elite were forced to bring socialist principles into the working of their economy, which was very distasteful to them. There was no communist threat to the US; there was a threat of the US losing its hegemony (not to the Soviets but to individual countries) and its domineering economic standing if peace was allowed to prevail. Thus peace was not tolerated.

Just like the CIA was convincing the Afghans of the countryside that fighting the Soviets was a sure ticket to heaven, these elite are now using this "war on terror" farce to steal massively from their public by a paranoid atmosphere of fright. According to the 2006 US budget, the government’s discretionary spending on defense, almost $450 billion, is greater than its discretionary spending on all other programs combined. Add to this discretionary spending the non-discretionary part and you come up with a whopping $800 billion figure, according to some calculations of a line-by-line analysis of the budget.

9/11 has been highly publicized, used and abused by the US elite for their many motives, there is no threat from "political Islam" either or any external enemy. Factually 9/11 is a non-issue compared to even the murders committed in the US every year that exceed those killed in 9/11 by over 10,000.

There is certainly no threat facing the US comparable to the scale of destruction it brings upon whole countries or the chokehold it has placed upon the majority world through its economic domination. Only idiots would believe that a country (US) with the most massive military power in the world is "threatened" by a few people roaming around in caves brandishing ak-47s and (world war 2 vintage) RPGs, yet this farce has been sold not only to the US public but world wide as poor countries busy themselves to fight a "war on terror" on the behalf of the US while ignoring their overwhelming domestic problems. We must reject this lie, and reject it in totality.

Muhammed Asadi can be reached at: masadi@aol.com.