He’s a smarmy criminal, so what?
Would you prefer ‘proxy’?
The very fact you mistakenly believe that the Muslim Brotherhood are ‘our enemies’ shows how little you understand about this. Of course, products do not always do what they are told, but the idea that what’s now going on North Africa is counter to our interests and long-running strategy in the region just isn’t tenable.
No, because the idea that Muslim radicals could, on a general basis, outwit MI6 and the CIA is absurd, if you know anything about Muslim radicals, MI6 and the CIA. It’s like saying that when a parent lies to their child about the existence of Santa Claus that the child is actually manipulating the parent so they can get presents. If you honestly think these gangs of wild-eyed Muslims who are up for a fight have a greater ability to understand geopolitical strategy, historical dialectics and psychological manipulation then you’re crediting them with such intelligence and foresight that there’s no way they would have acted like they have in these recent riots. The very fact that they did that shows that they aren’t very bright, and couldn’t outwit most horses let alone most spies.
History is history and what actually happened actually happened, regardless of what generic, vague claims you might make about ‘man’…
Western intelligence agents have been running around the Middle East for a lot longer than the Muslim Brotherhood has existed. You are simply wrong on this point.
Hardly, it’s their home. It’s our playground.
Because of course there’s no possibility that BOTH were products of Western covert action, except that’s actually what happened. But never mind all that, reality is irrelevant when it comes to worldviews.
Mubarak was Saddam v2 - we were on his side until the moment that we weren’t. I doubt Obama’s policies are in any way influenced by what McCain says. I also doubt that the resurgent mujahideen who facilitated the ‘Arab Spring’ realise that they have been covertly backed by the West, hence why those Syrian rebels were burning US flags the other day. They really are quite stupid, but unlike so many on this thread I don’t smugly decide that that fact is the total explanation of what’s going on here. It would be like looking at the Watts Riots and saying ‘all this proves is that black people are stupid’…
He is obviously more than that, but you’ve proven yourself to be intellectually dishonest with these repeated straw man arguments, so I can’t be arsed with you anymore.
Oh, I’m lying to you eh? Straw man argument? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not building up any sort of argument.
Why don’t you just advise who this guy is working for. The pope? Aliens? Obama? Who is it?
Hey SIATD,
— The very fact you mistakenly believe that the Muslim Brotherhood are ‘our enemies’ shows how little you understand about this.
O- I don’t believe that anyone, in the world of politics, is a 'friend". I think that they had an interest in seeing Murbarak go. When his continued rule was no longer the interest of the administration, it might cause the illusion that we are now friends. But what they stand for is not in the interest of the US in the long run, I think, and eventually that will cause problems. Does that mean that we are enemies? I simply define an enemy of govt a person or group that does not play by the rules said govt wishes others to play by even if itself it follows no rule other than it’s “interest”.
— Of course, products do not always do what they are told, but the idea that what’s now going on North Africa is counter to our interests and long-running strategy in the region just isn’t tenable.
O- Before we go on, what do YOU think is the US (and England) “long-running strategy”? What are their “interests” and how have the events in North Africa further their “interest”?
— No, because the idea that Muslim radicals could, on a general basis, outwit MI6 and the CIA is absurd, if you know anything about Muslim radicals, MI6 and the CIA.
O- Osama stayed alived nearly a decade with the CIA and MI6 potency trainned on him. I think that you grossly under-appreciate the situation, the fact that it is their land and have popular support. You also over-value the capacities of these organs…it is not like in the films. Their capacities are determined by finding the right connections, which requires a lot of luck and while there are cases of success there are even more of failure, latest example being the attack on the embassy.
— It’s like saying that when a parent lies to their child about the existence of Santa Claus that the child is actually manipulating the parent so they can get presents. If you honestly think these gangs of wild-eyed Muslims who are up for a fight have a greater ability to understand geopolitical strategy, historical dialectics and psychological manipulation then you’re crediting them with such intelligence and foresight that there’s no way they would have acted like they have in these recent riots. The very fact that they did that shows that they aren’t very bright, and couldn’t outwit most horses let alone most spies.
O- Have you seen american television? It is not the many that are intelligent or must be, but only a few. First you argue that they are not savages and then argue that they are? What are they SIATD? Make up your mind. THEY planned this attack, and the sooner we stop seeing them as stupid or lacking the foresight needed to carry out an attack on an embassy or on the twin towers, the sooner we will address our limitations.
— Western intelligence agents have been running around the Middle East for a lot longer than the Muslim Brotherhood has existed. You are simply wrong on this point.
O- Here is how that sounds to me: "James Bond has been running around the ME for a lot…"These spies could not find Bin Laden for years. The Cole, the Barracks, 9/11 happened because of how tenuous our presence is. Any american is a target, a lamb in a land of wolves. It is not easily to conceal a spy in an Arab country. It requires agents of a ME heritage, who speak the dialect and looks like any other person. But the problem is that people’s alligeance can change, as in the ft hood shooter.
— Hardly, it’s their home. It’s our playground.
O- That is what gets us in trouble- thinking of the ME as a “playground”. There is some truth in that however in that one defends one’s home with more ferocity than one’s “playground”. Americans don’t want to see an endless war in a far away “playground”. It only gained support after their “home” was treathened.
— Because of course there’s no possibility that BOTH were products of Western covert action, except that’s actually what happened. But never mind all that, reality is irrelevant when it comes to worldviews.
O- Which one, yours or mine?
I’m not saying they are friends, more bedfellows. The CIA have been following the struggle between Mubarak and the Muslim brotherhood since at least the late 1980s, including importing people like the Blind Sheikh into the US and monitoring him through spies like Ali Mohamed. I know all this because before I came to a conclusion I actually looked up the available documentation.
Their interests are to maintain dominion over the world’s most important energy and trading corridor, as has been the European policy in the Middle East since… forever, really. The strategy is the one demanded by the geopolitical realities. The disruption of many states in the region and the encouraging of in-fighting between, for example, the Israelis and the Egyptians, the Saudis and the Iraqis, the Syrians and the Turks, the Iranians and the Pakistanis, ensures that no internal faction gains that much regional power. Thus, the only consistent geopolitical strategy in the region is that of what is now called NATO.
Are you being serious?
No, it’s much, much worse. But thanks for the condescending suggestion that I draw my view of this from films, rather than from the thousands of real life intelligence agency files that I actually read. It’s nice to be accused of having far less subtlety of thinking than one actually has.
Ah yes, the old ‘intelligence failures’. 
I didn’t say anything about ‘savages’. I said that a lot of Muslims are stupid and easily riled, but that simply viewing these events in those terms is ignorant. They didn’t attack the twin towers, and I’ll bet my presence here that you have no evidence that they did.
Are you being serious?
That’s what they tell you. Christ knows why you believe it, and which barracks are you talking about?
Yeah, when the Americans were bombing Iraq they really came across like a poor little defenceless animal surrounded by vicious predators. Oh, wait, no they didn’t.
Like Ali Mohamed? David Headley? Junaid Babar? Luai Sakra? Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh? Omar Abdel Rahman? Gulbuddin Hekmatyar? Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan?
Actually, Headley was white and didn’t look remotely Middle Eastern despite being half-Pakistani. Still didn’t stop him being used very successfully to infiltrate Pakistani drugs gangs in the 80s and 90s, and Lashkar e Taiba in the 2000s. He masterminded the Mumbai massacre before being given a cushy plea agreement by the US authorities that has protected him from being extradited to India where he would likely face the death penalty. Funny, that…
Because we really have enough objective evidence to decide what happened in that case…
Bullshit, the CIA overthrew Mossadeq in the early 1950s.
Yours. I don’t have a worldview, just a lot of facts that tell me that the middle of the road, MSNBC version of events that you believe is utter nonsense.
Exactly. SIATD v2 does NOT have a worldview! Get that straight, and I mean right now buddy!
Everyone except for SIATD v2 is UDDER NONSENSE!!
Overlooking freely available and highly relevant information like the following is udderly ridiculous:
foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_000025 … 258682.pdf
(pages 20-23 of the PDF are on Egypt)
A few months after this assessment, we got this:
news.intelwire.com/2007/06/us-se … blind.html
And then there’s the question of how the Muslim Brotherhood’s leader got into the US, repeatedly, despite being on the terror watch list:
historycommons.org/context.j … bdulrahman
Also this blog, incuding documents, on what the 9/11 Commission knew about the Blind Sheikh:
hcgroups.wordpress.com/2009/10/0 … nd-sheikh/
Oh, and a little map illustrating the ‘tenuous’ US presence in the Middle East:
great post - thanks for the map 
Western Embassies in the Middle East were accessories to the making of the film? That’s pretzel logic. i might as well firebomb my local Mosque to vent the anger i feel over 9-11.
i take your point as to the killngs themselves. those may have been planned for all i know. and i realize that all different kinds of things can incite violence among all different types of people, not just insults to this or that prophet. but the violent reaction to the film is still there. it is still senseless and unjustified - and, unlike the Rodney King riots (which were senseless in their own way) these are the product of a particular form of religious zeal not at all limited to Muslims, but certainly rife among them.
i have no particular fondness for Christianity. i would say that the Inquisition was savagery on a scale only hinted at by the present violence over the film. But that’s a difference in magnitude, not to mention a few centuries of social and cultural development - the fact remains that in the end it’s all still savagery.
i don’t think that all Muslims are savages, but i think that Islam, particularly in the Arab world, is about 2-3 centuries behind the other major religions in terms of assimilating itself into the modern world.
A rather ironic response, since the US actually did a lot worse than just firebomb a mosque in response in 9/11, despite having no evidence that Muslims were responsible, and the US public (as well as a lot of other people) not only accepted that, but praised it.
Seems we’re not so different after all…
You’ll recall at least two things about 9-11 in comparison to the film:
1)9-11 was an act of violence and thousands of people were killed.
2)The subsequent war in Afghanistan (whether or not you think it was justified ((i do not)) ) at least attempted to target those responsible for the act.
The blind rage at any and all things Muslim was NOT a notable characteristic of the American public’s response the way that blind rage toward any and all things American characterizes the response of hoards of Muslims to this film. Strictly in terms of the proportionality and reciprocity of each response, the American response to 9-11 at least followed a discernible logic: “There are militant groups in Afghanistan responsible for killing thousands of Americans, those groups are evil and we will attack them”, NOT “This film, made by an American, is an insult to my chosen prophet, so America is evil and by extension Westerners should die, let’s take revenge on the closest Westerner we can find”.
It would be one thing to declare a Fatwa on the producers of the film, that would be reprehensible but at least it would make sense - the present violence surrounding the film has no object or purpose. It is senseless in the extreme.
So was the war in Libya.
Except there is no evidence that anyone in Afghanistan had anything to do with it, the Afghan government offered to hand over Bin Laden and the invading forces already had their gear in place months before 9/11.
Except there aren’t ‘hoards’ of Muslims expressing ‘blind rage’ in response to this film. As I have pointed out already, most people haven’t seen it, and could not have seen it prior to taking the actions that they have taken. Just as with 9/11, you are simply wrong in these assertions.
As to hatred of all things Muslim - remember the ‘Ground Zero mosque’ controversy? How about the arrests of literally thousands of innocent Muslims who had fuck all to do with 9/11 or terrorism?
See above. You are wrong on EVERY point.
If you mistakenly believe that the violence is in response to the film then of course it seems utterly stupid, but the violence has little to do with this film, that’s just a convenient story designed to make Muslims look uncontrollably and stupidly violent, when the reality is that FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR more people have been killed by the very Western foreign policy machine this handful of Muslims have retaliated against.
But let’s say it is because of the film, at least in terms of a trigger. Imagine your country was attacked, your homes bombed, your roads destroyed, your economy flattened, and some bunch of bastards flew in a load of radical, horribly violent men who roamed around in gangs killing pretty much whoever they liked, including many people you knew. And then, after that had happened, someone decided to make a film depicting you, your family, everyone you knew and everything you believed, in a deliberately insulting manner. You finally retaliate, committing violence on a tiny scale relative to that visited on you and your people, but as a result you are portrayed as a stupid, out of control maniac who can’t take any criticism. How would you feel?
And, just to complete the parallels with what happened in 2005-6:
It is amusing to compare what has happened here with what has happened regarding the topless photographs of Kate Middleton, the posh slag that married Prince William. In that case there has been overt censorship, court injunctions, websites being forced to remove the pictures, and not a single person has bleated about ‘freedom of speech’. Yet in the case of things that are clearly designed to offend and inflame a far larger number of people than make up the Royal family, the pat, one-line excuse is ‘freedom of speech’. The hypocrisy is almost tangible.
Hello uglypeople,
— Western Embassies in the Middle East were accessories to the making of the film? That’s pretzel logic. i might as well firebomb my local Mosque to vent the anger i feel over 9-11.
O- If the islamicist were right and it was Islam itself that taught the principles that lead to 9/11 (which it doesn’t)…By comparassion, freedom of speech is a protected right, the law of our govt, so the consequences of it rest, partly, on the liberties we grant. However I insist that I do not agree with murder, for that is what it is and unfortunately neither does the Koran itself, the work of the prophet, whom I believe is more insulted by the defense of his name than by the vodeos or cartoons that come from infidels. I wish that more coverage was being generated by the moderate voices in these countries that condemn these acts of violence.
— i take your point as to the killngs themselves. those may have been planned for all i know. and i realize that all different kinds of things can incite violence among all different types of people, not just insults to this or that prophet. but the violent reaction to the film is still there. it is still senseless and unjustified - and, unlike the Rodney King riots (which were senseless in their own way) these are the product of a particular form of religious zeal not at all limited to Muslims, but certainly rife among them.
O- We have thousands of muslims in this country. If being muslim was a direct cause of violence, were are the attacks on american govt bldgs in the US? We have to separate extremist from moderates and note that just as WE have our McVeigh and others who DO NOT reflect what we stand for, that Islam has this vulnerability of being hijacked.
— i have no particular fondness for Christianity. i would say that the Inquisition was savagery on a scale only hinted at by the present violence over the film. But that’s a difference in magnitude, not to mention a few centuries of social and cultural development - the fact remains that in the end it’s all still savagery.
O- But do you understand the point that you cannot summarily condemn muslims? I thought that you were above prejudice.
— i don’t think that all Muslims are savages, but i think that Islam, particularly in the Arab world, is about 2-3 centuries behind the other major religions in terms of assimilating itself into the modern world.
O- Certain differences, like the fact that Mohammed was a politically successful prophet, who wrote parts of his “dictation” on govt, mixing govt and religion for all time, make that assimilation different, not impossible. But the west cannot insist that they drive on towards modernity through the same roads that the west chose to take. The US has had a commitment for decades to a strategy of divide and conquer, placing greater importance on access to petro than to the ushering the muslim world into modernity. Would the west be any different if such tampering had taken place?
Hello SIATD,
Thank you for that link. I am going to answer this post now, but I definetly want to respond to your link AFTER I have seen it in it’s entirety. I have seen about 22 minutes of it and it is very rich in information. Kudos so far.
— I’m not saying they are friends, more bedfellows. The CIA have been following the struggle between Mubarak and the Muslim brotherhood since at least the late 1980s, including importing people like the Blind Sheikh into the US and monitoring him through spies like Ali Mohamed. I know all this because before I came to a conclusion I actually looked up the available documentation.
O- And I didn’t right? And then you talk about condescension. These “spies” were often double spies, and what did I say: Who can be sure of their alligeance?
— Their interests are to maintain dominion over the world’s most important energy and trading corridor, as has been the European policy in the Middle East since… forever, really.
O- Agree. I don’t see how removing a puppet dictator helps you achieve that, rather than hampering it. Again, if this is the strategy, then John McCain was right to criticise Obama and it shows that there was a change in approach to the ME strategy.
— The strategy is the one demanded by the geopolitical realities.
O- Yes.
— The disruption of many states in the region and the encouraging of in-fighting between, for example, the Israelis and the Egyptians, the Saudis and the Iraqis, the Syrians and the Turks, the Iranians and the Pakistanis, ensures that no internal faction gains that much regional power. Thus, the only consistent geopolitical strategy in the region is that of what is now called NATO.
O- Disruption in the form of war between states? That disrupts the stated goal of the strategy, the interest of the west. Another thing to consider here is that “forever” had included a cold-war and that that shaped who were the bedfellows. Disruption, such as the war between Iran and Iraq, was prolonged and encouraged as a strategy against the soviet expansion and not necessarily the maintenance of the energy corridor. There are at least a hundred different ways to serve chicken. Likewise, there are several paths to achieve the preservation of western interest. War was but one tactic. Another tactic is the installation of west-friendly dictators. But these tactics are not implemented from the top-down, meaning that it is not that the west says: “This is what we are going to do and how we are going to do it”, but bottom-up, established in response to unforeseen events. You see W Bush’s face in Michael Moore’s film and you realize that he was surprise, that this was not according to plan, NOT an inside job. I don’t deny that there is a world of spies and infiltration and sabbotage, but there is also unforseen events, other entities, with their own interests and abilities to frustrate best-laid-plans.
— Are you being serious?
O- Yes. Killing Osama would have been a political victory for the republican president. It was a failure of his administration to produce his body in seven years of open hunt that cost the republicans the WH. They didn’t know. That is the honest truth. SOON as Obama found the location, he nailed that political victory, which he is going to remind voters of again and again in the next election. That Osama was alive was a regret of the Americans and the British and not “according to plan”.
— No, it’s much, much worse. But thanks for the condescending suggestion that I draw my view of this from films, rather than from the thousands of real life intelligence agency files that I actually read. It’s nice to be accused of having far less subtlety of thinking than one actually has.
O- You have the propensity for condecension and sarcasm as well. Can I be candid? That is how you wrote it. That is not the same as accusing you of believing it. If anything, take it as an invitation for clarification. I present it to you as something clearly absurd and beneath you, therefore, inviting a clarification of what you meant.
— I didn’t say anything about ‘savages’.
O- So ONLY “stupid”? Yeah, THAT makes it less condecending.
— I said that a lot of Muslims are stupid and easily riled
O- I guess you agree with uglypeople. Not that HUMANITY has a lot of members, of different creeds and beliefs, that for those beliefs, are easily riled, but that Muslims, yes, these unassimilated idiots, ARE stupid and easily riled up, unlike the rest of us, the enlightened…just don’t look at our history.
— They didn’t attack the twin towers, and I’ll bet my presence here that you have no evidence that they did.
O- Of course. they ARE too stupid to accomplish something as massive as that. That stupidity is your evidence?
— That’s what they tell you. Christ knows why you believe it, and which barracks are you talking about?
O- It makes more sense than the alternative you are proposing, which is: They did not do it, they are too stupid to even conceive of such a plan, WE only allowed them to think that they had done it, but it was us all along. That makes no sense. I don’t mean to say that there is no possibility that the govt may, as part of a strategy (like the Fast and Furious arms opertaion), encourage or conduct illegal operations, leading up to the deaths of some, but I reject the idea that EVERY violent act suffered by this country or England, HAD TO BE HATCHED in the halls of these countries secret agencies. Again, it is an over-simplification. Rather, I am of the opinion that 9/11, for example, was a coordinated attack by Al-Qaeda. They could do it just as any other crime is possible, because the arm of the law is not infallible, because agencies don’t work well together, because ambition can prevent the sharing of information, because security was relax at major airports… and several more.
— Yeah, when the Americans were bombing Iraq they really came across like a poor little defenceless animal surrounded by vicious predators. Oh, wait, no they didn’t.
O- You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them. And I was refering to spies.
— Like Ali Mohamed?
O- Double agent at best.
— David Headley?
O- DEA agent? Listen, working for the feds one week does not make you a puppet. It certainly does not preclude the probability that you even disagree with them, then or after, or harbor sympathies to anti-federal causes, then or after. The two above fit the bill. The Mumbai attacks don’t have to be interpreted (there is no necessity for it) as inside-jobs, just because “David” once worked for the DEA. McVeigh was a former soldier. Does that mean that the OK City bombming was carried out by the Army?
— Actually, Headley was white and didn’t look remotely Middle Eastern despite being half-Pakistani. Still didn’t stop him being used very successfully to infiltrate Pakistani drugs gangs in the 80s and 90s, and Lashkar e Taiba in the 2000s.
O- No chance that he might have experienced a change in heart, and returned to an allegiance that would achieve the goals of HIS people rather than the goals of his handlers?
— He masterminded the Mumbai massacre before being given a cushy plea agreement by the US authorities that has protected him from being extradited to India where he would likely face the death penalty. Funny, that…
O- Cushy? What did he get?
— Because we really have enough objective evidence to decide what happened in that case…
O- So there too it was the feds ordering the shooting of other feds? How did that further any national interests?
— Hardly, it’s their home. It’s our playground.
O- That is what gets us in trouble- thinking of the ME as a “playground”. There is some truth in that however in that one defends one’s home with more ferocity than one’s “playground”. Americans don’t want to see an endless war in a far away “playground”. It only gained support after their “home” was treathened.
— Bullshit, the CIA overthrew Mossadeq in the early 1950s.
O- What does your response address anything of what is said above?
— Yours. I don’t have a worldview
O- HAHAHAHA!..Wait…are you serious?
— just a lot of facts that tell me that the middle of the road, MSNBC version of events that you believe is utter nonsense.
O- Fresh condescension…for someone who complains about it so much, you dish it far too often. Where is your higher moral center?
Yes, i have to assume that moderate Muslims make up the majority of Muslims presently living in the West. Why aren’t their voices being heard? Media bias? That can’t be the only thing. Why aren’t they speaking more loudly? Perhaps they are intimidated into silence by their more extreme counterparts, i would not blame them for that - the most extreme are the most easily insulted, and like you said, what you say can get you killed. So i understand a certain reticence among moderates, but still, their silence seems remarkable.
i don’t think that being muslim is necessarily a direct cause of violence, but the violence being done in the name of Islam is not just a coincedence, entirely unrelated to the teachings of the religion. Different muslims will of course say different things about what “being muslim” actually entails, but it seems that by some definitions being muslim does entail violence, or at least allows it, which, according to you, would make it complicit.
i doubt anyone is above prejudice. The best we can do is try to catch ourselves in the act. But no, i don’t summarily condemn all muslims for the violent acts of extremists, i merely condemn the violent acts and the extremist beliefs.
Ultimately, it is not the West that is forcing muslims to drive towards modernity, it is fate. The world is modernized and still modernizing. The ENTIRE world. But i take your point that paths to assimilation may look very different for Islam than for other religions. The West’s political expectations of the Muslim world are not always fair, and certainly more geared toward maintaining access to oil than toward the well being of muslims.
Perhaps i’m just being dim-witted, but i don’t see your point.
Even if the Afghan Govt had been capable of handing over Bin Laden, why would they do that if no one in Afghanistan had anything to do with the attack?
It doesn’t matter if they have seen it, they still know of it and are angry because of it. Hell, i’m angry about it and i’ve never seen it either.
There was no violence surrounding the ground zero mosque controversy - in fact, it was an almost startlingly civil debate that didn’t even go on very long. And innocent people are arrested with some frequency - it’s an inevitable part of the process by which guilty people get caught.
As much satisfaction as i’m sure you get from writing those words, your conviction is unpersuasive given your own stated bias against all things American.
If the current outbreak were an isolated incident, and if, without Western interference, the Middle East were a normally peaceful place where all Arab peoples coexisted in freedom and harmony then you might have a point. As it stands however, that is far from being the case.
Most of the violence wrought upon people in the Arab world is done by other Arabs. That doesn’t excuse the violence done by the Western foreign policy machine, but it does preclude the assertion that muslims are simply the hapless victims of evil western imperialists.