eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:24am on 2015-12-17

[From 2009]

Bill Moyers:  

You make the point that we're more likely to be the target of attack because Obama is trying to win over the hearts and minds of the Muslim world.

 
Mark Danner:  

I think that's true. I think that he is a political threat. And I think you have to look at the character of this war. You know, we're accustomed to calling it the "war on terror," even though Obama's no longer using the word. But it isn't a war where you try to seize territory. It's not a war where you're going to kill every jihadist. It's a war about politics. Think of a target. What you want to do in this war is prevent people from moving toward the center. That is, you want the people getting the money to not become more active supports. You want the more active supporters to not become active jihadists, to actually go into the fight. So, you're trying to do something political. You want to stop young Muslims from supporting this movement and taking part of it. That's the only way that this war will eventually be "won," quote unquote. And for the-- you know, when you look at it in these terms, George W. Bush was an enormous gift to the jihadists. An enormous gift.

 
Bill Moyers:  

Why?

 
Mark Danner:  

Because he embodied the caricature of the United States that Osama Bin Laden had put forth. An imperial power using its power blunderingly around the world, suppressing Muslims, repressing Muslim countries, occupying Saudi Arabia. You know, think of that image of Lindy England the young military woman standing in her fatigues, smiling at the camera, holding a leash. A leash that goes down to the neck of a naked Muslim man lying on the ground, grimacing in pain.

Osama Bin Laden, if he had hired the most expensive advertising agency on Madison Avenue, could not have embodied more brilliantly his ideology, which is that the United States is suppressing, humiliating, shaming, undermining the Muslim world, and especially Muslim men.

Obama, on the other hand, stands for-- you know, he has an African name, he's black, he has a Muslim middle name, he speaks about inclusion. I mean, look at his Cairo speech. Ideologically, he's an enormous threat to Osama Bin Laden. Because he does the opposite of what Americans are supposed to do.

-- from the PBS television program, Bill Moyers Journal, 2009-10-16

[Substitute Daesh in place of Bin Laden, and consider the ill effect Coward Trump or some of his ideological cousins could have.]

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