I watched Joe Scarborough this morning for about five minutes. He was carrying on about how the muslim world hates us, reprising the conditioned American sophistry that “they” hate us because of our freedoms, our values, etc. etc. He got no opposition from his co-anchors, who indeed seemed comfortable with the opinion that America is somehow facing an unreasoned and implacable religious foe. In this version of the world the United States is presented as a nation bleached of a history–and in particular of a foreign policy that has repressed people across the globe. Scarborough doesn’t remember or view as relevant the overthrow of the Iranian government by the CIA and its subsequent backing of the Shah. Why would Iranians hate us? Because we love Jesus? Because we have a two party system? Hardly.
Absent from the TV pundits’ assessments of chaos in the middle east is any recognition of recent war crimes in Iraq. We have killed over 1 million civilians in that nation but to hear Scarborough and Co, this is of no matter. We have pursued a policy of violence and destabilization in the middle east for 60 plus years and we now have the results. How convenient it is to blame religious fundamentalism. And how wrong. Fundamentalism is one aspect of a region’s outrage, but it’s not the driving force. The murder, indeed mass murder of innocent people stands at our doorstep. The sooner our nation faces this fact the better. The odds of this are slim to none.
Planet of the Blind 