Muslims and Arabs do not despise us
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Editor,
Recently, in a White House briefing to the press corp. on the intelligence screw-up that almost downed an airliner on Christmas Day, Helen Thomas, the 89-year-old Veteran correspondent and the only one in the room with real courage, asked counter-intelligence guru, John Brennan this question, “Why do they want to do us harm? What is the motivation? We never hear what you find out about. Why?”
Mr. Brennan sputtered some rather flaccid explanations about how terrorist simply want to hurt everyone. After his first attempt at deflecting Helen’s question, she asked it again.
“Why to they hate us? You never say why?” Again, Mr. Brennan skirted the subject with the usual comments on how terrorists are only concerned with harming others. And Helen ends her questioning with, “But, why?”
Even the 9/11 Commission, in a most carefully worded paragraph in their report, said this: “American policy choices have consequences, right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American policy regarding Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.”
“Dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.” What kind of language is that? The Arab and Muslim worlds are furious, furious, furious with America’s full support of Israel, our disastrous invasion of Iraq, our present Afghanistan fiasco, and generally our military presence and arms deals all over the Middle East. And, according to many Middle East experts who really understand the Arab and Muslim minds, they have every right to be fearful, angry and feel deeply affected.
So, what does this lead to? What do the terrorists have to build upon to recruit and train people in building and maintaining their organizations? They surely don’t have to look far to find fuel for their diabolical fire-schemes.
Arabs and Muslims do not hate us, the average American. Many of them have relatives and friends living peacefully over here among us. They hate our nations policies of influence peddling with huge amounts of money, military might, arms dealings, aggressive occupations, and painting the broad brush of hatred against an entire culture because of radicals and extremists within that culture who dare create havoc upon American soil.
Long live Helen Thomas, the grand dame of correspondents.
Bob McClellan
Polson
