How are we our own worst enemy? So many ways, it seems. 9/11 – much referenced by conservative politicians – can be seen as an example of extremists using our own flawed technology and screwed up national infrastructure against us. (And with national assets like the Minerals Management Service and a toothless Securities and Exchange Commission, we hardly need Al Qaeda… As Richard Pryor might have put it, we’re kicking our own ass.)
Here are, it seems to me, a few obvious ways we facilitate those we are supposedly fighting:
The “Ground Zero Mosque” Controversy. This is an unexpected bonanza for jihadi recruitment. It validates much of the propaganda about an America at war with Islam. It demonstrates the depth of our political pathology and our willingness to scapegoat more than 1 billion people because of the actions of a handful of criminally insane zealots. And it does so at the worst possible time, when expectations in the Islamic world are already being deflated by Obama’s Bush-like foreign policy. Jihadi leaders hope that this controversy will drag on, I’m sure, or that the Park 51 center will be forced to relocate in Staten Island so that its detractors, flush with victory, will expand their campaign against Muslims.
Drone Strikes in Pakistan. Let me set aside, for a moment, the notion that extrajudicial murder, domestic or foreign, is just plain wrong and criminal. This CIA and private paramilitary-driven effort should be named the “Hothead Jihadi Promotion Program.” Every time we kill some functionary in the Taliban, he (and it likely is a he) is most likely replaced by someone younger, more zealous, and less open to compromise. Killing senior leadership means that inexperienced hotheads straight out of Kill! Kill! camp will be making all the decisions. Add to that the fact that we’re also killing hundreds of civilians, thereby generating more and more young people who hate us like fire… enough to, I don’t know, join the Taliban?
Iraq’s Forgotten Refugees. There are still millions of disaffected Iraqis living in squalid conditions in Jordan and Syria, two of the poorest nations in the Middle East. Their homes have been destroyed, their country is a bloody mess, and their future is grim. We are doing next to nothing to recompense these folks in some way. Where do you think this is headed?
luv u,
jp
What you will hear exactly none of them say is that a) it is NOT a mosque; it is a community center with a prayer space in the upper floors, and b) it is NOT at ground zero or in the World Trade Center complex; it is two blocks away in the empty former Burlington Coat Factory building. And while Newt Gingrich (Remember him? He was what was fucked up about the nineties.) likens this to opening an office of the Nazi party next to the Holocaust Museum, it is really more like… someone opening a community center in an abandoned building. Perennial New York State also-ran Rick Lazio was on cable yesterday substituting his sorry judgment for that of the City of New York, complaining that this was not a residential district but a business district. Well, hell – so this is a zoning issue, is it, Rick? Sounds like what they used to use to keep black people out of certain neighborhoods.
Think about it for half a second. When we open leasing on all that real estate again, no matter when that happens, will we have any trouble finding someone to drill, drill, drill? Of course not. What the hell, do they only have one rig? Is Hanna and the PI suggesting they can only drill in one place at a time? Pathetically ludicrous. 
mortality rates in Fallujah have reached ridiculously high levels in the wake of the U.S. assault, very likely the result of our use of depleted uranium munitions. The casing materials from these armor-piercing shells caused untold misery in Iraq in the years following the Gulf War, during which time essential medical supplies were being withheld from them by virtue of U.S. /U.K. sanctions. (Cockburn’s colleague Robert Fisk tells the story in his book 
will pay a heavy price. Admiral Mullens went so far as to say that Wikileaks may already have blood on their hands. Mullens and his colleagues would know something about that, of course, as the documents apparently demonstrate. I suspect, in cases such as these, that most if not all of what is secret is merely a secret from us (i.e. the American people); that military operations of the kind deployed in Afghanistan are very porous in the sense of who is working for whom. Sure, it would be better not to put people needlessly in harm’s way. But that’s what the Afghan war is all about, from what I can see.
post-racial America that they respond in knee-jerk fashion to any claim of reverse racism, no matter how unfounded. Combine that with their tendency to throw left-leaning staffers, like Van Jones, overboard at the first sign of trouble (unlike the Geithners and Salazars of the world), and you’ve got a White House that allows Roger Ailes to make their personnel decisions for them. Now there’s a real formula for success.
excuse, too – the bad economy. And yet the boss seems to be doing really well. Buys him/herself a new car, lives the good life, seems well-fed enough. Built into this dynamic is the knowledge that jobs are scarce, and that you can be replaced any day. It’s a businessman’s paradise, I tell you. Bosses’ nirvana.
Why the hell are we in Afghanistan? Our leaders say it’s to disrupt and destroy Al Qaeda so that they cannot plan new attacks on us. But to the extent that people like Osama Bin Laden are involved in operational planning for global terror attacks, all he and his pals need is a room (or a cave, but I suspect a room) big enough for a white board. Can anyone claim that we have denied him that in nearly nine years of war? Did our drones stop the Times Square bomber? (Fact is, they helped push him over the edge.) Where’s the story on that, kids?
Hey, Harry Reid – time to take the gloves off. If the Republicans threaten a filibuster over benefits for the long-term unemployed, hold them to it. Make them stand there, hour after hour, day after day, through the bloody holiday weekend, defending their obstructionism and showing the entire country how little they care about those on the losing side of our economy. What a great opportunity for you to demonstrate that your pro-working stiff rhetoric isn’t just a lot of hot air. (Unless, of course, it is.) There would be those who call you partisan, divisive, etc. Let them! They say that anyway. Slug it out on behalf of workers, both poor and middle class, and you’ll end up with something a lot more valuable than a weekend barbecue.
Most of the reporting on Afghanistan – the Rolling Stone article included – includes a kind of embedded imperial perspective. There’s an underlying assumption that we should be in Afghanistan, that there is some legitimacy to our enterprise there, and that it’s largely a matter of getting it right. This attitude is a formula for remaining in that country for the rest of any of our lives (particularly with respect to anyone who is sent to fight there). Unfortunately, our foreign policy is driven by domestic politics and the need for leaders to act “tough” and project an image of American exceptionalism. That is what makes generals like McChrystal so attractive to our leaders and the mass media that fawn on them (until they say the wrong thing).