Greenwald's least insightful commentary in a long while. but then nothing is as useful in condemning sloppy, self-serving generalizations as some alternative sloppy, self-serving generalization...

Ask jonathan pollard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard

People reflexively respond in agreement to your suggestion that it is our dislike of muslims that prompts our behavior.

How do you know, merely by reading words, what is "reflex" and what is not? I could assert that your response - appearing minutes after the post went up - was a "reflexive" reaction against the idea that US policy could in any way be grounded in racism. But that'd be guesswork on my part - and ultimately inconsequential to any discussion of the matter.

You don't know what motivates each individual commenter, any more than I know what motivates you. For either of us to try is a pure waste of time.

This guy appears to be reporting from Urumqi. There is no breakdown on who got killed or injured.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/WireStory?id=8008472&page=1

Anyone who hasn't learned a lot about hypocrisy and deceit from the invasion of Iraq must be making a Herculean effort to remain dull-brained. The oil companies began bidding for exploration rights in that country a few days ago and now I suppose the deal to bring "democracy" to Iraq can be seen as successful. It's a shame about all the deaths, maimings and destruction but, hey, pragamatism must always prevail over ideals.

Our Foreign Policy has been dominated by Right Wing Authoritarians for decades. Since at least the 1980’s, as can be seen in the following timeline, there was a concerted effort by RWA’s to link Communism to “terrorism”. Now that there's no "Red Scare" to be used, "Islamic terrorism" can easily be substituted. There must only be an “Other”, as a means to achieve their ends. The name of that “Other” is not important.

May 5, 1981- “THE GREAT TERRORIST HUNT”, NYT: “…the Reagan Administration and the subcommittee [the new Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism] might yet manage to find some kind of a terrorist threat to American security, and a need to counter it with tough legislation. Secretary of State Haig has accused the Soviet Union of controlling international terrorism, and the Administration is reported to be working hard to document his charges and develop an antiterrorism policy. Chairman Denton said that the C.I.A. had recently broadened its definition of terrorism to include ''threats.'' “The magic result, a State Department official told reporters, would be to double - from 3,336 to 7,000 - the previously reported ''incidents'' of world terrorism from 1968 through 1979. The number killed or wounded, of course, would remain the same -about 8,000 - since this bookkeeping slight-of-hand merely makes the same situation look twice as bad as it did before.” (NYT IN THE NATION; THE GREAT TERRORIST HUNT May 5, 1981)

June 1984- THE JONATHAN INSTITUTE, a private research institute based in Jerusalem and concentrating, among other things, on terrorism, sponsored a conference in Washington…(NYT: “Rolling Back the Barbarians”, a book review of “TERRORISM How the West Can Win” edited by Benjamin Netanyahu, which is a compilation of writings regarding this meeting) One of their ideas is that: “behind these terrorist states is the Soviet Union - training and manipulating the terrorists and sustaining the terrorist states.”

November 27, 1986-NYT writes: “Now, the [Reagan] Administration's secret overture to Iran [Iran-Contra] appears to have been the product, in part, of Israel's growing role in shaping Washington's assessments of the Middle East's turbulent rivalries. Increasingly, academic experts and former Government officials observe, White House aides with close personal and professional ties to Israel seem to have absorbed Israeli views on the ability of well-placed weapons sales or military action to influence the internal politics of Middle Eastern nations. The Administration's clandestine contacts and arms sales designed to bolster pro-Western moderates inside Iran, for example, had been strongly advocated by Israel from 1979 to 1982, and then again in the last two years. [1984-86]” [1] “''I would think the Israeli geopolitical way of talking was very convincing to an Administration that has no policy,'' said Judith Kipper, a Middle East specialist at the American Enterprise Institute. ''This Administration, which has tended to see everything through the Soviet dimension, really does not understand what is at work there.'' “She also accused the White House of ''using the military as the first instrument of diplomacy rather than the last,'' a practice of which Israel has been accused as well. As in Lebanon, where Israel provided weapons to Christian forces to help them install a pro-Western Government in Beirut, the delicate mechanism of internal politics in the Middle East has proved less easy to manipulate than either Israel or the United States has expected.”

[1]-“The White House Crisis: The Israeli Stake; Israel Reportedly Got Mixed Signals From U.S. on Weapons Sales to Iran”-NYT Nov. 27, 1986

It seems that for various reasons, these RWA “leaders” find people who are fervently “religious” much more amenable to being “led” than the not-so religious; and that religion and the religious are used by them to achieve their dreams of dominance.

In his study of this phenomenon, John Dean writes:

“[…] [David] Osborne [who wrote a profile of Newt Gingrich for Mother Jones] reported that Gingrich was dominating, opposed to equality, desirous of personal power, and amoral; that he can be a bully, hedonistic, exploitive, manipulative, a cheater, prejudiced toward women, and mean-spirited; that he uses religion for political purposes; and that he wants others to submit to his authority and is aggressive on behalf of authority. […]”

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20070925.html The Impact of Authoritarian Conservatism On American Government: Part Three in a Three-Part Series

Bob Altemeyer, who has studied RWA’s for decades wrote in the introduction of his The Authoritarians:

”[…] OK, what’s this book about? It’s about what’s happened to the American government lately. It’s about the disastrous decisions that government has made. It’s about the corruption that rotted the Congress. It’s about how traditional conservatism has nearly been destroyed by authoritarianism. It’s about how the “Religious Right” teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country. It’s about the United States standing at the crossroads as the next federal election approaches. […] http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/Introduction_links.pdf