Indonesia In A State of Crisis Over Bush's Visit There

[Ed. note: In addition to Indonesia and Iran, it's also abundantly clear that, through the disastrous Bush occupation of Iraq, we have turned this nation from the only country in that realm that was not run by Islamic fundamentalism into one that is no longer secular (or reasonably stable, for that matter). Nice work, Bushies and neocons!]

If you've seen any TV news this weekend - which, sadly, seemed to spend an insane amount of time on Tom(cat) Cruise's marriage to Katie Holmes aboard the mothership (cleverly disguised as a castle) in Italy - you may have seen footage of the very violent protests going on in Indonesia over Bush's visit there.

The news drones made a big deal of the fact that Indonesia has the largest percentage of Muslim citizens of any other nation and implied that these people were just badly behaved for not wanting King George.

Yet, let me inject a bit of history. You may recall that less than two weeks ago, I noted that the man who taught me journalism, Arnold C. Brackman (who authored the book, "The Last Emperor" on which the Bertolucci film was made"), wrote extensively about how the U.S. (with the CIA) and Great Britain conspired to overturn the secularly-run government there which in turn led to - you guessed it - the rise of very fundamentalist-based Islamism.

We did the same basic thing in Iran with the help of Teddy Roosevelt's descendant, Kermit, installing and propping up the shah (not exactly democratic) which then led to rise of extreme Islamic rule. Hell, we've done the same thing any number of times in a number of what were secular and/or democratic countries in just the last century.

So if you ever find yourself inclined to ask, how did extreme Islamic rule become so entrenched, thank Uncle Sam! We created "the enemy" we now fight. Funny thing, that.