Patrick Lang: "War Against The Boogey Men"

From former DIA colonel Pat Lang's Sic Semper Tyrannis blog, some interesting observations:

After watching the Sunday newsies with clips of Bush, Cheney on camera and Hadley the functionary, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that we, Americans are chasing phantoms in the world, phantoms carefully cultivated in a surfeit of seminars and an excess of Jungian memory.

The president says that we are locked in an ideological struggle ----- OK, So what are the ideologies involved?

!- Freedom? On our side? That includes the Pakistanis, Saudis, Israelis, The Siniora government in Lebanon, Abu Mazen in Palestine, the Shia government of Iraq? The Iraqi Kurds? Turkey? Libya? Egypt? Yemen?

2- "Islamic Fascism" On the other side? Hamas, Syria, Iran, The Sunni insurgents (various), the jihadis?

This is tricky stuff. The Saudis? The administration's "pet" Lebanese? The "freedom" list looks more like a list of our client states than anything else. Saudi Arabia has no consitution other that the Quran, no law except for Sharia and that of the Hanbali variety. Pakistan is one man's life away from being a Shariah state. Yemen? Libya? My God! The Israelis? Sorry folks, but Carter is right. From the point of view of the the Palestinians Israel/Palestine is not a free place.

"Freedom" and "Islamic Fascism" clearly have "special" meanings here. I say that "freedom" as the bushies use the term is code and really means westernization and "globalization" in the sense that we want to see the world "ironed out" flat so the it meets the egregious Friedman's dream of a homogeneous world. "Islamic Fascism" means, I think, simply "Islam." That is, Islam as it has been understod by millennia of Muslims. That is, as an all encompassing view of the world and man's relationship to God. "Ah, but these are not real Muslims," I can hear the outcry now. Rubbish. We non-Muslims can not dictate to any particular group of Muslms what Islam means to them. We want an Islam similar in its role in life to the emasculated role that Christianity plays for most Americans in their lives? Sorry! We do not get to choose for them.