An Update of a Published Article On March 21, 1994
One intelligent question we are asked over and over again and must be answered: “Why is America warring against one Islamic country after another?” Is it because Arabs are sub-human, as Israelis claim, or are Muslims terrorists as the American press subtly suggests; or, is it an anti-Islamic agenda among our nation’s leaders that they do not share with us?
Who cannot help but notice what the common denominator is in America’s serial wars; that Muslims are dying in almost every war. When I visited Gaza in 2002, my hosts were mostly Christians. They had long experienced living and working among the Muslims. Some had been Muslims. They asked me if it could it be a coincidence that Palestine, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan are all Islamic countries, and each has suffered from war created or fostered or fanned to flame by the USA? Why, they wonder, would the US government single out Islam for destruction?
There can be no understanding of why the US supports war against the Islamic Palestinians until we face this question. Fortunately, our answer has been recorded and tested by the unforgiving standard of time. On March 21, 1994, this author wrote a detailed answer to the question why is the US government “Attacking Islam”, published in a national magazine.
That article is history and needs no additions or corrections to expose the truth today. The proof of its accuracy is that it can stand the light of scrutiny eight years later without changing a word. We are quoting the entire article in tact, changing nothing but leaving off only the historical introduction that has to do with the decline of world communism. That part, too, is available upon request. A few notes are added in the interest of understanding.
Charles E. Carlson, April 2002
Quote from The New American magazine called “Attacking Islam,” published March 21, 1994 (p. 19-24) by Charles E. Carlson:
“A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Communism.” So wrote Karl Marx in his opening line of The Communist Manifesto in 1848. And indeed the communist specter has haunted not only Europe but our entire planet, rising from small revolutionary bands in the latter half of the 19th century to world hegemonic powers girdling the globe and controlling nearly two billion lives in the 20th century. But now “communism is dead”; the “experts” tell us so -again and again. And these same epitaph writers tell us a new specter now haunts the world Islamic fundamentalism.
(The section on the Soviet Union, pages 19-20, as a world threat to peace is omitted except for the following introductory paragraph)
“The late Admiral Chester Ward, who was a CFR member for 16 years, charged that the organization is dominated by “one-world-global-government ideologists” who are “promoting disarmament and submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful world government.” Those of us who share the Admiral’s view of the CFR, commonly refer to the coterie it represents as “the Insiders,” or “the Conspiracy.” To these designations we would like to add, for the purpose of this essay, “the Warmakers.” The reasons for this will become obvious.”
Hereafter, The New American, Attacking Islam, By Charles E. Carlson, March 21, 1994, p. 19-24, is quoted in it entirety, with some comments added in italics.
“The Warmakers selected the far flung nations of Islam as a replacement for the old Marxist-Leninist enemy long before the American people suspected the Cold War had “ended.” With shocking abruptness, the Red Peril has “greatly abated” (some say it has disappeared) to be replaced by a new Green Peril — green being the color of Islam. Meanwhile, the USSR is being remolded from the carefully tailored image of world super-enemy into the new role of international welfare urchin and “ally,” to be rebuilt by the American taxpayer.
An anti-Islamic hate campaign to poison the peoples of the world and especially the American public against Muslims has been underway for quite some time. Fabricating the Islamic demon has not been difficult for the Insider-controlled press. The CFR, as usual, has been leading the way with its flagship journal, Foreign Affairs, the publication Time magazine has called “the most influential periodical in print.” Once Foreign Affairs began to equate Muslims with terrorists the malleable international press quickly took the cue and began a campaign to paint resurgent fundamentalist Islam as the looming world enemy.
The CFR has been conditioning its new enemy as a picador taunts a fighting bull; no abuse or insult is too strong. The enemy, like the bull, has been selected for courage in the face of overwhelming odds. With 1.2 billion people blanketing the globe, a naturally militant faith, and no organized movement of pacifist clergy such as we have in the West, Muslims can be counted on to fight back when invaded, insulted, or threatened — as was proved in Afghanistan.
Islam-Baiting
Examples of the vicious Islam-baiting media campaign are legion, but we have space here to present only a few of the more notorious and influential. Of these, the Spring 1993 Foreign Affairs offers a particularly noteworthy case. The keynote “debate” of that issue of the journal is framed by the article, “Is Islam a Threat?” by CFR member Judith Miller, a New York Times writer and author of a new book entitled The Arabs and Islam. Ms. Miller’s article makes negative generalizations about all of Islam, associating the vast majority of peaceful, law-abiding Muslims with the relatively small minority of those involved in outlaw activity. She depicts a warlike, united Islam, which she claims (without offering a shred of evidence) has executed a secret manifesto committing Islam to war against the West.
Anyone with even a superficial familiarity of the Islamic world realizes that Islam is about as unified as “Christendom.” Islamic theological and sectarian divisions — between Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Wahhabi, etc. — run nearly as deep and strong as those between Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Mormon. Added to this are equally divisive racial, tribal, national, regional, political, cultural, dynastic, linguistic, and historic factors that militate against any grand green coalition. But Miller simply assumes we have already been sufficiently conditioned to accept the idea that Islam equals radical “fundamentalism,” which equates to terrorism — on a global scale. Miller states, “Islam has its own version of a New World Order and a strategy to obtain it.”
Then Miller prepares us to fight back. She stirs the reader by vague references to atrocities against “Christians” in Sudan and the “lashing” of women in unnamed Arab states. Ms. Miller makes no attempt to prove her assertions, and her reference to Christians in mentioning the Sudanese tribesmen is curious, again playing up what may be tribal or political conflicts as a Muslim-vs.-Christian war. Ms. Miller concedes that Islam may not be militarily strong enough “to attack the U.S. openly or directly,” but she suggests that the Muslims can never be trusted because they are fanatically anti-American. Foreign Affairs made a flimsy effort to appear even-handed by publishing a counterpoint to Miller, “Islam Is No Threat,” by Leon Hadar of American University, in the same Spring 1993 issue. However, Hadar merely served as an intellectual punching bag for Miller, offering a less-than-convincing defense and never going on the offensive.
A key kick-off piece in the Islam-as-world-enemy campaign, “Fundamentalist Muslims Between America and Russia,” appeared in the Summer 1986 issue of Foreign Affairs. The author was Daniel Pipes (CFR), director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Unlike Miller, Pipes did at least distinguish between violent and peaceful Muslims; however, in similar fashion he applied the fundamentalist label liberally. Pipes, an Establishment Insider, correctly predicted that the USSR would fall and he rationalized why Islam is likely to become an organized enemy of the U.S. According to Pipes, “fundamentalist Islam” views the U.S. as a more threatening adversary than the USSR because “America presents the greater set of obstacles to life under the Islamic Law.” And, he says, “Little can be done to avert collisions between America and the fundamentalists.” It’s an inescapable kismet The Warmakers have spoken.
Worse Than Communism?
Interestingly, Pipes showed considerable concern about the potential hostile actions of the 50 million Muslims within the USSR toward the centralized communist government, and he clearly indicated he was on the Soviet side. In his CFR-certified analysis, “radical fundamentalists are the real danger. As even more profound enemies of the United States than Marxists, their ascension to power almost always harms the United States and its allies.” He warned that “in the case of fundamentalist Muslims opposing governments allied with the Soviet Union, the U.S. is naturally tempted to provide aid to the fundamentalists.” Pipes cautioned that this would be a mistake, as it might “make them the only alternative to communists.” He called for “strict limitations to any aid to be given to fundamentalist Muslims,” even when they are trying to escape the old USSR system.
In other words, Pipes warned government officials and the Establishment Insider press that when Muslim states — like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, or even Bosnia — revolt against the communist system, the U.S. must not help the state seeking independence because the Islamic state is less desirable to the U.S. than communism. Please remember that Pipes presented this thesis in 1986, five years before the USSR collapsed and independence-minded Muslim countries began to seek their freedom. Pipes also wrote a similar feature article in the October 30, 1992 Wall Street Journal with the inflammatory title, “Fundamental Questions About Muslims.” Imagine the outcry that would result from a article entitled, “Fundamental Questions About Jews (or American Indians, Blacks, Protestants, Catholics, etc.)”!
This theme of the danger of Islamic fundamentalism has echoed through many other CFR publications, such as, for instance, Sea Changes American Foreign Policy in a World Transformed, a path-breaking 1990 collection of essays by the CFR’s one-world policy wonks. In the summation essay by Stanley Hoffman (a CFR director and professor of government at Harvard) entitled “A New World and Its Troubles,” we are reminded once again that “a post-Cold War world will be anything but harmonious.” “First, there is a huge array of possible ‘traditional’ quarrels,” says Hoffman, “in a world where there is at least still one ideology of violent conflict — Islamic fundamentalism…” (emphasis added).
The same alarm is sounded in The Rise of Nations in the Soviet Union, an influential 1991 anthology produced by the CFR’s Project on East-West Relations and edited by the Project’s director, Michael Mandelbaum (CFR). In the book’s introduction, Mandelbaum reiterates the CFR line that recognizing sovereignty and independence of states breaking away from the Soviet empire would “contradict a widely honored postwar international principle the sanctity of existing borders almost regardless of their origins.”
“Nationalist turmoil may, finally, give rise,” warns Mandelbaum, “… to one or more forms of political extremism in the Soviet Union, which could make the country as dangerous to its neighbors as it was during the long years of the Cold War.” RAND Sovietologist Jeremy R. Azrael, one of Mandelbaum’s co-authors, writes in the same volume, “Still another highly undesirable outcome from a U.S. point of view would be an upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism among the Soviet (or ex-Soviet) Muslims of Central Asia and Azerbaijan” (emphasis added). We are reminded of this again in “The Clash of Civilizations” by Professor Samuel P. Huntington (CFR) in the Summer 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs. “After World War II,” says Huntington, “… first Arab nationalism and then Islamic fundamentalism manifested themselves” (emphasis added). A little further on he warns us that “Islam has bloody borders.”
Opinion Cartel
What appears in Foreign Affairs soon makes its way into news stories, editorials, and commentaries in the major print and electronic media. One of many factually absurd examples of this CFR-led, fundamentalist-bashing ripple effect is found in “Fundamentalism, the Zeal to Heal, or to Kill,” an inflammatory story by Sharon Cohen of the Associated Press that appeared on May 15, 1993. This bizarre story is only one of hundreds that are inundating the public with vitriol aimed at religious activists of all kinds. Muslims are the author’s primary target, but Ms. Cohen conveniently lumps all “fundamentalists” into a sort of global super-cult threat. She cautions darkly against the threat of “fundamentalism, one of the fastest growing religious movements.” In this “movement” she links “radical religious Zionists,” “the Islamic Group in Egypt,” the pro-life group “Operation Rescue,” and Muslims of various stripes in an ideologically semi-homogeneous, terrorist-inclined aggregation.
Similar media attacks on “fundamentalists” — Muslim and otherwise — are too numerous and too uniformly skewed to be accidents. They appear to be orchestrated for the purpose of initiating and perpetuating seemingly unrelated world conflicts by 1) creation of a perceived ideological enemy in the minds of the American people; 2) provocation of incidents that cause hatred on both sides; and 3) creation of a vehicle to keep the war going regardless of public opinion — a fighting machine outside the control of Congress and the voters.
Through the Establishment opinion cartel (CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, CNN, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, etc.) the Warmakers have already largely succeeded in creating the ideological enemy. An attitude of deep distrust between Muslims and Americans is being created; and Christians and nominal Christians are being conditioned to fear and loathe adherents of Islam. The incidents needed to trigger new conflicts can easily be provoked (and are being provoked) by blowing small events out of proportion, by completely fabricating non-events into incidents, and by actually creating situations sufficiently grave or so morally offensive as to demand international intervention. The Warmakers already possess their rudimentary fighting machine in the United Nations, created 50 years ago and now being built into a world army (together with such subsidiaries as NATO, OAU, OAS, CSCE, WEU, etc.) ostensibly to carry out “peacekeeping,” “police actions,” and other noble dictates of the UN.
Bloody Track Record
The Gulf War marked the first time America initiated an unprovoked attack on a foreign power in another hemisphere. This war was to be a test of public response to the televised horror of mass annihilation. The resultant death and devastation were sanitized, but not hidden from the American public. The horrors of the war were visible to anyone who really cared to know, and a number of well written books now detail the horror of the Gulf War aftermath. America‘s moral leaders in the churches failed the test; few questioned the politically acceptable blood letting. Step one in the Warmakers’ plan was in place and tested; an enemy had been created from thin wisps of smoke.
The Warmakers forged quickly ahead. UN troops were reported present in Bosnia in 1991, before Bosnian Muslims even declared independence. The United Nations first promised protection if Bosnia’s leaders committed to independence; but afterwards the UN switched sides and employed a deadly embargo and a patient stalling strategy to allow systematic genocide of the Muslim population (about 44 percent of the Bosnian population) as well as of many non-Muslims. News photos show the UN “peacekeepers” standing impotently aside under order to stay uninvolved. Mehmed Kozlica, the Phoenix director of the Bosnian Relief Fund, has stated that the UN is effectively preventing anything of value from getting through to the trapped and besieged Bosnians, rendering them helpless while under deadly siege. Adding insult to injury, the U.S. peace plan would intern the Muslim survivors in concentration camps under the guise of protection — a sure-fire formula for perpetual hatred and conflict, as we have seen so well in the similar situation of the Palestinians.
Five senior State Department officials from both the Bush and Clinton Administrations have resigned in protest over the continuing callous U.S. policy, which has amounted to complicity in genocide. The most senior and most recent resignee is Warren Zimmerman, who served as Ambassador to Yugoslavia. The others are George Kenney, Marshall Freeman Harris, Steven Walker, and John Western. The slaughter has been too much for even these seasoned, Insider-appointed foreign service officers to take.
In Somalia, the UN “humanitarian mission” quickly turned into an invasion the stated purpose of which was to remove General Mohammed Aidid, a Muslim leader. Whatever his image in the West, General Aidid is apparently popular with many of the Somali people, as evidenced by the fact that the UN was unable to apprehend him even with the promise of huge bribes (to be paid with U.S. taxpayers’ money) to dirt-poor Somalis. The UN occupying forces have repeatedly killed and tortured Somali civilians who challenge their authority. And the Somalis have little reason not to hold the U.S. accountable for these atrocities.
The Warmaker-dominated press and their dupes are prophetically warning the world to prepare for retribution, while Muslims are deliberately being conditioned to think Americans are racial bigots, bloody international bully boys, and suppressors of those seeking independence from socialistic governments. Since the U.S. taxpayer supplies more than 30 percent of the United Nations operating budget and about 50 percent of the UN’s war budget, many in the Islamic world hold American citizens responsible for these diabolical “peace” operations that have already resulted in an estimated 400,000 deaths in Iraq, Bosnia, and Somalia alone.
It should be clear that the Insider-Warmaker’s program to instigate perpetual conflicts with Muslim countries is being planned and carried out through the United Nations hydra, with the support of such U.S. agencies as the CIA. The United Nations “peacekeeping” forces are in various stages of occupying at least ten Muslim countries. The UN has a stated plan to occupy 19 additional “trouble spots,” many of which are Muslim.
In late 1992, the U.S. government published a very revealing world map and report, entitled Worldwide Peacekeeping Operations 1993, by the Directorate of Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency. The countries listed by the CIA as sites of current or proposed UN peacekeeping operations are Cyprus, Croatia, El Salvador, Angola, Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, Eritrea (Ethiopia), South Ossetia (Georgia), Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkahazia, Sinai, Rwanda, Cambodia, Jerusalem, Western Sahara, Mozambique, Lebanon, the Republic of South Africa, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Haiti, Moldova, Tajikistan, the Golan Heights, Kashmir, Kuwait, Sri Lanka, the Solomon Islands, and Liberia. When the CIA map was made, Bosnia, Kashmir, and Moldovia were all listed as “proposed operations,” but we now know the UN was already in Bosnia at that time.
Note that “peacekeeping” (war-making) operations are proposed wherever Muslim-led independence movements are challenging former Soviet-Warsaw Pact communist leaders, as in Bosnia, Moldova, Abkahazia, Georgia, and Tajikistan. As CFR operative Pipes predicted in 1986, these former USSR states are now seeking independence and the UN is there to assure their failure. Interestingly, the world peacekeeping map neatly overlays the CFR map depicting the population distribution in the Muslim-controlled countries around the world, published with Mr. Pipes’ Foreign Affairs article. The CFR and CIA are both talking about occupying the same Muslim-controlled real estate, but both maps omit mention of the American Muslim population, variously estimated at three to six million, most of whom are productive, patriotic, and hardworking citizens. Perhaps the Warmakers do not want Americans to think about the millions of potential victims here at home.
The death toll in Bosnia and Iraq already runs into the hundreds of thousands each, with a significant death count of women and children now mounting in Somalia. However, Americans are not supposed to be unduly concerned because these are “peacekeeping” operations, and, besides, the lives being lost are primarily troublesome “radical fundamentalists.” Meanwhile, Muslims are also being programmed to despise the Americans for our government’s war acts against civilians.
Planning for Terrorism
If these UN atrocities are allowed to continue, the Islamic Peril will become a self-fulfilling prophesy, as various Muslim groups and countries seek revenge on those they deem responsible. The Warmakers are not content to wait for this to happen on its own, however. As the article beginning on page 15 reveals, the same CFR Insiders who are decrying the fundamentalist danger have been in the forefront of a massive effort to build the most dangerous “Islamic fundamentalist” terrorist regimes and groups into genuine global menaces.
If terrorism fails to materialize, the Warmakers may even encourage, pay for, or stage incidents, as some evidence already suggests may be the case with regard to the World Trade Center explosion and the alleged plot to kill former President George Bush in Kuwait. Peculiar about the Bush mission to Kuwait is that the former President was visiting the El Sabah family, who paid bribes to three Americans, including a former Ambassador, to gain influence with the same George Bush to enter the war on the side of Kuwait.
In other words, Warmaker Bush was in Kuwait on a taxpayer-financed visit to a head of state who is accused of bribing Mr. Bush’s former employees. This alleged assassination attempt was used as yet another excuse to drop 23 American missiles on Baghdad, killing eight civilians and an unknown number of military personnel. Besides possibly serving to destroy more evidence of Saddam’s war machine that had been illegally provided to the dictator by the Insiders, another result of the raid certainly was to incite more hatred toward America among Muslims, which is exactly the Warmakers’ intent.
If allowed to succeed, the unholy UN wars (both those now underway and those still to come) ultimately will be brought home to our own shores, resulting in the abrogation of our sovereignty by international treaty enforced by the UN mercenary army. Temporary suspension of constitutional guarantees is likely, including gun confiscation, ostensibly to control the three to six million “Muslim Fundamentalists” residing in the U.S. The ultimate aim of the Warmakers can only be to force UN troops onto U.S. soil on some peacekeeping pretext — including the pretext of Muslim terrorism here or the pursuit of international terrorists in our midst. What elected or appointed official will resist an international treaty enforced by the United Nations? If and when fundamentalist Christians, Jews, or anyone else finally stand up for the rights of their Muslim neighbor they too may become a persecuted class, as German Christians were persecuted by the Nazis for acting out their faith in defense of Jews.
Get US Out!
Exposure of the Warmakers’ plan is the way to avert this world tragedy. Men and women of fundamental principles of all faiths must put aside establishment-fostered differences, for the threat is from anti-religious Godless Insiders, not from marauders without. Not only should these international death dealers be exposed but they should not be allowed to escape. The best possible beginning is to expose the war-making activities of the United Nations. The UN would likely collapse overnight if Congress could be made to withdraw U.S. financial support. Without their international war machine, the Warmakers will be exposed and will begin to loose their grip on our government. It is past time to get the U.S. out of the UN and the UN out of the U.S
-End –
The author of “Attacking Islam”, Charles E. Carlson, is happy to admit one oversight in his 1994 article that he did not foresee…the possibility that many people in the UN are now revolting against the obvious Warmaking activites of the USA/Israeli lobby. So powerful and far reaching is the revulsion to the slaughter in the Israeli gulag that many members of the general assembly of the United Nations have actually used it as a forum against the USA and Israel several times, and many nations have repeatedly voiced support for the Palestinians.
While the rest of the world can make some noise in the General Assembly, and has done so, the UN still derives its power from its American creator, from which it received its headquarters on the east river and its principal financial support. The American Warmaking system and its allies, Tony Blair of Great Britain to name one, still control all military acts of the UN through the US government’s financing. Therefore, while We Hold These Truths applauds many honest people in the UN, including special reporter Mary Robinson, for her valiant support of the Palestinian people, it must be remembered, it is limited in what it can accomplish. The US registered its contempt for the UN revolt by bombing an aid station in Afghanistan. It had also hit a UN building in Yugoslavia. More recently Israeli defense forces destroyed two ambulances in Gaza manned by UN volunteers, gunned down three UN aid workers and murdering the wounded ambulance passengers. I personally interviewed a UN employee about this incident the morning the crime was committed, March 9, 2002. Neither the US nor Israel is above bombing the UN if it gets in their way.
