Has American Foreign Policy become Quasi-Religious Crusading under another Name? — It’s Not Just Islamic Fanatics Playing a Deadly Game

© 2012 Peter Free

 

26 September 2012

 

 

I can see “your” flaws clearly, but seem to miss my own

 

One of the things that struck me about American media coverage of Islamic-centered protests against the aggressively stupid video, Innocence of Muslims, was its US-centric view.

 

Protesters were (choose one) terrorists, trouble-makers, or well-meaning, but ignorant folk.

 

In other words, there was something wrong with “those guys” that is not wrong with us.

 

But, in truth, there is something wrong with us, at least insofar as the way we deliver our foreign policy is concerned.  We have conflated national security concerns with religion.  We have unwittingly stumbled across the boundary that separates national self-defense from religious crusade.

 

Whether we can come to see our own lack of objectivity, much less overcome it, remains to be seen.

 

 

Disclaimer

 

My biased discomfiture with aggressive Islam parallels that of the people this essay criticizes.  My words are as much about me as them.

 

 

The gist

 

Humility and self-awareness are necessary components of wisdom, whether spiritual or geopolitical.

 

 

It ain’t just “them guys”

 

One politically “liberal” explanation for the recent Islamic embassy protesting unrest, ostensibly itself motivated by Innocence of Muslims, has been that tyrannical Mideast nations have never allowed their citizens to learn about how freedom of speech operates in the United States.

 

Consequently, according to these apologists, Muslims assume that religious speech in the United States is state-sponsored or state-approved.  Hence, their outrage with the crappy movie.

 

The ignorance observation may be accurate.  But the argument embodied in it somewhat misses a deeper point, which is that American foreign policy has been consistently delivered in a Christian-oriented box.

 

American foreign policy’s quasi-religious slant naturally raises memories of the 11th through 13th Century Christian Crusades in Islamic minds.

 

Note

 

See my February (2012) essay about the damage our Christian-biased foreign policy does us — made in the context of the Koran-burnings at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, here.

 

Professor/Colonel Andrew Bacevich made this connection again, in an essay that was published yesterday.

 

 

Citation — to Professor Bacevich’s essay about Islamophobia

 

Andrew Bacevich, Boykinism - Joe McCarthy Would Understand, Tom Dispatch (25 September 2012)

 

 

What Professor/Colonel Bacevich said

 

Andew Bacevich drew on some of the same evidence that I cited in February, regarding Christian proselytization in the American military:

 

Where exactly to situate God in post-9/11 U.S. policy posed a genuine challenge for policymakers, not least of all for George W. Bush, who believed, no doubt sincerely, that God had chosen him to defend America in its time of maximum danger.

 

[However] The United States is not at war with Islam per se, U.S. officials insist.

 

Still, among Muslims abroad, Washington’s repeated denials notwithstanding, suspicion persists and not without reason.

 

Consider the case of Lieutenant General William G. (“Jerry”) Boykin. While still on active duty in 2002, this highly decorated Army officer spoke in uniform at a series of some 30 church gatherings during which he offered his own response to President Bush’s famous question: “Why do they hate us?”

 

The general’s perspective differed markedly from his commander-in-chief’s: “The answer to that is because we're a Christian nation. We are hated because we are a nation of believers.”

 

On another such occasion, the general recalled his encounter with a Somali warlord who claimed to enjoy Allah’s protection. The warlord was deluding himself, Boykin declared, and was sure to get his comeuppance:

 

“I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

 

As a Christian nation, Boykin insisted, the United States would succeed in overcoming its adversaries only if “we come against them in the name of Jesus.”

 

When Boykin’s remarks caught the attention of the mainstream press, denunciations rained down from on high, as the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon hastened to disassociate the government from the general’s views.

 

Yet subsequent indicators suggest that, however crudely, Boykin was indeed expressing perspectives shared by more than a few of his fellow citizens.

 

© 2012 Andrew Bacevich, Boykinism - Joe McCarthy Would Understand, Tom Dispatch (25 September 2012) (paragraphs split)

 

 

An important chain of command point — which makes Bacevich’s argument for him

 

Notice that Lt. Gen. Boykin’s verbalization of the American purpose disagreed with his Commander in Chief’s.

 

Given how important foreign perceptions of United States foreign policy are, Boykin’s insubordination should have been considered a serious disciplinary problem.

 

The fact that President Bush did nothing to fix the General’s conflation of Church and State makes Professor Bacevich’s point:

 

[D]espite the furor, the general kept his important Pentagon job as deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, suggesting that the Bush administration considered his transgression minor.

 

© 2012 Andrew Bacevich, Boykinism - Joe McCarthy Would Understand, Tom Dispatch (25 September 2012)

 

Furthermore, as Professor Bacevich points out, General Boykin is today Executive Vice President for the Family Research Council, a very influential religious force in Republican Party Politics.

 

 

Is “Boykinism” as a revived form of McCarthyism?

 

Bacevich, an unrelenting critic of America’s over-reliance on perennial militarism, observed:

 

What the FRC’s embrace of General Boykin makes clear is this: to dismiss manifestations of Islamophobia simply as the work of an insignificant American fringe is mistaken.

 

As with the supporters of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who during the early days of the Cold War saw communists under every State Department desk, those engaging in these actions are daring to express openly attitudes that others in far greater numbers also quietly nurture.

 

To put it another way, what Americans in the 1950s knew as McCarthyism has reappeared in the form of Boykinism.

 

© 2012 Andrew Bacevich, Boykinism - Joe McCarthy Would Understand, Tom Dispatch (25 September 2012) (paragraph split)

 

 

Is this just hyperbole? — Maybe not

 

McCarthyism’s sinister grip on America during the 1950s was almost entirely due to its psychologically inviting self-delusion.  It was always, “them guys, not us.”

 

Rooting pinkos out became a national pastime that ruined the lives of many patriotic Americans by casting undeserved suspicion on them.  McCarthyism also shut down prominent components of the American mind and its ability to think objectively and creatively.

 

Islamophobia is similarly self-delusion inducing.

 

 

The parallel between Christian-originated Islamophobia and Islamic extremism

 

Religious fundamentalism automatically creates conflict.

 

By assuming we’re completely right and those who disagree are completely wrong, we make peaceful and mutually-supporting interactions with each other almost impossible.  And, when we pair this bias with “godly” passion, violence tends to erupt.

 

What is intellectually discomfiting about Americans’ view of Islam has been our inability to see the parallel, quasi-violent fundamentalism operating on our side.

 

Many of us assume that such a high proportion of Muslims are terrorists that the whole religion is suspect.  Or alternatively, we admit that terrorist Muslims are proportionately few, but the religion contains bad ideas that make it more tolerant of extremists’ killings.

 

It seems not to occur to us that the arguably imperialistic actions of a Christianized American military and foreign policy might not be seen as benevolent by much of the Islamic world.  Our Absolute pitted against theirs.

 

 

An example of American actions that should give us pause

 

How is America’s often indiscriminate drone killing program different than terrorism or a strategy of committing war crimes?

 

See, for example, this report:

 

International and Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic (Stanford Law School) and Global Justice Clinic (New York University School of Law), Living under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan, LivingUnderDrones.org (September 2012)

 

One can see how Muslims might doubt American protestations of well-meaning.

 

 

The moral? — We should be significantly more concerned about our penchant for making war, than with denigrating other peoples’ religions

 

That we mask our quasi-imperial bent behind allegedly Christian principles should concern us.  American national security is conceptually separate from religious proselytization.  That was the point to constitutionally separating church and state.

 

Geopolitical strategic wisdom requires that we be able to see ourselves and our adversaries clearly.  Right now we don’t.

 

Even more disturbingly, much of Islam’s arguably still medievally-oriented slant, with its calls to religious jihad and undeviating purity, is increasingly being adopted by its American Christian fundamentalist critics, in what they rationalize is our own national self-defense.

 

The irony is that this de-evolution of religious teachings into indiscriminate killing violence is exactly what Jesus, and other spiritual teachers, warned against.

 

So who’s ignorant now?