The Clash Thesis: A Failing Ideology?

[blitzen]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6805.htm


The Clash thesis and the associated war on terrorism carry little or no credibility outside the United States. This was first demonstrated in massive world wide protests against the planned US invasion of Iraq. Outside of the United States and Israel, the overwhelming majority of world opinion regarded this war to be illegal and immoral."

Instantly, instinctively, and unrelentingly, the American establishment has framed the attacks of September 11, 2001, in the language of a clash of civilizations. The Islamic terrorists attacked America because they hate our highest values, our freedoms, our way of life, our civilization.

President Bush wasted no time in defining the language of this discourse in his first speech on September 11, 2001. “Today,” he opened his speech, “our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.” This thesis was hammered home again. “America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.”

[PATRICK]

1. Targeted by Bush

he got that part right at least. We have been targeted because we are the plum and the thorn for the super rich marauders who wish to go from corporate outlaws to Imperial Potentates. Bush and the people he represents show hatred for America greater than any terrorist miffed at ME policy and homogenized American "culture" drowning genuine local cultures.

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2. bush is right, our freedoms are under attack, and the neocons are the ones

doing the attacking. :-(

[Miss Authoritiva]

3. A central tenet of the clash theory is that we are and always will be

under attack. Thus, any military "intervention" on the part of the US will always be defensive, preemptive, preventive. This is because apparently God did not endow the modern US military with the spiritual capability to wage offensive wars (or to torture and abuse POWs and detainees).

"Instantly, instinctively, and unrelentingly, the American establishment has framed the attacks of September 11, 2001, in the language of a clash of civilizations."

Well, of course. The American establishment isn't stupid. But history has a way of leaching through the hardest barriers, and Americans may one day -- in response to a bomb blast here or a crashed jet there -- ask themselves, "Okay, how and when did our government screw over these people and what reparations do they want?"