How are we our own worst enemy? So many ways, it seems. 9/11 – much referenced by conservative politicians – can be seen as an example of extremists using our own flawed technology and screwed up national infrastructure against us. (And with national assets like the Minerals Management Service and a toothless Securities and Exchange Commission, we hardly need Al Qaeda… As Richard Pryor might have put it, we’re kicking our own ass.) 

 Here are, it seems to me, a few obvious ways we facilitate those we are supposedly fighting:

The “Ground Zero Mosque” Controversy. This is an unexpected bonanza for jihadi recruitment. It validates much of the propaganda about an America at war with Islam. It demonstrates the depth of our political pathology and our willingness to scapegoat more than 1 billion people because of the actions of a handful of criminally insane zealots. And it does so at the worst possible time, when expectations in the Islamic world are already being deflated by Obama’s Bush-like foreign policy. Jihadi leaders hope that this controversy will drag on, I’m sure, or that the Park 51 center will be forced to relocate in Staten Island so that its detractors, flush with victory, will expand their campaign against Muslims.   

Drone Strikes in Pakistan. Let me set aside, for a moment, the notion that extrajudicial murder, domestic or foreign, is just plain wrong and criminal. This CIA and private paramilitary-driven effort should be named the “Hothead Jihadi Promotion Program.” Every time we kill some functionary in the Taliban, he (and it likely is a he) is most likely replaced by someone younger, more zealous, and less open to compromise. Killing senior leadership means that inexperienced hotheads straight out of Kill! Kill! camp will be making all the decisions. Add to that the fact that we’re also killing hundreds of civilians, thereby generating more and more young people who hate us like fire… enough to, I don’t know, join the Taliban?   

Iraq’s Forgotten Refugees. There are still millions of disaffected Iraqis living in squalid conditions in Jordan and Syria, two of the poorest nations in the Middle East. Their homes have been destroyed, their country is a bloody mess, and their future is grim. We are doing next to nothing to recompense these folks in some way. Where do you think this is headed?

luv u,

jp