Part one... To begin with, Chomsky mistakes a cultural struggle for an economic struggle. That is why I equate him with Falwell - like Falwell his tone is "I told you so," and he uses a rather narrow worldview predicated on anti-Americanism as the lens he uses to view recent events. Falwell ties America's sinfulness to the events. America may or may not be sinful, but the connection is tenuous at best. Likewise, Chomsky sees American imperialism and unilateralism as the cause of this great tragedy. Chomsky's argument is that this just isn't a hazard of being a world power, but instead is a justifiable counter-response to similarly aggressive actions taken by the US against these people. We did not make any such attack, however, so for him to maintain that we are somehow the aggressor is just wrong, wrong, wrong. You state that Chomsky (and Moore) make a logical observation of the facts. The facts are actually quite lacking in their analysis, and that's part of my problem - it is as if they are going out of their way to distort facts to say "I told you so." What is America's foreign policy toward the Middle East? In the last twenty years, we've maintained close ties with numerous Muslim countries, from Pakistan to Turkey. We've defended one Muslim nation from an aggressor in Hussein who has tried to conquer two Muslim nations in his reign of terror. We've aided Afghanistan's fight against the Soviets. We've dumped dollars in nations like Egypt. We defended the KLA and Bosnia. If our policy were truly "imperialistic," we would have simply sat on Iraq after defeating it and used its oil for ourselves. To say our policy toward the Islamic world has been a continued string of atrocities and blunders is simply not correct. The one clear beef Arabs have with America is its policy toward the Palestinian question. This is not only unique to them; Europe also does not understand this "special relationship" we have Israel. But it is entirely justified. Israel is the one outpost of freedom and democracy in that part of the world. We feel obliged to defend Israel because of the anti-Semitism still present in the world. I think when leaders of these nations and groups say that they intend to exterminate the Jewish people, we are advised to take such claims seriously.
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