The Thousand-Year War

William R. Polk, Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North. (Yale University Press, 632 pp., $37.50, 2018). ~ Reviewed by the Rev. Dr. Franklin Woo.

After the 9-11-01 attacks on the twin buildings of the World Trade Center which finally collapsed, President George W. Bush declared “War on Terror,” but not against Muslims as such. Initially his war was against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan as well as any country which harbors their terrorist network. Bush’s target was Osama Bin Laden. In 2003 Bush ordered air strikes on Iraq against Saddam Hussein who allegedly possessed weapons of mass destruction, as well as encouraging the young to be suicide bombers against Americans and others in the Global North. American leaders were able to identify the enemy against U.S. “freedom and democracy,” so Bush claimed. On May 2011 President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden. In 2014 the Islamic State (ISIS) appeared on the scene. In his 2018 State of the Union address, Trump pledged, “We will continue to fight until ISIS is defeated.”

Contrary to the tendency of American leaders to identify individuals who are the culprits in attacking the U.S., William Polk in his Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year Between the Muslim World and the Global North is a historical study of how the Muslim world sees the millennial war between itself and the modern West. By “Global North” he means countries such as “China, Russia, Europe, Britain, and America—and Muslim societies from Central Asia to West Africa.” For this short review, I will focus only on “America,” part of Polk’s Global North.

In 1953, American CIA with British intelligence overthrew the nationalist prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh who took over Iran’s oil industry from British control. They replaced

Mossadegh with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who ruled with repression, corruption, and extravagance for a quarter of a century. A coup in 1979 by anti-western clerics was led by Ayattollah Khomeini, whose youth captured the U.S. Embassy and held its personnel as hostages for 444 days. The Iranian Revolution established the nation as an Islamic Republic.

In 1971, Reza Pahlavi created a tent city in the Persepolis desert to house the 60 monarchs and
heads of state of the world invited, including UK’s Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Anne and
Spiro Agnew of the U.S. Maxim’s of Paris was the caterer for the occasion, which celebrated
2,500 years of Persian Empire. The estimated cost was $250 million, which Khomeini regarded
as a wasteful “Devil’s festival.” (Not mentioned by Polk, this event can be viewed on You-tube.)

Polk devotes a chapter on Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian Muslim fundamentalist who was a “philosopher
of the Iranian revolution.” He was executed by President Nasser in 1966. While a student in the
U.S. in 1950 Qutb saw America as “a cesspool of wasteful consumption, exaggerated sex, and
gross materialism.” ISIS may rise and fall, and the clash between Sunnism and Shiism may
persist, but Muslim fundamentalists (inspired by Qutb) will continue into the indefinite future.
Trump’s recent policy of ending the Iran deal which was jointly agreed by the U.S., UK, France,
Germany, Russia, China, and the European Union, along with Trump’s stringent sanctions
against Iran and threat of any country with commercial ties with it, plus his ban on immigration
from Muslim countries—all of these only exacerbate the “Thousand-Year War.”

Distressed Reading … Ike, Iran and Guatemala … 1953 and 1954

I've always know this, but never in detail, and it makes me sick.

What we did in Iran in 1953, to support the craven interests of the declining British Empire and it's stranglehold on Iranian oil is so disturbing to me - our CIA, with Ike signing off on it, as he grew increasingly more frightened of the Communist Boogeyman, fomented a "revolt" paid for by American Taxpayers against a democratically elected leader (who had nationalized British petroleum interests - Communist-inspired for sure) and installed the Shah, with a new deal for oil in hand … and everyone was happy, except the Iranians.

Even as this was going on, efforts were underway in Guatemala to remove the democratically elected leader who had instituted land reform (this became proof positive of "Communist" influence); United Fruit Company, with its bananas and tentacles throughout the American Government, cried for help, and got it. "Rebels" were trained, and by golly miss molly, the president of Guatemala resigned and in his place, a dictator. And everyone was happy, except the Guatemalans.

For years, the Iranian deal was carefully hidden from the American People, until the final piece of Ike's diary were declassified May 10, 2010, admitting "covert" involvement. Steven Ambrose, Ike's biographer, had first seen this entry as early as 1984, but subsequent books omitted it.

What's tragic for me is that an otherwise savvy President, who understood colonialism in Indochina and thus refused to save the French, failed to understand British colonialism in Iran and American business "colonialism" in Guatemala. All along the way, folks who wanted to influence Ike glossed over the facts and used the threat of "Communism." Such language didn't work for Ike in Indochina, but it did for Iran and Guatemala.

And what a price we've paid.

As a side note, the Dulles Brothers were legal counsel for United Fruit in Boston; Eisenhower's personal secretary was wife of United Fruit's public relations department; Ike's national security advisor was the banker for United Fruit; CIA soldier of fortune on the ground in Guatemala, E. Howard Hunt, would later spend 33 months in federal prison for his role in the Watergate break-in.

When I finished this chapter in Eisenhower: In War and Peace, I felt dirty - my mind had been dragged through a pig sty. While I have great regard for Eisenhower, he surrendered his ability to think and weigh the realties by succumbing to the American hysteria of the time - a Communist behind every tree and under every bed.

He would have done well to heed the advice of his long-time friend, William Prescott Allen, publisher of The Laredo Times, who visited Guatemala in June of 1954: "Yes," he cabled Ike, "Guatemala has a very small minority of Communists, but not as many as San Francisco."

What If ... no Iraq Invasion

What-ifs are hardly worth the time, but sometimes, after a bad decision, or at least a decision that seems fraught with ill, it's worth while to indulge, if for no other reason than learning.

What if Bush hadn't pulled the trigger on Iraq, and instead, focused everything on the capture of Ben Laden?

Here are some of my thoughts.

Al Qaida would not be as potent as it is today, and Afghanistan and Pakistan might be more stable.

Israel and the Palestinian question would remain, but I wonder: would it be less volatile?

Iran might have taken care of Iraq, with another war, or something more clandestine to eliminate Saddam.

If not Iran, perhaps Saudi Arabia.

Or a stealth raid by Israeli commandos might have taken Saddam out.

Our debt-crisis would be far less.

The thousands of American soldiers returning home with severe emotional and physical injuries would be minimal.

And the nearly 6000 American deaths (Iraq and Afghanistan) would be considerable less.

Bush would have been able to claim credit for Ben Laden's capture or death.

Al Gore might have won.

GOP Foolishiness Persists!

Are the Repugs incapable of working with the Prez? Has their right-wing DNA been irreparably damaged by the last 40 years of Reagan economics and military drumbeating?

And what DOES McPain want for Iran?

Bombs?

Invasion?

Death?

The Repugs did it to Carter, they did it to Clinton, and now the same old strategy with Obama - charge the Prez with timidity and weakness on foreign policy.

It worked with Carter, sad to say.

It worked partially with Clinton.

But it won't work at all with Obama.

Times have changed. It's a brand new world, with a new normal. Though some still love to wave the flag and get goosebumpy with thoughts of war, the vast majority of Americans realize that diplomacy is the only reasonable way.

We simply don't have the military might to do much more than we're presently doing in Iraq and Afghanistan; we have to work with our allies and rely on the international community.

And with the limits of American military power having been reached, it's a God-send for us - to learn how to take our place in the family of nations and how to talk responsibly to the world.

Thankfully, we have a Prez who can do this.

For those who thrill with tough talk and muscle flexing, it'll never be enough.

But for those who want America to be genuinely strong and truly great, it will be more than enough.

McCain Shows Real Colors

For a long time, I've considered John McCain a decent man.

But his recent rant about the President and Iran is shameful.

McCain and the Repugs are using the people of Iran to further their own perverted ideology of power and domination, an ideology that has proved utterly bankrupt.

On the other hand, Obama's restrained and patient approach bodes well for the future. We can't and we don't control the world. We are but one nation among all the others. Though larger than most, and surely one of the most powerful, we're not the king of the hill, though such a thought utterly galls a poor man like McCain who is, and this I've contended for years, still fighting Vietnam, trying to reclaim a glory he perceives us to  have lost in Vietnam.

That the Repugs have sunk this low is hard to imagine.

The party of Lincoln, not to mention Eisenhower, has sunk very low, indeed.

Diplomacy? Iran?

Roger Cohen writes a thoughtful piece about the international chess game we call diplomacy ... click HERE to read more.

Iranian Missiles

Sure, I'm concerned ... as I've always been about the proliferation of WMD.

But is this not a case of the chickens coming home to roost?

Has America not been the world's largest developer and purveyor of such weapons and every other assorted means of destruction, while raking in tons of blood money?

To decry Iran's effort to arm itself against the rogue state called Israel (nuclear) is the height of hypocrisy. It's the equivalent of arming myself to the teeth, and then arming my neighbor down the block, and when my neighbor down the block threatens another neighbor who buys some arms, does it make sense for me to raise hell and threaten them?

Who wants Iran with WMD?
But then, who wants Israel with WMD?
Oops, that's right, I forget - they're our ally.

Or are they?
They've spied on us.
They've made plans without reference to us.
Is not Israel in this thing for itself?
Are they not utterly desperate?

Have we failed them?
Of course, we have, and we've allowed them, encouraged them, to become an armed state - our so-called anchor of democracy in the ME.

And now McCain and his bluster. Yup, just what we need.

When what we need are cool heads and thoughtful discourse - Obama promises to meet with anyone anywhere. Yes! This costs us nothing, and it might gain us a bit of peace of in a war-torn region.

I don't want to see Iran with WMD, but they're a nation - well-defined and large. Nations do what nations do and have always done. They're only doing what we've done; what Europe has done (although with much more restraint and intelligence) and what Israel has done (a cruel little land bent on destroying the Palestinian - both Muslim and Christian - and anyone else who offers a voice of reason or protest in their paranoid mind-storm).

Hats off to Obama for willing to say it: "Let's talk!"
Before we start pulling triggers.

I don't doubt that Israel is planning a strike on Iran - and what could we do? We have created a monster there, and now it's about to bite us.

Now is the time to apply sanctions on Israel, and let the Israel lobby in this country cool its jets. If folks here are really concerned about Israel's survival, it will be secured at the conference table not in an F-14 delivering a bomb.

Warring Madness

Harry Emerson Fosdick's hymn, third verse:

Cure Thy children’s warring madness,
Bend our pride to Thy control.
Shame our wanton selfish gladness,
Rich in things and poor in soul.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal.

"Thy children's warring madness" - I'm listening right now to CNN (my, how low they sunk) and a Wolf Blitzer (blitzed?) forum on Iran, Syria, North Korea, Israel (the maddest of them all) - it's as if we're hellbent on war.

We sniff a little gunpowder, or an isotope, and we go mad.

Are we so insecure? So little in our own minds that we can only react like a schoolyard bully to every threat, real or imagined? And how large are these threats? And who's the enemy?

Feinstein thought Israel's bombing of the alleged nuclear facility was right - because Israel can't tolerate "a hostile neighbor" on its border.

A hostile neighbor - wonder how Syria feels because good ol' Israel has the bomb, and we know it, and we're glad to make Israel our little pawn in the Middle East - to make Israel the hostile neighbor to everyone, slowly stripping Israel of its humanity, turning it into a first-class oppressor-nation of the Palestinians - not to mention Palestinian Christians of various sorts - and a technologically advanced terrorist nation able to mount a bombing attack, not with strap-on vests, but high-tech jets and smart bombs - yup, this makes it a military adventure, not a terrorist attack.

In the recently available photo scrapbook from Dachau, Allied air-raids are described as "terrorist" attacks. Interesting how perspective makes all the difference. We all spin our own perspective to match our own ideological bias, and, of course, we're always the good guys. America has this insane desire to be innocent all the time, and what crimes we commit against our own history and the peoples of the world to sustain this false god, this terrible illusion.

But to return to Fosdick's hymn.

It's an appeal to God to "cure" us. And I echo that prayer, but I wonder if God doesn't say: "Cure yourselves. You can do it, you have what it takes, so don't dump this in my lap."

And more to the point: I wonder if God is letting us chart our own course toward war. "If this is what you want, far be it from me to stand in your way. War you want? War you shall have."

Fosdick is right: we are rich in things, although recent economic patterns are threatening that, too.

And profoundly poor in soul.

Where's the church in all of this?
I'm the church.
I'm a pastor.
I don't even know where to begin.

We're enthralled with ourselves ... we're stuck in a time warp ... we're so into Jesus, we're oblivious to the world, or we're so sophisticated, we deal with the world only through university-sponsored workshops that result in placards and pronouncements, and then we smoke a joint or have a drink and forget about it.

Anyway, I think we're in a pickle ... and God is going to let us pickle ourselves ... until we're so tired of it, so desperate for another way, we'll reach within and discover our own peace, and reach upward and discover God's peace, and reach out to others and give them peace.

But until then, our warring madness is leading us down a dark and dangerous path, from which there is no return except a radical decision to pursue peace rather than wage war.

Ah, nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning.

Bush Insane?

A Middle East trip for peace ... and all the man does is obsessively ramp up the threat-level to Iran ... is Bush insane?

Can the man talk about anything other than war?

Is he even capable of talking peace?

He has utterly lost his balance - if he ever had it - and he's taking our nation further into the insanity of fear.

Robert Frost once wrote: "There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people."

Because scared people, when scared for a long time, begin doing insane things, like torturing prisoners, when experts agree: torture yields poor results, and more importantly, such behavior is a violation of our nation's sacred principles. We are behaving badly, and our president has only made matters worse with behavior unbecoming to the Office and inconsistent with our nation's character.

John McCain recently notes: we're doing things to prisoners that we called war crimes when they were done by the Japanese in WW 2.

Let's face it: we use torture because we can. It's not about security, it's all about power, and there are are arenas of our government drunk on power.

We need a President who can help regain our balance and stop living in fear.

Surely, the dangers of our world are real, but our reactions have been way over the top. Our fear is causing us to lay aside our principles and our reputation among the nations of the world is suffering as a result.

We can do better, we must do better, we will do better.

P.S. For a fine editorial, see John Buchanan, Christian Century, Jan 15 ed: http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=4202

More lies?

While our best intelligence folk were hard at work determining the shut-down status of Iran's nuclear bomb program, our president was rattling the saber and talkin' Texas tough.

More lies?

As with Saddam's WMDs?

What's up with Bush? Does he ache for war? Does he and his gang get some kind of a rush with all of this?

Or is he just a Texas schoolyard bully who knows only how to intimidate?

I don't get it.

More lies?

I think so!

Bush, a War Criminal?

Do a Google on "definition of war criminal" and you'll learn a lot.

That Bush ordered a preemptive strike on Iraq sullied the soul of the Republic for years to come. That Colin Powell used faulty intelligence, and now we know, outright lies perpetrated by a single Iraqi chemical engineer (code name: Curveball), is a blot upon our record that will never be erased.

This is America's greatest failure presided over by America's worst President, supported by a gang of thugs, greedy CEOs, religious wackos, and a host of sycophantic minions.

For a long time, I tried to be sympathetic to Bush - after all, being a leader, being President, is never easy, and worse in hard times. But as the months unrolled and new revelations came to light, my sympathy quotient turned down to zero.

I'm still not convinced that Bush masterminded all of this - I believe he was a toady for powerful oil interests and maniacal neo- and theo-cons intent on world domination.

This gang of thugs hijacked the nation and bullied good folks into quiet submission with the 911 and religious-cover cards.

Now there's talk of bombing Iran.

Will this insanity soon end?

Is Bush a war criminal?

Recovering from WW 2

We've never recovered our sense of balance since WW 2. By balance, I mean a sense of perspective, both of ourselves and the world around us.

I'm thinking about this right now because of today's death of Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 used to drop the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, instantly ending 78,000 lives, with many more to follow in the months ahead.

I believe the bombs ended the war in the Pacific, saving millions of lives, both American and Japanese. Though some might disagree, I believe it can be said of WW 2, it was a "good war" and we can be all be thankful for the outcomes.

But lest I drift too far afield, we live with the legacy of that "good war."

Ever since we entered Korea and Vietnam in the flush of WW 2, and failed, we've been looking for another "good war" wherein the "enemy" is really evil and we're the good guys, innocent of guile and endowed with some "white man's burden" of saving the world from itself.

Our current president is drunk on the power of his office, and only the efforts of politicians and army officers have saved us from his malady.

Even now, in the twilight of his tenure, the sabers rattle over Iran. Foolish. Insane.

With an economy struggling to keep its head above water, a military stretched to the point of breaking, a world reputation ruined, the Republican Party disfigured by Christian wackos, this tiny Texas bully reverts to the most primitive of instincts.

God bless Paul Tibbets' family. And God help America recover from WW 2.