Terrorism…? We create our own reality!

During the launch of his recent book, author and journalist Milton Viorst said he found it interesting that neither President Bush nor his advisors took the time to study the history of the Islamic world and its past interaction and struggle with the West.

“One presidential aide told the New York Times, ‘we don’t worry about reality –” we create our own reality’," Viorst told his audience.

“Well, we know where that reality got us –” it got us in Iraq today and we don’t know how we’re going to get out.”

The above account narrated by Washington Report on Middle East Affairs’ columnist Jamal Najjab, also goes on to reveal Viorst’s take on the ‘war on terror.’

He said a remarkably candid Pentagon analyst argued that the ‘war on terror’ was a cover: America is not responding to the threat of a rival power, as it did in the Cold War. It is “seeking to convert a broad movement within Islamic civilization to accept the value structure of Western modernity.”

Hence, its not surprising that a recent conference on terrorism held in Kyalami by an American outfit known as IQPC, fielded a number of dubious “terror experts," who are not only closely aligned to the Pentagon, but also linked to the Israeli military.

Media reports quoting a couple of these self-styled specialists of “Islamic terrorists” and “Madressahs” reveal that their objective was no different to that of Viorst’s presidential aide: Never mind proof. We create our own reality!

And for some strange reason – not explained, the keynote speaker David Radcliffe, regional director for Africa representing Donald Rumsfeld, the United States Secretary of Defence, emphasized that he was expressing his personal view –” not the official stance of his boss. Why?

Is it that he was aware that the cock and bull approach of his boss Rummy, will not be met with any enthusiastic round of applause? Or merely being insecure about peddling blatant lies –” cloaked in the garb of conjecture and propaganda –” on behalf of the Bush administration at a time when the big chief’s ratings are at an all time low?

Whatever his motives, it didn’t prevent Radcliffe from venting his bigoted views by profiling “terrorists” in the routine stereotypical manner of his government. And in his first-world wisdom, he emphasized that the danger of “terrorist” attacks, operations and activities in Africa existed because the continent allowed vast amounts of “space.”

The “terror gurus” at Kyalami, included Marc Kahlberg, a retired Israeli police officer who now heads an international security consulting and preventive measures organization. Also raising the heckles of South African Muslims was Jim Gort, supervisor of the American Pembrook Pines Anti-Terrorism Unit. In media interviews, he unashamedly attacked Madressahs as training grounds for Islamist “terrorism”. His one-dimensional view displayed arrogance and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge the existence of a neo-con operation designed to ferment destabilization of Africa in order to further entrench American hegemony in the continent.

This “terror” conference represented the latest manifestation of a growing industry, which manufactures, refines and packages for distribution, information, analyses and opinion on a topic called “terrorism.” A large part of the alarm raised on the “Islamist terror” threat to Africa was not based on any major terrorist threat, though security concerns related to the 2010 World Cup was emphasized. Rather a great deal was contrived and the so-called “threat” was inflated for the political purposes of the American/Israeli axis.