The current conventional wisdom about terrorism, Islamism, and the Middle East is being bent — but not broken — by two events. On one hand, there is the Boston bombing; on the other hand, we see developments in Syria, and to a lesser extent, Egypt. What’s happening?

In the Middle East, the misbehavior of Islamist movements is becoming more apparent. In Egypt, there is the repression of the Muslim Brotherhood regime, which — shock! — may actually intend to create a non-democratic Sharia state. Parallel behavior in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Turkey is underreported, but occasionally surfaces.

The most important single story at the moment, though, is Syria. Basically, the Obama administration has woken up and recognized what was readily apparent two years ago: they are helping to put radical, anti-American Islamists into power, and helping to provide them with advanced weapons which might be used for activities other than toppling Assad.

When the U.S. government wakes up, it nudges the media to get up also: what is quite startling is the extent to which the mass media is responsive to government policy — at least this government’s policy.

I want to explain this carefully in order to be fair.

Take this article in the New York Times, which can be summarized as saying that Islamist rebels’ gains in Syria create a dilemma for the United States. This is an article about U.S. policy, so naturally it describes how that policy is changing.

Yet at the same time, one wants to ask: why haven’t the policy consequences of this situation been described continuously by the media in the past? If a big truck is headed straight at you on the highway, might not the media sitting in the front passenger seat shout out a warning? Does it have to wait for the driver to notice before speaking?

And even so, the diffidence is astonishing. It is good that the newspaper notices that the rebels are largely comprised of “political Islamists inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood and others who want an Islamic-influenced legal code.” But why, even now, can one get away with saying “Islamic-influenced”? For many years, they have made it clear that they seek a total Islamic (in their interpretation) state. It is the precise equivalent of describing Chinese Communists more than sixty years ago, as they approached victory in their country’s civil war, as “agrarian reformers.”

This story also parallels the much larger-scale debate about the Boston bombings. There’s a long piece in the New York Times about the Boston bombers; the lede gives the flavor of its argument:

It was a blow the immigrant boxer could not withstand: after capturing his second consecutive title as the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion of New England in 2010, Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev, 23, was barred from the national Tournament of Champions because he was not a United States citizen.

The title of the piece is “A Battered Dream, Then a Violent Path.” In other words, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not allowed to win a boxing championship because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen. Blocked by bad treatment from America, he became more Islamic and turned to terrorism.

Of course, it is vital to develop an accurate picture of the terrorists’ background and to explain the factors providing a personal motivation. On the other hand, it is something quite different to suggest that if the United States was nicer to Muslims and perhaps gave people citizenship more easily, there would not have been terrorism in Boston.

Why is this fundamentally dishonest premise being presented in most of the public debate? Because the voices enhanced by control over the most powerful microphones focus in on the political theme they want to push, excluding other factors in the context of their topic.

Where to begin? The article includes a photo of the future terrorist as a baby in Dagestan with his parents and his uncle. His uncle is wearing a Russian army uniform. Note: in the photo he is a baby, but Tamerlan Tsarnaev first entered the United States at age 16. Isn’t he more a product of Russian than of U.S. conditions? After all, his family was involved in a conflict against the Russian state; he and his brother were largely shaped by that environment and by the struggle there.

But the authors cannot focus on this issue. Why not? Well, obviously they want to blame America first, but also there is a big land mine there. Pointing out that immigrants — legal or otherwise — may bring with them hatred, grievances, and cultural formations inimical to America makes a point in the immigration debate which would be the exact opposite of what they want aired.

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Consider this quotation:

“Israeli pessimism seems largely if not entirely unwarranted. It seems based on an extraordinary lack of understanding of what happened in the Arab world in the last year and a half. Rather than girding their loins for the fifth, sixth, seventh Israeli-Arab wars, tThe Israelis might examine more carefully than they seem to have done so far the alternative of a peaceful accommodation with the Arabs.”

This is not a reference to the “Arab Spring.” No, it’s from a dispatch sent from the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia, January 9, 1975. It concluded that the lack of peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict was Israel’s fault. That dispatch could be published — as we will see in a moment—word for word today, 38 years later, with just as little accuracy. The dispatch reflects the unshakable premise — well, from time to time it does decline or disappear for a while — that the Arab side really wants peace, that Israel is not so much threatened but paranoid, that Israel doesn’t think enough about making peace, and that conditions in the Arab world demonstrate that peace is possible or even imminent.

What was happening at that point in time? The PLO was energetically pursuing terrorism, including deliberate operations against Israeli civilians, and openly declaring that it would never make peace with Israel and that if it got a West Bank-Gaza Palestinian state it would use that as a springboard for wiping out the remainder of Israel. Lebanon was a country where the PLO could operate with complete freedom of action, controlling the south and launching cross-border attacks whenever it pleased. Syria and Iraq were ruled by radical Ba’thist regimes dedicated to Israel’s destruction and sponsoring terrorism. Egypt was about to be engaged by Israel in secret negotiations while constant behind-the-scenes discussions were being held by Israel with Jordan.

Yes, in Egypt President Anwar al-Sadat was thinking about the usefulness of peace with Israel as a solution to Egypt’s woes. But let’s also remember that after he made peace, Egypt was isolated by every other Arab states and denounced by them (and the PLO). And of course Sadat was assassinated. And of course while the peace treaty survived, much of it wasn’t implemented. Of course, though Israel did seize the opportunity of making peace with Egypt at the price of material concessions.

The PLO only took about two decades more and being on the verge of extinction before it agreed to negotiate. And then it broke its commitments and rejected a two-state solution.

And what was the name of the supposedly hard-line, closed minded prime minister of Israel at that time who just refused to take the obvious steps that would have allegedly brought peace? Answer: Yitzhak Rabin.

A serious paradigm would understand that for deep-seated structural reasons the Middle East was not on the verge of comprehensive peace then and the same applies to today.

Now the Washington Post has published an editorial titled, “John Kerry’s efforts in Middle East could lay groundwork for success.”  Yes, once again we are on the verge of progress! Yet in a real way the editorial is realistic. The success predicted for Kerry merely maintains the status quo of not having peace. Expectations have been considerably lowered yet the fiction must be maintained that peace is almost at hand and thus this issue should be a very high priority for U.S. diplomacy.

The editorial begins by saying that, yes, a U.S. obsession with the Arab-Israel conflict today seems strange with other issues seeming to be more serious:

“Syria’s civil war… gets worse every day. So does Egypt’s domestic political and economic turmoil. The terrorists who assaulted the U.S. Consulate in Libya have yet to be corralled; Iraq is on the verge of splitting into sectarian pieces; negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program are going nowhere.”

You foolish little people who lack the gigantic brains and profound wisdom of such geniuses who live thousands of miles away from the deadly consequences of their political positions. Because despite the fact that the “peace process”:

“Has proved resistant to the diplomacy of President Obama and numberless previous secretaries of state, but also is not, for now, the source of any of the fires raging across the region.”

And both sides, the editorial continues, put forward preconditions — Abbas “deftly,” since he must be praised even for blocking progress toward peace in a move that he’s been doing for years.

And yet, there’s supposedly something brilliant in what Kerry is doing:

“In pursuing a new peace process in spite of the leaders’ resistance, Mr. Kerry is making an assumption that Mr. Obama has rejected elsewhere in the region: that by leading from the front, the United States can force events and impose solutions. If his goal is a final agreement on Palestinian statehood, he has almost no chance for success.”

Ah, so the goal of peacemaking isn’t to make peace?

“”The initiative could still prove useful, if it is carefully crafted. Encouragingly, Mr. Kerry is beginning with an economic initiative, what he described as `specific steps that we could take to . . . expedite the goal of economic growth in the West Bank.’ He is talking to Mr. Netanyahu about Mr. Abbas’s objective of prisoner releases and to Mr. Abbas about refraining from further action at the United Nations targeting Israel. He appears to have persuaded Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan to postpone a potentially provocative visit to the Gaza Strip.”

This is absurd.

First, Israel has put forward the goal of economic growth in the West Bank for years. It’s nothing new and indeed there has been for several years the appearance of growth which has now once again fallen apart. Economic development always founders because no one in their right mind would invest in an economy ruled by corrupt kleptocrats who keep insisting that they are about to go to war again. In 2009 it was common to claim that economic growth was raising living standards in the West Bank. Now, however, everyone knows that the economy is doing badly. Why? Because the flow of aid has been reduced. In other words, “economic growth” is purely due to sending in money to pay a regime over-heavy with security forces, plus a bit of speculative construction of luxury apartments.

Second, Netanyahu had rejected the prisoner releases already. There have been literally dozens of such releases previously during the last two decades with no lasting effect whatsoever, except that many of the released prisoners return to terrorist activities.

“I know what the world thinks of us, we are Communists, and of course I have said very clearly that we are not Communists; very clearly.”              –Fidel Castro, 1959

U.S. policy toward Syria has changed but it is too late. A senior State Department official said at the meeting just concluded of opposition groups: “We have to help the moderates, people like [Chief of Staff of the Free Syrian Army] Salim Idris….” This is what I proposed two years ago but I have to admit that I almost never saw anyone else who suggested that the strategy should be to help the non-Islamists with money, weapons, and diplomatic support.

Unlike Castro, the Islamists in Syria never lied about their goals and ideologies. Now the Islamists are far more powerful and well-armed than anyone else, courtesy of U.S. policy. Oh, and there’s one more problem. Many or most of the Free Syrian Army’s troops, that is the supposed non- or anti-Islamist alternative, are also Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

So what’s there to do with revolutionary Islamists controlling Syria and sooner or later, though it might take a couple of years, taking over the whole country or at least gaining recognition as the legitimate government of Syria while the regime holds out in the northwest of the country?

That’s okay, says the main line of U.S. policy. We don’t care if they are America-hating fanatics who want to impose Sharia, suppress or even massacre Christians, and commit genocide against Jews. Just as long as they aren’t affiliated with al-Qaida.

Beyond this, there’s mostly wishful thinking. Compare these statements by a Turkish diplomat and a Saudi newspaper:

“Once Assad is gone, al-Qaeda won’t stay long in Syria.”

“We know that there are radical forces like [al-Qaida] but do not overestimate them.”

But it seems impossible to get the mainstream debate to recognize the fact that the problem is not merely al-Qaida but other radical Salafists and another Muslim Brotherhood government.

What kind of situation would another Egypt bring about in the Middle East?

hat will happen within Syria which historically is a far more radical entity (for historical, political culture, and geopolitical reasons) than Egypt?

What will be the fate of all those modern-oriented women, liberals, Alawites, Christians, Druze, and Kurds?

Going beyond the largely worthless current debate on Syria let’s look ahead into the seemingly inevitable future. We can reasonably assume that the Assad regime might last another year or two but it will either retreat to the Alawite areas by then or have fallen totally. There is by the way another possibility. Rebels make advances in Damascus, then use the opportunity to announce the establishment of a provisional government there. The United States and other countries then recognize it–despite Assad’s continuing hold on much of the country–as the legitimate government of Syria.

Whatever happens, there will be a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Syria and Obama will support it. The Salafis will not rule but they will kill people, intimidate non- or anti-Islamist forces, and probably be the main force in various local areas of the country.

Political leaders and government officials are paid for trying to avoid, mitigate, or manage damage to their countries. Experts and journalists are supposed to warn about them and explain the dangers. This isn’t happening. Instead, language is being used to define threats down to the minimum by speaking of revolutionary, anti-American, antisemitic forces quite willing to use terrorism when it suits them into moderates.

The latest step toward making it impossible to understand the world is a decision of the Associated Press, the world’s biggest source of news for English-language mass media. AP’s new step, however, does not launder all Islamism nor does it outlaw the word “Islamism.”

We should remember, however, that use of this word–the description of the world’s most important revolutionary movement today–is already outlawed not only for U.S. government officials in public but also in their internal writing.) In AP’s case, you can still use the word Islamism but not in connection with saying that this is intrinsically a bad, extremist or dangerous thing. So it becomes a broad label like liberal, conservative, social democratic, Christian democratic, etc. In other words, Islamism is defined not as a radical threat but as a full-spectrum movement.

What the AP’s decision means is a far more limited step. It is defining Islamism as a not necessarily militant, radical, or threatening movement. This is significant though not as bad as the accusation being made that it has gone much further.  What has happened is that the AP has adopted a somewhat more moderate version of Obama policy that there are good Islamists and bad Islamists.

According to the new AP stylebook:

“An advocate or supporter of a political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam. Do not use as a synonym for Islamic fighters, militants, extremists or radicals, who may or may not be Islamists. Where possible, be specific and use the name of militant affiliations: al-Qaida-linked, Hezbollah, Taliban, etc. Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.”

I guess if you can get elected to office somewhere that means you can’t be a militant, extremist, or radical. Now this does reflect a basic principle of mainstream thinking in the United States: popularity is inversely proportionate to extremism. To win elections you must move to the center. Without getting into how this applies to U.S. politics, that is usually but by no means always true in democratic countries. In the Arabic-speaking Middle East, the truth has been the exact opposite for decades: radicalism wins out. When there are no attractive, real solutions available, demagoguery almost always triumphs.

There are three subtle points about the AP’s decision here that might be easily missed.

First, the AP has taken a political stance of defining the Muslim Brotherhood leadership as “mainstream politicians.” Who else might be a mainstream politician among Islamists? The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia, where the organization has captured political positions through elections? Or perhaps the Brotherhood cadre of Hamas or in Syria? Maybe it refers to Hizballah’s politicians who now run Lebanon? Well, the best job of camouflage has come from Turkey but then that government–precisely because it seems moderate–has rarely been properly branded as Islamist.

Now it is quite true that not all Islamist movements favor violent or terrorist tactics, at least at this moment. Yet that is not what the Stylebook dictates. It would be absolutely reasonable to say that the word Islamist should not be a synonym for terrorist.

Note the wording about,”reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam.” No. An Islamist is not someone who wants to do that anymore than a democratic socialist or a liberal is a Communist. If you want to make society a bit more Islamic, you’re not an Islamist. The leaders of Iraq or the Palestinian Authority, for example, are not called Islamists.

The Islamist is a revolutionary who wants to reorder government and society in accordance with the laws—all or almost all of them—prescribed by Islam as they interpret it, that is in a militant, extremist, and radical manner. That might sound like a detail but it is well known in the Muslim-majority world that there is a huge difference between using Islam as a basis for law and as the basis for law. By the AP’s new definition, the Mubarak regime in Egypt, the Fatah regime in the Palestinian Authority, and the Assad regime in Syria—all considered to be relatively secular—are Islamist.

Second, this dictates the idea of “moderate Islamists” is valid. Would one say “moderate Communists,” or “moderate fascists?”

Consider the four synonyms for which Islamism is being outlawed:

–Fighters. This is the most reasonable idea since it links up to the point that not all Islamists (currently) follow the path of armed struggle. I can accept that.

–Militant. Well, yes of course they are militants. They seek revolutionary transformations of their societies. They believe they are following the word of Allah and thus cannot compromise on any major principles. Of course, they are militant, despite any tactical mirages they spin forth. Notice that militant is confined to al-Qaida, Hizbollah, and the Taliban style groups. Yet a militant can easily be someone who isn’t using violence. They are, however, seeking the fundamental transformation of their societies and nothing less is acceptable.

–Extremist. Is someone who wants to impose their interpretation of Sharia on the entire society, and a very extremist interpretation of Sharia at that, an extremist? In that sentence I am not getting into the argument of whether Sharia must innately be extremist, but that’s certainly true for the Islamists’ version. (If you have any doubt of that ask a genuinely non-Islamist Muslim.)

Radical—see above.

Remember that getting a lot of votes does not make someone moderate. If you want to say that radical Islamists are within the mainstream of their own societies, that’s fine but the implication then is that the societies themselves are militant, extremist, and radical. AP’s decision, reflecting a mistaken Western view today, is that anyone who is popular cannot be radical.

Third, this stance confuses radicalism/extremism/militancy with actual armed struggle. If you have already seized state power you don’t need to wage armed struggle any more. Such activities are now called state repression.

Fourth, the reclassification of Islamism is integrally related to the misrepresentation of Islamist ideology and goals. For example, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders, including those in official positions, daily evince bloodthirsty antisemitism including the explicit goal of genocide against Jews in general and wiping Israel off the map. Yet these people are now to be seen as “mainstream politicians” who are not radical, militant, or extremist?

When I used the term “revolutionary Islamism” or “radical Islamism” I sought to emphasize the inherent nature of the movement, not to suggest that there was also a separate moderate Islamism. Otherwise you get into the ridiculous game of speaking about the “armed” wing or “political” wing of Hamas or Hizballah or Fatah. There is no such real distinction, only a division of labor.

What AP is doing is a smokescreen to play the game of a fictional “moderate Islamism” whose “mainstream politicians” constitute just another non-radical, non-militant, non-extremist movement that just happens to believe women are chattel, Christians have no real rights, Jews are to be wiped out, and America is to be destroyed.

Thus, “Islamism” is not really a threat so what does it matter if it takes over more countries?

But okay I accept the AP challenge. When you talk about the Muslim Brotherhood and other similar parties and politicians, will you dare to label them as radical, extremist, or militant Islamists? That is allowed by your new Stylebook. But will you do it?

And when the Muslim Brotherhood destroys all but the thinnest semblance of democratic practices in Egypt or when it presides over ethnic-religious massacres in Syria will AP alter its Stylebook?

In its first test, the Boston terror attack, the AP did a lot better than some, including its competitor Reuters. One of its articles explained:

“Evidence mounted that Tsarnaev had embraced a radical, anti-American strain of Islam. Family members blamed the influence of a Muslim convert, known only to the family as Misha, for steering him toward a strict type of Islam [emphases added].” I have no problem with these formulations, though they used the word Islam (a religion) rather than Islamism (a political doctrine).  Not all Islam is radical and anti-American, though all too much of it is today. But, yes, all of Islamism is radical and anti-American. I

One of the reasons why the Middle East situation is less fearsome than it might seem is that the radicals and terrorists are not united at all, but battle among themselves for tactical, doctrinal, ethnic, and ambition-related reasons.

For example: despite their daily bloodthirsty howls for Israel’s destruction, these three groups are otherwise at odds:

– The Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt wants to revolutionize the Middle East, but is putting the priority on entrenching its power in Egypt itself, including by dealing with economic and internal security problems. One of its difficulties is a terrorist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula. While this includes cross-border attacks on Israel, it also involves assaults on Egyptian soldiers, police stations, and other facilities.

– The Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip wants to revolutionize the Middle East, and puts a high priority on genocide against Israel. But it has to balance backing Salafist and even al-Qaeda groups with controlling the timing of its wars on Israel.

– The Salafist groups in the Gaza Strip and Sinai want to attack and wipe out Israel, but some of them also want to overthrow the Brotherhood and to institute an even more extremist regime in Egypt.

So: what happens when Palestinian Salafist groups, including supporters of al-Qaeda, want to attack Israel through Egyptian territory or to work with Egyptian Salafist groups to attack Egyptian soldiers or policemen?

Answer: Egypt doesn’t like it.

And Egypt blames Hamas: Why are you helping these people? Or why aren’t you suppressing them? We will let people attack Israel from our territory if and when we want to do so. And, yes, our intelligence does have evidence you are helping these anti-Egyptian forces. For example, we saw that you weren’t interfering with the smuggling of material to make phony Egyptian army uniforms. Salafists can use these to attack Israel disguised as Egyptian soldiers, thus getting us into a shooting confrontation with Israel while we are trying to borrow money and to keep the Americans happy. Or they can even pretend to be our men and kill Egyptians. So why should we help you when you are helping those who attack us?

The latest event was the firing of two rockets from Egyptian territory at Eilat on April 17. A global jihad-affiliated network in the Gaza Strip calling itself the Shura Council of the Jihad Fighters of the Environs of Jerusalem claimed responsibility.  Their claimed motive was interesting: to protest two Palestinians killed in Tulkarm in a violent confrontation with Israeli security forces.

In other words, Palestinian Islamists are carrying out their war with Israel using Egyptian territory without permission.

The group’s statement also made the remarkable demand that “the sane members of Hamas” pressure the Hamas government in Gaza to stop trying to arrest its men.

So this is the chain of events:

Hamas must decide whether to allow al-Qaeda affiliated or similar groups to attack Israel from Egyptian soil. Even if it doesn’t mind their attacking Israel from Gaza, it needs to keep the Egyptians happy so that the Egypt-Gaza border is kept open for goods, including weapons.

But some Hamas men want instant all-out jihad against Israel.

Hamas must also decide whether to restrain these same groups from waging an Islamist revolution against the Islamist regime in Cairo. Again, perhaps some Hamas gunmen or officials think the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t going fast enough to turn Egypt into a Sharia state. That’s hard to believe, though. Perhaps more likely these Hamas officials are incompetent, bribed, or blackmailed.

At any rate, even though it was completely avoidable, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood regime is very angry at the Hamas Muslim Brotherhood regime. The relationship has been damaged and the Egyptians’ willingness to back up Hamas has been reduced.

Moreover, Israel has given Egypt permission — required under the peace treaty — to  move troops into the eastern Sinai to combat the terrorists. Let’s stop for a moment and realize that when Israel (which the Muslim Brotherhood wants to wipe off the map) cooperates with a radical Islamist regime in Egypt (run by the Brotherhood) to send soldiers to fight radical Islamist terrorists (who want to wipe out Israel and also attack Egypt), you know you are in the Middle East. And you know that the revolutionary Islamists are making major strategic mistakes.

Now that the two (primary, at least) terrorists from the Boston Marathon attack have been killed or captured, we enter a new phase in which the dominant politically correct, factually incorrect forces try to explain away the attack.

Can this be done? Will they really try? Well, yes. True, as one of my correspondents remarked, it is much easier to obfuscate distant Benghazi than a total shutdown and horror in the middle of a major American city. Yet the spin-masters are already at work.

The first step must be, in part, a stalling technique — but it sets the pattern for what is to come. The motive must be obfuscated — this Reuters piece, “Boston Marathon Bombing Investigation Turns to Motive,” is a good start. The article spends seven paragraphs discussing the parents’ claim that the two brothers were framed.

This suggests that mass media and politicians will not shrink from suggesting — perhaps I should say “giving fair hearing” — to bizarre conspiracy theories and doubts. People shouldn’t believe these completely, is the theme, but you just can’t be too sure that two young Muslims would have any reason to harm Americans. There are now witnesses who heard the two terrorists’ mother claiming that September 11 was a U.S. plot to make people hate Muslims.

That’s where playing with that kind of fire leads.

In the Reuters article, the word “Islam” is not mentioned except to say that the two once lived in one predominantly Muslim country, and that another place they lived, Dagestan, is “a southern Russian province that lies at the heart of a violent Islamist insurgency.” Here, we have another technique: minimize Islam as a factor, and turn it into background noise.

Obviously, this will not apply completely, both because the elephant in the room is too big, and there is still some journalistic integrity in places. Both the Washington Post and Mother Jones took a lead in exposing the YouTube likes of one of the terrorists, which showed a preference for al-Qaeda views — to say the least.

There are a lot of other quivers in the arsenal of denial, however. On Face the Nation, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said he had no idea why the Tsarnaev brothers would target ”innocent men, women, and children in the way that these two fellows did.”

The answer — of course — is that these people were not regarded as innocent at all, but as soldiers in the alleged Christian-Jewish war on Islam. This, of course, is precisely the same thinking that has been produced by Islamists for decades. Might September 11, 2001, be a clue for Patrick?

Of course, for Patrick to say that at this point in the investigation is understandable on one level: as a refusal by a government official to remark on an ongoing investigation, which is a relief from the president’s past remarks that the police acted “stupidly” with professor Henry Louis Gates and “if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

Yet what if Patrick’s claim is sustained, week after week, until the heat is off?

NBC News has just reported that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had visited an Islamist radical six times at a mosque in Dagestan. The Caucasian/Chechen angle offers some hope for successful obfuscation, as a lot of media time can be spent talking about that conflict. [Christian Science Monitor, it isn't Islam but a Chechen tribal code of honor.]

Of course, if the young men were acting as Chechens and not as Islamists they would have attacked a Russian target. The United States has not — even by the usual stretch of radical Islamist imagination — had anything to do with the conflict in Chechnya.

The more compelling the conflict in Chechnya is as a source of pain and passion, the less compelling the argument that the conflict was a motive. The Russians have indeed been brutal in suppressing the rebellion, far more than the West or Israel has acted toward anyone. So what cause overrides that one?

Yet Chechen grievances will be a good topic for obfuscation.

“Boston Marathon bombing investigation turns to Motive.”

Thus reads the headline on Yahoo here. The lead of the Reuters story:

“With the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings lying seriously wounded in a hospital and unable to speak on Saturday, investigators worked to determine a motive and whether the ethnic Chechen brothers accused of the attack acted alone.” In the article, which spends seven paragraphs discussing the parents claim that the two brothers were framed, the word “Islam” is not mentioned, except to say that they once lived in one predominantly Muslim country and another place they lived,  Dagestan,  is “a southern Russian province that lies at the heart of a violent Islamist insurgency.”

The film “Casablanca” was an alarm bell for America back in 1941. I thought about an exchange from that script in regard to Boston:

Major Strasser: Are you one of those people who cannot imagine the Germans in your beloved Paris?

Rick: It’s not particularly my beloved Paris.

Heinz: Can you imagine us in London?

Rick: Ask me when you get there.

Major Strasser: How about New York?

Rick: Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.

But wait! They got to New York back in 2001. And have been back there about 18 times since then. They got to Washington DC that same year.

And now they are in Boston.

That’s what I thought about when I heard President Obama saying that the terrorists picked the wrong city to attack.

No, they didn’t.

Two kids paralyzed an American city with great ease just by being willing to sacrifice their lives if necessary, which is after all the whole theory of the suicide terrorism, we-believe-in-death-you-believe-in-life school of thought.

Whether or not they had some brief training in bomb making and didn’t just take the Internet course isn’t that important. And remember that the Chechen nationalist movements have no interest in attacking the United States. This was al-Qaida, as we can see from the selection of You-Tube videos by one of the bombers.

When Obama says, “Americans refuse to be terrorized,” it seems as if he is actually proudly saying: We aren’t going to change anything we’re doing now!

So, if we are going to be honest about it, the issue here is not the heroes who emerged or the quality of the police work done. It is that America is tremendously vulnerable.

But is that fair to say given the few big terror plots that have succeeded since September 11, 2001?

Well, yes, because there are a lot of small ones that have succeeded; a lot of plots that were deliberately not recognized as such so that the American people remained asleep. The United States is losing.

On September 11, 2001, only Iran and Afghanistan were ruled by revolutionary Islamist governments.

Today, Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Iran, Lebanon, Tunisia, Turkey, and soon Syria make for a lot longer list.

This, then, is the one-two punch of Islamism: Terrorist movements plus political movements. Oh, and there’s another punch, too, Western denial.

Years ago there was a joke in South Africa, before the end of the apartheid regime. The government builds a giant computer and asks it, “In the year 2000 will South Africa be ruled by whites or blacks?”

The computer says, “Whites.”

But then the officials think of the friction between the Boers (Dutch-speakers) and the English speakers so they ask: “What language will they be speaking?”

And the answer comes back “Russian.”

This is sort of what happened with the hopes of the left this week:

“What race will be the Boston terrorists be?”

“Caucasian.”

“What a relief!”

“Yes, Caucasian Muslims.”

When I was watching the September 11 attacks on television, an announcer said, “From now on, everything will be different.” And I said out loud to the television set: “No, it won’t.”

For many years before 2001 I carried with me a secret. When reporters would ask me, “Why haven’t terrorists targeted the United States directly?” I didn’t answer.

That’s because the answer was: “Because they haven’t yet realized how easy it would be to do that.”

I didn’t want to be the one who tipped them off. Back then, in the 1980s and 1990s, the Islamist terrorists knew they didn’t know America very well. Also, I suspect, they couldn’t believe how open the United States was, that there weren’t policemen who would follow them around because they were Muslim and Middle Eastern.

Here’s the irony: Only when the terrorist leaders realized that Islamophobia was not a big factor in the United States could they resolve to attack the United States with a belief that they would succeed.

Once again I hear that “everything will change” because of Boston. Again, a dozen years later, I don’t believe that either. It is absolutely clear what needs to be understood and what needs to be done. But that message will not be accepted by those with socio-political power.

Indeed, exactly 11 years later, on September 11, 2012, terrorists got away with killing four U.S. officials in Benghazi and one of the Boston terrorists received U.S. citizenship.

You see, regarding the current dominant people and ideas ruling America, controlling its universities and mass media, there’s a Navaho proverb that applies: You can’t wake up someone who’s only pretending to be sleeping.

Back in 1941, the Pearl Harbor attack forced America to wake up. But America had its Pearl Harbor a dozen years ago and we’re still waiting.

The lesson from the Boston Marathon bombings could not possibly be clearer. Yet few people, due to various complications, will address that real issue.

Part of the problem is this. Most powerful institutions and people say that Islam is a religion of peace. There’s no problem, except for a few mysterious extremists who just seem to pop up either at random or due to American and Western sins.

The next largest segment says that Islam is an inherently violent and extremist religion. Thus, since the problem is Islam, there’s nothing to do but to combat it directly in some form.

Both of the main Western responses, then, deny the importance of waging a real and serious battle within Islam.

Yet where do the terrorists come from? In the case of these two brothers, they were Muslims all of their lives and yet suddenly they became—without any major direct experience—radical terrorists.

The cause, of course, was revolutionary Islamist propaganda, especially but by no means exclusively from al-Qaeda. There are literally hundreds of Internet sites, videos, preachers, books, and everything else you can think of that promote revolutionary Islamism. They tell Muslims that they should and must be revolutionaries and terrorists; they cite holy works to do so.

What the heck is there on the other side?

Let’s think for a moment about some of the things that don’t exist:

–A Radio Free Islam that systematically preaches (the last word is not chosen at random) an anti-extremist approach to Islam. Obviously no Western government could do such a thing but there are supposedly enough wealthy Muslims to finance such an operation.

–There are virtually no programs at mosques to explain why terrorist, Islamist, and extremist Islamic positions are wrong and bad. Wrong because they don’t accord with what those who say so deem to be a “proper” Islam; bad because they are immoral, ruin the lives of those who embrace such ideology, and hold back the societies where enough people have such a view.

–There is remarkably little literature and few preachers—especially ones who are as well-financed as the radicals—that a young Muslim is going to read on Internet or hear on videos or elsewhere to learn about an alternative path.

–Where are the videos? Where are the web sites? Where is the social disapproval among Muslims?

On that basis, one could argue that there is no moderate—or at least no non-violent, non-revolutionary– Islam that can be developed. But that simply isn’t true. The works and the moderate individuals exist, but they are not given support, even in Western countries, nor do they have the resources to wage the battle. Everyone who ignorantly drones on about Islam being inevitably radical doesn’t know how hard Islamists have had to work for forty years or  more to create what exists now, nor how many people who are Muslims oppose this movement in Iran, Arabic-speaking countries, Turkey, and other places. One mistake–made by President Obama in his Cairo speech among other places–is to extol Islam as the main political identity people who are Muslims should have.

Everyone who ignorantly drones on about Islam being inevitably radical based on religious texts doesn’t know how hard Islamists have had to work for forty years or  more in the real world to create what exists now, nor how many people who are Muslims oppose this movement in Iran, Arabic-speaking countries, Turkey, and other places. One mistake–made by President Obama in his Cairo speech among other places–is to extol Islam as the main political identity people who are Muslims should have.

It is like the situation in the Cold War when the Soviets and their supporters were well-organized and well-financed, but the social democrats, liberals, and conservatives opposing them were not. Not only the U.S. government–through covert and other means–stepped into the breach, but so did lots of organizations, foundations, non-governmental organizations, and others.

In the era of Islamism, there are a lot of major problems in terms of its opponents’ responses.

First, any Western, non-Muslim financing or help to those groups would be used to discredit them.

Second, in a bizarre manner Western societies favor the radicals, giving them good press and praise.

Third, moderate Muslims are penalized and ignored.

Fourth, the ability to critique precisely what is radical in Islam and what is wrong with Islamism is handicapped by the successful effort to brand any attempts at making such distinctions as “Islamophobia” instead of a sensible fear of revolutionary Islamism. It is equivalent to branding any such attempt to critique Communism as anti-Sovietism or as a mindless antagonism to liberalism or pure reactionary views.  Communists tried such techniques, but they only worked to a very limited extent.

Salafist groups have called for a massive demonstration at noon in front of the High Court building on Ramses Street in Cairo to protest the acquittal of several officials from the Mubarak regime and at Mubarak’s release on bail pending a retrial. The retrial was required by the withdrawal of the judge. That retrial was necessitated  by the overturn on appeal of a previous life imprisonment verdict against Mubarak.

The Muslim Brotherhood has told members they can participate in the demonstration on a personal basis if they wish. The demonstration’s main demand is that the judiciary be restructured. The court system has stood as the last remaining institutional barrier to the Brotherhood’s total control of the country. While over time it would inevitably name new judges, many are impatient for the Islamist revolution to roll forward.

Also today, though, anti-Islamist movements are gathering at 1 pm at Tahrir Square, a nearby suburb, and Elqaed Ibrahim Square in Alexandria to demand that the Brotherhood be forced out of power.

At the Alexandria location, however, other Salafist groups have called for a 2 PM progrest against the anti-Islamists. Violence is quite possible.

Meanwhile, the economy is continuing to decline steeply and a plan for a massive IMF bail-out is stalled due to wrangling on the Egyptian government side.

This is the chaos into which Egypt is descending. In real terms, a revolution hailed by virtually everyone in the West has turned into a disaster. The choices seem to be either a Sharia state or a civil war, each accompanied by suffering and explosive instability.

Might the West learn something from this story? Lessons could include the idea that another supposed great solution–a revolution in Syria–is about to bring another disaster, while the utopian vision of an instant peace process imposed on Israel would bring a parallel disaster.  The Syrian story will happen; the “peace process” one won’t and Israel will be blamed for avoiding suicide.