hold your applause...

we may thrill to obama's rhetoric, but very few of the 1.3 billion muslims in the world are as deluded. they grasp that nothing so far has changed for muslims in the middle east under the obama administration... muslim rage is stoked because we station tens of thousands of american troops on muslim soil, occupy two muslim nations, make possible the illegal israeli occupation of palestine, support repressive arab regimes and torture thousands of muslims in offshore penal colonies where prisoners are stripped of their rights. we now have 22 times as many military personnel in the muslim world as were deployed during the crusades in the 12th century. the rage comes because we have constructed massive military bases, some the size of small cities, in iraq, afghanistan, saudi arabia, turkey and kuwait, and established basing rights in the gulf states of bahrain, qatar, oman and the united arab emirates. the rage comes because we have expanded our military empire into neighboring uzbekistan, pakistan, kyrgyzstan and tajikistan. it comes because we station troops and special forces in egypt, algeria and yemen. and this vast network of bases and military outposts looks suspiciously permanent... the brutal reality of expanding foreign occupation and harsher and harsher forms of control are the tinder of islamic fundamentalism, insurgences and terrorism. we can blame the violence on a clash of civilizations. we can naively tell ourselves we are envied for our freedoms. we can point to the koran. but these are fantasies that divert us from facing the central dispute between us and the muslim world, from facing our own responsibility for the virus of chaos and violence spreading throughout the middle east. we can have peace when we shut down our bases, stay the hand of the israelis to create a palestinian state, and go home, or we can have long, costly and ultimately futile regional war. we cannot have both. // chris hedges, 06.08.09, truthdig