Monday, January 31, 2005
Bush's Lex Luther?
I certainly believe that Zarqawi exists, and is a terrible person, but is he really the terrorist mastermind that we make him out to be? Or, is "just" a terrorist that we built up to serve as the mastermind of anti-US resistence/terror in Iraq? Sort of a face-behind-the-terror type of thing? I really have no idea, but some of the things he says are so good for propoganda purposes, I find it hard to believe he is real.
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If President Bush wanted to conjure up someone from central casting to act as a foil to his inauguration call for worldwide freedom, he couldn't ask for a villain more fitting than the terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, who, on the eve of Iraqi elections, denounced democracy as an "evil principle."
In a widely disseminated Internet audiotape, Zarqawi didn't merely say that he opposed the mechanics or timing of the U.S.-run elections being held today in Iraq to choose a 275-member assembly and transitional government. And he didn't say he thought Iraqis should wait and vote after U.S. occupation forces depart. No, Zarqawi said that he opposes any elections under any circumstances...
The good news is that the anti-democratic rhetoric by Zarqawi and bin Laden crystallizes the political choices facing Muslims worldwide. The jihadis' antidemocratic stance is unpalatable to the overwhelming majority of Muslims. Mainstream clerics and Islamists have condemned the kidnapping and beheading of civilians and other abuses. After the U.S.-led assault on the insurgent stronghold in Fallujah in November, Zarqawi lashed out at senior Muslim scholars and clerics for their silence and tepid backing. "You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy," he reportedly said on an audiotape.
