(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
Control
[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
WARBLOGGER WATCH
Tuesday, November 05, 2002
Graham Fuller is a former Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation in Washington D.C. and former Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA. In 1982, he was appointed as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia at the CIA. While working for the CIA he was responsible for long-range Intelligence Forecasting. In 1986, Mr. Fuller was named Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, with overall responsibility for all national level strategic forecasting. In early 1988, Mr. Fuller joined the RAND Corporation; his primary work was on the Middle East, Central Asia, ex-Soviet nationality affairs, Russian-Middle East relations, Islamic fundamentalism and problems of democracy in the Middle East.
What is the single most important contemporary root cause of hostility between the Islamic world and the West? The sources of conflict are multiple, but if I had to name just one, I would point to Western interventionism in the Muslim world that takes the form--and this includes the Bush Administration--of unconditional support for a very right-wing government in Israel, and unconditional support for Israel in general.
But it goes beyond that, because there has been American and Western military intervention over the years in this region due its extreme strategic importance, due to oil and its geopolitical locations. So I think there’s a sense among the Muslims that the West has overpowered them militarily, and continues to intervene militarily and politically and to impose its will on a region that feel itself too impotent to be able to withstand this kind of pressure.
