03/11/11 – Matthew Harwood – The Scott Horton Show

Ah man, the Sharia law islamo-fascist caliphates conquering America and the liberals are helping them do it or something, I don't know.
Introducing Matthew Harwood.
He's a journalist in D.C., frequent contributor to The Guardian's Comment is Free.
His writing has appeared in the Washington Monthly Progress Magazine and the Columbia Journalism Review, Common Dreams, and Alternet.
He's currently working on a book about evangelical Christian rhetoric and aggressive U.S. foreign policy.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Matt?
I'm doing well, Scott.
Good to be back.
Well, it's good to have you here.
Yeah, it's been a little while since we've talked, so let's see.
I think, well, Peter King's terrorism is, I think, less important.
Let's start with this witch hunt against American Muslims.
Is WorldNetDaily right that the islamo-fascist caliphates, Islamic extremist fifth column in America is ready to enslave us all under Sharia law and convert our sons and rape our daughters?
Well, obviously not.
I mean, there's no evidence to back any of that up.
And one of the big things that we've all learned from the run-in to the King hearings is he basically said that Muslim Americans aren't helping enough with law enforcement investigations.
And actually, we know that's completely not true and that there's a group called MPAC, which is the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and they put together this big report.
So over the last two years or so, 75% of jihadist plots have actually been disrupted by Muslim Americans themselves.
So there is absolutely no evidence that there isn't cooperation between Muslim Americans and law enforcement.
And there simply is no evidence that there's creeping Sharia.
Well, I mean, I wonder about those numbers.
It sounds like most of that just means Muslim rats recruited by the FBI to entrap some poor kid into saying something stupid into a microphone.
I don't know of any actual jihadist plots in America since they prosecuted Moussaoui.
I guess Abdulmutallab, maybe.
Well, we know there is cooperation.
Like, in my area, there was the out-of-danger Virginia Five who went to Pakistan.
They were obviously going to fight.
Washington said they were obviously going to fight.
Allegedly, they were going to fight in the attack border against American soldiers.
And it was their own families who basically went to the mosque, their mosque, and then reached out to the FBI to basically say, these guys have gone, and we should really try to catch them before something bad happens.
So, I mean, a lot of it has to do with Muslim family members.
You know, they see their kids being radicalized or that they even are radicalized.
They're just really concerned as loving parents to make sure that they don't get hurt or get in trouble.
I think that's a portion of what's going on.
But, you know, I've heard a lot of allegations that the FBI has been infiltrating a lot of mosques.
Obviously, that stuff is going to backfire.
Yeah, well, and there's just been, you know, I guess a lot of terrorism cases go without much publicity or making, you know, huge national coverage or whatever, but it seems like virtually all of them that made national headlines were just set-ups or, you know, pretty much outright entrapment.
The case of the plot to bomb the synagogues in New York and the Miami 7 plot, in both those cases, you simply had people who thought that they were the smart one playing the informant and getting his money, when, in fact, the informant was setting them up, you know?
And then TV and FBI like to pretend that, oh, we stopped Al-Qaeda, but there ain't no Al-Qaeda in America to stop, so they got to keep making up this nonsense, you know?
Well, I mean, you could say with Najib al-Azzi and the Faisal Shahzad, I mean, the Faisal Shahzad cases, that these were real embryonic terrorist plots.
Yeah, Faisal Shahzad and, yeah, yeah.
I'm sorry, what was the other guy's name?
I know the one you mean.
Najib al-Azzi.
Right, right.
And I even know New York's Center of Law and Security, which has issued a report on what you're saying, basically looking at terrorism arrests and trials and saying, you know, a lot of these guys, you know, can barely piss and impale.
So they're not Al-Qaeda operatives.
You know, they're people exactly like you said that have somehow, an informant or an infiltrator has kind of steered them along the lines of going jihadi.
And whether or not they even really understand what they're doing is something for debate.
But you could say with Faisal Shahzad and Najib al-Azzi, you really do have real plots.
And what's actually interesting about Faisal Shahzad is you have what is actually effective counterterrorism, and that's the people in the community.
And, you know, much has been made of it with, I think, a single-eyed Muslim vendor on the corner who basically saw the smoking FUV and alerted police.
So, again, we're getting back to the point is, you know, Muslim Americans in this country are counterterrorism partners, and that's the way they need to be looked at.
And a hearing that basically is calling them to task for something they've never done, which is not cooperate with law enforcement, and in a sense looking at them as a fifth column in American society, can only have really bad repercussions for our counterterrorism defenses.
Right.
I mean, after all, why do they live here?
They live here because they like it, because they want to be Americans, just like everybody else who ever moved here in the last 500 years, you know?
Well, that's a good point.
I mean, they're fleeing the type of oppressions that supposedly they're been infiltrated, I guess, in a sense, supposedly they're carrying their demons, I guess, into America in some sort of benefit.
And what you're saying is absolutely correct, it seems.
They're trying to get away from these type of things.
Well, it can be fun, if the mood strikes you right, to go and read through, you know, for example, WorldNetDaily, Newsmax.com, and those kind of, you know, ludicrous Republican operative sort of right-wing kookery websites, and to read their version of what they're talking about here, it reads like the most ridiculous conspiracy theory stuff.
Everything is, a guy who knew a guy who one time checked with this thing that this FBI report said he maybe knew this other guy who gave money to this thing that was really a charity for Hamas, and oh my God, the Islamofascist caliphate.
And yet, you know, the connect the dots and draw the picture or whatever that they provide for you to do so is just preposterous.
It's the most ridiculous thing.
I mean, you know, I don't know.
Well, I was going to say, what was interesting yesterday in the hearing, you said, I believe, before we got on the line, said you really weren't familiar, you didn't watch it, was the Democrats actually called Los Angeles Sheriff Leroy Bockett to testify.
And during question and answers, a congressman from Minnesota, Chip Kravick, basically alleged that Baco was an unwitting kind of tool of care, and basically that he was doing the work of care, which is, in a sense, deflecting the true threat of jihadism in America.
And actually, I really love what Leroy Bockett said to him.
He said, basically, if care is a criminal organization, then bring charges and prosecute them.
And until that happens, I will work with them because I'm here to protect my community.
And if they're going to help me and give basically people who we believe may be radicals and we have the time to basically disrupt it or intervene before they actually get violent, then that's what I'm going to do because my first job is to protect the people of Los Angeles County.
Yeah.
Well, and I think I did read a quote from a guy from CARE who said, man, don't create a division where a division does not exist between the FBI and CARE.
We work together better than you people on this committee work together.
Yeah, well, that wasn't CARE.
That was actually Leroy Bockett saying that.
Oh, that was the cop.
That was the cop actually saying it.
I mean, and it was interesting because Leroy Bockett was really an advocate, and this is what most police should be, is a real advocate of community policing, basically saying the cops can't do everything.
You know, we're here to basically enforce the law, but we need your help, and we shouldn't be going in and trying to mess that delicate balance of trust between law enforcement and the community.
So basically he's saying cops shouldn't go into the community and be a bunch of dicks.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, on the issue of extremism, I mean, that's the big, you know, you're quoting the guy who got it right up there, still getting it wrong, basically.
Look at Faisal Shahzad, who you mentioned, the attempted Times Square bomber.
He was an American with a wife and a kid and a job, and he went to Pakistan to visit his family, and he saw people bombed by predator drones.
And he didn't all of a sudden decide that he'd get 72 virgins in heaven if he believed in some ridiculous dogma from a long time ago or whatever.
He joined up as a soldier in the war against the Americans who, you know, actually exist in space and time.
It was all political and human.
It wasn't about Islamic extremism whatsoever.
Same as Mohammed Atta, the same as Marwan al-Sheihy.
Well, that's the filter they look at these things through.
It's like anything.
I mean, I would think if another country came here and occupied the United States, our violence would probably be filtered through Christianity of some sort, a fundamentalist Christianity.
Because it's happening in Islamic land, it's going to be filtered through Islam.
It's obvious.
And I think you bring up another good point, which is one of the problems with homeland security, is there's no acknowledgment of foreign policy.
Right.
Well, we'll have to get back to that right after this.
It's Matthew Harwood.
He writes all over the place, including at Truthout.org and The Guardian.
Talking about Peter King's bogus Islam hearings.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
On the line is Matthew Harwood.
He writes for The Guardian, for Truthout.
He's got a new one called Peter King, reactionary, rash, and wrong.
And now, Matt, you were just at foreign policy and the lack of a discussion about foreign policy at these extremist Islam lack of cooperation with law enforcement hearings going on there on the House Homeland Security Committee.
And it reminded me of what James Bovard said about the Waco hearings.
He said it's like watching drunks fight in a bar.
They swing and they miss.
And so here you have people saying, no, come on, all Muslims aren't so bad.
And they do cooperate with us.
They're not so bad and whatever.
But still all agree that the enemy is extremism.
And that that's what we're up against, is extremism.
And so as long as they ignore foreign policy as the root of this problem, I guess we're just going to continue on.
And eventually we'll have another red alert or two.
And that will be the end of even the pretension of the Constitution and the rule of law in this society forevermore.
Well, what I think is going to be interesting is, I don't know if you're familiar with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
And, you know, that's who the FBI and a lot of the national security types say.
And while Lockheed, you know, the many American cleric who basically is always calling for jihad against the United States, it's attached to.
I'm waiting for these hearings to end up in their publication Inspire.
And Inspire is all about kind of, you know, new media, jihadi, radicalization and propaganda.
And I know, I shouldn't say I know, I would be really surprised in the next issue or two that comes out that Peter King isn't used as kind of like the dinner bell for jihadists.
That this guy is going to be held up and say, you see, they really do hate Islam.
They really do hate everyone.
Peter King is an interesting example because when you go back and you see why people get their rationale for attacking the United States, you know, sure, Islam comes up and stuff.
But a lot of it has to do with Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, torture, invasion, occupation.
And Peter King, interestingly enough, has been for every single one of these things.
And that's actually what I tried to highlight in the article at Truth Hour.
Yeah, well, tell us more about this politician, Peter King.
Well, he's an interesting guy.
I mean, it seems supposedly before 9-11 he was the Republican that played ball on both sides.
You know, he had an independent streak.
He actually voted against the Clinton impeachment.
And then 9-11 happened and it just seems the terrorist attack just made everything that, you know, basically his reasoning faculties just really go astray.
I mean, obviously he comes from New York.
He saw the towers fall, had people who he loved killed.
But it basically turns him into this kind of, you know, kind of congressional werewolf who's out to get every single person he thinks is responsible for 9-11.
And, you know, while that may be true, he tends to forget that our actions have unjustly impacted a lot of innocent people around the world in our hunt for these people.
All right, and tell us more about, you know, the positions he's taken on all these things that, as you list all the obvious causes of our problems with terrorists in the first place here.
Oh, well, I mean, you know, the best one probably is Gitmo and torture.
He's basically said enhanced interrogations are not torture.
He called Gitmo a club med for terrorists, which is obviously ridiculous.
And he always calls the people at Gitmo the worst of the worst.
But we know that's not true.
You know, there's been 700, I want to say 792 detainees held at Gitmo.
There's only 172 remaining, and the Bush administration released most of them.
So obviously the Bush administration, the tough on terrorism administration, did not release over 500 hardcore al-Qaeda zealots back into the world.
It just wouldn't happen.
And then on top of that you have people who have petitioned the government for their release under habeas corpus review.
And over half of them, the judges have turned and said to the United States government, you need to release these people.
There's absolutely no evidence to hold them, to either charge them or release them.
He's for all this.
There's no distinction made between, you know, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and some poor, you know, sap who's on the Afghan, the AfPak border who got picked up by the Northern Alliance and sold off to the United States.
What was his position on the invasion of Iraq in 2003?
Oh, completely foreign.
And on the surge to escalate it back in 2007?
No, I don't want to talk out of turn because I'm not sure.
But I know he's been a very vocal supporter of all American wars and anything counterterrorism related.
I mean, he's the type of guy that any time a plot is on hand, you know, we find a plot, and whether or not it's successful or disrupted, he's always the first one to be saying, you know, we need full body scanners, we need to enhance pat-downs.
When that plot that just was disrupted in, I think, the Texas area, you may be familiar with it, the guy who was going around buying fertilizer and stuff.
He's basically saying now that we have to monitor all these holders who come from basically the Middle East, any type of country who's associated with terrorism.
He wants, I don't know if it's real-time surveillance, but he wants increased surveillance.
So anytime something happens, you see Peter King advocating stronger and more intrusive state powers to deal with this.
We'll see he is trying to protect us.
Once you accept the premise that they hate us for our freedom, then all we can do is create an authoritarian police state from which there is no escape from Big Brother's eye, and then that way, one, we'll stop every terrorist plot before it happens, and two, we'll be taking away the motivation for the war against us.
Well, again, it's what we always talk about.
Until you deal with American foreign policy, there really isn't a solution.
There's no way out of this.
The more and more there's American wars overseas, the more and more these type of things are going to come home.
The acknowledgement or the discussion needs to be whether or not these American wars overseas are legitimate, and if they're not, then they should be ended.
Yeah.
Well, I got one, and this is one of the last points that you bring up in your article here, the Inquisitor's List.
Again, the article is Peter King, reactionary, rash, and wrong, and you say that one of these witnesses will be, or maybe a couple of them will be, family members of Minneapolis men who left the United States to fight for al-Shabaab in Somalia.
Did that happen yesterday?
That did happen.
There was only one family member.
It was an uncle of a kid who went overseas and died fighting for al-Shabaab.
And, I mean, there's no more perfect illustration than that, when al-Shabaab only came into existence in opposition to the Ethiopian government's invasion at George Bush and Dick Cheney's insistence back in Christmas of 2006.
And they were there to help the Islamic Courts Union defeat the Ethiopians and take power back.
And then, when the Islamic Courts Union cut a deal with Conoleezza Rice, the al-Shabaab said, no way, why would you take half a loaf?
You know, we're young and headstrong.
We'd rather keep fighting.
And they've been fighting ever since, and they never existed.
There never was such a thing until the US invaded just five years ago.
Well, yeah, we supported the invasion.
I know, I know.
You're correct.
And I think it always goes back to- Well, and according to the WikiLeaks, you know, strongly pressured the Ethiopian government to go ahead and do us this favor.
I haven't read the cable.
They couldn't refuse.
I haven't read the cable, so, you know, I don't want to talk about that.
But I think it always, again, brings us to, you know, the really great work of Dr. Cate, and always understanding that this type of jihadist violence that's come out is usually in response to what they consider imperialism, and imperialism done by a different, what they quote-unquote think, faith.
So the United States obviously is going to be associated with Christianity, and I believe in the Ethiopia example, you know, Ethiopia is a Christian country when they invaded Somalia.
Bob Pape was on the show yesterday explaining just that point.
Yeah, I mean, his work really is a necessary corrective.
You know, everyone wants to get scared of- it's always that other, you know, it's the fear of Muslims.
But I really think you go throughout history, you're going to find the same reactions from other people.
And, of course, when you do these type of things, you're only going to empower the worst of those people.
Yeah, well, and the worst are the Americans who fear them the most.
It's just like Yoda says, that fear leads to hatred.
I'm sure- oh, you note in your article the so-called protests there in Orange County.
These people, you know, blind with rage.
The only thing preventing them from being a lynch mob that day apparently was the local sheriff's department standing around.
Otherwise, that thing could have got real ugly.
They're that afraid of a bunch of women and children raising money for a battered women's shelter.
You know, like it's the Japanese invasion and conquering of America or something.
Well, you know what I love too, if you heard it, there's all these things about we love our Constitution, no Sharia.
One, right, I don't think there's been any implications of that mosque peddling Sharia.
I mean, I didn't hear about that.
Yeah, no, it's ridiculous.
And then number two, you know, if you saw the videotape, these are families walking in with their little children, and yet still they're screaming and screaming for blood, you know, telling them Mohammed's a pedophile and that I hope you beat your wife tonight.
Just really, really noxious things.
Yeah, well, and the city councilwoman says, well, I know some Marines who'd be more than happy to introduce them to paradise right now.
Like, really?
You want to have a massacre now?
Like, what in the hell?
People are off their rockers, man.
And really, you know, I have my disagreements with the liberals in the left, Matt, and I don't know where you count yourself, but the right wing is so disconnected from anything true that anything can be true to them, I guess.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I have friends that come from the right, and I'm always a little surprised at what they believe.
It's pretty funny at times.
They really go in for the Rush Limbaugh lines a lot of the time.
And so, you know, ideologically speaking, I think I fall in kind of like a libertarian left issue.
So, you know, a lot of times they just want people to be left the hell alone and let them do, as long as they're not doing anything that's violent or destroying someone else's property, then just leave them be.
Yeah, well, we live in a world where, you know, Iran is about to nuke us with hydrogen bombs, or better yet, shut off all our lights forever and turn us all into cannibals, like Frank Gaffney says.
Or, you know, Sarah Palin represents, you know, real intellectual leadership and traditional American, real American values and all these things.
Or, geez, like Anthony Gregory was pointing out, the Tea Party people, who, you know, supposedly are really against, you know, they're almost a new party, they're so not the Republicans or whatever.
No, a new poll came out, had super-duper majorities of them saying that they approved wholeheartedly of the George Bush administration.
It's just losing an election they don't like.
And, you know, I don't know.
It's crazy.
Yeah, I mean, I don't find the Tea Party in any way to be a libertarian party in any way.
Well, no, it's not.
Although, you know, at first they really did try to just emphasize economic issues and just sort of leave the culture war stuff out, but that didn't last too long, I guess.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.
There's so many cross-currents going on inside that, too.
Because, I mean, obviously, you probably have the people who are more on the Ron Paul line, which is for, you know, my people.
I consider myself, again, I was saying, more on the left libertarian side.
I look at Ron Paul, I might not agree with everything, but I would love to see the Republican Party be taken over by someone like that.
I think we really make some progress in this country.
Yeah, hear, hear.
And, you know, I don't know.
I was supposed to interview this guy today.
It didn't work out, but his name is James Carroll, and he wrote this piece about how, hey, check out these revolutions in the Middle East.
Look at how scary these Muslim Arabs aren't.
Look, man, they're about as cool as can be.
They're all, you know, really remind us of us out there wanting justice and liberty and an end to their emergency law and these things.
They're not, you know, bin Ladenite, Islamo-fascists at all.
And, you know, maybe, hopefully, that can really have some effect in dispelling the myth of this, you know, dangerous Islamic front against us or whatever by just showing us the reality of the average Egyptian.
They're really not much like Ayman al-Zawahiri, you know?
No, and I'm sure you've heard these arguments, you know.
Basically, what the Egyptians did was tell al-Zawahiri that what he wanted was wrong, and it doesn't work.
Violence is only going to get more violence, and when you do the nonviolent disobedience, when you take that route, you have a better chance of winning.
I mean, you get the world's sympathy.
Right.
Absolutely, and just look at them.
It's working, you know?
Yeah.
Well, look, we've got to leave it there, but I really appreciate your attention to this issue.
I mean, I think the most important thing now for a journalist or, you know, an opinion writer like yourself or whatever, it's anti-demagoguing.
It's finding out who's the weak who's getting picked on and explaining, you know, how they're not the scary force in the world to people who at least will listen because, you know, as people get confused and get scared, it's really easy, apparently, especially for the state, to get them to turn on the weak and, you know, we need to see if we can try to defuse that as best we can.
Hey, I agree, and I thank you for letting me come on.
I really appreciate it, as always.
Anytime, Scott.
Everybody, that's Matthew Harwood.
He writes for The Guardian.
Comment is free.
And Columbia Journalism Review, Common Dreams.
He's got a new one at truthout.org.
It's called Peter King, Reactionary, Rash, and Wrong.