Haroon Siddiqui, editorial writer for the Toronto Star, discusses his article “Qur’an burning is a political, not a theological, issue;” making the connection between the Afghan peoples’ sensitivity to Qur’an burning and the ten year military occupation of their country; the political obstacles preventing the US and NATO from calling it quits; and Newt Gingrich’s laughable threat to “say good bye and good luck” to those ungrateful Afghans.
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All right, so welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Haroon Siddiqui, editorial page editor emeritus and columnist for the Toronto Star.
Welcome back to the show, Haroon.
How are you doing?
I'm well, thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Oh, I'm very happy to talk with you again.
How are things?
Oh, you already said you're doing good.
Good.
It's been good and the sun is shining here.
Haha, good deal.
All right, so we're running a piece by you that's running at thestar.com, but it's in the viewpoint section today also at antiwar.com.
Koran burning is a political, not a theological issue.
A very important point because, of course, the common narrative TV comes right up with it is, oh, look at those crazy Muslims rioting again, I guess just like a bunch of animals at the zoo or something.
You burn a symbol of theirs and they just flip out completely unlike, you know, American Christians would do if somebody burned a symbol that they cared about that anyone could think of, I guess.
Another example of how we just can't deal with these crazy people who might as well be from another planet than us.
What do you think of that?
No, you see, all that needs to be said in response to that is that how come we have had such massive protests only in Afghanistan and not the rest of the Islamic world, which is 1.5 billion people and Afghans constitute only 25 percent.
It also so happens that the American troops are still there.
They went in 10 more than 10 years ago.
The job was to topple the Taliban, which was done in two weeks.
So what have we been doing since then?
You know, so we cannot just dismiss the fact that we cannot dismiss the connection between the NATO occupation of Afghanistan, as it is seen by a majority of people in Afghanistan and what is happening today.
As simple as that.
Well, yeah, that's you pretty much, I think, win the argument already.
Dang, what a short interview.
No.
Yeah, you're right.
Obviously, it's it's the occupation.
It's the same thing as during the cartoons before.
Right.
And even, I guess, before before they knew that the Norwegian shooter was a white right wing fanatic and people were assuming they're Muslims, they were saying, you see, they do just hate freedom because or else why would anyone ever attack Norway?
Why would any Muslim terrorists ever want to attack Norway?
Just completely ignoring the fact that they're part of the coalition occupying Afghanistan.
They have a foreign policy, the Norwegians.
It's ours.
It's the same thing like Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma.
You know, that's what was said.
As soon as that incident happened, people said, Oh, must be some crazy Muslim doing it, you know.
And still, they must be doing it just because of how Muslim they are, not because anything that the Norwegian government had ever done.
Sure.
Right, right.
You know, I mean, the crazies are everywhere.
And the fact remains that you mentioned the 2006 Danish cartoon crisis, cartoon crisis was in somewhere in Europe.
But the biggest demonstrations were in Afghanistan.
Why?
Again, the same point.
Now, the counter argument to that is, well, of course, it's the Taliban who are exploiting the situation and egging people on to demonstrate.
Absolutely.
I mean, they're not much different.
This is not an exact parallel, but they're not much different than the Republicans, you know, who throw mud at each other at any excuse.
So all you need is an excuse.
And this is a genuine excuse for the Taliban to use.
So then a counter counter argument really to all of that is simply, doesn't it say something about our occupation, NATO occupation, American occupation, that the Taliban can exploit it so easily, so handily, so quickly, that the Americans and the NATO forces, and the President of the United States apologizing so profusely, has so little impact, but the Taliban's word carries more weight than the weight of the President of the United States.
I mean, what does that tell us?
It doesn't tell us that they're crazy tells us that our credibility is far lower than that of the Taliban.
Now, I cannot think of a worse commentary than our presence in the 11th year that the Taliban carry more weight with public opinion in Afghanistan than the President of the United States.
And Barack Obama at that, you know?
Yeah, well, this whole time, the more we escalate, the more opposition there is to it.
And it's been that way from the very beginning.
In fact, that was the one thing that Donald Rumsfeld got right, sort of, at least even if he was backing the losing side in a civil war, he wanted that short light footprint so we could get on to the next regime change and not get bogged down trying to occupy the unoccupied.
But he did that policy pretty quick, didn't he?
He was he was half right about a small point, but 110% wrong about the biggest point that we should not have gone there in the first place, especially in under false arguments.
Of course, of course.
Yes.
Well, and now look at the willful ignorance on display.
Speaking of Donald Rumsfeld, the willful ignorance on display at the Washington Post today, violence in wake of Koran incident fuels US doubts about Afghan partners.
I mean, after all, if Hamid Karzai can't just clamp down and snap his fingers or click his heels together and make all these violent protesters go away, well, then what good is he as our regional quizzling sock puppet over there?
Right.
But I mean, if if the President of the United States cannot persuade public opinion, how can Pipsqueak Karzai do it?
I mean, it just defies logic, doesn't it?
Yeah, it's amazing.
Well, you know, they try to get rid of him a couple of years ago.
I'm not sure what he's even doing there.
The Obama administration deliberately linked that leaked that he's just shooting heroin all day and laying around.
All of this really points to a far bigger issue.
The bigger issue really is we had gone to topple the Taliban.
The job was done.
We should have got out.
Okay, we should not have got out after six weeks.
We should have got out after six months.
We should have got out after a year.
We have overstayed our welcome for about 10 years or so.
If we were going to stay, then we should have accomplished what we said we were out to accomplish, which is what, which is to bring democracy, liberate Afghan women, bring Afghanistan into, into modernity.
None of those stated goals has been achieved, so much so that we have not been able to establish simple security.
This is the first moral, legal, political duty of an occupying force is to enforce order.
They have not been able to do that.
So in certain parts of Afghanistan, yes, but in southern Afghanistan and other parts, they have not been able to do it.
So we change, we change our stated objective.
We say the objective is no longer.
Lately, we have not heard a thing about liberating the women of Afghanistan as Laura Bush had made a mission out of it.
My own Prime Minister in Canada, Mr. Stephen Harper used to state this reason often, no one talks about liberating Afghan women anymore.
Number two, we were there to stop terrorism.
If we are not there, they would be here.
Well, the counter argument would be they're more likely to be here because we are at their doorstep all the time.
No.
So President Obama has even stopped calling it a war on terror.
So what the hell are we doing there?
You know, we're doing that.
We're there because NATO is looking for a mission.
NATO does not know how to get out and President Obama is paying the price for his election campaign promise, which was the Iraq war was a dumb war.
Afghanistan was a good war.
So he was going to fix it.
And he is now finding his way slowly out of Afghanistan.
So it's really another political dimension to our occupation in Afghanistan, that President Obama, who was trying to establish his security credentials, has had to take four years to get out of Afghanistan.
You know, he should have said the same thing out of Afghanistan, as he did about Iraq.
Both are dumb wars.
We need to get out.
And now what do we see?
We just saw the latest figures.
You Americans have spent $3 trillion on these two wars, whereas they cannot find enough money to feed their own people, or provide welfare or create jobs and so on.
I mean, this is so extraordinarily and historically wrong, that one does not find the exact words to communicate the seriousness of this issue.
Well, and I guess, you know, if they can really get away with saying that, geez, they sure do overreact if you burn their silly book kind of argument, and that sort of is based on the premise that it can't be the occupation that they resent.
It's all really to help them and build them a school and, and give them electricity lines, I guess, and bring them into the 21st century and put them on welfare.
And they got to love that.
So people still believe that, I guess, if they can believe that the protest is just about the book itself.
Right.
These are distracting elements, we need to distract, find, we need to find a distracting narrative from the one that really is driving it.
So I mean, that's the essence of the argument.
Yeah.
Well, it's very interesting to me to see the so much of the coverage is about, well, geez, maybe we should just leave, you know, Newt Gingrich, even the hawk, the hawk of all hawks running for president said, Well, geez, if you don't like it, well, maybe we should just stop being so kind to you all the time and go ahead and pick up our stuff and go home.
Do please do.
Yeah, it is what is required here.
Yeah, well, so maybe, you know, this terrible incident has a silver lining to it, maybe we can help forge a little bit larger consensus that this just is not working out.
Right.
And this is not to say that, you know, we prefer the Taliban to come back or that the Taliban were terrific.
The point is, you're not able to stop them.
And even when the timetable set by Obama is followed, and when the American forces do leave in 2014, there is no more guarantee that the Afghan government would be any more prepared to tackle the Taliban than it is now because that is the same promise that has been made for the last 10 years or so.
This is Vietnam.
Redux, you know, the same argument was made about Iraq, the Americans have left.
Of course, bombs are going off, but they're not going off to the same extent that they were even when the Americans were there, namely 2006 2007 2008.
And you just distort the local picture.
You know, you don't need to be there with such a heavy footprint.
And all you're doing is drawing the anger of the public.
And a Quran burning comes along, which is besides anything else is so extraordinarily stupid, you know, I mean, if it was true that some of the detainees at the Bagram airbase were using the Quran to send messages to each other and prisoners are known to do all such things.
Why not just confiscate the books and put them in the library somewhere or send them off somewhere as opposed to sending it to the trash can and to the garbage can only to be found by Afghan workers who become heroes by saving the holy books.
And away you go you have a you have a you have a crisis on your hands.
Even from a practical pragmatic point of view, whether you agree with this idea that some somebody's book is so holy that they will go bonkers as the hotline radio shows have it.
Even if it is true, tactically, practically, pragmatically, why would you do it?
Because it is stupid.
You know, sure.
Well, in fact, in the clip of the commanding general there, he seemed to really regret that this happened.
Not so much, you know, the feelings hurt, but the reaction to it.
And said, We are so sorry to the proud Afghan people and their honorable religion of righteousness and glory and whatever.
I mean, he was really sorry that this had happened for whatever short term goal of his had just gotten completely screwed up by it, I guess.
Right.
You know, just more of the same keystone imperialism over there.
But anyway, we're way over time.
Thank you very much for your time.
I appreciate you giving my pleasure.
Bye bye.
All right, everybody.
That's Haroon Siddiqui, editorial page editor, emeritus and columnist at the Toronto Star.
We'll be right back.
