24 Sep Foggy Bottom Bloggers
Kudos to the State Department for launching the Digital Outreach Team, a.k.a. the Foggy Bottom Bloggers. As reported here, they are doing marvelous work spreading the message of tolerance and dialogue to Middle East blogs frequented by radical Muslims.
The team concentrates on about a dozen mainstream Web sites such as chat rooms set up by the BBC and Al Jazeera or charismatic Muslim figures like Amr Khaled, as well as Arab news sites like Elaph.com. They choose them based on high traffic and a focus on United States policy, and they always identify themselves as being from the State Department…. The team said certain topics repeated regularly, including arguments over the accusations that American soldiers tortured Iraqis at Abu Ghraib and President Bush’s comment that the fight against terrorism is a ‘crusade.’ Much time is also spent trying to douse the Internet brush fires that erupt whenever prominent Americans from talk-show hosts to politicians make anti-Muslim remarks of the “bomb Mecca” variety…. Analysts said they had been surprised by the positive response, with people seemingly eager to engage, although the overall impact was impossible to assess. ‘They are not carrying the slogans of liberalization or democratization across the region, said Adel al-Toraifi, a Saudi political analyst. ‘They are talking about peace and dialogue, and I think that makes it difficult for those debating them to justify criticizing them.’
Indeed.
This makes my blood boil, Mr. Alford. We commit genocide against the Arab peoples as we engage them in a dialogue of “tolerance”. This isn’t just chutzpah, it’s disgusting, shameless imperialist arrogance. Excuse me while I put another hole in the wall.
Vargold:
Thank you for your comment. I would suggest that you look up the meaning of words like genocide before you use them so freely. At a minimum it devalues the meaning of the word for those who have suffered genocide for you to suggest that the United States has as its intent the destruction of the Arab people.
Roger Alford
Dear Prof. Alford, I am well aware of the meaning of the word, thank you, and in particular, the full ICC definition of it. And I have a very serious question for you, and those who dare not call what the United Snakes has done and is doing genocide, to ponder: How would you regard the deaths of 48 million Americans as the result of two recent wars of aggression against this country? That figure represents approximately 16% of our population–roughly the same percentage of Iraqis whom we have helped to “liberate” from their bodies over the last decade. This of course does not include the utter destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure, their cultural and historical heritage, their once-proud middle class and the brain-drain of medical, scientific and other professional talent, nor the displacement of over 4 million Iraqis and the steady hemorrhaging of at least 50,000 people per month. Nor does it include epidemiological data such as water-born disease (cholera is now spreading south, and since the U.S. has stopped chlorine shipments into Baghdad because of insurgent attacks, and since water purification facilities depend on chlorine, the populations downstream of that major city will now be drinking SEWAGE), or… Read more »