Reply #28: A HA ! a French neocon....

[AntiFascist]

just kidding!

Even if he was only quoting Pipes, he is still airing his propaganda, and he doesn't seem to raise any strong questions.

The main problem I have with Pipes, and with Bush for that matter, is that they often try to frame the Islamic religion as an ideology that is a primary threat to the West and which must be defeated. They always start to get to this point, where they think they almost have public opinion on their side, then they will suddently revert back to the old "well its really only militant Islam that is the problem and we can tolerate moderate or secular Islam." This also totally ignores the fact that in the West we have an even much more utopian, world vision from our own religious right which views the Middle East as the potential seat for a worldwide Christian theocracy. I don't see too many people pointing this out in the mainstream, except for journalists like Seymour Hersh.

Here is what Daniel Pipes once said in the more conservative Front Page Magazine, which totally contradicts his views quoted above:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles//Printable.asp?ID=3158

Pipes: No, we need to avoid the "Espositan eagerness" that discerns and then trumpets specious differences among Islamists. Whether they work on the front lines of jihad, its logistics train, or in the back-offices of its bureaucracy, all Islamists are part of the same effort to build a totalitarian regime world-wide. Whether they engage in immediate violence or hold off until later, they all must be fought, using appropriate responses to the case in hand. (Just as the U.S. government, for example, used different tools against Italian and Soviet communists).

In other words, he's saying all Islamists are the same, and they all need to be defeated, just like the commies. By the way, what are those "different tools" that he speaks of? Sounds like P2/Gladio tactics if you ask me.