Reply #33: Pipes is a neocon yes and he has an agenda...

[tocqueville]

but the quotes from the interview are not very controversial. It's an accepted standpoint in most European circles that RADICAL ISLAM is a threat. Of course there is a risk for "guilty by association" here too, but the Europeans are actively backing the secularist, "enlighted" movements within Islam.

Your quote is obviously out of context

We need to weaken and contain militant Islam, to work with our allies to eradicate terrorist movements. But it stops there. Islamic fundamentalist movements that operate within the system are not our business.

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.

with Islamists he means what we in Europe call Fundamentalists. And he only means that there is no real difference between an Iranian shiite Khomeini type and a Saudi Sunni Whahabite. Both have the same totalitarian view.

I agree that there is a risk of confusion, and you are doing it "backwards". For example the US has considered environmentalists, social-democrats as "hardcore commies" when they weren't. Thus the horrors in Latin America.

the US has historically a tendency to see things in black and white. FDR didn't see the difference between De Gaulle and Pétain. So he chose the later because he was the "legal" representative. Until CHurchill twisted his arm.

What I meant in previous posts is that Europeans in general don't see "muslims" as a threat, but FUNDIE muslims as a serious one like the fascists were. They hit us first, far before 9/11. And Jyllands Posten isn't a neocon voice, the cartoons are not part of a neocon agenda. And most European muslims don't give a fuck about that story at least regarding the religious side.

but if there is an agenda with the cartoons, it's obviously a Syrian-Iranian one.

You cannot imagine the debate here in Europe about freedom of expression and religion. But the racistic agenda is generally dismissed.