I have often observed that there is an unspoken fight taking place between socalled liberal hawks and the peaceniks. The Liberal Hawks have a preference for mostly Jewish and Christian fundamentalist (neoconservatives) fighting for the right of the settlers to live on the West Bank. This requires ethnically cleansing or reservationizing the Palestinians. It also requires that the two state solution be abandoned. The other side consists of peaceniks who unfortunately often side with muslim fundamenatalist. The muslim fundies may care about the Palestinians but they also want an Islamic caliphate, which is a theocracy no liberal should desire!
Most of the establishment Democratic Boards like Dailykos and Du are dominated by Liberal Hawks, and if you don’t automatically side with them and you think the settlers are terrible too, they try to purge you. Tom Friedman wants to create an enemies list specifically for people like us. I recall a poster that wanted to purge anyone who posted from the right wing libertarian antiwar.com. I just think both fundamentalisms are a threat. I really do feel that the Israeli settlers are racist right wingers, but I also veiw Osama as a threat because he wants to create an Islamic Caliphate. I opposed the war with Iraq, because it had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. It was primarily pushed by the neocons in order to secure Iraq’s oil, and also because pro-Israel types viewed Iraq as a threat, and they felt they could force the Palestinians to submit to the settlements by conquering Iraq.
I also completely supported the war in Afghanistan, because it was run by Al Qaeda and the Talbans. The Talibans were truely terrible and as a feminist. I was appalled by them long before 9/11. They would shoot women who walked the street without male company. They would also kill women who worked, or women who went to male doctors. Women were not allowed to be doctors so women basically had no medical care if they got sick. They also killed little girls that went to school because education had been made illegal for women. I do view this form of extremist Islam as taking adavantage of real muslim anger at the settlements, and I am scared of them.
The other absurdity of the Iraq war, is that now we have an Islamic fundamentalist Iraq. Women will be less free under this “Islamic Democracy” than they were under Saddam.
I just wish progressives would tell both fundamentalisms to fuck off. Why should we have to take sides?
