[continued from previous message] 
  
 was too busy peddling the war against Iraq as the panacea for the troubles 
 of America and Israel. 
  
 What is Mr. Friedman's agenda in all this? No doubt, he will claim he is a 
 man of peace: no less than George Bush or Ariel Sharon. We know that Mr. 
 Friedman is no naof; neither are we gullible fools. Mr. Friedman can sense 
 that the history he tries so hard to camouflage - the history of Western 
 domination over the Muslim world - may change before his eyes. He has been 
 hoping that the United States can forestall this by wars, by occupying and 
 re-making the Arab world, a second, deeper Balkanization of the Middle East 
 that his neoconservative allies have been pushing under the rubric of 
 democratization. 
  
 Already that project is in tatters. Despite all their inane rhetoric about 
 fighting the terrorists in Baghdad, the policy makers in Washington know 
 that their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are spawning more terrorists than 
 they can handle, and not just in Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorists have 
 struck Western targets in Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, Karachi, Madrid, and now 
 London. The United States could have leveraged these terrorist acts to 
 strike Iran or Syria or both. But these plans are now on hold. Even Mr. 
 Friedman admits that "there is no obvious target to retaliate against." One 
 has to add, the targets are obvious enough, but they look much harder after 
 Iraq. 
  
 In desperation, Mr. Friedman has now issued two new threats. He is warning 
 Muslims living in the West, 'If your coreligionists do not stop their 
 terrorist attacks against us, we will hold you hostages here.' To the 
 Muslims living outside the Western world his message is equally sanguine, 
 "Smash the terrorists or forget about ever setting foot in the United 
 States." 
  
 Perhaps, judging from the endless rush of visa applicants at US consulates 
 in Muslim countries, Mr. Friedman thinks this will bring the Muslim masses 
 to their senses. In every street, every neighborhood, Arabs, Pakistanis and 
 Indonesians will form anti-terrorist vigilante groups, and hunt down the 
 terrorists. If this works out, it could be the cleverest coup since the 
 marketing of Coke and Pepsi to the hungry masses in the Third World. 
  
 Regrettably, the visa proposal will not work. The United States has already 
 mobilized nearly every Muslim government - with their armies, police and 
 secret services - to catch the Muslim terrorists. Not that the Musharrafs 
 and Mubaraks have failed. Indeed, they have caught 'terrorists' by the truck 
 loads, and dispatched many of them ex post haste to Washington. 
  
 In this enterprise, it is the United States that has failed. It has been 
 producing terrorists much faster than the 'good Muslims' can catch them. 
 Perhaps, after Madrid and London the rhetoric about fighting the terrorists 
 in Baghdad is beginning to strain even the ears of the faithful in the red 
 states. Perhaps, the faithful are now ready for a new tune. Perhaps, in time 
 the Muslim world will take Mr. Friedman's advice, suppress terrorism, and 
 deny business visas to Americans unless the United States pulls out its 
 troops from every Muslim country. 
  
 After that Mr. Friedman might wish he had thought a little harder about the 
 law of unintended consequences! 
  
 [M. Shahid Alam, professor of economics at Northeastern University, is a 
 regular contributor to CounterPunch.org. Some of his CounterPunch essays are 
 now available in a book, Is There An Islamic Problem (Kuala Lumpur: The 
 Other Press, 2004). He may be reached at alqalam02760 at yahoo.com.] 
  
  
  
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