The War on Terror Jumps the Shark as Everyone in the Mideast accuses everyone else of Terrorism
http://www.juancole.com/2014/03/everyone-accuses-terrorism.htmlThe War on Terror Jumps the Shark as Everyone in the Mideast accuses everyone else of Terrorism
By Juan Cole | Mar. 11, 2014
In early December of last year, Lebanese Shiite leader Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbullah accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, i.e. charged Riyadh with terrorism.
Then in the middle of December, a small terrorist group that calls itself “Helpers of Holy Jerusalem” blew up the headquarters of the State Security police in the provincial Egyptian city of Mansoura. The response of the interim appointed government of Hazem al-Biblawi was to declare the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization. This decree was issued despite the lack of any evidence that the MB was behind the explosion (its key leaders are behind bars so how are they coordinating such things?), and despite the obvious fact that the Brotherhood is a large longstanding group whose political party (the Freedom and Justice Party) won the parliamentary elections in late fall of 2011 and the presidency in June of 2012. I.e., the Brotherhood is not in fact a terrorist organization.
In an interview published last week in al-Shuruq, Gen. Abdel Fattah El Sisi maintained that Khairat Shater, a Muslim Brotherhood insider who is now in jail, had threatened him with unleashing terrorism on Egypt (from Libya, Yemen, Iraq, etc.) if the military overthrew the elected Muslim Brotherhood government. Perhaps it is to this exchange that the government was referring in its decree. But Shater is not the leader of the movement and does not set policy; the Brotherhood had given up violence decades ago; and besides we only have El Sisi’s word for what was said.
Late last week, Saudi Arabia followed suit, naming the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. At the same time, Saudi Arabia (joined by Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates) more or less accused Qatar of supporting terrorism by virtue of its backing for the Muslim Brotherhood. Doha stood accused, in other words, of being a state sponsor of terror.
= new reply since forum marked as read
(This is such a good article. If only someone was listening who had the ability to do something to change this policy) 
This outbreak of accusations of terrorism represents the final victory of Bush-Cheney rhetoric in the Middle East. “Terrorism” in this sense is not being used as a meaningful technical term, it just means “you are taboo, your ideology is unacceptable, you are beyond the pale.” The Israelis pioneered this way of speaking about political enemies, attempting to smear all Palestinian (and later Lebanese) resistance to Occupation as mere terrorists. Bush-Cheney applied it widely. Sarah Palin threw this kind of rhetoric around about Barack Obama himself. It is a profoundly undemocratic discourse, since democracy is about the reworking of disputes into political compromise or at least into civil voting on issues. Castigating a competing political current as “terrorist” is a refusal to engage in civil politics.
