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<span class="post_date" title="2015-12-09">December 9, 2015</span>
<h1 class="headline" itemprop="name"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/09/when-were-they-radicalized-thats-not-the-right-question/"
rel="bookmark">When Were They Radicalized? That’s Not the Right
Question!</a></h1>
<p class="post_meta"> <span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/revhag0987/"
rel="nofollow">Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler</a></span> </p>
<div class="post_content" itemprop="articleBody"><b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/09/when-were-they-radicalized-thats-not-the-right-question/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/09/when-were-they-radicalized-thats-not-the-right-question/</a></small></small></small></b><br>
<p>The big question these days dominating the airwaves is when
were Syed Farook and Tasheen Malik radicalized; or who
radicalized them; and how were they radicalized? This question
is a perplexing one because it assumes that without outside
influence everything would be all right and that there are no
valid grievances, or anger, and no desire for revenge or justice
no matter how misguided those desires might be manifested.</p>
<p>This is a strange line of query because it presupposes that
without external forces radicalization would be impossible. This
line of questioning illustrates a blind patriotism of empire
proportion that believes that anyone upset and acting out is
either demented or have fallen under the influences of a
political/religious ideology that exploits the weak minded or
the mentally deranged. To even ask the question is to make the
assumption that everything is ok around us and in our world and
would be regarded as such if it were not for outside influences.
But this perspective has a tendency to ignore the realities of
what so many people live under and have to endure daily. It is
often from personal experiences, relationships with those
impacted by what most of us don’t see or care about are the
radicalizing factors. The present queries act as if there are no
valid grievances, no real anger, and as if there is innocence on
the part of the powerful, the US and others. But this is not the
way that peoples of the Middle East, North Africa and Asia see
the US or the West.</p>
<p>The US and its partners have been at war for more than 14 years
in Afghanistan. The US began an unprovoked and preemptive war in
Iraq in 2003 and virtually destroyed the country where today
ISIL is filling part of the vacuum created by that war, and the
President of Afghanistan literally is presiding over nothing but
the capital city of that country, Kabul. The US under the cry of
removing President Bashar Hafez al-Assad in Syria by helping to
orchestrate and sustain a civil war has created a displacement
crisis of epic proportion and caused the deaths of more than
250,000 people. Conditions in many countries have worsened under
the wars and the remaking of the Middle East and North Africa in
the West’s image. Our continual military support of Israel
against Palestinians challenges the view that everything is ok
without the influences of “outside agitators” radicalizing
people and calling them to arms. According to <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.611001">Ha’aretz</a><u>,</u>
an Israeli newspaper, in an August 2014 report it states
concerning military aid to Israel,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Since it began in 1962, American military aid to Israel has
amounted to nearly $100 billion. For the past decades The
United States has been regularly transferring aid of about $3
billion annually. In recent years, the aid has been solely for
defense purposes. Additionally, The US has been giving Israel
generous military aid for projects important both to it and
Israel.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even in light of Israel’s continued human rights violation
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November 2015 traveled to
Washington, DC to request an increase to the amount of aid his
country receives from the US.</p>
<p>Then there is also the US drone program designed to make
killing more antiseptic and distant. However in a 2013 speech
before the National Defense University President Obama said, “It
is a hard fact that US strikes have resulted in civilian
casualties.”</p>
<p>He did not go on to cite numbers or further details, yet Micah
Zenko, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations and lead
author of a 2013 study of drones, is quoted in an April 23, 2015
<em><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone-strikes-reveal-uncomfortable-truth-us-is-often-unsure-about-who-will-die.html?_r=0">New
York Times</a></em> article on drone strikes, in reference
to the President’s 2013 comments, “Most individuals killed are
not on a kill list, and the government does not know their
names.”</p>
<p>The program has not been as clean as government leaders would
have liked for us to think. Or lastly among many examples, a
November 2014 article in <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147">the
Guardian</a> cites:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A new analysis of the data available to the public about
drone strikes, conducted by the human-rights group Reprieve,
indicates that even when operators target specific individuals
– the most focused effort of what Barack Obama calls “targeted
killing” – they kill vastly more people than their targets,
often needing to strike multiple times. Attempts to kill 41
men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people…”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The assumption that “radicalization” is not based in some
reality is an empire or White supremacist notion where
everything is ok save for those rabble-rousers, outside
agitators, and purveyors of hatred. Again I am reminded every
time I hear some newsperson or some pundit drone on (excuse the
pun) about when, how and who did the radicalization about J.
Edgar Hoover, former Director of the FBI during the Civil Rights
era and the status-quo politicians of the time looking under
every rock for communist agitators from Moscow who had inflamed
and radicalized the Black folks to march, demonstrate and rebel!
It is an empire and White supremacist notion to believe that all
is fine save for outside influences. The assumption is ‘who
would not be happy with our way of life, our agendas, or ways we
see the world.’</p>
<p>Keep in mind that I am not condoning acts of violence by any
side or carried out in any name of God or nationalistic
identifications. I am simply pointing out that it is real
conditions and experiences that have given credence to the
so-called “radicalization” process. There are agents recruiting
and organizing people to join their cause, but it is recruitment
based on some stark and harsh realities produced by war, greed,
and attempting to fashion entire regions in the United States’
political image.</p>
<p>Therefore it stands to reason that to combat so-called
radicalization the US and its partners need to ethically
evaluate it motives and initiatives and stand to be judged in a
world court where warranted. The US and its allies need to allow
countries and regions to develop without interference,
manipulation or control. The mechanisms of radicalization would
be muted and impotent if the US and its partners addressed human
rights violations carried out around the world by itself, its
partners and its allies. There would be no fertile ground to
recruit from if people felt the processes were fair and just
rather than exploited by a few nations and corporations at the
expense of everyone else. This is a part of what needs to happen
to thwart radicalization. The US and its allies must right the
wrongs they have done and attempt to restore regions and people
to govern their own selves no matter how those structures might
look in the end.</p>
<p>As far as who, when and how Syed Farook and Tasheen Malik and
the countless others were radicalized? The answer to this
question is found in a world that has been ravished by war and
greed; in the conditions of despair that has been created; in
the powerless feeling pushed around by the powerful; and it is
there in refugee camps and at funerals from drone strikes that
we will find the agents of anger that breeds radicalization that
we claim we do not understand.</p>
</div>
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