As Iran Goes, So Goes Militant Islam
Reader comment on item: Iran in Crisis

Submitted by Chris (United States), Jul 23, 2002 at 12:48

My goodness, Dr. Pipes. This has to be the first article in quite a long time in which you and others see the light at the end of a very dark tunnel of Militant Islam, and that that it is waning. September 11th, to me, is not the beginning of the war, it is the denouement, if you will. The fact that Bin Laden had to sneak people into the US country to spread his warped message (with a little assistance from Saddam) tells me that he does not have the blanket support of a majority of the Muslim world.

I just don't understand why no one in the media with a few exceptions can see that Militant Islam is just another name for a cult. A human being's first instinct is to survive. Once he has been brainwashed to forget that instinct, that's where you get at least four Arab pilots willing to kill others in the name of Allah, or what have you; that's how you get suicide bombings. And Saddam is behind all this. He realized that he could not win in a conventional war with the US, so he had to use guerrilla tactics. Using Bin Laden as a sympathetic symbol, Saddam conducted his campaign of terror against US citizens around the world.

As for Iran, When the Islamic Revolution came about in 1979, Jimmy Carter was not ready to deal with an American failure. But 23 years later, a generation has grown up with a mix of repression and limited freedom, and the Iranian people are choosing freedom. It is not the people, it is the government, that we as Americans are against. I grew up hearing the phrase "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." When Iranians rise up against their government, and they will, maybe, too the rest of the Arab world will see that they cannot miss out on this opportunity.

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