CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, August 14, 2006

Jihad: Why we are to blame for being attacked

While the Hate-America-Blame-America-Crowd is not likely to see the wisdom of joining the rest of us out here in Fly-over-Land in opposing those whom President Bush has, at last, vocalized as the “Islamic fascists,” yours truly may have found a rationale for why we are under attack that even the Cut-and-Run-Left might appreciate.

This rationale rests on the twin notions that the Islamic fascists are the victims of the dependence of the industrialized nations on Middle Eastern oil and that the Koran and the Hadith compel the Islamic fascists to attack Western Civilization, in general, and Israel, in particular. If someone is a victim, then someone must be at fault. Guess who?

Therefore, it is our fault that we cannot conquer our lust for foreign oil. It is our fault that we do not develop energy alternatives to fossil fuels. It is our fault that the Romans, about 135 A.D., ousted the Israelites from the Land of Canaan which they had farmed for over a 1000 years and scattered the Jews to the four winds. It is our fault that, following the Holocaust, the United Nations mandated that the Jews could return to a small portion of their ancient homeland and, once again, call it: Israel.

Actually, if you are willing to overlook the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 by the Muslim Sirhan Sirhan and ignore the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, it might be claimed that the Islamic fascists did not become really violent until after the Arab-led oil embargo that followed the assault by the Arabs upon Israel in the Yom Kippur War.

Prior to the Arab oil embargo, Middle East oil sold for from $2.00 to $4.50 per barrel. But, post-1973, the Middle East oil producers discovered the oil-hungry Westerners would pay over $40.00 per barrel rather than spend their days and nights searching for stations with gasoline. Now, it is over $70.00 per barrel.

So, how have we caused the War on Terror? Prior to 1973, Saudi Arabia was a relatively poor country. For centuries, the royal family and its many princes derived their income from taxes imposed on poor Islamic pilgrims coming to Saudi Arabia to visit the holy sites at Mecca and Medina. But, in 1948, the Saudi royals began to receive royalties from the highly efficient Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO).

By 1970, the royals were raking in about $1.2 billion a year. That was enough filthy lucre to spawn the beginnings of a royal Saudi jet-set whose rumored excesses began to alarm the clerics within the Bedouin tribes wandering the deserts while piously practicing their Sunni/Wahhabi Muslim religion.

Then, with the oil embargo (October 16, 1973-March 19, 1974), all Hell broke loose. By the end of 1974, Saudi oil revenues rose to $22.5 billion. Westerners were imported by plane, boat, car and train to provide the management and technical skills needed to build the infrastructure projects the royals saw as a means of rescuing a Kingdom drowning in money.

Despite strenuous efforts by the religious police (the Matawain), to prevent the spread of the concepts embodied in our Declaration of Independence and the spread of our quaint idea that women are more than beasts of burden whose highest calling is to produce more Arab males, the western-civilization Genie was bubbling out of her bottle.

Perceived as a threat, not just to the teachings of Islam, but to the dominant role of the Sunni/Wahhabi male over his wives and children, western thinking had to be exterminated. The whole of Islam, Sunni and Shiite alike from Cairo to Kabul, had to be rallied in a jihad before the rotten excesses depicted by Hollywood and practiced by the royals could infect the Muslim masses.

Quick to answer the call was the Saudi-born son of a wealthy Yemeni construction contractor by the name of Osama bin Laden. So, you see, all of this terror stuff is our fault.

William Hamilton, a syndicated columnist, a featured commentator for USA Today and self-described “recovering lawyer and philosopher,” is the co-author of The Grand Conspiracy and The Panama Conspiracy – two thrillers about terrorism directed against the United States.

©2006. William Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com