Glassman: Seeing Through The Glass Very Darkly

Our leaders are blind. The blind are leading the sleepwalking. And, all the rest of us stand staring in amazement at the spectacle.



From Hugh Fitzgerald:


“This is an effort that requires credible Muslim voices to work effectively — especially voices of those, like Fadl, born Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, and known as Dr. Fadil, whose story was told recently by Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker. Fadl helped build the Al Qaeda ideology and now repudiates it for its wanton violence.” -- James K. Glassman, under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs


Had James K. Glassman read the report on Fadil with attention and understanding, despite Lawrence Wright's attempts to offer his own pollyannish gloss about What A Falling-Out There Was In The Ranks of Al Qaeda, he would have seen just from the quotes from Fadil offered, that Fadil was not abandoning Jihad. (Does anyone actually read anything with attention, or did he just accept an Executive Summary of the piece, or ignore the quotes and accept Wright's misunderstanding of the very evidence he, Wright, presented?) Fadil is all for Jihad. He is simply for Jihad conducted by means other than the terrorism favored by Al Qaeda, because that doesn't work. It simply arouses the Infidels too early.

Read the whole thing.