While most trends follow the predictable life cycle of being born, growing, maturing, reaching old age and dying, some — war, religious fanaticism and nationalistic rivalries — never die.
And as evidenced by Donald Trump’s words and deeds as a candidate and president, “Crusades 2000” — a trend I first forecast in our Fall 1993 Trends Journal and in Trends 2000 (Warner Books, 1997) — will not only continue to be waged under the Trump administration, but will dramatically intensify.
On the campaign trail in December 2015, he read a statement at a South Carolina rally that “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
Responding to the crowd’s applause, Trump said, “We have no choice. We have no choice. We have no choice.” He repeated the refrain as he frequently does to either drive home a point or as a matter of style.
Trump’s ban would apply to “everybody,” including both immigrants and tourists. He said that, as president, he would support heavy surveillance of mosques and establish a database to track all Muslims in the country.
“Where this hatred comes from and why, we will have to determine,” Trump told his cheering supporters. “Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victim of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.”
“Where this hatred comes from and why” is a question rarely posed and never answered by America’s presstitute media or “our country’s representatives,” who are too cowardly to admit “what the hell is going on.”
THE ROOTS OF “HATRED”
Go back to 2001, just days after 9/11, with the nation in shock and the government providing not one shred of evidence to prove who was responsible for the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. President George W. Bush declared, “This is a new kind of, a new kind of evil… and the American people are beginning to understand. This Crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.”
Indeed, “This Crusade, this war on terrorism,” is taking more than “a while.” The longest war in American history launched against Afghanistan — despite 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers being Saudi citizens and the Taliban government having nothing to do with 9/11 — continues to rage. With no victory in sight, Obama administration officials warned Americans that the War on Terror would continue for another 30 years.
“Where does the hatred come from and why?”
Could it come from the First Gulf War, “Operation Desert Shield,” launched by George H.W. Bush against Iraq?
Picking up where Bush Sr. left off, could the hatred come from President Bill Clinton’s ongoing bombing of Iraq during his eight years in office — plus his sanctions on Iraq that the UN estimates killed 500,000 Iraqi children under age five?
Long forgotten by most Americans and never known by the vast majority were US Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright’s response on CBS’ 60 Minutes. Interviewer Lesley Stahl asked: “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
“We think the price is worth it,” Albright responded.
Not “We,” you! You and all the murderous political and military psychopaths and sociopaths who “think the price was worth it.”
Later, as secretary of state, Albright began spreading the weapons-of-mass-destruction propaganda that later would be a pretext for the massive destruction of Iraq.
Speaking at a town hall meeting in 1998, Madam Secretary declared, “No one has done what Saddam Hussein has done, or is thinking of doing. He is producing weapons of mass destruction, and he is qualitatively and quantitatively different from other dictators. I’m really surprised that people feel they need to defend the rights of Saddam Hussein.”
Unable “to understand the problem,” Mr. Trump?
Surely it wasn’t America’s Dunce-in-Chief George W. Bush, who lied us into the Afghan and Iraq wars, and launched the ongoing War on Terror that has killed millions and destroyed two nations.
Indeed, it is reported that President Trump does not read. But Trends Journal subscribers should go back to the summer 2014 edition and read “Bogeymen, terrorists and evil doers,” where I revisited and reviewed Bush’s address to a joint session of Congress and the nation nine days after 9/11.
Of his address I wrote, “Only a madman would speak such words. Only frightened people would believe them. And believe they did. Scared to death, Americans were dumbstruck with terror.”
Breaking down his speech, sentence by sentence, I concluded, “That was it! A mere 263 words, four rousing rounds of applause and not a shred of proof provided.”
“I’M REALLY GOOD AT KILLING PEOPLE”
And of course, the Muslim hatred couldn’t have been fueled by the anti-war fraud, candidate Barack “I’m really good at killing people” Obama. As president, America bombed seven countries. His Libyan War, Syrian War and support of the Saudi-led Yemen War have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and destroyed nations.
Further championing the escalating Crusades 2000, Obama, the Nobel Piece of Crap prizewinner, declared on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary in 2014 that the United States and its allies would “degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL… which calls itself the Islamic State.”
Bingo! ISIL. A dirty four-letter word with easy initials to remember and a religious “Islamic State” to hate.
Back then, no one knew what an ISIL or ISIS was until two independent journalists took it upon themselves a few months earlier to risk their lives by venturing into Middle Eastern war zones. They were beheaded.
Using similar lines that George W. Bush did to promote the Afghan War following 9/11, Obama used the anniversary to deliver cheap lines with a straight face to incite hatred and rally the public: ISIS gets its thrills killing kids and raping women. “They execute captured prisoners,” he said. “They kill children. They enslave, rape and force women into marriage…”
“Where does the hatred come from and why?”
It would not be proper to consider that the long series of Israel’s war against the Palestinians, the massive destruction, the tens of thousands of innocent men women and children slaughtered and Israel’s ongoing stealing of Palestinian land would be a cause for Muslim revenge.
No. Anyone who dares to accuse Israel of murder, robbery, being in violation of international law and condemning the Obama administration for providing Israel with $38 billion in a 10-year arms deal would be attacked by the presstitute media and politicians as being anti-Semitic.
Still can’t figure out “where this hatred comes from and why,” Mr. Trump?
It’s because of the mass murder committed by the United States and its Coalition of the Killing that includes NATO, Israel and its radical Arab League partners in crime. They invaded sovereign nations based on lies, slaughtered millions of innocent civilians and destroyed entire countries.
This created the conditions for “radical Islam.”
MASS MURDER HAS CONSEQUENCES
A recent United Nations report forecasts that 75 percent of countries in the Arab region could see conflict in the next three years. Thus, with 30 percent of Arab young people unemployed, and with 60 percent of the population under 30 — their loved ones killed by foreign invaders and occupiers, their nations bombed into ruin, and facing a futureless future — only a moron, the American media, Congress and presidents of the United States would not be “able to determine and understand this problem” and why these “people believe only in Jihad.”
Indeed, United States foreign-policy initiatives and its never-ending wars on terror have been recurring themes in the Trends Journal since 1993, when we first forecast a Crusades 2000 trend:
“The seeds of the new Crusades have been sown in areas of Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Throughout the Muslim world, devout masses, politically repressed and impoverished, were rising up against their endemically corrupt and inefficient secular governments with their pro-Western alliances. Imperialism, directly or indirectly, took the blame for the poverty, lack of opportunity, and the social and moral decay.
Disenfranchised, desperate, politically powerless, Muslims in many countries looked to charismatic clerics to change their destiny.”
And as for radical terrorists having “no sense of reason or respect for human life,” as Trump asserted, his solution to eradicate ISIS from the “face of the Earth” is “to bomb the hell out of them.”
We forecast this not only will fail, but will, as more countries are bombed into destruction and more innocent people are killed, increase hatred against the United States and its partners in war crimes, and fuel radicalism.
In the fall 1995 Trends Journal, six years before 9/11, we forecast: “Washington Fueling Terrorism Trend.” We wrote that “Washington’s intervention in other countries’ internal affairs is increasing the likelihood of terrorist strikes against American interests.”
And, just as today, politicians, the defense, police and spy agencies brag that they have the tools and brains to stop terror strikes on the homeland. We disagreed in 1995 and were proven correct. We disagree now and will be proven correct again. Back then, we wrote:
“The bombing of New York City’s World Trade Center and Oklahoma City’s Murrah Federal Building showed that even the world’s superpower has virtually no defense against terrorists.
No tough laws, tough talk or heightened security can stop the revenge sought by groups or disgruntled individuals.”
FAST-FORWARD TO 2017
Sticking to his campaign promise, President Trump, upon taking office, issued an executive order banning individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries… five of which President Obama had bombed, dropping 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone. And, despite the federal appeals court ruling against the ban, the Trump Administration is pushing forward with alternate strategies to prohibit citizens from Muslim countries that the United States had bombed and/or destroyed from entering the United States.
And, again, as we had written in 1995, “No tough laws, tough talk or heightened security can stop the revenge…” TJ