Neocons deliberately leveraged academic Orientalist authority to sanction their wars

Evidence

The foundational War on Terror myth was anything but novel. In two hours’ time, Edward Said synthesized his magnum opus, Orientalism, into a master class tied to the War on Terror and events that were unfolding at the time. A sage on that stage, Said demystified how Islam was flattened by scholarly discourses old and new, and how ideas shaped in ivory towers oriented Muslims as the enemy—ballads that preceded the bullets fired by snipers in Iraq, or the battalions in Afghanistan that bludgeoned innocent families and then branded them as “collateral damage.” In ways that only he could, Said tailored Orientalism’s definitive ideas to break down how the Bush administration deftly suspended civil liberties in the name of national security and persuaded a frightening majority of the American polity that Muslims, regardless of their legal status, were “impossible Americans”—a fifth pillar cast out of the caste of meaningful citizenship. With even greater diabolical deftness, the Bush regime carried forward a baseless war against a nation entirely disconnected from the 9/11 terror attacks: Iraq. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 267 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Samuel Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard, also wrote about the incompatibility of Islam and the West. In his seminal article, “The Clash of the Civilizations” (1993) published in Foreign Affairs, Huntington argued that the next major global conflict would be Islam versus the West. Like Lewis, Huntington reduced this clash to cultural differences between Islam and Western societies, further perpetuating the idea that Islamic societies are inherently antimodern and anti-Western. Not only were Lewis and Huntington writing for an academic audience; they also reached the ears of state authorities and were highly influential in American foreign policy. In the 1970s, Huntington served as the coordinator of security planning for the National Security Council under President Carter’s administration. … These concepts of Muslim rage and Islamic barbarity contribute to the notion that the terrorist is both Muslim and male, which can be seen in his subjugation of Muslim women. The casting of Muslim men as backward, antimodern, violent, and filled with rage initially fueled American aspirations for a military presence in the Middle East (Kumar 2012). — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 31 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The foundational War on Terror myth was anything but novel. In two hours’ time, Edward Said synthesized his magnum opus, Orientalism, into a master class tied to the War on Terror and events that were unfolding at the time. A sage on that stage, Said demystified how Islam was flattened by scholarly discourses old and new, and how ideas shaped in ivory towers oriented Muslims as the enemy—ballads that preceded the bullets fired by snipers in Iraq, or the battalions in Afghanistan that bludgeoned innocent families and then branded them as “collateral damage.” In ways that only he could, Said tailored Orientalism’s definitive ideas to break down how the Bush administration deftly suspended civil liberties in the name of national security and persuaded a frightening majority of the American polity that Muslims, regardless of their legal status, were “impossible Americans”—a fifth pillar cast out of the caste of meaningful citizenship. With even greater diabolical deftness, the Bush regime carried forward a baseless war against a nation entirely disconnected from the 9/11 terror attacks: Iraq. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 267 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Neocons deliberately campaign to shape public opinion for imperial wars; The War on Terror recycled pre-existing Orientalist academic discourse into state violence — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 267; Academic Orientalist ideas preceded and justified military violence against Muslims. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 267 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The War on Terror recycled pre-existing Orientalist academic discourse into state violence #corroborates (0.90) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 267
• Orientalist scholarship directly shaped US interventionist foreign policy #corroborates (0.88) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 31
• Academic Orientalist ideas preceded and justified military violence against Muslims. #corroborates (0.85) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 267
• Elite Islamophobia borrows intellectual authority to justify civilizational defense #corroborates (0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 369
• Centuries of Orientalist scholarship have functioned as domination and violence #corroborates (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 483
• Orientalist scholarship mounted political and ideological edges rather than neutral knowledge #expands (0.72) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 82