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Updated Thursday, July 29, 2010 12:01 am TWN, By Philip Smucker, MCT

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US intel bubble needs a pin prick

These legitimate questions demand answers but folks in the Islamic realm do not have them. In fact, they don't even have many clues. As long as they remain open, al-Qaida and its allies will fill the air with conspiracy theories. Their goal is to convince as many new recruits as possible that the United States would like nothing better than to permanently “occupy” the Islamic world.

Through rose-tinted lenses in Washington, America still stands for freedom and an end to all oppression.

Not so in the Islamic world, as I discovered.

The two “occupations” that concern Muslims the most are America's in South Asia and Israel's in the West Bank.

To his credit, President Obama is trying to pick up where his predecessor bought into “bad intelligence.” He has expressed abhorrence for pre-emptive war. He also wants to finish the job in Afghanistan and Pakistan — clean out the rat's nest as it were — and pressure Israel, as much as is politically feasible for his own career, to end its occupation of the West Bank.

There can be little wonder as to why Afghans remain skeptical of U.S. intentions. After all, the war on their soil is now the longest in America's history.

Yet it is the other key “occupation” that forever mires America's efforts to be seen for what most of its own citizens would rather she be: a peacemaker.

As long as the Middle East conflict simmers and boils, young Muslims will remain susceptible to the views of radical leaders like Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who told me in an interview that “without resisting the occupiers, the occupation, the occupier himself will never be convinced that he has to leave.”

Herein lies the essential disconnect. Washington has convinced itself that it is facing an “offensive” and amorphous jihad from across the Islamic world, but this same “jihad” is usually viewed as a “defensive” one by the young Muslims subjected to such manipulation.

Al-Qaida's propaganda geniuses — as opposed to “intelligence experts” — have crafted their own recruitment campaigns to play upon paranoia and fear. Their simple and direct message: “America and Israel want you under their boot.”

But then it is hard to argue with global perceptions when you are so busy lavishing billions on brain power inside the Beltway.

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