A curriculum for US military officers at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, was reportedly meant to “inculcate the spirit to prepare for total war against Muslims, including taking war to a civilian population wherever necessary.” The syllabus was being taught five times a year with one week duration of each since 2004. So far, approximately 800 officers have been qualified. The comments on “the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki” came from instructor Lt Col Matthew Dooley’s presentation entitled A Counter-Jihad Op Design Model. The lecture made specific mention of targeting the Muslim holy cities of Makkah and Medina in Saudi Arabia. In view of the protests from the Muslims throughout the world, the Pentagon suspended the course in late April 2012. The teaching in military course was contrary to the vows and repeated assertions by the US officials over the past decade that “America is at war against Islamic extremists, not the religion itself.”Although conflicts and contradictions between Islam and Christianity date back to more than 1,000 years, their followers have coexisted in Europe and elsewhere. Of course, there was resistance when imperialists occupied Muslim countries as in case of Iraq and Afghanistan. However, Samuel P. Huntington’s, of Harvard's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, thesis of a post-cold war new world order had floated the idea about the inevitability of “Clash of Civilisations” that was published in the 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs. It was quite natural that when voices to fight Islamic fundamentalism were raised, radical Islamic groups retaliated and started stigmatising the West. There is a perception that after defeating communism, the USA and the Western countries were looking for another enemy to keep them united; hence, they created the myth of the clash of civilisations. And the target was now Islam. Anyhow, the crimes committed by the US soldiers in Afghanistan - the homicidal rampages, the desecrations of corpses and the burning of Holy Quran - are not the acts of crazy and misguided people, as the Obama Administration and the media make us believe. In fact, whenever American leaders need the support of the Muslim world, they start eulogising Islam, and once the objective is achieved they start demonising it. On April 6, 2009, President Barack Obama, while addressing the Turkish Parliament on the final leg of his tour of Europe, declared: “The US is not - and never will be - at war with Islam.” It was an effort to undo the damage caused by his predecessor, who after the 9/11 attack had referred to the crusades - the war between Islam and Christianity. President George Bush had also been using terms like “a radical Islamic empire” and “Islamic radicalism”. Indeed, Muslims are the target at present. However, the USA’s aggressive foreign policy, and coercive engagement all over the world, belie its commitment to global peace, multilateralism and impartiality. The superpower’s strong economic base and invincibility of military strength have made its politicians arrogant, who believe in controlling the world’s resources and advance its interests through fair or foul means. Today, the American leadership continues its wars against other countries to win over the voters. Arundhati Roy has rightly stated: “In the US, wars are fought as election campaigns and people around the world are bombed, while in India, Muslims are killed as part of the election campaigns.” In both these great democracies, emotions are stirred against the ideological opponents, and the power of media is used to project them in a bad light. The US having started the war on terror has not only managed to demonise Islam, but also given carte blanche to the world to target its followers by projecting them as extremists. But coercive diplomacy will not help the US to achieve its objectives. Washington must identify the enemy within and review its policies towards the Islamic world.

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