One of the Guardian's stable of Israel apologists, Nick Cohen, returns to one of his favorite themes, the left's (Cohen is nothing if not broad brush) alleged embrace of 'Islamism' (he's equally broad brush when it comes to political Islam):
"The worst elements on the left once exploited Islamism in an identical manner. When jihadis attacked New York, London or Paris they, too, joined what I called the 'kill us, we deserve it' school of foreign policy analysis. In their case, it was not our tolerance of immigration that brought punishment. Rather, they explained away the crimes of an irrational religious totalitarianism as logical responses to western foreign policy, poverty or discrimination, which... they already opposed." (The lies of the right that debase civilised society, theguardian.com, 26/3/17)
Ah yes, 9/11. Cohen's telling us here that the terror attack on New York, presumably planned by Osama bin Laden, had everything to do with "irrational religious totalitarianism," and nothing whatever to do with "Western foreign policy."
Not according to bin Laden, however:
"People of America,
"I speak to you today about the best way to avoid another Manhattan, about the war, its causes, and its consequences. First of all, I tell you that security is one of the pillars of human life. Free men do not underestimate the value of their security, despite Bush's claim that we hate freedom. Perhaps he can tell us why we did not attack Sweden, for example?
"It is well known that those who despise freedom do not possess proud souls, unlike the nineteen [the 9/11 hijackers], may God bless them. We have been fighting you because we are free men who cannot acquiesce in injustice. We want to restore security to our umma. Just as you violate our security, so we violate yours. Whoever encroaches upon the security of others and imagines that he will himself remain safe is but a foolish criminal. When disasters happen, intelligent people look for the reasons behind them, so that they can avoid them in the future.
"But I am amazed at you. Although we are now into the fourth year since the events of September 11, Bush is still practicing his deception, misleading you about the real reason behind it. As a result, there are still motives for a repeat [attack]. I will explain to you the real reasons behind these events, and I will tell you the truth about the moments when this decision was taken, so that you can reflect on it. God knows that the plan of striking the towers had not occurred to us, but the idea came to me when things went just too far with the American-Israeli alliance's oppression and atrocities against our people in Palestine and Lebanon.
"The events that made a direct impression on me were during and after 1982, when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the help of its third fleet. They started bombing, killing, and wounding many, while others fled in terror. I still remember those distressing scenes: blood, torn limbs, women and children massacred. All over the place, houses were being destroyed and tower blocks were collapsing, crushing their residents, while bombs rained down mercilessly on our homes. It was like a crocodile devouring a child, who could do nothing but scream. Does a crocodile understand anything other than weapons? The whole world heard and saw what happened, but did nothing. In those critical moments, many ideas raged inside me, ideas difficult to describe, but they unleashed a powerful urge to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the oppressors.
"As I looked at those destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the oppressor in kind by destroying towers in America, so that it would have a taste of its own medicine and would be prevented from killing our women and children. On that day I became sure that the oppression and intentional murder of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. It seemed then that 'freedom' and 'democracy' are actually just terror, just as resistance is labelled 'terrorism' and 'reaction.' Imposing lethal sanctions on millions of people, as Bush Sr did, and carrying out the mass butchering of children, is the worst thing that humanity has ever known. So is dropping millions of pounds of bombs and explosives on millions of children in Iraq, as Bush Jr did, to remove a former collaborator, and install a new one who will help steal Iraq's oil, as well as commit other atrocities." (The Towers of Lebanon (29/10/04), from Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, Edited by Bruce Lawrence, 2004, pp 239-40)
Hey, but what would bin Laden know?
Showing posts with label Bin Laden/9/11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bin Laden/9/11. Show all posts
Monday, March 27, 2017
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Forgive Him Lord, He Knows Not What He Says
The illiteracy of public intellectuals and pontificators on the subject of Palestine in particular, and the Middle East in general, never ceases to amaze.
A case in point was Monday night's all Christian Q&A panel. The panel dealt with a question, among others, about Australia's Middle Eastern involvements - Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, with a questioner asking, "are we not reaping the seeds we have sown?" Well, talk about sorting the sheep from the goats!
Now you would think that a bloke who doubles as a professor of moral philosophy and director of a centre for ethics, philosophy and public affairs might have something sensible to say on the subject, right? Wrong.
The bloke in question is John Haldane, here on a visit to Australia's Catholic University of Notre Dame from Scotland's University of St Andrews. The main part of Haldane's answer to the above question ran as follows:
"I do think that there is one thing that probably needs to be understood... the deep sense of humiliation that's felt in the Arab Muslim world, going all the way back to the end of the caliphate at the end of the First World War. And it was interesting in the period when, after 9/11, I happened to be in Washington when those attacks took place and Osama bin Laden issued a statement about the shame and humiliation that our people have suffered all these years and he saw this as a kind of just retaliation. Well, that humiliation was the dismantling of this great Islamic empire, the caliphate. I think that there is a burden of shame that is felt, that plays a very major role in reactivating the sentiments of militant Islam in various parts of the world and we don't necessarily help that at times, behaving in ways that look as if or can be interpreted as sort of carrying on the business of the continuing humiliation."
Haldane was possibly referring to bin Laden's October 7, 2001 statement, The Winds of Faith:
"What America is tasting today is but a fraction of what we have tasted for decades. For over 80 years our umma has endured this humiliation and contempt. Its sons have been killed, its blood has been shed, its holy sanctuaries have been violated, all in a manner contrary to that revealed by God, without anyone listening or responding. So when God Almighty granted success to one of the vanguard groups of Islam, He opened the way for them to destroy America utterly. I pray to God almighty to lift them up to the highest Paradise. When these men retaliated on behalf of their poor, oppressed sons, their brothers and sisters in Palestine and in many of the other lands of Islam, the whole world cried out, and the hypocrites followed them." (Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, Ed. by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, p 104)
In all of bin Laden's statements which follow in Lawrence's compilation, there is only one solitary reference to the concept of the caliphate:
"So I say that, in general, our concern is that our umma unites either under the Words of the Book of God or His Prophet, and that this nation should establish the righteous caliphate of our umma, which has been prophesied by our Prophet in his authentic hadith: that the righteous caliph will return with the permission of God" (p 121)
By contrast, bin Laden's statements fairly throng with references to the injustice of Palestine.
Despite this, our eminent visitor, a Scot no less, as was Lord Balfour who issued the eponymous Declaration which created the Palestine problem, makes no reference whatever to the subject, let alone Britain's role in its creation. (Keep in mind, that but for Britain's creation of that problem almost 100 years ago we would not likely be involved militarily in the Middle East today.)
Had Haldane addressed the issue elsewhere, I wondered? Despite an exhaustive Internet search (John Haldane/ Palestine/ Israel) I could find nothing on the matter save a YouTube video of our august authority speaking to a packed & rapt house at Sydney's Notre Dame University on March 23. There he was saying pretty much the same as he said on Q&A... only worse:
"There is a sense of humiliation among many Muslims, principally among Arab Muslims, because they see themselves as the inheritors of a great tradition represented by the Ottoman Empire but going back beyond that, and then they see themselves as suffering a tremendous humiliation. This is actually analogous in a way to feelings you get in Russia because the Russians were humiliated by the West and there's a great deal of resentment..."
IOW, today's Arabs are just miffed because they're no longer top dogs a la the Ottoman sultans!
But that claptrap was as nothing compared to what followed:
"I think a very significant aspect of all of this, of course, is the whole position with regard to Israel and the perception in the Arab world that Israel has been sustained particularly by the US, and some have capitalised on that and seen it as part of this ongoing, as they see it, humiliation of the Arabic [sic] and of the Muslim world more generally. Now I think all of that is wrong, but it is part of what has to be engaged with."
IOW, Israel is not really sustained by the US (or Britain before that), it's just a deep-rooted, irrational "perception" hard-wired in the Arab mind. And, of course, the Arabs are just plain "wrong" here, but, alas, we, the West, have little choice but to deal with their mental-as-anything paranoia, right? If only we could convince them that the US has nothing to do with Israel, and that anyway Israel is the best thing that could ever have happened to them, and that...
Oh, and to return to Q&A, here's our moral philosopher pronouncing on the woes of those poor blighters, Bush and Blair:
"I would not want to be in the shoes of someone in the White House or in Downing Street who has to make these big decisions. They're not easy and I'm reluctant to criticise them."
Jeeesus!
A case in point was Monday night's all Christian Q&A panel. The panel dealt with a question, among others, about Australia's Middle Eastern involvements - Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, with a questioner asking, "are we not reaping the seeds we have sown?" Well, talk about sorting the sheep from the goats!
Now you would think that a bloke who doubles as a professor of moral philosophy and director of a centre for ethics, philosophy and public affairs might have something sensible to say on the subject, right? Wrong.
The bloke in question is John Haldane, here on a visit to Australia's Catholic University of Notre Dame from Scotland's University of St Andrews. The main part of Haldane's answer to the above question ran as follows:
"I do think that there is one thing that probably needs to be understood... the deep sense of humiliation that's felt in the Arab Muslim world, going all the way back to the end of the caliphate at the end of the First World War. And it was interesting in the period when, after 9/11, I happened to be in Washington when those attacks took place and Osama bin Laden issued a statement about the shame and humiliation that our people have suffered all these years and he saw this as a kind of just retaliation. Well, that humiliation was the dismantling of this great Islamic empire, the caliphate. I think that there is a burden of shame that is felt, that plays a very major role in reactivating the sentiments of militant Islam in various parts of the world and we don't necessarily help that at times, behaving in ways that look as if or can be interpreted as sort of carrying on the business of the continuing humiliation."
Haldane was possibly referring to bin Laden's October 7, 2001 statement, The Winds of Faith:
"What America is tasting today is but a fraction of what we have tasted for decades. For over 80 years our umma has endured this humiliation and contempt. Its sons have been killed, its blood has been shed, its holy sanctuaries have been violated, all in a manner contrary to that revealed by God, without anyone listening or responding. So when God Almighty granted success to one of the vanguard groups of Islam, He opened the way for them to destroy America utterly. I pray to God almighty to lift them up to the highest Paradise. When these men retaliated on behalf of their poor, oppressed sons, their brothers and sisters in Palestine and in many of the other lands of Islam, the whole world cried out, and the hypocrites followed them." (Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, Ed. by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, p 104)
In all of bin Laden's statements which follow in Lawrence's compilation, there is only one solitary reference to the concept of the caliphate:
"So I say that, in general, our concern is that our umma unites either under the Words of the Book of God or His Prophet, and that this nation should establish the righteous caliphate of our umma, which has been prophesied by our Prophet in his authentic hadith: that the righteous caliph will return with the permission of God" (p 121)
By contrast, bin Laden's statements fairly throng with references to the injustice of Palestine.
Despite this, our eminent visitor, a Scot no less, as was Lord Balfour who issued the eponymous Declaration which created the Palestine problem, makes no reference whatever to the subject, let alone Britain's role in its creation. (Keep in mind, that but for Britain's creation of that problem almost 100 years ago we would not likely be involved militarily in the Middle East today.)
Had Haldane addressed the issue elsewhere, I wondered? Despite an exhaustive Internet search (John Haldane/ Palestine/ Israel) I could find nothing on the matter save a YouTube video of our august authority speaking to a packed & rapt house at Sydney's Notre Dame University on March 23. There he was saying pretty much the same as he said on Q&A... only worse:
"There is a sense of humiliation among many Muslims, principally among Arab Muslims, because they see themselves as the inheritors of a great tradition represented by the Ottoman Empire but going back beyond that, and then they see themselves as suffering a tremendous humiliation. This is actually analogous in a way to feelings you get in Russia because the Russians were humiliated by the West and there's a great deal of resentment..."
IOW, today's Arabs are just miffed because they're no longer top dogs a la the Ottoman sultans!
But that claptrap was as nothing compared to what followed:
"I think a very significant aspect of all of this, of course, is the whole position with regard to Israel and the perception in the Arab world that Israel has been sustained particularly by the US, and some have capitalised on that and seen it as part of this ongoing, as they see it, humiliation of the Arabic [sic] and of the Muslim world more generally. Now I think all of that is wrong, but it is part of what has to be engaged with."
IOW, Israel is not really sustained by the US (or Britain before that), it's just a deep-rooted, irrational "perception" hard-wired in the Arab mind. And, of course, the Arabs are just plain "wrong" here, but, alas, we, the West, have little choice but to deal with their mental-as-anything paranoia, right? If only we could convince them that the US has nothing to do with Israel, and that anyway Israel is the best thing that could ever have happened to them, and that...
Oh, and to return to Q&A, here's our moral philosopher pronouncing on the woes of those poor blighters, Bush and Blair:
"I would not want to be in the shoes of someone in the White House or in Downing Street who has to make these big decisions. They're not easy and I'm reluctant to criticise them."
Jeeesus!
Sunday, April 14, 2013
'Honest' John
John Howard in his April 9, 2013 speech to the Lowy Institute:
"I never believed that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks nor did president Bush..."
George Bush in his May 1, 2003 announcement that major combat operations in Iraq have ended:
"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 - and still goes on. That terrible morning, nineteen evil men - the shock troops of a hateful ideology - gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the 'beginning of the end of America'. By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed... The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain. No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more." (The Iraq Papers, edited by Ehrenberg, McSherry, Sanchez & Sayej, 2010, p 176)
"I never believed that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks nor did president Bush..."
George Bush in his May 1, 2003 announcement that major combat operations in Iraq have ended:
"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 - and still goes on. That terrible morning, nineteen evil men - the shock troops of a hateful ideology - gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the 'beginning of the end of America'. By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed... The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain. No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more." (The Iraq Papers, edited by Ehrenberg, McSherry, Sanchez & Sayej, 2010, p 176)
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Stand By Your Man
OK, so John Howard read federal parliament's report - Intelligence on Iraq's WMD - which showed that a sanctions-weakened Iraq was about as much of a threat to world peace as Monaco, and simply ignored its findings. So why then did he take us to war against Iraq in 2003?
Apart from all the bull in Howard's Lowy Institute speech about everybody, but everybody, at the time having a near gospel belief that Saddam was such a mean and ornery fella he just had to have a stash of WMDs under his bed (and the more so for saying he didn't) and you're left with the odd statement or two that tells us why we really went in. Here they are in chronological order:
"[C]entral to a proper understanding of why the US acted as she did over Iraq, and the implications that had for a close ally such as Australia, is to recognise [her] vulnerability [to more terrorist attacks]."
"Australia's decision to join the coalition in Iraq was a product both of our belief at the time that Iraq had WMD, and the nature of our relationship and alliance with the US."
"Although the legal justification for the action taken against Iraq was based on her cumulative non-compliance with UNSC resolutions, and a properly grounded belief that Saddam possessed WMDs, a powerful element in our decision to join the Americans was, of course, the depth and character of our relationship with the US. Australia had invoked ANZUS in the days following 9/11. We had readily joined the coalition in Afghanistan; Australia had suffered the brutality of Islamic terrorism in Bali. There was a sense then that a common way of life was under threat. At that time, and in those circumstances, and given our shared history and values, I judged that, ultimately, it was in our national interest to stand beside the Americans."
Got the picture? When you're in love, you stand by your man, OK? It's really that simple(-minded). End of story.
Now, having definitively solved that little mystery, there are other revealing threads in his speech worth following up.
For example, in addition to all the ducking and weaving on WMDs, Howard gleefully invokes the spectre of Osama bin Laden and the Islamo-fascist hordes in blithe disregard for bin Laden having long ago written Saddam off as a "socialist infidel."*
As much as he protests, "I never believed that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks nor did president Bush or, to my knowledge, Tony Blair. Such a claim never formed part of the public case put by the Howard government for our Iraqi involvement," Howard flogs the 9/11 attacks for all they're worth:
"Americans thought that their country would be attacked by terrorists again, and soon. To many in the US why wouldn't a rogue state like Iraq supply dangerous weapons to terrorist groups?"
Bringing it closer to home, he invokes the bomb in our own backyard - Bali - and the prospect of "home-grown threats to our peaceful society," conjuring nightmare visions of flinty-eyed, bearded men in flowing white robes bearing nuclear/chemical/biological suitcase bombs, personally packed by a certain "loathsome dictator" who rules over an "outlaw regime/rogue state," and who will go to any lengths to kick down our white picket fences and trample all over our carefully manicured lawns. And who, of course, has more WMDs - gospel! - than you can shake a stick at.
But what the bugger doesn't let on is that Americans didn't automaticaly think of Iraq after 9/11. They had to be 'taught' to think about it. They had to be 'educated'. Enter the neocons:
"The 'Get Iraq' campaign... started within days of the September bombings... It emerged first and particularly from pro-Israel hard-liners in the Pentagon such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and adviser Richard Perle, but also from hard-line neoconservatives, and some journalists and congressmen. Soon it became clear that many, although not all, were in the group that is commonly called in diplomatic and political circles the 'Israel-firsters', meaning that they would always put Israeli policy, or even their perception of it, above anything else." (Pro-Israeli, anti-Arab campaigns could isolate America, Georgie Anne Geyer, uexpress.com, 25/10/01)
Of course, don't expect Howard to go there.
Finally, some other gems... very John Howard:
"The claims of some that life in Iraq was better under Saddam than it has been since, defy belief."
The claims of some? Iraqis perhaps? But then again, what would they know?
"To have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, for a new [UN] resolution added weight to the moral and political case being built for a military operation."
LOL, even if the UN won't give you the green light you need, you're still ahead merely for trying!
"It was inevitable that after Saddam had been toppled a degree of revenge would be exacted, but a stronger security presence would have constrained this."
Inevitable, eh? You mean Rumsfeld didn't really have to send in the likes of Colonel James Steele, "a US veteran of of the 'dirty wars' in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up detention and torture centres... [conducting] some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and [accelerating] the country's descent into full-scale civil war"?**
"[T]he removal of Saddam's regime provided the Iraqi people with opportunities for freedom not otherwise in prospect."
What is it with these born-to-rule bastards? Remember Abbott's campaign slogan - 'Hope, Reward, Opportunity'? As the experience of Iraq should tell us, when a guy in a suit starts banging on about opportunities it's time to batten down the hatches.
[*Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, ed by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, p 184; ** Iraq - searching for Steele, Foreign Correspondent, 2/4/13]
Apart from all the bull in Howard's Lowy Institute speech about everybody, but everybody, at the time having a near gospel belief that Saddam was such a mean and ornery fella he just had to have a stash of WMDs under his bed (and the more so for saying he didn't) and you're left with the odd statement or two that tells us why we really went in. Here they are in chronological order:
"[C]entral to a proper understanding of why the US acted as she did over Iraq, and the implications that had for a close ally such as Australia, is to recognise [her] vulnerability [to more terrorist attacks]."
"Australia's decision to join the coalition in Iraq was a product both of our belief at the time that Iraq had WMD, and the nature of our relationship and alliance with the US."
"Although the legal justification for the action taken against Iraq was based on her cumulative non-compliance with UNSC resolutions, and a properly grounded belief that Saddam possessed WMDs, a powerful element in our decision to join the Americans was, of course, the depth and character of our relationship with the US. Australia had invoked ANZUS in the days following 9/11. We had readily joined the coalition in Afghanistan; Australia had suffered the brutality of Islamic terrorism in Bali. There was a sense then that a common way of life was under threat. At that time, and in those circumstances, and given our shared history and values, I judged that, ultimately, it was in our national interest to stand beside the Americans."
Got the picture? When you're in love, you stand by your man, OK? It's really that simple(-minded). End of story.
Now, having definitively solved that little mystery, there are other revealing threads in his speech worth following up.
For example, in addition to all the ducking and weaving on WMDs, Howard gleefully invokes the spectre of Osama bin Laden and the Islamo-fascist hordes in blithe disregard for bin Laden having long ago written Saddam off as a "socialist infidel."*
As much as he protests, "I never believed that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks nor did president Bush or, to my knowledge, Tony Blair. Such a claim never formed part of the public case put by the Howard government for our Iraqi involvement," Howard flogs the 9/11 attacks for all they're worth:
"Americans thought that their country would be attacked by terrorists again, and soon. To many in the US why wouldn't a rogue state like Iraq supply dangerous weapons to terrorist groups?"
Bringing it closer to home, he invokes the bomb in our own backyard - Bali - and the prospect of "home-grown threats to our peaceful society," conjuring nightmare visions of flinty-eyed, bearded men in flowing white robes bearing nuclear/chemical/biological suitcase bombs, personally packed by a certain "loathsome dictator" who rules over an "outlaw regime/rogue state," and who will go to any lengths to kick down our white picket fences and trample all over our carefully manicured lawns. And who, of course, has more WMDs - gospel! - than you can shake a stick at.
But what the bugger doesn't let on is that Americans didn't automaticaly think of Iraq after 9/11. They had to be 'taught' to think about it. They had to be 'educated'. Enter the neocons:
"The 'Get Iraq' campaign... started within days of the September bombings... It emerged first and particularly from pro-Israel hard-liners in the Pentagon such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and adviser Richard Perle, but also from hard-line neoconservatives, and some journalists and congressmen. Soon it became clear that many, although not all, were in the group that is commonly called in diplomatic and political circles the 'Israel-firsters', meaning that they would always put Israeli policy, or even their perception of it, above anything else." (Pro-Israeli, anti-Arab campaigns could isolate America, Georgie Anne Geyer, uexpress.com, 25/10/01)
Of course, don't expect Howard to go there.
Finally, some other gems... very John Howard:
"The claims of some that life in Iraq was better under Saddam than it has been since, defy belief."
The claims of some? Iraqis perhaps? But then again, what would they know?
"To have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, for a new [UN] resolution added weight to the moral and political case being built for a military operation."
LOL, even if the UN won't give you the green light you need, you're still ahead merely for trying!
"It was inevitable that after Saddam had been toppled a degree of revenge would be exacted, but a stronger security presence would have constrained this."
Inevitable, eh? You mean Rumsfeld didn't really have to send in the likes of Colonel James Steele, "a US veteran of of the 'dirty wars' in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up detention and torture centres... [conducting] some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and [accelerating] the country's descent into full-scale civil war"?**
"[T]he removal of Saddam's regime provided the Iraqi people with opportunities for freedom not otherwise in prospect."
What is it with these born-to-rule bastards? Remember Abbott's campaign slogan - 'Hope, Reward, Opportunity'? As the experience of Iraq should tell us, when a guy in a suit starts banging on about opportunities it's time to batten down the hatches.
[*Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, ed by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, p 184; ** Iraq - searching for Steele, Foreign Correspondent, 2/4/13]
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Our Most Serious Foreign Affairs Analyst
Australia's most serious foreign affairs analyst holds forth on the current state of US-Israeli relations:
"Accompanying Obama's own actions has been some of the most dangerous rhetoric ever to come out of a US administration, to the effect that Israeli intransigence endangers US troops by inflaming extremists in the Arab world. No serious analyst anywhere believes that Israel is an important source of the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq. Using this type of argument comes dangerously close to the administration licensing a mutant strain of anti-Semitism - it's all the Jews fault." (Obama's anti-Israeli hysteria dangerous and destructive, Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 27/3/10)
The dangerous, almost anti-Semitic, rhetoric that our most serious of analysts darkly alludes to comes from US Central Command chief General David Petraeus, who, despite his daily immersion in the heat and dust, both literal and metaphorical, of the Middle East, simply cannot be taken seriously:
"On January 16... a team of senior military officers from CENTCOM (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries in the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45' PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the US was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing US standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior pentagon officer later bluntly described it) 'too old, too slow... and too late'. The... briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus' instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. 'Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling', a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. 'America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding'. But Petraeus wasn't finished: 2 days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command - or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus' reason was straightforward: with US troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region's most troublesome conflict." (From Foreign Policy, quoted in 'This is starting to get dangerous', Scott Horton, informationclearinghouse.info, 15/3/10)
And not only is Petraeus' analysis - sorry, rhetoric - not to be taken seriously, we can't take the analysis/rhetoric of everybody's favourite extremist Osama bin Laden seriously either:
"The suffering of the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples is seen by bin Laden as a result of the creation of the state of Israel with Western support. The notion of revenge is central to bin Laden's thinking: 'The events that made a direct impression on me were during and after 1982, when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon... I still remember those distressing scenes: blood, torn limbs, women and children massacred... The whole world heard and saw what happened, but did nothing. In those critical moments, many ideas raged inside me, ideas difficult to describe, but they unleashed a powerful urge to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the aggressors'. Bin Laden regards the Zionist enterprise as an anachronistic extension of European colonization into the modern age. Since bin Laden's words were censored in the US in the aftermath of 9/11, there was little or no reporting at the time of his claim that the attacks were a culmination of an 80-year struggle; that the action was to avenge 'our people killed in Palestine'; that it was Palestine 'which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years' (some commentators have assumed that bin Laden was referring to the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924); that 'the creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you - the United States - are the leaders of its criminals'; and finally that there was 'no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel'." (False Prophets: The 'Clash of Civilizations' & the Global War on Terror, Richard Bonney, 2008, p 27)
No, whether it's those who are battling the extremists or the extremists themselves, nothing they say, as our most serious foreign affairs analyst says, can be taken seriously.
Seriously now, truly serious people who require a serious analysis of the Middle East conflict need go no further than that of Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, foreign editor of our most serious newspaper, The Australian.
"Accompanying Obama's own actions has been some of the most dangerous rhetoric ever to come out of a US administration, to the effect that Israeli intransigence endangers US troops by inflaming extremists in the Arab world. No serious analyst anywhere believes that Israel is an important source of the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq. Using this type of argument comes dangerously close to the administration licensing a mutant strain of anti-Semitism - it's all the Jews fault." (Obama's anti-Israeli hysteria dangerous and destructive, Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 27/3/10)
The dangerous, almost anti-Semitic, rhetoric that our most serious of analysts darkly alludes to comes from US Central Command chief General David Petraeus, who, despite his daily immersion in the heat and dust, both literal and metaphorical, of the Middle East, simply cannot be taken seriously:
"On January 16... a team of senior military officers from CENTCOM (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries in the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45' PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the US was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing US standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior pentagon officer later bluntly described it) 'too old, too slow... and too late'. The... briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus' instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. 'Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling', a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. 'America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding'. But Petraeus wasn't finished: 2 days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command - or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus' reason was straightforward: with US troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region's most troublesome conflict." (From Foreign Policy, quoted in 'This is starting to get dangerous', Scott Horton, informationclearinghouse.info, 15/3/10)
And not only is Petraeus' analysis - sorry, rhetoric - not to be taken seriously, we can't take the analysis/rhetoric of everybody's favourite extremist Osama bin Laden seriously either:
"The suffering of the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples is seen by bin Laden as a result of the creation of the state of Israel with Western support. The notion of revenge is central to bin Laden's thinking: 'The events that made a direct impression on me were during and after 1982, when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon... I still remember those distressing scenes: blood, torn limbs, women and children massacred... The whole world heard and saw what happened, but did nothing. In those critical moments, many ideas raged inside me, ideas difficult to describe, but they unleashed a powerful urge to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the aggressors'. Bin Laden regards the Zionist enterprise as an anachronistic extension of European colonization into the modern age. Since bin Laden's words were censored in the US in the aftermath of 9/11, there was little or no reporting at the time of his claim that the attacks were a culmination of an 80-year struggle; that the action was to avenge 'our people killed in Palestine'; that it was Palestine 'which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years' (some commentators have assumed that bin Laden was referring to the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924); that 'the creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you - the United States - are the leaders of its criminals'; and finally that there was 'no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel'." (False Prophets: The 'Clash of Civilizations' & the Global War on Terror, Richard Bonney, 2008, p 27)
No, whether it's those who are battling the extremists or the extremists themselves, nothing they say, as our most serious foreign affairs analyst says, can be taken seriously.
Seriously now, truly serious people who require a serious analysis of the Middle East conflict need go no further than that of Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, foreign editor of our most serious newspaper, The Australian.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Don't Mention the War Criminal 2
The Australian's obsession with a certain terror state has bubbled up yet again (see my post of 4/3/09) in its March 5 editorial, A medieval quest to reverse modernity. Ostensibly about the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan, the following paragraph gave the game away, literally: "By its nature, this attack demolishes the misguided rationale of the appeasers, generally but not exclusively from the liberal Left, who for the past 20 years have tried to seek out what they claim to be the root causes of terrorism in a futile attempt to achieve a political settlement with terrorists. They seize on economic inequality, real and imagined colonial injustices, or, most often the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They ignore the fact that in more than a decade of terrorist atrocities leading up to September 11, 2001, including the first World Trade Centre bombing and the attack on the USS Cole, the issue of Israel and the Palestinians featured little in the propaganda of al-Qa'ida and its forerunners."
Al-Qa'ida's Osama bin Laden, of course, begs to differ. The Big O deals with the attack on the USS Cole (12 October 2000) and September 11 2001 in his 2003 sermon Among a Band of Knights. Some excerpts:-
"As I speak, the blood of Muslims continues to be shed in vain in Palestine, Chechnya, Philippines, Kashmir, and Sudan, and our children are dying because of the American sanctions in Iraq."/ "One of the most important objectives of this new Crusader campaign, after dividing up the region, is to prepare it for the establishment of what is called the state of Greater Israel, which would incorporate large parts of Iraq and Egypt within its borders, as well as Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, the whole of Palestine, and a large part of Saudi Arabia. Do you know what harm and suffering greater Israel will bring down upon the region? What is happening to our people in Palestine is just a small example of what they want to repeat in the rest of the region courtesy of the Zionist-American alliance: murder of men, women, and children, incarceration, terrorism, destruction of houses, bulldozing of fields and razing of factories."/ "Then after that, in 1998, the mujahidin were able, by the grace of God, to deal [the Americans] two mighty blows in East Africa. After that America was warned once again and failed to respond so God helped the mujahidin to successfully implement a great martyrdom operation, demolishing the American destroyer USS Cole in Aden... Then when they saw the gang of criminals in the White House misrepresenting the truth, whose idiotic leader claims that we despise their way of life - although the truth that the Pharaoh of the age is hiding is that we strike them because of their injustice towards us in the Islamic world, especially in Palestine and Iraq, and their occupation of Saudi Arabia - the mujahidin decided to overcome this obfuscation and to bring the battle right into their heartland. And on that blessed Tuesday... September 11 2001, the Zionist-American alliance was mowing down our sons and our people in the blessed land of al-Aqsa, at the hands of the Jews but with American planes and tanks, and our sons in Iraq were dying as a result of the oppressive sanctions of America and its agents... Amidst all this... injustice, arrogance, and aggression on the part of the Zionist-American alliance, while 'Uncle Sam' was committing these reckless transgressions and terrible oppression in contempt of everyone, going through the world without paying attention to anyone else and thinking that nothing could attack it, disaster struck it... There came a group of young believers... They sought to be with God, and deprived themselves of sleep while injustice was being done... So they attacked the enemy with their own planes in a brave and beautiful operation, the likes of which humanity has never seen before, destroying the idols of America. They struck at the very heart of the Ministry of Defence, and they hit the American economy right at its heart, too. They rubbed America's nose in the dirt, and wiped its arrogance in the mud. As the twin towers of New York collapsed, something even greater and more enormous collapsed with them: the myth of the great America and the myth of democracy. It became clear to all that America's values are the lowest, and the myth of 'the land of the free' was destroyed, as was the myth of American national security and the CIA... One of the most important positive effects of our attacks on New York and Washington was to expose the reality of the struggle between the Crusaders and the Muslims, and to demonstrate the enormous hostility that the Crusaders feel towards us. The attacks reveal the American world in its true ugliness. The entire world woke up from its slumber... And for the first time, most of the American population is aware of the reality of the Palestinian issue, and that what happened to them in Manhattan was a result of the unjust policies of their government." (Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, edited by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, pp 187-195)
But even when The Australian's singular obsession gives way to good old-fashioned Muslim-bashing, it still can't get things right. Take this, for example, from the same editorial: "Former England batsman Ed Smith was closer to the mark when he wrote in The Times yesterday that Islamic extremists... had singled out cricket for the murderous attack because it is an icon of Westernization." Islamic extremists, eh? Now they don't come more extreme than the Taliban, do they? After all, as the editorial says, "the Taliban's notorious Ministry of Vice & Virtue used football stadiums for public executions... [and] banned kite-flying, barbers, books, radio and chess."
Ah, but did they also ban cricket, that "icon of Westernization"? Well, not according to The Australian's South Asia correspondent Amanda Hodge: "During its years in power, the Taliban... applied - unsuccessfully - for membership of the International Cricket Council. The sport was played in Afghanistan during that time, although with a distinct Talibani flavour." (Islamists wage war against cricket, 'the other religion', 6/3/09)
God, Amanda, now you've done it!
Al-Qa'ida's Osama bin Laden, of course, begs to differ. The Big O deals with the attack on the USS Cole (12 October 2000) and September 11 2001 in his 2003 sermon Among a Band of Knights. Some excerpts:-
"As I speak, the blood of Muslims continues to be shed in vain in Palestine, Chechnya, Philippines, Kashmir, and Sudan, and our children are dying because of the American sanctions in Iraq."/ "One of the most important objectives of this new Crusader campaign, after dividing up the region, is to prepare it for the establishment of what is called the state of Greater Israel, which would incorporate large parts of Iraq and Egypt within its borders, as well as Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, the whole of Palestine, and a large part of Saudi Arabia. Do you know what harm and suffering greater Israel will bring down upon the region? What is happening to our people in Palestine is just a small example of what they want to repeat in the rest of the region courtesy of the Zionist-American alliance: murder of men, women, and children, incarceration, terrorism, destruction of houses, bulldozing of fields and razing of factories."/ "Then after that, in 1998, the mujahidin were able, by the grace of God, to deal [the Americans] two mighty blows in East Africa. After that America was warned once again and failed to respond so God helped the mujahidin to successfully implement a great martyrdom operation, demolishing the American destroyer USS Cole in Aden... Then when they saw the gang of criminals in the White House misrepresenting the truth, whose idiotic leader claims that we despise their way of life - although the truth that the Pharaoh of the age is hiding is that we strike them because of their injustice towards us in the Islamic world, especially in Palestine and Iraq, and their occupation of Saudi Arabia - the mujahidin decided to overcome this obfuscation and to bring the battle right into their heartland. And on that blessed Tuesday... September 11 2001, the Zionist-American alliance was mowing down our sons and our people in the blessed land of al-Aqsa, at the hands of the Jews but with American planes and tanks, and our sons in Iraq were dying as a result of the oppressive sanctions of America and its agents... Amidst all this... injustice, arrogance, and aggression on the part of the Zionist-American alliance, while 'Uncle Sam' was committing these reckless transgressions and terrible oppression in contempt of everyone, going through the world without paying attention to anyone else and thinking that nothing could attack it, disaster struck it... There came a group of young believers... They sought to be with God, and deprived themselves of sleep while injustice was being done... So they attacked the enemy with their own planes in a brave and beautiful operation, the likes of which humanity has never seen before, destroying the idols of America. They struck at the very heart of the Ministry of Defence, and they hit the American economy right at its heart, too. They rubbed America's nose in the dirt, and wiped its arrogance in the mud. As the twin towers of New York collapsed, something even greater and more enormous collapsed with them: the myth of the great America and the myth of democracy. It became clear to all that America's values are the lowest, and the myth of 'the land of the free' was destroyed, as was the myth of American national security and the CIA... One of the most important positive effects of our attacks on New York and Washington was to expose the reality of the struggle between the Crusaders and the Muslims, and to demonstrate the enormous hostility that the Crusaders feel towards us. The attacks reveal the American world in its true ugliness. The entire world woke up from its slumber... And for the first time, most of the American population is aware of the reality of the Palestinian issue, and that what happened to them in Manhattan was a result of the unjust policies of their government." (Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, edited by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, pp 187-195)
But even when The Australian's singular obsession gives way to good old-fashioned Muslim-bashing, it still can't get things right. Take this, for example, from the same editorial: "Former England batsman Ed Smith was closer to the mark when he wrote in The Times yesterday that Islamic extremists... had singled out cricket for the murderous attack because it is an icon of Westernization." Islamic extremists, eh? Now they don't come more extreme than the Taliban, do they? After all, as the editorial says, "the Taliban's notorious Ministry of Vice & Virtue used football stadiums for public executions... [and] banned kite-flying, barbers, books, radio and chess."
Ah, but did they also ban cricket, that "icon of Westernization"? Well, not according to The Australian's South Asia correspondent Amanda Hodge: "During its years in power, the Taliban... applied - unsuccessfully - for membership of the International Cricket Council. The sport was played in Afghanistan during that time, although with a distinct Talibani flavour." (Islamists wage war against cricket, 'the other religion', 6/3/09)
God, Amanda, now you've done it!
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
American Jihad
What the mainstream media say:
"Over the past decade, every major terrorist attack by Islamic militants against Western interests can be traced back to Afghan training camps and Pakistani madrassas." (Editorial, Afghan challenge: The West cannot waiver in its commitment, The Australian, 9/9/08)
And what they don't say:
"How did right-wing Islamism, an ideological tendency with small and scattered numbers before the Afghan War [1979- 1989], come to occupy the global center stage after 9/11? The answer lies in the Afghan jihad [against the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan], which gave it not only the organization, the numbers, the skills, the reach, and the confidence but also a coherent objective. Before the Afghan jihad, the right wing of political Islam was divided into 2 camps: those identified with pro-American regimes, as in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and those opposed to these same regimes, seeing them as American stooges that had betrayed the Palestinian cause. Unlike Islamists who organized political parties and sought to galvanize ordinary people into political activity, however, the right-wingers had no program outside of isolated acts of urban terror. Until the Afghan jihad, right-wing Islamists out of power had neither the aspiration of drawing strength from popular organization nor the possibility of marshaling strength from any alternative source. The Reagan administration rescued right-wing Islamism from this historical cul-de-sac. The American jihad claimed to create an Islamic infrastructure of liberation but in reality forged an 'infrastructure of terror' that used Islamic symbols to tap into Islamic networks and communities. To understand the deep-seated effects of the decision to ideologize the war as Islamic, it is necessary to look at different aspects of the mobilization that was the American jihad.
"The blueprint for the Afghan jihad was worked out by the CIA, in collaboration with the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. For the actual conduct of the war, the CIA acquired weapons and specialists in guerilla warfare from different countries and delivered them, along with intelligence and surveillance information on Afghanistan, to the ISI. The ISI was responsible for transport of weapons to the border, supervised the training of Afghan fighters in Pakistan, and coordinated their operations inside Afghanistan. While ISI was the main regional proxy in the operation, the second line included the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, with the intelligence services of Britain, China, the Philippines, and even Israel also involved.
"... Beyond the front-line proxy states and their intelligence agencies, increasingly the intermediaries were private institutions, both religious and secular. The overall effect was progressively to privatize the war on an international basis. From this dynamic emerged the forces that carried out the operation we know as 9/11.
"Had the anti-Soviet crusade been organized in a national framework, the CIA would have looked for mainly Afghani recruits to wage it. But with the war recast as an international jihad, the CIA looked for volunteers from Muslim populations all over the globe. Outside of Pakistan, the Arab countries were the main source of volunteers, who became known as Afghan-Arabs...
"The CIA looked for a Saudi prince to lead this crusade but was unable to find one. It settled for the next best, the son of an illustrious family closely connected to the Saudi royal house... Bin Laden was recruited, with US approval at the highest level, by Prince Turki al-Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence. According to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, Osama bin Laden first travelled to Peshawar in 1980 and met mujahideen leaders there, and for the next 2 years he returned frequently with Saudi donations for the cause. In 1982, he decided to settle in Peshawar. In 1986, bin Laden worked as the major contractor to build a large CIA-funded project: the Khost tunnel complex deep under the mountains close to the Pakistani border. The Khost complex housed a major arms depot, a training facility, and a medical center for the mujahideen. It is the Khost complex that President Clinton decided in 1998 to bomb with Tomahawk cruise missiles. It is also in the Khost complex - the famed mountain caves - that the United States later fought al-Qaeda remnants in its own Afghan War.
"Though Osama bin Laden had been a student of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the first Afghan-Arab gatekeeper of the jihad in the mid-80s, a break between Azzam and bin Laden came towards the end of the Afghan jihad. The parting of the ways was the result of a disagreement in 1989 over the future of the jihad: bin Laden 'envisioned an all-Arab legion, which eventually could be used to wage jihad in Saudi Arabia and Egypt', whereas Azzam 'strongly opposed making war against fellow-Muslims'. Soon after, Azzam and 2 of his sons were blown up by a car bomb... A meeting was held toward the end of 1989 in the town of Khost to decide on the future of the jihad. One of the 10 at the meeting was a Sudanese fighter named Jamal al-Fadl. He testified in a New York courtroom in one of the trials connected with the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in East Africa that a new organization was created in that meeting to wage jihad beyond the borders of Afghanistan. The organization was al-Qaeda, 'the Base'. Bin laden thus emerged as the organizer and patron of the most prominent privatized arm of the American jihad."(Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, Mahmood Mamdani, 2004, pp 129-133)
"As the turf war culminated in a seesaw battle for Kabul, the [Afghan] civil war [which followed the 1989 Soviet withdrawal] turned vicious. When it became obvious that [Gulbuddin] Hikmatyar's forces [Hizb-i-Islami] were losing ground, the Pakistani army shifted its backing to the Taliban, a group mainly comprising students it had trained since 1980 in madrassahs in the North-West Frontier Province. The ISI saw the Taliban as amenable to the tight control and thus a preferable substitute for the now discredited Islamic coalition led by Hikmatyar. With the Cold War over, the focus of official America also narrowed to a percuniary dimension: oil. And for American oil interests - particularly Unocal, the giant oil company that hoped to build a trans-Afghan pipeline from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean as an alternative to going through Iran - any group that could offer security in Afghanistan would do. On October 4, 1996, The Los Angeles Times reported that a new rumor was making the rounds of Kabul - 'many are sure that the Clinton administration is supporting the Taliban, the victorious Islamic militia' - and added that the conspiracy theory was 'plausible, given the great mystery that shrouds the Taliban's rise and rapid advance: How did a ragtag force that emerged in late 1994 among Muslim religious students in the southern region of Kandahar and adjacent areas of Pakistan grow so quickly that, two years later, it has become master of three-quarters of Afghanistan? Who paid for its weaponry, ammunition and vehicles? Who organized its training and logistics? Is intelligence or military assistance received from outside one of the reasons the Taliban has enjoyed astonishing, and relatively bloodless, successes over experienced mujahideen who, for nearly a decade, fought occupying Soviet forces?' It cited 'generous support' from Pakistan but still wondered whether the United States was involved. A ranking UN official said: 'The U.S. wants law and order in Afghanistan, and the Taliban now seem like the best bet'. A local director of a foreign charity was equally cynical: 'There are two different things - American state interests and human rights. For the politicians running America, human rights take second place.' And a Kabul university graduate who worked as a translator asked the reporter, 'How can your country want to deal with people who whip women for not conforming to their dress code?' After a State Department meeting with a visiting Taliban delegation on February 3, 1997, a senior U.S. diplomat explained his government's point of view: 'The Taliban will probably develop like Saudi Arabia. There will be Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.' " (ibid, pp 159-161)
"Over the past decade, every major terrorist attack by Islamic militants against Western interests can be traced back to Afghan training camps and Pakistani madrassas." (Editorial, Afghan challenge: The West cannot waiver in its commitment, The Australian, 9/9/08)
And what they don't say:
"How did right-wing Islamism, an ideological tendency with small and scattered numbers before the Afghan War [1979- 1989], come to occupy the global center stage after 9/11? The answer lies in the Afghan jihad [against the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan], which gave it not only the organization, the numbers, the skills, the reach, and the confidence but also a coherent objective. Before the Afghan jihad, the right wing of political Islam was divided into 2 camps: those identified with pro-American regimes, as in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and those opposed to these same regimes, seeing them as American stooges that had betrayed the Palestinian cause. Unlike Islamists who organized political parties and sought to galvanize ordinary people into political activity, however, the right-wingers had no program outside of isolated acts of urban terror. Until the Afghan jihad, right-wing Islamists out of power had neither the aspiration of drawing strength from popular organization nor the possibility of marshaling strength from any alternative source. The Reagan administration rescued right-wing Islamism from this historical cul-de-sac. The American jihad claimed to create an Islamic infrastructure of liberation but in reality forged an 'infrastructure of terror' that used Islamic symbols to tap into Islamic networks and communities. To understand the deep-seated effects of the decision to ideologize the war as Islamic, it is necessary to look at different aspects of the mobilization that was the American jihad.
"The blueprint for the Afghan jihad was worked out by the CIA, in collaboration with the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. For the actual conduct of the war, the CIA acquired weapons and specialists in guerilla warfare from different countries and delivered them, along with intelligence and surveillance information on Afghanistan, to the ISI. The ISI was responsible for transport of weapons to the border, supervised the training of Afghan fighters in Pakistan, and coordinated their operations inside Afghanistan. While ISI was the main regional proxy in the operation, the second line included the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, with the intelligence services of Britain, China, the Philippines, and even Israel also involved.
"... Beyond the front-line proxy states and their intelligence agencies, increasingly the intermediaries were private institutions, both religious and secular. The overall effect was progressively to privatize the war on an international basis. From this dynamic emerged the forces that carried out the operation we know as 9/11.
"Had the anti-Soviet crusade been organized in a national framework, the CIA would have looked for mainly Afghani recruits to wage it. But with the war recast as an international jihad, the CIA looked for volunteers from Muslim populations all over the globe. Outside of Pakistan, the Arab countries were the main source of volunteers, who became known as Afghan-Arabs...
"The CIA looked for a Saudi prince to lead this crusade but was unable to find one. It settled for the next best, the son of an illustrious family closely connected to the Saudi royal house... Bin Laden was recruited, with US approval at the highest level, by Prince Turki al-Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence. According to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, Osama bin Laden first travelled to Peshawar in 1980 and met mujahideen leaders there, and for the next 2 years he returned frequently with Saudi donations for the cause. In 1982, he decided to settle in Peshawar. In 1986, bin Laden worked as the major contractor to build a large CIA-funded project: the Khost tunnel complex deep under the mountains close to the Pakistani border. The Khost complex housed a major arms depot, a training facility, and a medical center for the mujahideen. It is the Khost complex that President Clinton decided in 1998 to bomb with Tomahawk cruise missiles. It is also in the Khost complex - the famed mountain caves - that the United States later fought al-Qaeda remnants in its own Afghan War.
"Though Osama bin Laden had been a student of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the first Afghan-Arab gatekeeper of the jihad in the mid-80s, a break between Azzam and bin Laden came towards the end of the Afghan jihad. The parting of the ways was the result of a disagreement in 1989 over the future of the jihad: bin Laden 'envisioned an all-Arab legion, which eventually could be used to wage jihad in Saudi Arabia and Egypt', whereas Azzam 'strongly opposed making war against fellow-Muslims'. Soon after, Azzam and 2 of his sons were blown up by a car bomb... A meeting was held toward the end of 1989 in the town of Khost to decide on the future of the jihad. One of the 10 at the meeting was a Sudanese fighter named Jamal al-Fadl. He testified in a New York courtroom in one of the trials connected with the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in East Africa that a new organization was created in that meeting to wage jihad beyond the borders of Afghanistan. The organization was al-Qaeda, 'the Base'. Bin laden thus emerged as the organizer and patron of the most prominent privatized arm of the American jihad."(Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, Mahmood Mamdani, 2004, pp 129-133)
"As the turf war culminated in a seesaw battle for Kabul, the [Afghan] civil war [which followed the 1989 Soviet withdrawal] turned vicious. When it became obvious that [Gulbuddin] Hikmatyar's forces [Hizb-i-Islami] were losing ground, the Pakistani army shifted its backing to the Taliban, a group mainly comprising students it had trained since 1980 in madrassahs in the North-West Frontier Province. The ISI saw the Taliban as amenable to the tight control and thus a preferable substitute for the now discredited Islamic coalition led by Hikmatyar. With the Cold War over, the focus of official America also narrowed to a percuniary dimension: oil. And for American oil interests - particularly Unocal, the giant oil company that hoped to build a trans-Afghan pipeline from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean as an alternative to going through Iran - any group that could offer security in Afghanistan would do. On October 4, 1996, The Los Angeles Times reported that a new rumor was making the rounds of Kabul - 'many are sure that the Clinton administration is supporting the Taliban, the victorious Islamic militia' - and added that the conspiracy theory was 'plausible, given the great mystery that shrouds the Taliban's rise and rapid advance: How did a ragtag force that emerged in late 1994 among Muslim religious students in the southern region of Kandahar and adjacent areas of Pakistan grow so quickly that, two years later, it has become master of three-quarters of Afghanistan? Who paid for its weaponry, ammunition and vehicles? Who organized its training and logistics? Is intelligence or military assistance received from outside one of the reasons the Taliban has enjoyed astonishing, and relatively bloodless, successes over experienced mujahideen who, for nearly a decade, fought occupying Soviet forces?' It cited 'generous support' from Pakistan but still wondered whether the United States was involved. A ranking UN official said: 'The U.S. wants law and order in Afghanistan, and the Taliban now seem like the best bet'. A local director of a foreign charity was equally cynical: 'There are two different things - American state interests and human rights. For the politicians running America, human rights take second place.' And a Kabul university graduate who worked as a translator asked the reporter, 'How can your country want to deal with people who whip women for not conforming to their dress code?' After a State Department meeting with a visiting Taliban delegation on February 3, 1997, a senior U.S. diplomat explained his government's point of view: 'The Taliban will probably develop like Saudi Arabia. There will be Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.' " (ibid, pp 159-161)
Sunday, March 2, 2008
McEwan Misses the Point
Having succumbed to the hype surrounding the overrated soapie based on Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement, I wasted an afternoon watching the film. So perhaps I should have passed over the Sydney Morning Herald's interview with this alleged "literary giant" (Morality man 23/2/08). I didn't, however, and came across this:-
"September 11 changed McEwan...The hijackers would never have done what they did had they been able to put themselves in the place of their victims, he wrote. 'Imagining what it is like to be someone other than oneself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and it is the beginning of morality'. Al-Qaeda also looms in a discussion of the militant atheism of...scientist Richard Dawkins and others. Asked for his view, he says, 'I am entirely in their camp. I think it helps to recognise that the instigators of September 11 operated out of immense faith. Faith is not a virtue...What is faith but ungrounded certainty, without evidence'."
To call McEwan's views shallow is an understatement. The words "September 11 changed McEwan," reveal the man's hardwired Eurocentric mindset and suggest that two centuries' worth of life-shattering rape, pillage and plunder of the Middle East (& elsewhere) by the likes of imperial Britain, France, Israel and America have simply passed him by. It took an attack against his own kind on the other side of the Atlantic to engage him, but the best he can come up with, by way of probing thought, is platitudes about empathy on a par with The Beatle's All you need is love.
However, it was the reductionist ignorance of equating the terrorist acts of 9/11 exclusively with the "faith" of their perpetrators that really pulled me up. Assuming that Osama bin Laden was the terrorist mastermind behind 9/11 (he claimed direct responsibility for it in October 2004), then it behoves the likes of McEwan, who presumes to speak so dogmatically on the subject, to do a little research. What does bin Laden himself say about 9/11? Here's an excerpt from his video-taped message delivered to al-Jazeera not long after the attack. The rhetoric is, of course, that of the believer, but it's clear that what motivates him are more earthly concerns:-
"God has struck America at its Achilles heel and destroyed its greatest buildings, praise and blessings to Him. America has been filled with terror from north to south and from east to west, praise and blessings to God. What America is tasting today is but a fraction of what we have tasted for decades. For over 80 years our umma has endured this humiliation and contempt. Its sons have been killed, its blood has been shed, its holy sanctuaries have been violated, all in a manner contrary to that revealed by God, without anyone listening or responding. So when God Almighty grants success to one of the vanguard groups of Islam, He opened the way for them to destroy America utterly. I pray to God Almighty to lift them up to the highest Paradise. When these men retaliated on behalf of their poor, oppressed sons, their brothers and sisters in Palestine and in many other of the lands of Islam, the whole world cried out. The infidels cried out [in protest at 9/11], and the hypocrites followed them. Until this point, a million innocent children have been killed in Iraq, although they had done nothing wrong. But we do not hear anyone condemning this, ... As I speak, Israeli tanks and bulldozers are going in and wreaking havoc and sin in Palestine - in Jenin, in Ramallah, in Rafah, in Beit Jala - and other parts of the domain of Islam, and we do not hear anyone protesting or even lifting a finger to stop it. But when after 80 years the sword comes down on America, the hypocrites rise up to lament these killers who have scorned the blood, honor, and holy places of Muslims." (Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, edited by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, p 104):-
IOW, without this history of prior and present Western imperial aggression against the peoples of the Middle East, no amount of "faith" on bin Laden's part would have motivated him or his comrades to wage an armed jihad against the West.
"September 11 changed McEwan...The hijackers would never have done what they did had they been able to put themselves in the place of their victims, he wrote. 'Imagining what it is like to be someone other than oneself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and it is the beginning of morality'. Al-Qaeda also looms in a discussion of the militant atheism of...scientist Richard Dawkins and others. Asked for his view, he says, 'I am entirely in their camp. I think it helps to recognise that the instigators of September 11 operated out of immense faith. Faith is not a virtue...What is faith but ungrounded certainty, without evidence'."
To call McEwan's views shallow is an understatement. The words "September 11 changed McEwan," reveal the man's hardwired Eurocentric mindset and suggest that two centuries' worth of life-shattering rape, pillage and plunder of the Middle East (& elsewhere) by the likes of imperial Britain, France, Israel and America have simply passed him by. It took an attack against his own kind on the other side of the Atlantic to engage him, but the best he can come up with, by way of probing thought, is platitudes about empathy on a par with The Beatle's All you need is love.
However, it was the reductionist ignorance of equating the terrorist acts of 9/11 exclusively with the "faith" of their perpetrators that really pulled me up. Assuming that Osama bin Laden was the terrorist mastermind behind 9/11 (he claimed direct responsibility for it in October 2004), then it behoves the likes of McEwan, who presumes to speak so dogmatically on the subject, to do a little research. What does bin Laden himself say about 9/11? Here's an excerpt from his video-taped message delivered to al-Jazeera not long after the attack. The rhetoric is, of course, that of the believer, but it's clear that what motivates him are more earthly concerns:-
"God has struck America at its Achilles heel and destroyed its greatest buildings, praise and blessings to Him. America has been filled with terror from north to south and from east to west, praise and blessings to God. What America is tasting today is but a fraction of what we have tasted for decades. For over 80 years our umma has endured this humiliation and contempt. Its sons have been killed, its blood has been shed, its holy sanctuaries have been violated, all in a manner contrary to that revealed by God, without anyone listening or responding. So when God Almighty grants success to one of the vanguard groups of Islam, He opened the way for them to destroy America utterly. I pray to God Almighty to lift them up to the highest Paradise. When these men retaliated on behalf of their poor, oppressed sons, their brothers and sisters in Palestine and in many other of the lands of Islam, the whole world cried out. The infidels cried out [in protest at 9/11], and the hypocrites followed them. Until this point, a million innocent children have been killed in Iraq, although they had done nothing wrong. But we do not hear anyone condemning this, ... As I speak, Israeli tanks and bulldozers are going in and wreaking havoc and sin in Palestine - in Jenin, in Ramallah, in Rafah, in Beit Jala - and other parts of the domain of Islam, and we do not hear anyone protesting or even lifting a finger to stop it. But when after 80 years the sword comes down on America, the hypocrites rise up to lament these killers who have scorned the blood, honor, and holy places of Muslims." (Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, edited by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, p 104):-
IOW, without this history of prior and present Western imperial aggression against the peoples of the Middle East, no amount of "faith" on bin Laden's part would have motivated him or his comrades to wage an armed jihad against the West.
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