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War & politics: Sept 11th, bin Laden, Middle East news, from my own perspective.

25 October 2004   

 

America's secret war

"In an article in the Saudi English daily The Saudi Gazette, Md. Maqdoom Mohiuddin and Khamis Mushayt wrote an op-ed and book review which exposes an alleged U.S. plot to invade Pakistan, and then later possibly Sudan, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey."

This surprising item alerted me to this book by StratFor's boss, George Friedman. StratFor is a private CIA, being paid by companies to tell them of risks.

The book tells of the 'real' reasons whey the US went into Iraq: to scare the shit out of other wavering countries to back the US and not Al Qaeda. Apparently. It says that WMD and terrorism links were merely a smoke screen, or propaganda.

This clarity (even though Wolfowitz has said this openly) wouldn't have been enough to pull the US street with them.

I have been puzzling why they lied about WMDs. Seeing that I must have been a cover, but for what? Still, I wonder if there was one reason, I guess there'd be many. Oil, being another, though, I wouldn't think oil would be primary, surely, there are hosts of reasons there.

The fact that Friedman's book, apparently, doesn't mention oil, at all, leads me to believe that this wasn't an oversight, just that it's our Achilles' Heel.

But scaring the crap out of the House of Saud meant they clamped down on Al Qaeda's finances. Or, so Friedman says. He goes on that Al Qaeda will be looking, once more, for a method of bring a jihadic uprising to the Muslim world. Though he thinks that the insurgents in Iraq are merely foreign fighters and that the Iraqis are against them. This is echoed in a Debkafile story about Al Qaeda blessing decapitation as a "Muslim method" for killing Westerners and their supporters. "Prophet Mohammed, who declared that decapitation is the most effective means of intimidation and deterrent against the enemy." In this 'blessing', actually a long PR release from Al Qaeda, they ask themselves, "why are not enough Iraqis fighting the infidels and the occupation?" Still, then, the Arab street hasn't bought the Al Qeada line. They still haven't risen up.

This is exactly what Ayman al-Zawahri expected the Egyptian masses to do when he assassinated Sadat in 1981. It never happened. Many Palestinians cheered the fall of the twin towers, some Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Saudis... the list is endless. But many didn't—many feared the giant's wrath. Many sympathised with the US. Was it Al Qaeda's plan to cause a crusade, and the surf the backlash? If so, and, though the situation in Iraq is messy, there appears to be no mass uprising.

What next then for bin Laden's strategy? Sure, the toppling of the House of Saud would be a huge goal. And very dangerous for the West. Will Al Qaeda admit after 20 years of trying that the Arab street is too disinterested in their Islamic rantings and stunts? What if they went military, not terrorist and tried to crack oil production—everywhere?

Our reliance on oil would surely bring a recession. Our economies are too 'market lead' or bubble based to stand a real shock like this. Would it weaken us enough, such that Al Qaeda's mission to cause an Islamic uprising somehow worked?

 


1983 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:14:49 PM  . .
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15 October 2004   

 

BBC: The making of the terror myth

This (via The Guardian) sounds like an excellent programme to watch. BBC2 from next Wednesday.

"Some critics of this situation see our striking susceptibility during the 90s to other anxieties - the millennium bug, MMR, genetically modified food - as a sort of dress rehearsal for the war on terror. The press became accustomed to publishing scare stories and not retracting them; politicians became accustomed to responding to supposed threats rather than questioning them; the public became accustomed to the idea that some sort of apocalypse might be just around the corner."

I need to re-frame my thinking on the war on terror. Sure, it'll last a generation, I still believe that. But, I've always beielved that this is due to the generations that are growing up, now, in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and perhaps Indonesia. Not, the generations growing up in the UK, US and other Western countries. That it was violence, destitution, religious intolerance in Middle Eastern countries that were the causes. Not couch potatoes demanding that their politicians make them safe.

I've been looking at this as a couch potato. Safe in his safe European home. Now that there is another view, I can go back to my media studies, and re-read Folk Devils and Moral Panics.

Lest I forget, this is the age of media. Where words, videos, are spread at hyperspeed. As a person who consumes this stuff, who waits for the next outrage, I've yet to understand my motives. Is it soap opera, or the reality outside my front door? If 'we' as a society could answer that, honestly, then perhaps, just maybe, we could focus on the important shit in our lives—the reality outside our door. This is not to say we turn our attention away from the horrors, but we could give them less import, less TV coverage. And this will cool the terrorists ardour for publicity. They simply would not be getting airplay. Their voices wouldn't be heard, not in that way.

But this is why 9/11 happened. Wake up! They shouted. They weren't being heard any other way. Could there be another way for us to listen? Or are we too interested in soap and our navels?

There has to be another way. Lest our politicians react to our fears by more invasions of more countries as knee jerks to our misplaced, lavish fears.
 


1973 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:29:32 AM  . .
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12 October 2004   

 

Keeping Bush's secret, secret

Quite obviously, Bush has been listening, and repeating just what he is told via his secret little ear piece.

What I want to know, is why they put the little box on his back, why not in a pocket? Surely, someone must have thought, "heck, people can see that."

Don't the powers manipulating him care any more? Doesn't the American people care that their President is a laughing stock around the world?

stringy bush

 


1964 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:16:27 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Keeping Bush's secret, secret