The Al Qaeda Myth
Tom Porteous
April 12, 2006
Tom Porteous is a syndicated columnist and author who was formerly
with the BBC and the British Foreign Office.
We now know that Al Qaeda had nothing to do with the London bombings
in July 2005. This is the conclusion of the British government's
official inquiry report leaked to the British press on April 9.
We now also know that the U.S. military is deliberately misleading
Iraqis, Americans and the rest of the world about the extent of Al
Qaeda's involvement in the Iraqi insurgency. This was reported in The
Washington Post on April 10, on the basis of internal military
documents seen by that newspaper.
What do these revelations tell us about the arguments of President
George W. Bush and Prime Minister Blair that in Al Qaeda the "Free
World" faces a threat comparable to that of the Soviet Union and Nazi
Germany, a world-wide terrorist network which seeks to build a radical
Islamist empire over half the world?
That they are threadbare, to say the least. But also that they are
cynical, misleading and self serving.
The London bombings, it turns out, were the work of four alienated
British Muslims, with no links to "international terrorist networks",
who had learned how to make bombs by trawling the Internet. They had
been radicalized and motivated, according to the report, by British
foreign policies in the Muslim world—a view Tony Blair has
consistently sought to undermine and discredit.
The role of the alleged "Al Qaeda mastermind in Iraq," Abu Musab Al
Zarqawi, we are now told, was cynically misrepresented and exaggerated
by the U.S. military's propaganda units in an effort to discredit and
divide the Iraqi insurgency and to provide a retrospective
justification for the Iraq war by suggesting a link between Iraq and
9/11.
Wherever in the world Al Qaeda crops up, its appearance has often been
uncannily convenient for the local authorities—dictators, warlords,
occupation forces and elected governments alike. And often the precise
nature of the Al Qaeda connection turns out, on close examination, to
be tenuous or non-existent. But by that time the message has gone out
and sunk in: "Al Qaeda was here".
It's almost certain that as the United States ratchets up the pressure
on Iran in the coming months the non-issue of Tehran 's "links" with
Al Qaeda will come to the fore. In fact the groundwork is already
being laid. Blair, no less, said ominously in a speech last month that
although "the conventional view is that Iran is hostile to Al Qaeda:
we know from our own history of conflict that, under the pressure of
battle, alliances shift and change." So as the confrontation with Iran
builds, watch out for leaked reports from anonymous security officials
about dastardly Iranian-Al Qaeda conspiracies.
Stripped of exaggeration, romanticism, demonization and myth making,
the picture of Al Qaeda which has emerged from the trial in the United
States of Zacarias Moussaoui is of a fractious organisation that has
been a magnet for bewildered martyrdom-seeking fantasists. At least
this has a ring of truth to it.
This is not to say that Al Qaeda is not dangerous. It is a serious
security challenge. It may even one day be a strategic threat,
especially if it gets hold of some WMD. But it is not the threat Bush
and Blair tell us it is.
The recent revelations of the non-existent role of Al Qaeda in the
London bombings and of the Pentagon's deliberate exaggeration of Al
Qaeda's role in Iraq reinforce the argument that in their response to
the threat of Al Qaeda (the so called "war on terror," or "Long War"),
the United States and its allies are making strategic errors of
monumental proportions.
First, this war, as it is being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not
principally fighting "Al Qaeda" but is creating and fighting new
enemies: people who don't like being invaded, occupied and kicked
around by foreigners and who are prepared to stand up and resist.
These people may eventually become terrorists. But it will have been
U.S. policies that created them. If Iran is next on the Pentagon's
list, the same thing will happen there. To the extent that Israel is
seen by the United States as pursuing its own war on terror in the
Palestinian territories it occupies, it is happening in Gaza and the
West Bank too.
Second, the Long War is a distraction from the real issues which need
to be addressed as a matter of urgency in order to reduce conflict,
violence and injustice in the region and thus to reduce the
radicalization of a generation of angry and alienated Muslim youth at
home and in the diasporas. These include: ending the Israeli
occupation of occupied Palestinian territories through negotiation;
pursuing peaceful nuclear reduction throughout the region; and
engaging seriously with political Islam. Talk of "democratization"
without engaging with political Islam is nonsense.
Third, on the grounds that it is fighting a "just war," the United
States and its allies have justified using levels of violence,
coercion and repression—including torture, collective punishment and
the killing of large numbers of civilians—which are not only of
questionable tactical efficacy, but have led to a collapse of U.S.
prestige in a part of the world where it has long been seen as a
necessary protector, stabilizer and arbiter.
The fact that there was no operational link between the London bombers
and Al Qaeda shows that its real danger lies in its ability to inspire
terrorist attacks. In this it has no better allies and collaborators
at present than the United States and Britain under their current
leaders.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: The Al Qaeda Myth |
13 Apr 2006 05:23:34 PM |
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No no wrong just because some folk like to live by fear, does not mean
that there is not a movement to unseat the Hegemon, and just because
they have enemies does not mean they cannot change the rules from time
to time.
LB
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