UPDATE 2: From Issandr El Amrani at The Arabist:

The radical-theological option that Bin Laden represented as a solution to the state of the Arab world has long been discredited. It was discredited before it even began, in that it was a result of the failure of the violent Islamist movements of the 1970s-1990s era. Also discredited, or at least on the ropes, are the pro-US reformist option of the moderate Arab regimes. Moderate, in the way Saudi Arabia or Mubarak's Egypt was, and reformist, because they are interested in changing to survive, not making a radical break. But the people spoke and they don't want reform, they want rupture.

UPDATE 1: From the Angry Arab, As'ad Abukhalil:

But what is not yet acknowledged here in the US is that Bin Laden is a product of horrific US policies in the Cold War: of their alliance with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The people in Pakistan and Afghanistan would be relieved today: not because they hated Bin Laden (many do sympathize with him only to spite the US), but because scores of Afghans and Pakistanis have been killed over the years during the campaign to get and kill Bin Laden. Remember that time in late 2001 when the US incinerated a convoy there because a tall dark man was seen getting into one of the cars. The US intelligence analyst on the scene assumed that there were no tall people other Bin Laden. But the factors that produced Bin Laden and Al-Qa`idah are still there: the US is still very tempted to arm and fund fanatical groups if they think it is politically convenient for US national security interests. Look at that lousy Libyan Transitional Council: there are fanatics in the ranks and I assume that we will hear from some of them, especially once they declare the victory of their holy cause.

INITIAL POST: Osama Bin Laden is dead, and I am not particularly interested in whether it happened yesterday or was merely announced yesterday. After all, there are many who believe that he has been dead for years. Instead, I am more interested in how the public announcement of his death reveals, yet again, an inability by Americans to seize upon opportunities to reflect upon the interrelationship between violence and US policy.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I expressed the hope, however misguided, that Americans, having experienced such traumatic acts of violence, would now empathize with many others around the world who have suffered similarly. For example, the 9/11 attacks took place on the same day in 1973 that the Chilean military, with the support of the US, forcibly removed President Salvador Allende from power and subsequently killed thousands of Chileans. Shortly thereafter, Chile, along with other US backed dictatorships in the region, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Peru, launched Operation Condor, a covert intelligence operation with the express purpose of exterminating the left in the southern cone of South America. With the support of the CIA, these countries killed, at minimum, 40,000 people and incarcerated 200,000 others. In other words, the destabilization of Chile by Nixon and Kissinger and subsequent military coup by Pinochet were preconditions for a more ambitious effort to erase the left in much of South America. The coincidence that both 9/11 and the Chilean coup occurred on the same date could have served to provoke Americans to reflect upon the horrible consequences of the infliction of such violence for political purposes. Beyond South America, we could have understood the horrible suffering that resulted from US military and covert operations all over the world.

We could have taken responsibility for our actions even as we grieved over those who died on 9/11, and strove to induce other countries to resolve political disputes non-violently. But this would have required Americans to relate to 9/11 as an act of violence, as opposed to an act of nihilistic resistance to American hegemony, and identify with others who have experienced such violence as well, regardless of their nationality, religion and political ideology. Unfortunately, most Americans responded vengefully, villifying those around the world who objected to the militaristic response to the attacks and the exploitation of them to extend the reach of US imperial influence. Invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq followed, and, to this day, despite the lack of any significant al-Qaeda presence in either country, US troops remain, as Bush and Obama have discovered new enemies to justify their presence. Needless to say, the death and destruction associated with these occupations far exceeds that related to 9/11. Sadly, in Iraq, the US has relied upon the same kind of death squad activity that was such a prominent feature of Operation Condor, as well as covert operations in Vietnam, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. And, under Obama, the US has expanded its military and covert operations in Pakistan, Yemen and Libya.

In this, Bin Laden succeeded in his one of his primary objectives, to reduce much of the relationship between the US and the countries of the Middle East and Central Asia to one of military violence or the threat of it. But, as Baudrillard predicted, this effort to overcome the vulnerability revealed by the 9/11 attacks merely increased the perception of US weakness. US troops are mired in conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan without any prospects for success by any recognizable standard, other than the perpetuation of conflict indefinitely. To the extent that people are euphoric over Bin Laden's death, this is a measure of the permanence of his achievement. Paradoxically, though, one of the consequences has been an eruption of more secular, more inclusive activism throughout North Africa and the Middle East, an eruption in which al-Qaeda has been conspicuously absent. Hence, Americans are celebrating success in a struggle that has already been rendered largely irrelevant.

Bin Laden often expressed his belief that this objective would lead to the attainment of another, more serious one, the economic decline of the US, a decline so pronounced that it would no longer be capable of imposing its will upon other countries. Here, the record is mixed. Admittedly, countries in Asia and South America have a freedom of maneuver that they did not possess prior to 9/11. About seven months later, in April 2002, Hugo Chavez survived a coup supported by the US, signalling to the rest of South America that the door was now open to the emergence of center-left governments. It is still uncertain, however, as to whether US economic influence is been impaired globally. The US, with the assistance of Germany and the United Kingdom, has successfully imposed a program of extreme austerity upon Europe, marked by the evisceration of historic social welfare programs, as a means of addressing the severe global recession of 2008 and 2009.

Meanwhile, within the US, the ongoing war on terror serves to ring fence spending on the military and the intelligence services, despite substantial budget deficits, thus empowering those who aspire to eliminate the remaining vestiges of social protection initiated during the New Deal and the Great Society. At this time, it would be more accurate to say that Bin Laden indirectly participated in the creation of circumstances that have made it possible to reconfigure the global economy in ways even more amenable to finance capital. It is tempting to say that Bin Laden lacked a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between the US and global capital, but this is doubtful. Rather, it is more likely that he considered the aggressive neoliberalism of recent years as compatible with his social philosophy and beneficial to the future of al-Qaeda. In this, there is a perverse, unacknowledged alliance between al-Qaeda, neoliberals and neoconsevatives, as all three groups are in agreement about the urgency associated with the need to marginalize and impoverish workers even if it is in the service of strikingly different visions of the future.

Labels: "War on Terror", Al Qaeda, American Empire, Barack Obama, Chile, Hugo Chavez, Neoliberalism, Obituaries, Osama Bin Laden, South America, Venezuela

Remember the Bush administration official who told Ron Susskind that we make our own reality? In the faith based presidency, facts were worse than irrelevant, they were an impediment to be brushed aside in a messianic effort to reshape the world.

But, as the senior advisor told Susskind, the Bush administration did more than just disregard facts and reasoned analysis, they actively sought to manufacture a new truth in the absence of any evidentiary support for it. And, as we now know, the means that they used to do so were odious:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.

So, of course, the interrogators just did what they were told, even though they knew that if they broke the will of the detainees, and got them to affirm a connection between Hussein and Bin Laden, it was false. Furthermore, such a gross lie, analogous to the propaganda disseminated by Goebbels to justify the annexation of the Sudetenland and the invasion of Poland, would have been used to create public support for an even more violent and aggressive militarism. And, yet, they pushed harder.

Meanwhile, in Congress, they didn't want to know. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Better to have a vague sense of what was happening, and avoid any responsibility to take action. That's now the official version that people like Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have adopted as the best of bad alternatives to explain their passivity.

But that's apparently another attempt to make their own reality:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

In the first years following 9/11, the sadomasochistic allure of torture was such that nearly everyone in DC was seduced by it. According to Human Rights Watch, Rumsfeld personally participated in the torture of a purported al-Qaeda detainee at Guantanamo in 2002 and 2003. Members of Congress were transfixed by the raw exercise of such brutality, and willingly entered into a relationship of servility with the Bush administration.

As an aside, there is one last note. The McClatchy article quoted above implies that only high value targets, an apparent euphemism for important al-Qaeda operatives, were subjected to harsh interrogation practices. We know, however, that this implication is erroneous, an attempt to deceive the public into believing that US officials resorted to torture in an infrequent and calculated way. We need only be reminded of the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo generally, and Binyam Mohammed and Maher Arar more specifically, to see through this manipulation.

Labels: "War on Terror", Al Qaeda, American Empire, Bush, Democrats, Guantanamo, Rumsfeld, Sadomasochism

Al-Qaida is no longer the problem, Americans engaging in civil disobedience are. So are people with video cameras who intend to record the actions of the police. Mass arrests and raids upon residences and convergence centers are required. Please report any suspicious behaviour to the Department of Homeland Security.

Labels: "War on Terror", Activism, Al Qaeda, American Empire, Anarchism, Police, Republicans

Perhaps, many of you have already encountered it, but I thought that posting an excerpt from this excellent Democracy Now! interview of Tariq Ali about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto might be informative:

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go now to Britain to Tariq Ali, the British Pakistani historian, activist, commentator, one of the editors of the New Left Review, author of more than a dozen books, was recently back in Pakistan, where he was born. Tariq, talk about your response on Thursday when you heard the news, and talk about why Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan.

TARIQ ALI: Well, Amy, my first reaction was anger. I was livid that Bush and his acolytes in Britain had fixed this deal, pushing her to do a deal with Musharraf, forcing her to play a role, which, of course, she agreed to do—it has to be admitted—in Pakistan, which she was not capable of playing. She made some extremely injudicious remarks, saying that she would go back, she was the only person who could deal with terrorism, etc., etc. The fact was that this was not the case.

And, you know, to—I wrote at the time that it is a big, big problem when you try and arrange a political marriage between two parties who loathe each other. And so, Musharraf very rapidly, after her return, embarrassed her by instituting a state of emergency. And she then didn’t know whether to defend the state of emergency; finally, she attacked it. So the whole situation was a complete mess.

And now, everyone in Pakistan knows that an election organized in this fashion, under the leadership of a guy who’s become a master at rigging elections, is not going to achieve anything. So Benazir was advised by close advisers, including one of the central leaders of her party, Aitzaz Ahsan, who is still in prison, by the way, saying we must not participate in this election, it’s totally fake and rigged, it should be boycotted. She refused to accept that, because Washington insisted that she participate in this election, and she was torn in her loyalties. And finally, she, a woman of great physical courage, lacked the political courage to defy Washington. And I have to say this, it’s cost her her life. Had she decided to boycott the election, this would not have happened.

And for Washington to send her to Pakistan, reassuring her that she would be safe, is shocking. At the very least, if they were insistent on doing this, they could have provided her with a Marine guard like Karzai gets in Kabul. But, you know, they depended on the locals to guard her, and they obviously couldn’t do it. So she’s now dead. And it’s a tragedy. It’s a personal tragedy for her and her family. And it sort of has begun, embarked on a new crisis for Pakistan, which is going to get worse.

I mean, I think Musharraf’s days are numbered. I don’t think he will be, even if he has this fake election in a week or ten days’ time, which Bush is forcing him to do—I mean, I cannot understand, for the life of me, how the President of the United States can be so isolated and remote from reality as to insist that an election goes ahead when one of the central political leaders in the country, backed by Washington, has just been assassinated. I mean, what the hell are they going to achieve from this election? Nothing. It will not give legitimacy to anyone. It will create possibly, very rapidly afterwards, a new crisis, and then they will have to have a new military leader stepping in.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Tariq Ali, a British Pakistani historian, activist, commentator; also Manan Ahmed, historian of modern Pakistan and South Asian Islam. This is Democracy Now! We’re talking about Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan for the hour. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: For our radio listeners, you can go to our website to see the video images that we show throughout the broadcast today on Pakistan. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez. Our guests are Manan Ahmed, historian of modern Pakistan and South Asian Islam, as well as Tariq Ali, British Pakistani historian, activist and commentator, one of the editors of the New Left Review. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, I’d like to ask Tariq Ali, I was struck by your counter-posing the physical courage of Benazir Bhutto with some of the lack of political courage. And this is something that you’ve remarked in many of your articles in the past, including interviews you had with her. I remember one article where you talked about a 1988 interview, I think it was, that you had with her when she was prime minister and how she was hemmed in by the political forces in Pakistan, but would not publicly tell her supporters what was going on. Could you talk about that in this sort of—this trend throughout her leadership of this lack of political courage.

TARIQ ALI: Well, Juan, this is absolutely right, and it’s been her tragedy and the country’s tragedy. When she came to power, elected for the first time, it is absolutely true she was hemmed in by the military on one side and an old rogue of a bureaucrat who had been made president on the other.

And she told me very openly, “I can’t do anything.” And I said to her at the time in Prime Minister’s house in Islamabad, “I understand that, but there are two things you have to do. One, you have to make it very clear to the people publicly that this is the reason I can’t deliver my promises on land reform, on health, on education. They won’t let me do anything. This is why I can’t make any readjustments in foreign policy. They have imposed their own foreign minister, Yacoub, on me, who insists we carry on as before,” etc. etc. She didn’t do that.

And I think by this time she had become a very different person politically from what she had been earlier and had decided that she didn’t want to be on the wrong side of history, so to speak. She more or less said that to me. And she realized or she thought that the only way to survive in this world was basically to do the bidding of the army at home and Washington abroad, two institutions which had led to the—which had basically bumped off her dad in 1979 and which were not going to do her any favors.

AMY GOODMAN: Tariq, explain that, how her father died and who was involved in his assassination, in his execution.

TARIQ ALI: Her father was probably the most popular politician in Pakistan, pledging massive social reforms. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had been elected in the 1970 elections, had won a large majority in the country that we now know as Pakistan and had been elected on a very radical platform. He came to power.

He implemented some of his reforms, not all, became extremely autocratic, clashed with the United States on a number of issues, including Pakistan’s right to have nuclear weapons. Henry Kissinger warned him in private that if you do not desist on the nuclear issue, we will make a terrible example out of you. That’s what Bhutto wrote from his death cell. The United States organized a military coup d’etat. General Zia-ul-Haq took power in 1977, organized a trial against Bhutto, charging him with an absurd charge of murdering someone. The judges were pressured, and they found him guilty, and Bhutto was hanged in April 1979. It could not have happened without US support and approval, because Zia was a nobody, and Washington clearly green-lighted the murder.

And Bhutto, from his death cell, wrote a very moving document called “If I Am Assassinated,” in which he said there are two hegemonies—these are his words. He said, “There are two hegemonies that dominate our country. One is an internal hegemony, and the other is an external hegemony. And unless we challenge the external hegemony, we will never be able to deal with the internal one,” meaning Washington is the external hegemony and the army is the internal one. And this is a problem which still haunts Pakistan and which, I have to say, has now created this new crisis.

And unfortunately, his daughter decided to collaborate with both of these hegemonies. One has to say this. Her second period in office was a total disaster, because not only did she do nothing for the poor or her natural constituency, but basically it became an extremely corrupt government, and she and her husband accumulated $1.5 billion through corruption. This is well known to everyone.

Now, when the United States decided they wanted to put her back in there, they told her, we are going to whitewash you so clean no one will even know. And this is what the global media and networks have been doing. Look, I knew her well. I’m very upset that she’s dead. But the piety being displayed on the global media networks is beyond belief. You know, it’s as if there’s no past, no history in this country or its politicians.

Manan Ahmed, a historian of Pakistan and Islam in South Asia participates in this interview as well. Well worth reading in its entirety.

Labels: "War on Terror", Al Qaeda, American Empire, Neoliberalism, Pakistan, Tariq Ali

She returned to Pakistan, triangulating her way between the demands of the US and the political necessity of appearing to challenge Musharraf while negotiating a power sharing arrangement with him. She marketed herself to the US as someone willing to more ruthlessly prosecute the "war on terror" and intensify the imposition of neoliberal economic policies. She hoped to recover power for herself and her family through the dismissal of charges that would hold them accountable for their notorious corruption. Much of the global media will now describe her as courageous, but she was, quite simply, merely a fool for believing that she could successfully navigate the violent currents of Pakistani politics in such a contrived, self-serving way. Would she still be alive if she had attempted to shatter the elitism of the Pakistani political system by appealing directly to the populace as a figure of radical reform? It is, of course, an impossible question to answer, but one thing is certain, the democratization of Pakistan is vehemently opposed in equal measure by both the US and her al-Qaeda assassins.

Labels: "War on Terror", Al Qaeda, American Empire, Neoliberalism, Pakistan

It goes unreported, however, except in the peripheral, left media, that Bhutto is completely discredited as a political figure in Pakistan, and, hence, incapable of contributing to the future stability of the country, as observed by Tariq Ali in this recent Democracy NOW! interview:

AMY GOODMAN: And how did Benazir Bhutto, his daughter, rise to power?

TARIQ ALI: Benazir Bhutto was, in those days, not very political, but her father's martyrdom, so to speak, brought her into politics. I remember talking to her when her father was prime minister of Pakistan, and she would say to me, “Oh, you know, he’s putting me under pressure to come into politics. I don’t want to be a politician. I want to be a diplomat. I want to be in the foreign office.” But once her father was killed by the army, she and her mother were very courageous. They took the military on. They were locked up. They were in and out of prison. So her role at that time was very honorable.

The big problems began when she -- after General Zia was blown up in a plane with the US ambassador, there were elections again, and Benazir won. But she was unable to do anything the first time. And the second time she came to power, her government was incredibly corrupt, and the military then, when Musharraf came to power, charged her with corruption. The evidence is there; it’s irrefutable. And as part of the deal now, this corruption is being ignored, which is making people incredibly cynical. . . . . .

AMY GOODMAN: Right now, the situation in Pakistan, where does Bush's allegiance lie, and what could you see happening?

TARIQ ALI: Well, I think Bush’s allegiance lies to the military ruler of Pakistan. They’ve made that very clear. They’ve given him $10 billion. Every time the Pakistani military goes in and carries out actions on the Afghan border, they send an invoice directly to Centcom in Florida, which pays them directly. So all these actions are being paid for by the United States, which is well known in Pakistan and is well known here, as well. So the United States is totally tied into the military leader. And the cosmetic changes they're proposing by this arranged marriage, a marriage arranged by the State Department between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, a political marriage, I don’t think is going to work. It is creating mayhem within her own party. And there’s nothing she can do, because she’s quite a discredited politician.

AMY GOODMAN: In what way?

TARIQ ALI: In the way that she’s -- everyone knows that she and her husband went in power incredibly corrupt. The evidence is there. And in a country where the ordinary people are already alienated from the political process, to inflict this on them isn’t going to improve matters.

It is hard to imagine how this transparent manipulation of the Pakistani political system by the US, Musharraf and Bhutto is going to accomplish anything other than further empowering al-Qaeda and its allies within Inter-Services Intelligence.

Labels: "War on Terror", Al Qaeda, American Empire, Pakistan

Seumas Milne has published an important article about the nature of the Iraqi resistance to the US occupation:

"We are the only resistance movement in modern history that has received no help or support from any other country," Omary declares. "The reason is that we are fighting America." The 1920 Revolution Brigades spokesman is an articulate and sophisticated operator, who - if he survives the counterinsurgency and sectarian onslaught - clearly has the potential to become an influential voice in a future Iraq. "Our position is that there are two kinds of people in Iraq: not Sunni and Shia, Kurdish and Arab, Muslim and Christian, but those who are with the occupation and those who are against it." Anyone who takes part in the institutions set up by the occupation, such as the government and parliament, army or police, are regarded as collaborators. "Our organisation began its operations in the first days after the invasion and wherever you find the occupation, you will find us: from Mosul, Baghdad and Samarra to Basra, Hillah and Kirkuk," continues Omary. "Our group has also carried out attacks on British forces in Basra." They are not a Sunni sectarian organisation, he insists: "The military leader of the Brigades is a Kurd. Iraq is for all Iraqis and we only distinguish between those who cooperate with the occupation and those who do not. If my brother cooperates with the occupation, I will kill him - but the innocent must not be touched."

What makes Iraqis join the resistance? "Many people come to the resistance because of their Islamic background, some because of what has happened to their relatives at the hands of the occupation armies," says Zubeidy. "American forces have committed very big crimes against the Iraqi people. All Iraqis hate the foreign forces and won't forget what they have done. Generally, British forces have acted as a helper to the US and the British government shares the blame for everything that happened to Iraq. But their actions are seen as having been less cruel than the Americans."

At the heart of the new insurgent alliance is a rejection of the murderous sectarianism that has come to grip Iraq - and the role of al-Qaida in particular. Most striking is the case of Zubeidy, whose hardline salafist (purist Islamic) group Ansar al-Sunna recently split in half over the issue (his faction is now called the Legitimate Committee of Ansar al-Sunna - Goure says such splits are endemic in the resistance movement). "We wanted to unite with other resistance forces, but the other group is moving closer to al-Qaida and refused. Al-Qaida has brought benefits and problems," Zubeidy says. "They attack the US occupiers. But every day the problems they bring become greater than the benefits.

"Resistance isn't just about killing Americans without any aims or goals," he continues. "Our people have come to hate al-Qaida, which gives the impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are terrorists. Suicide bombing is not the best way to fight because it kills innocent civilians. We are against indiscriminate killing - fighting should be concentrated only on the enemy. They [al-Qaida] believe that all Shia are kuffar [unbelievers] - and most of the Sunnis as well." They estimate that al-Qaida now carries out between a fifth and a third of all attacks in Iraq.

But they say that it is necessary for the Sunni-based groups to ally with the Shia. "Even though that is not easy," says Zubeidy. "A great gap has opened up between Sunni and Shia under the occupation and al-Qaida has contributed to that - as have the US and Iran. Most of al-Qaida's members are Iraqis but its leaders are mostly foreigners. The Americans magnify their role, even though they are responsible for a minority of resistance operations - remember that the Americans brought al-Qaida to Iraq."

If US troops remain in Iraq because of the threat of al-Qaeda, then the US can work with these people, and, according to some news accounts, has already done so. If the US also remains in Iraq in order to achieve the imperial aims of permanently stationing troops there, while exploiting the country's oil resources on terms favorable to transnationals, then, the violence will persist, if not intensify.

Meanwhile, Moqtada al-Sadr continues to reach out to the Sunni resistance in order to create a coalition that will render the occupation untenable:

Nationalist Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's bid to unite Sunnis and Shiites on the basis of a common demand for withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces, reported last weekend by the Washington Post's Sudarsan Raghavan, seems likely to get a positive response from Sunni armed resistance.

An account given Pentagon officials by a military officer recently returned from Iraq suggests that Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province, who have generally reflected the views of the Sunni armed resistance there, are open to working with Sadr.

A commander of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Abu Aja Naemi, confirmed to Raghavan that his organization had been in discussions with Sadr's representatives.

According to Raghavan's report on May 20, talks between Sadr's representatives and Sunni leaders, including leaders of Sunni armed resistance factions, first began in April.

Sadr's aides say he was encouraged to launch the new cross-sectarian initiative by the increasingly violent opposition from nationalist Sunni insurgents to the jihadists aligned with al Qaeda. One of his top aides, Ahmed Shaibani, recalled that the George W. Bush administration was arguing that a timetable was unacceptable because of the danger of al Qaeda taking advantage of a withdrawal. Shaibani told Raghavan that sectarian peace could be advanced if both Sadr's Mahdi Army and Sunni insurgent groups could unite to weaken al Qaeda.

Let's sit down for a moment and allow our heads to clear, shall we? While American citizens receive vague warnings about the possibility of domestic terror attacks perpetrated by a purportedly reinvigorated al-Qaeda, it turns out that indigenous Shia and Sunni resistance groups are already independently engaged in armed conflict with it! Furthermore, they are initiating dialogue about how they can work together to become even more effective in eradicating the al-Qaeda presence.

Indeed, according to the National Intelligence Estimate, the Shia and Sunni resistance are striking al-Qaeda in one of its strongholds that could faciliate a domestic terror attack:

We assess that al-Qa’ida will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the Homeland through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups. Of note, we assess that al-Qa’ida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland. In addition, we assess that its association with AQI helps al-Qa’ida to energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources, and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks.

No doubt, the leaders of the Shia and Sunni resistance will soon be receiving counterterrorism grants from the Department of Homeland Security. It will, however, be necessary for them to strictly account for the expenditures of all funds to ensure that the monies are not diverted to anti-occupation operations aimed at US forces. With some good legal and accounting advice, this should not be too difficult.

Labels: "War on Terror", Al Qaeda, Iraqi Resistance, Muqtada al-Sadr, Occupation of Iraq

About a week ago Glenn Greenwald posted a piece called "Everyone we fight in Iraq is now 'al-Qaida'", about the change in White House rhetoric such that Bush and his sock puppets currently insist on referring to the insurgents in Iraq as "al-Qaeda fighters" rather than as "insurgents". I had meant to flag the Greenwald post because I had noticed the same thing, and Greenwald had saved me the trouble of having to write about it.

Labeling everyone the US fights in Iraq as "al-Qaeda" is, of course, wildly inaccurate: it's common knowledge that foreign fighters are the smallest group of militants in Iraq, and even if that were not the case referring to foreign fighters as "al-Qaeda fighters" would still be deeply misleading.

As Greenwald and others have pointed out, this is a new development. Remember that whole almost year-long era of White House Frank-Talk-on-Iraq? -- when Bush would gamely characterize the largest group of insurgents as "Sunni rejectionists", i.e. ordinary Iraqis. In a post about Bush's State of the Union last year, for example, I was talking about the Frank-Talk-on-Iraq era when I wrote

The talking heads in the State of the Union postmortems seemed to be enchanted by Bush's distinction between the good war critics and the bad war critics; however, that whole line was boiler-plate from the nineteen thousand terrorists-rejectionists-and-Saddamists speeches he gave in the fall after his numbers dipped below forty.

Greenwald makes it pretty clear that this new direction in White House and Pentagon rhetoric is intentionally deceptive, and he discusses the extent to which the media is complicit in the deception.

Anyway, why am I bringing this up? -- check out this article from McClatchy Newspapers:

Facing eroding support for his Iraq policy, even among Republicans, President Bush on Thursday called al Qaida "the main enemy" in Iraq, an assertion rejected by his administration's senior intelligence analysts.

The reference, in a major speech at the Naval War College that referred to al Qaida at least 27 times, seemed calculated to use lingering outrage over the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to bolster support for the current buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq, despite evidence that sending more troops hasn't reduced the violence or sped Iraqi government action on key issues.[...]

U.S. military and intelligence officials, however, say that Iraqis with ties to al Qaida are only a small fraction of the threat to American troops. The group known as al Qaida in Iraq didn't exist before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, didn't pledge its loyalty to al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden until October 2004 and isn't controlled by bin Laden or his top aides.

You know, Glenn Greenwald is as close to mainstream media as you can get and still be a blogger -- actually, in a sense, he's not a blogger: he's a columnist for Salon -- so he's probably widely read among journalists. I don't think it's far-fetched to believe that the above is the result of the Greenwald post. One might imagine we'd see more newspaper articles like the above given that Bush's numbers have been in Nixon territory for as long as I can remember now, but what do I know.

Labels: Al Qaeda, Bush, propaganda, State of the Union

Today is one year after the London bombings, and Britons observed the grim anniversary by paying tribute to the victims:

At Edgware Road, where six innocent people died, the station manager organised a floral tribute of irises and carnations for the bereaved families.

Susannah Pall, 25, a City broker who was on the Circle line train which had a number of carriages destroyed in the blast, said she returned to the scene as part of the healing process.

Ms Pall, who has not travelled on the Underground since the bombings, said: "I've been building up to this day. I was going to stay away but decided to come.

"You've got to do these things. Until I do it, I can't move on - it's all part of the catharsis process."

At Aldgate, poems and messages of support were added to a burgeoning floral tribute outside neighbouring St Botolph church.

A book of condolence was placed on a lectern by the gates for passers-by and those affected by the tragedy to sign.

Carrie Taylor, a 24-year-old finance officer at the Royal Society of Arts, was killed in the blast. She came from Billericay in Essex.

A message from her relatives read: "Carrie, we will never forget you, rest in peace. Anne, Danny, May, Dave and David."

At Russell Square the station fell silent as transport staff, police officers and passengers remembered the 26 people who lost their lives on the Piccadilly line train last year.

Relatives and survivors who gathered outside the station tearfully hugged one another as they laid floral tributes to their loved ones.

But why was London a target of such gruesome violence? Anti-terrorism specialists have briefed Scotland Yard officers in a way that points to the inescapable truth:

After the London bombings, British counter-terrorism officials intensified their efforts to understand why some Muslims turned to violence. The document, which has been seen by the Guardian, is the product of that work, and was completed within the past three months before being distributed to senior officers across London. The document says in a headline introducing one section: "Foreign policy and Iraq; Iraq HAS [its emphasis] had a huge impact."

It continues: "Iraq is cited many times in interviews with detained extremists but it is over-simplistic to describe terrorism as the result of foreign policy. What western foreign policy does provide is justification for violence ..."

It says changing jihadist attitudes is a long term issue: "Whatever preventative measures are taken or discussed around the world, none are comprehensive and early results are not expected. Many jihadists do not feel that 'winning' is important because God will see to that eventually - what is important is 'taking part'."

The report says the removal of grievances the jihadists use to justify violence will take time: "What will change them - gradually - is argument, the removal of justifying causes (Palestine, Iraq), the erosion of perverted beliefs and day-to-day frustrations."

Of course, it is beyond the pale of acceptable discourse to state that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has so angered Muslims around the world that they are now willing to act violently against the perpetrators of them. It is, as the report states, oversimplistic, evading the fact that terrorism in Britain, prior to the invasion, was not the province of Muslims. Conversely, Davey D. of Hard Knock Radio had no difficulty finding people in the crowd along Edgeware Road, during the afternoon after the bombings, who recognized that the bombings were a direct response to the war in Iraq.

So, the authors of the report rely upon a fiction to convey the more disturbing truth about Iraq to its Scotland Yard audience: Jihadists are relying upon hostility towards the war and occupation of Iraq to justify violence that they have already decided to inflict upon us. No doubt there are hard core jihadists committed to taking violent action against the United States and Britain, regardless of what has transpired in Iraq, although even here, even in the case of al-Qaeda, it is highly dubious, if not erroneous, to disassociate such violent intentions from political motivations, as Pat Buchanan has correctly observed on a number of occasions.

Furthermore, this fiction leads to questions that lack credible answers. For example, if the threat of future terror attacks in London has palpaply increased, as asserted by Metropolitan Police Chief Ian Blair, how can this be possible if the people motivated to carry out such attacks had a predisposition to do so prior to the war in Iraq? It would seem that the only plausible response to this question is an absurd one, namely that Great Britain has a significant number of Muslims bent upon violence who lacked the fortitude to follow through upon their convictions until the British participated in the invasion of Iraq. It all sounds very much like the stereotypical view of Arabs promoted by Zionists and other supporters of Israel. Arabs are violent, yet cowardly, until prompted to inflict violence upon others as a juvenile emotional response to external events.

Last year, the people in the Edgeware Road crowd knew better. The bombers responded to our violence with their violence, and there is something culturally demeaning in a perspective, as implied by the authors of the report, that Americans and Britains use violence in a calculated way to achieve allegedly acceptable ends, but that Arabs and Muslims merely exploit current events to justify it. In other words, they, unlike us, lack the human qualities of anger, thought and commitment, and indeed, transformation, such that some may have concluded that they only way to confront the perpetrators of the war and occupation, in both Iraq and Palestine, is through violence.

A lamentable, tragic decision, to be sure, but no less so than the ones by Britain and the United States to invade and, apparently, permanently occupy Iraq, and the insistence of Israel to permanently colonize the West Bank and Gaza. And, of course, the dead in Gaza, Ramadi, Haditha, Jenin, Fallujah . . . they are just numbers, if reported at all, and if there have been flowers laid and tears shed, as they justifiably have been for the victims of 7/7/05, it has failed to capture our imagination.

Labels: "War on Terror", 7/7/05, Al Qaeda, Iraq War, Islam, Occupation of Iraq, Tony Blair

Last July, I reviewed Adam Curtis' striking BBC documentary, The Power of Nightmares, integrating cultural and political analysis. I described it as follows:

. . . Curtis radically reinterprets the political landscape: the "war on terror" is a fraud perpetrated by politicians who rely upon fear to disguise their lack of any optimistic, futuristic vision. He elaborates upon this insight in three one hour episodes, combined into a feature length film, Baby, It's Cold Outside, The Phantom Victory, and The Shadows in the Cave.

According to Curtis, American neoconservatism and Islamic fundamentalism represent competing, yet symbiotic, deformed ideologies based upon a shared contempt for the ability of people to govern themselves. They conspire, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, to induce people to believe in the effectiveness of the other to enhance their influence. The willingness of both to deceive the broader public results in them ultimately deceiving themselves, as they did in Afghanistan, with frequently catastrophic consequences for the rest of us.

Now, Information Clearing House reveals that The Power of Nightmares can again be downloaded over the Internet. Last word is that Sony Pictures Classics plans to release it as a feature film but, according to Curtis, it will be cut, so download it if you want to see it in its original, unedited form.

Curtis impressively interweaves political and psychological themes, as I noted back in July:

Curtis, like the neoconservatives and the Islamic fundamentalists, is fascinated by the question as to whether people have the capacity to conduct their lives independently, without the assistance of an elite to that controls them through the manipulation of their desires. In this respect, The Power of Nightmares is the logical sequel to his earlier film, The Century of the Self, a documentary that exposes the purported history of how Freudian psychology and modern advertising methods have impaired individual political free will. Curtis, unlike the neoconservatives and the Islamic fundamentalists who have responded negatively, evades answering this essential question, while paradoxically recognizing the susceptibility of people to such manipulation.

Curtis is thus an heir of the legacy of the great German and Hollywood film director, Fritz Lang. Lang, like Curtis, frequently referenced Freudian concepts in his films. In early ones like Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and M, all produced during the turbulence of the Weimar Republic, he understood that the social transformation associated with rapid urbanization, technological innovation and new forms of communication (in his case, film and radio), created new, alarming prospects for the exploitation of fear as a means of accomplishing political ends, especially in the form of hysterias incited by inflaming public anxiety.

Additionally, Wikipedia has a detailed entry about the film as well, with numerous links to articles, reviews and criticism. Quite by accident, my review was posted here four days before the London bombings on July 7, 2005. I subsequently wrote my perspective about this tragedy in a posted entitled, London 7.7.2005: Questions, Questions, The Power of Nightmares Revisited. Curtis himself addressed the subject in the Guardian:

Last year I made a series of documentaries for the BBC, The Power of Nightmares, which showed how a fantasy image of the "al-Qaida" organisation was created. The films told how the response to the shocking events of September 11 2001 swung out of control, and the threat became exaggerated to a dangerous level. Although there was a serious terrorist threat, the films criticised the apocalyptic vision of what lay behind it - the "nightmare" of a uniquely powerful network, unlike any previous terrorist danger and capable of overwhelming our society and our democracy.

The Power of Nightmares said bluntly that this was a fantasy. The real threat came not from a network, but from individuals and groups linked only by an idea. Our energies were going into fighting a phantom enemy. We were looking for a network that didn't exist when we should have been dealing with an idea that does.

The evidence we have of what lies behind the London bombings confirms that this was the real nature of the threat. It is fascinating to see how suddenly all the terror "experts" have changed their tune. For three years they told us breathlessly about a terrifying global network. Now, suddenly, it has gone away and been replaced by "an evil ideology" that inspires young, angry Muslim males in our own society.

It is good that we now all agree on the nature of the threat, but there remains a danger that the "idea" will be simplified, exaggerated and distorted just as the "network" was, and that in this mood of fear the government will bring in policies that will alienate young Muslims further and drive them towards dangerous extremism.

Sadly, The Power of Nightmares may become a timeless film for this century, if we insist upon repeating our mistakes.

Labels: "War on Terror", Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Film Notes, Islamic Fundamentalism

Over the past couple of months as it became increasingly clear that the neconservatives' big adventure had failed and that Iraq was becoming a dangerous bloody mess, Dick Cheney has made a habit of claiming there was a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist network despite the lack of credible evidence supporting this conclusion.

Months ago he would justify his pet claim by referring to the so-called "Feith memo", a leaked classified message from Douglas Feith to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The memo was hyped by The Weekly Standard as the last word on the Hussein-Laden connection but it never achieved the Standard's intended goal of rendering Dick's pet conspiracy theory a tenable position -- the memo was quickly and accurately characterized as another example of the sort propaganda that's been flowing out of Feith's office since the run-up to Bush's War, propaganda of the cherry-picked and exaggerated intelligence variety, as Daniel Benjamin wrote in Slate

At best, [the Feith memo] records expressions of various individuals' wish for a better relationship between the two sides--a desire that does not appear to have been consummated. ... There was a lot of seeking and wanting going on, and perhaps there were even meetings. But the fact that meetings occurred has never been the issue--at least not among serious critics--nor has it been disputed that some jihadists lived in or traveled through Iraq. ... What is disputed is that the meetings went anywhere. It would not be surprising to find out that the two sides had a de facto cease-fire, as has been alleged. But we're still waiting to see real cooperation in the form of transfers of weapons and other materiel, know-how, or funds

Even the Pentagon wouldn't stand by the Standard's spin and it released the following statement on the subject:

News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq ... are inaccurate. [The Feith memo] was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda and drew no conclusions.

But this didn't stop Cheney from standing by his favorite story; he just stopped trying to defend it by citing the discredited memo. After the 9/11 commission report concluded that "to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts [between Hussein and al Qaeda] ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship", Cheney began spinning furiously and really started making a fool out of himself. His reply to the above definitive statement made by the group that his own administration had authorized to investigate the matter was to simply ignore it, saying

[The 9/11 commission] did not spend a lot of time on these other issues. They've got one paragraph in the report that talks about that. And so the notion that you can take one paragraph from the 9/11 Commission and say, `Ah, therefore that says there was never a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda.' It's just wrong. It's not true. I'd love to go on on all of this stuff, but the fact of the matter is there clearly was a relationship there.

and Cheney is right, there was a relationship there: the two adversarial entities, Iraq and al Qaeda, had a few tentative meetings to decide whether to pursue a collaborative relationship and decided not to. Nothing more substantive is supported by the available intelligence -- of course, it is impossible to prove a negative assertion so Cheney's continued insistence that an operative connection existed is similar to insisting that elves exist because no one can prove that they don't.

But this whole little political circus took another turn today ... apparently back when Cheney first started telling his tall tale months ago, he asked the CIA to review the intelligence on the subject and produce a report, well the CIA has completed the requested investigation and, you guessed it,

The new assessment follow[ed] the independent Sept. 11 commission's finding that there was no "collaborative relationship" between the former Iraqi regime and bin Laden's terrorist network.

according to Knight-Ridder today. I haven't yet seen Cheney's response to the report, but based on his past behavior, his lack of shame in publicly maintaining a belief that simply is not corroborated by the available facts, I have no doubt that Cheney will continue to endorse his conspiracy theory.

Yesterday, however, as reported by the AFP, Rumsfeld jumped ship, stating

To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.

contradicting previous statements of his which situated him squarely as a drinker of the neoconservative Kool-Aid; for example, on 9/27/2002 Rumsfeld said

We have what we consider to be credible evidence that al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire weapons of mass destruction capabilities

But Rummy's political conversion didn't last long. After the above statement hit the press he attempted to back pedal issuing the following on the Pentagon's website claiming that his previous statement was "misunderstood":

I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between al Qaeda and Iraq ... Today at the Council, I even noted that 'when I'm in Washington, I pull out a piece of paper and say ``I don't know, because I'm not in that business, but I'll tell you what the CIA thinks'' and I read it'.

So maybe Rummy and Cheney can still be friends...

Labels: Al Qaeda, Cheney, Feith Memo