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-Caveat Lector-
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_jun23.html
June 23, 2002
Anti-U.S. militants showing up all over
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor
ZURICH -- According to a secret government report revealed last week
by the New York Times, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan not
only "failed to diminish the threat to the United States," but
actually complicated the U.S. counter-terrorism campaign by
dispersing its radical foes across the Muslim world.
The small, tightly-knit leadership of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida has
been succeeded by a group of younger militants who have formed ad hoc
alliances with other anti-U.S. groups from Morocco to Indonesia.
These groups now pose the most serious danger to the United States
and will remain a potent threat for years to come.
This dismaying report confirms what this writer has been saying in
columns and on CNN since 9/11. A full-scale military invasion of
Afghanistan would prove futile; the correct response was intelligence
and police work, not brute force.
Al-Qaida's numbers were grossly exaggerated by the Bush
administration and U.S. media. Hardcore al-Qaida members never
numbered more than 200-300. Claims that there were 5,000-20,000 al-
Qaida fighters in Afghanistan were nonsense. These wild exaggerations
came from lumping Taliban tribal warriors with some 5,000 Islamic
resistance fighters from Kashmir, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the
Philippines and Chinese-ruled Eastern Turkistan, none of whom were
part of al-Qaida.
The reason 12,000 U.S., British and Canadian troops operating in
Afghanistan can't find al-Qaida - a campaign that has so far cost
over US$10 billion - is that there were few to begin with; by now,
most have slipped away through Pakistan. Instead, the U.S. is getting
mired in Afghan tribal politics by trying to maintain a regime in
Kabul that will take orders from Washington.
Last week's much ballyhooed grand tribal council, or loya jirga,
that "elected" CIA "asset" Hamid Karzai as national leader was a
wildly expensive charade conducted under the guns of U.S. and British
troops. Karzai's "election" has cost Washington $5 billion in bribes
and payoffs to Afghan warlords. As soon as U.S. and British
occupation troops decamp, Afghanistan will again dissolve into tribal
chaos or fall under the control of Russia, which continues to arm and
direct the Northern Alliance.
Fury over Palestine
It's also becoming painfully clear that Afghanistan was never the
true epicentre of anti-U.S. militancy, as Washington initially
believed. The real hotbeds of Islamic resistance to the United States
lay in Egypt, Arabia, North Africa and Europe. According to the
leaked report in the Times, a loose network of anti-American groups
have surfaced in these regions, united mainly by their fury over
events in Palestine, America's impending invasion of Iraq, and
opposition to America's political and economic domination in the
Muslim World.
Osama bin Laden, be he dead or alive, and his al-Qaida movement have
become irrelevant. In truth, they were never much more than a symbol
of hatred and defiance. But their message, propagated by 9/11, has
reverberated around the world. The torch of anti-Americanism is being
taken up by the "jihadi" movement - Muslim veterans of the war
against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s - and by a
younger generation of militants.
Sizeable numbers of anti-American militants have been uncovered in
Europe and arrested by local police and intelligence forces, the only
major success, to date, of the "war on terrorism." But more hostile
groups are springing up faster than they can be identified or
neutralized.
Call this the privatization of warfare. Many young Muslims despair
their own feeble, corrupt, U.S.-dominated regimes will ever bring
justice to the Palestinians, save Iraq from invasion by the U.S., or
end what they view as oppressive American influence over their
nations. They are taking matters into their own hands by waging a
personalized war against the United States and Israel, two nations
that have become one in the eyes of the Muslim world.
Forty years ago, the Islamic world regarded the United States as its
best friend and saviour. Today, the two are on a collision course.
There is growing fear across the Muslim world that the Bush
administration is being driven by backers of Israel and
fundamentalist Christians into a modern anti-Islamic crusade.
Powell sidelined
The leaked report in the Times likely originated from Colin Powell's
Department of State. Powell is widely respected abroad as the
administration's most intelligent and ethical member, but he has been
almost totally sidelined because of his opposition to invading Iraq
and waging a wider war against the Muslim world. Foreign policy -
particularly towards the Mideast and South/Central Asia - has been
taken over by a hardline, ardently pro-Israel faction in the Pentagon
and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Powell may soon resign
in disgust.
President Bush's National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, should
provide balance and nuance. But she has shown herself a rigid
ideologue with poor judgment and very limited understanding of the
outside world. She is in way over her head. Bush is not getting the
sound advice he needs. As a result, he has been vacillating and
contradicting himself for months.
Afghanistan, billed only last fall as a triumph for America and
President Bush, is now looking less and less like a victory and more
each day like the beginning of a long, bloody struggle that could and
should have been avoided.
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DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
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