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How To Stop Bin Laden
The World Needs Justice, Not More Terror
By Justice Not Vengeance
07/07/05 "JNV"
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EXPLAINING
AL QAEDA—THE WRONG ANSWERS
Five days after the 11 September attacks, President
Bush said that Osama bin Laden was ‘the prime suspect’. He
added, ‘Now, I want to remind the American people that the prime
suspect’s organization is in a lot of countries—it’s a
widespread organization based upon one thing: terrorizing. They
can't stand freedom; they hate what America stands for.’
Addressing
Congress on 20 Sept. 2001, President Bush said, ‘Al Qaeda is
to terror what the mafia is to crime. But its goal is not making
money; its goal is remaking the world—and imposing its radical
beliefs on people everywhere.’ He added, ‘Americans are
asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in
this chamber—a democratically elected government. Their leaders
are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms—our freedom of
religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble
and disagree with each other.’
Prime Minister
Blair told the House of Commons
on 14 Sept. 2001 that Parliament had been specially recalled
because ‘these attacks were not just attacks upon people and
buildings; nor even merely upon the USA; these were attacks on the
basic democratic values in which we all believe so passionately
and on the civilised world’.
EXPLAINING
AL QAEDA—THE REAL ANSWERS
The US Government’s official ‘9/11 Commission’ reported that
bin Laden’s grievance with the United States ‘started in
reaction to specific US policies’. Bin Laden and his group
‘say that America had attacked Islam... Americans are blamed
when Israelis fight with Palestinians, when Russians fight with
Chechens, when Indians fight with Kashmiri Muslims, and when the
Philippine government fights ethnic Muslims in its southern
islands.’
The US is also ‘held responsible for the
governments of Muslim countries, derided by al Qaeda as “your
agents”. Such charges, says the Commission, ‘found a ready
audience among millions of Arabs and Muslims angry at the United
States because of issues ranging from Iraq to Palestine to
America’s support for their countries’ repressive rulers.’
(The 9/11 Commission Report, New York: Norton & Co, 2004, p.
51)
WHAT THE
CIA’S BIN LADEN EXPERT SAYS
The Commission’s analysis may have drawn on the writings of
Michael Scheuer, who served in the CIA for 22 years, and who
headed the CIA Counter-Terrorism Centre’s bin Laden task force
(1996–1999). Scheuer, who retired in Nov. 2004, wrote two recent
books as ‘Anonymous’: Through Our Enemies’ Eyes and Imperial
Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror. (He was unmasked
in the Boston
Phoenix.)
Scheuer contests the view put forward by
George W. Bush and Tony Blair: ‘We in the United States and the
West make a mistake when we argue, as has [New York Times
columnist] Thomas L. Friedman, that bin Laden’s attacks are
“not aimed at reversing any specific U.S. foreign policy,” or,
as Steve Simon and Daniel Benjamin did in Survival in early 2002,
that bin Laden has “no discrete set of negotiatiable political
demands”.’ (Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, p. 256)
Scheuer argues that Osama bin Laden has
‘clear, focused, limited and widely popular foreign policy
goals’, including:
‘the end of
U.S. aid to Israel and the ultimate elimination of that
state;
the removal of
U.S. and Western forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim
lands;
the end of U.S.
support for the oppression of Muslims by Russia, China, and India;
the end of U.S.
protection for repressive, apostate regimes in Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, et cetera; and
the conservation
of the Muslim world’s energy resources and their sale at higher
prices.’
Scheuer observes that, ‘Bin
Laden is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward
the Islamic world, not necessarily to destroy America, much less
its freedoms and liberties. He is a practical warrior, not
an apocalyptic terrorist in search of Armageddon.’ (Imperial
Hubris, p. xviii)
Scheuer wrote, while still a serving CIA
officer, ‘Bin Laden has been
precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us.
None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty
and democracy, but have everything to do with U.S. policies and
actions in the Muslim world.’ (Imperial Hubris, p. x,
emphasis added)
Scheuer goes further, arguing that ‘the
United States, and its policies and actions, are bin Laden’s
only indispensable allies’. (Imperial Hubris, p. xi)
WHAT CAN
WE DO?
The 9/11 Commission also asked the question, ‘What can we do to
stop these attacks?’ It suggested that, while bin Laden’s
campaign had begun in reaction to US policies, ‘it quickly
became far deeper’: ‘To the second question of what America
could do, al Qaeda’s answer was that America should abandon the
Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and
godlessness of its culture... If the United States did not comply,
it would be at war with the Islamic nation’. (The 9/11
Commission Report, pp. 50-51)
The Commission produced no evidence that al
Qaeda had such a maximalist programme. Michael Scheuer vigorously
disputes this view, drawing a distinction between ‘the things a
Muslim would find offensive’, and things which a Muslim might
regard as an attack on Islam or on Muslims. ‘Part of bin
Laden’s genius is that he recognized early on the difference
between those issues Muslims find offensive about America and the
West, and those they find intolerable and life threatening.’
(Imperial Hubris, p. 10)
Jason Burke, Chief Reporter for the London
Observer, points out in his book Al-Qaeda, ‘While bin Laden’s
discourse may be based on an interpretation of Islamic history, his
power is derived from playing on the current social, economic and
political problems of the Muslim world.’ (Al-Qaeda,
Penguin, 2004, p. 25)
In the case of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, bin Laden and other non-Afghan Muslims ‘went there
to fight the Red Army not because
the Soviets were atheists and communists’ but because
of their brutal invasion. (Imperial Hubris, p. 10) After
the invasion was reversed, the mujahideen did not continue
armed action against the atheist and anti-Islamic Soviet Union.
When the grievance ended, so did the mujahideen war.
Scheuer, as already pointed out, argues
that Osama bin Laden has ‘clear, focused, [and] limited’
foreign policy goals. The goal is
not the establishment of an Islamic fundamentalist state in the
US, whatever the 9/11 Commission asserts, but deep change in US
foreign policy.
WHAT
WOULD MAKE AL QAEDA STOP?
After 11 September, bin Laden said, ‘Just as they are killing
us, we have to kill them so there will be a balance of terror...
We will do as they do. If they kill our women and innocent people,
we will kill their women and innocent people until they stop.’
(Cited in Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, p. 247, emphasis added)
Intervening in the closing days of the 2004
presidential election, bin Laden told the American people, ‘Your
security does not lie in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or al-Qaeda.
Your security is in your own hands. Each and every state that does
not tamper with our security will have automatically assured its
own security.’ (BBC
translation)
This statement was translated by CNN
as, ‘Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked.’
‘Us’ is meant to refer to the community of Muslim nations and
populations, and ‘attack’ has a broad meaning, as former CIA
official Michael Scheuer explains.
Writing before the invasion of Iraq,
Scheuer commented: ‘How will [al Qaeda] recognise victory? Easy,
by forcing drastic changes in U.S. foreign policy... when U.S. and
British forces evacuate Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arabian
peninsula; when the United States has terminated all aid to
Israel; and when the U.S. and UN embargoes on Iraq are lifted.’
(These achievements, bin Laden believes, ‘will lead inevitably
to destruction of Israel and what bin Laden has called the regimes
of “hypocrites” in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and
elsewhere.’) (Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, p. 256)
To these goals, one might add the ending of
the US-UK occupation of Iraq and presence in Afghanistan.
LEGITIMATE
GRIEVANCES
Underlying these demands are legitimate grievances against the
West: Western support for Israeli oppression of the Palestinians;
the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan; the brutal sanctions imposed
on Iraq (now lifted); and US-UK support for dictatorial regimes in
the Middle East. These are immoral policies which should be
reversed because they are wrong. So is the policy of ignoring—or
supporting—oppression in Chechnya and elsewhere.
It so happens that reversing these immoral policies would drain
most if not all of the hatred which fuels al Qaeda. This is how we
can stop bin Laden. War, retaliation and violence simply adds to
his appeal.
PUNISHMENT
OR SURVIVAL
The governments of Britain and the United States can pursue the
path of punishment and preventive violence, or they can seek to
bring this wave of terrorism to an end. Bringing al Qaeda-style
terrorism to an end means, above all, reducing the motivation that
exists to carry out terrorism. This does not mean ‘negotiating
with terrorists’ or ‘capitulating to their demands’, but
seeking justice and human rights for all, including the peoples of
Palestine and Iraq.
The answer to terrorism is justice, not
more terrorism. London and Washington must also stop practising
the terrorism of the powerful—invasion, occupation, and indirect
terrorism via oppressive states. We should recognise that in much
of the world the U.S. is regarded as a leading terrorist state,
and with good reason.’ Noam Chomsky (Chomsky, 9/11, Seven
Stories, 2001, p. 23)
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