Must read Asia Times story on Bush and Al Queda

[route_66]

Here's a link and excerpt to a must read article out today in the Asia Times. I find it to be a comprehensive and thoughtful outside view of the current dynamics of Bush's War on Terror. Of course, this went to press before today's NY Times expose on the Afghan prisoners.
In a nutshell, The U.S. is in deep shit.

The US's gift to al-Qaeda
By Pepe Escobar

Al-Qaeda and all the other components of the Salafi-jihadi (or Islamist) front are on the verge of scoring a major double blow. Unlike September 11, now their fight not only is being recognized by top Islamic scholars as legitimate, but they have also managed to capitalize on major blunders in the "war on terror" to strengthen the anti-imperialist, anti-US impulse among global, moderate Muslims. How did that happen?

http://tinyurl.com/agsyh

[atommom]

1. Very interesting. It's too bad we can't get this sort of depth from U.S.

media...

[whistle]

2. This is an interesting part of the article....

...at the third from the last paragraph:

<snip>
As for the non-stop car bombings, the document says that "some conceal a bomb in the trunk of a car while they search it in a check point and then detonate it at a distance in the right place and time, or they target certain cars by helicopter gunships so it would look like there was a person who detonated a car bomb".
<end>

The article goes on to say that: "...Whether any of these claims are verifiable or true is beside the point. The point is that they are written and widely broadcast in Arabic, and they stick."

That means that the U.S. presence and obviously the actions that must be taken as occupiers feeds the Al Queda propaganda engine to where any incident whether real or contrived fans and fuels the Muslim hatred for the U.S. at the deepest level within each and every Muslim. The BushCo policy of might makes right, is ultimately going to fail, because there are simply more of them then there are of us .

Thanks for the article

[murielkane]

3. Intriguing but murky

It sounds as though the people running things on the Islamic side don't really understand what they're after any more than we in the West do. Perhaps their problem is that they're casting things in terms of Islam vs. the West, where the real issues involve coming to terms with the modern world.

Perhaps the most encouraging part of the article is that events seem to be pushing them beyond the unsuccessful Western-style nationalism of Saddam Hussain or Yasser Arafat and into new categories of thought and action. Since it is clearly impossible to have long-term global stability without the Islamic world getting its act together and ceasing to be a hotbed of hurt feelings and resentment, this can only be a good thing.

[teryang]

4. Confusing "terrorism" and war of national liberation

Iraq and islamist terrorism never had anything to do with each other.

Now that Iraq is a free fire zone, acts of terrorism are confused with what went before.

While I don't believe that the US Army stages contrived car bombings, the history of American and Israeli intelligence services and politically expedient bombings and assassinations does not inspire confidence. The anarchy in Iraq provides a wealth of opportunities for those of the cynical (neo-con) persuasion to do "social and political engineering" either directly or through proxies. This is exactly the type of thing that neo-cons as Rheinhard Heydrich clones feel most competent.

There is a strong likelihood that the al qaeda phenomenon is little more than a product of strategic collusion among the the intelligence services of the axis of evil, America, Israel, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. There is actually, from an intelligence perspective, quite a bit of evidence for this. This sort of operation or group doesn't exist without state intelligence service support. This was taken for granted during the anti Russian campaign in Afghanistan, suggested by evidence in the Balkan wars but is somehow blasphemy when it is suggested concerning 911 and the putative "war on terror."