Al-Qaeda Gloats over 9/11
A new videotape surfaced on Aljazeera Thursday showing Usamah Bin Laden with Ramzi Bin al-Shibh [al-Shibihah], Wa'il al-Ghamdi and other 9/11 hijackers. Bin Laden is shown urging followers to pray frequently for these martyrs, as a way of accelerating the progress of their own souls.
The tape is a way of celebrating the fifth year anniversary of the monstrous September 11 attacks, and tries to parlay Muslim resentments against US policies into support for al-Qaeda, which has declined and fallen on hard times in recent years.
They play the old suicide tape of al-Ghamdi, which complains about the treatment of Muslims in Chechnya, Kashmir, the Philippines, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
It is to weep. The US helped save the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo. Al-Ghamdi did not know that. Does anyone, over there? Why is the US so bad in getting out the word of the positive things it has done for the Muslim world? Doesn't anybody care?
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/08/2006 12:34:00 AM
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Juan asks: "Why is the US so bad in getting out the word of the positive things it has done for the Muslim world?"
Because its motives are impure. It does nothing for the Muslim world that does not profit itself, and it has done nothing for the Muslim world that will not lead to its profit.
It will not leave Muslims to themselves to decide their own fate. That's why the US cannot get its word out.
In fact, the US has done virtually nothing positive in the Muslim world. It always seeks to aid its own multinational corporations in that region.
The US depends upon American military muscle to aid its corporations. It has no interest, whatsoever, in aiding unreactionary Muslims in their quest for democracy and moderation.
If that's not the case, then why the hell did we invade Iraq and create a civil war there?
"It is to weep. The US helped save the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo. Al-Ghamdi did not know that. Does anyone, over there? Why is the US so bad in getting out the word of the positive things it has done for the Muslim world? Doesn't anybody care?"
No, they are too busy lining their pockets, but for this, and a part in the upcoming psyco-drama at the Hague (title and date TBA), they might learn to regret not caring.
The tape is a way of celebrating the fifth year anniversary of the monstrous September 11 attacks, and tries to parlay Muslim resentments against US policies into support for al-Qaeda, which has declined and fallen on hard times in recent years.
Seems to me like there is some other group trying to use the anniversary of Sept. 11th as a way of building support for an organization that has fallen on hard times in recent years...Hmmmm.
The US helped save the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo.
The US could not have cared less about the Moslems of Kosovo or Bosnia. They were used as a pretext to dismantle Yugoslavia. I suspect Germany (and the US, of course) has scored a double whammy: now that they've empowered the Balkan Moslems, there's a ready repository of "islamo-fascist" close to home, next time you need a reason to "save" somebody in the region.
Anger over US policy generally hasn't translated into support for Al Qaeda, thank God. Sure, they tried to connect it, as you showed in the past. OBL tried to act like his group is the only means to stop Bush's aggression, and Bush said "you're either with us or with the terrorists." Fortunately, the world views both as crazy and not exactly polar opposites; you can condemn one and not necessarily support the other.
Intervening in Bosnia and Kosovo, while exceedingly good deeds which made many Muslims supportive of America, is seen as old news. Clinton did it, as well as the Oslo peace agreements, and when Bush came in he steered the country in a whole different direction; wars and Guantanamo.
To quote an article by Thomas Friedman: "Husain Haqqani, a thoughtful Pakistani scholar now teaching at Boston University, remarked to me: "When people like myself say American values must be emulated and America is a bastion of freedom, we get Guantánamo Bay thrown in our faces. When we talk about the America of Jefferson and Hamilton, people back home say to us: 'That is not the America we are dealing with. We are dealing with the America of imprisonment without trial.' ""
On another note, the media is reporting the video shows older footage of OBL meeting with the hijackers. Quite a change from his denials in 2001 that he was involved in 9/11, to his admission in 2004 that he planned it, to his citing of the 80's invasion of Lebanon as inspiration for 9/11, eh?
Prof. Cole, while I do not currently have it with me, in Gen. Wesley Clark's autobiography he quite openly states that the point of intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo was not so much in response to the ethnic cleansing and additional human rights violations themselves (otherwise the treatment of minorities within the borders of a full NATO member, Turkey, would be an issue) as to restore faith in NATO's ability to act decisively against a country that was flouting its will. They needed to drop some bombs to maintain credibility, and apparently they did little more than that, since the pace of killing and forced relocation did not abate with the NATO bombing campaign, and the humanitarian situation in Kosovo remains bad to this day.
Looking for good deeds from an immense concentration of economic and military power such as the United States isn't so simple.
Please, use some rationality here. First, sweeping generalisations as these proposed previously, are facially untrue, a sign of logical lassitude, and often advanced by individuals who place a higher valuation upon their personal point of view than the truth. What corporate interests were aided in the War Upon Serbia, other than bomb manufacturers?
Why would people believe that there are deep underlying and near identical reasons for why Clinton chose to intervene in the Balkins, and what compelled Bush to wage War Upon Iraq? How could thoughtful analysis of the two conflicts find a high degree in commonality between them.?
NATO exhibited strong sensitivity to collateral damages in the bombing of Serbia, to the extent that it seriously degraded the air campaign's capacity to achieve NATO's goals, while at the same time increasing the personal risk to NATO pilots.
["
"NATO pilots were forced to drop millions of dollars of ordnance in the Adriatic and on open countryside because they could not find their targets or engage them properly due to bad weather and the aerial rules of engagement (ROE) imposed by politicians. (The planes could not land with the unexpended ordnance on board.) Since the ROE were imposed by politicians, this means that politicians affected information superiority, too.
[. . .]
As Lieutenant General Michael C. Short, NATO's air operations chief, noted, 'NATO placed its own air crews at increased risk by taking certain steps to reduce civilian casualties, such as bombing bridges only on week nights between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.--a regular schedule that made NATO planes more vulnerable to antiaircraft fire.'
Additionally, Serbia exploited the strict rules of engagement to protect or move certain target sets. This further limited the effectiveness of NATO's information technology. For example, NATO aerial ROE stated that pilots could fire only on visual recognition, diminishing the value of targets obtained by other methods.
Timothy L. Thomas, "Kosovo and the Current Myth of Information Superiority", Parameters, Spring 2000, pp. 13-29.
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Serbia wasn't Shock and Awe, and it Damn Sure wasn't Fallujah.
The Serbian conflict occurred at the very end of Clinton's Presidency, and his effectiveness had been largely gutted in the Lewinski scandal. He was forced to expend a great deal of the small amount of political capital he possessed on the hill to garner enough support for the war. The original cause for war on Serbia remained inflexible throughout the engagement, and is still proffered as the to this day, to put an end to the ethniccleansing; and this has stayed immutable.
GW Bush squandered his abundance of political capital charitably handed to him in sympathy after 911, by pressing for a needless war upon Iraq, basing it on grossly exaggerated reports, which themselves had originated from biased sourcing. The Chalabi led Iraq expatriates would drop off deceitful data at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, headed by Douglas Feith, and staffed by Michael Rubin, Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode.
In one year the primary cause for war upon Iraq was downplayed. On the eve of war, Bush claimed there could be no doubt that Hussein possessed and was in the process of manufacturing one of the world's largest stockpiles of WMDs. By June, Bush was claiming that everybody in the world had believed Hussein had possessed WMDs, and he was sure they'd be found in a manner of time. By his 2004 State of the Union Address, Bush's certainty of Iraq WMDs had been seriously degraded down to nil, and Bush's rationalisations for the war sounded like a brutal parody of himself:
["
Some in this chamber, and in our country, did not support the liberation of Iraq. Objections to war often come from principled motives. But let us be candid about the consequences of leaving Saddam in power. We are seeking all the facts already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day. Had we failed to act, Security Council resolutions on Iraq would have been revealed as empty threats, weakening the United Nations and encouraging defiance by dictators around the world. Iraq's torture chambers would still be filled with victims terrified and innocent."
"]
"Dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities"? During the Clinton era, the right-side of the political linearity called this 'Aspirin Factories", and 'Baby Formula Manufacturing Plants'. Haven't Conservatives been claiming for many long years that UN Security Council resolutions were empty threats? Why the sudden worry?
Use the scales of justice; on one side place an ineffectual UN Security Council issuing girlyboyish threats without substance, and on the other place the War Upon Iraq, fomented with false claims, and the cause of uncounted deaths. Tell me, which way does the balance lean?
I am not tryuing to justify th eWar on Serbia. I believe
the reaction was far too long in the making, and that other methods short of war could very well have been ,ore effective, without causing as many needless deaths.
There is very little in the way of honest comparisoms between Clinton's action in Serbia, and GW Bush's War on Iraq, other than both seem to believe that liberty can be coerced upon a people via a rifle muzzle's end, and that America has some sort of manifest destiny to engage in this irrational behaviour.
kenneth turner
The US helped save the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo. Al-Ghamdi did not know that. Does anyone, over there? Why is the US so bad in getting out the word of the positive things it has done for the Muslim world? Doesn't anybody care?
Also, it was the Clinton Administration that did that. Anything Clinton did, even if it would help the Bush Administration, is dead to Bush and friends.
"The US could not have cared less about the Moslems of Kosovo or Bosnia. They were used as a pretext to dismantle Yugoslavia. I suspect Germany (and the US, of course) has scored a double whammy: now that they've empowered the Balkan Moslems, there's a ready repository of "islamo-fascist" close to home, next time you need a reason to "save" somebody in the region."
Funny you say that, considering the fact that the Balkan version of Islam is far from the intolerance espoused by Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia.
Another scare-tactic used by Serb lovers to justify the ethnic cleansing against the Muslims in the Balkans.
FYI, many Balkan Muslims are extremely grateful for what the U.S. has done.
Doesn't anybody care ?
I have been reading your blog for a couple of years at least, and I am surprised at this question. I understand (I think) the intent behind it, but honestly ...
"why should anyone who is a Muslim in the Middle East or elsewhere care by now ? Hasn't enough unjustified absurd horror been visited on them by now ? Why would anyone even raise that ? It was carried out under a different administration, under an arguably different (and growing more different by the day) ideology. And the current ideology would lead anyone whio is Muslim to consider that any previous support would have been an aberration, or just a chess move at the best."
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