The War on "Drugs". The War on "Poverty". The War on "Terror".
How about a War on "Machiavellian Politics"?
Let's take a look around for minute... and try to clearly define the "enemy". Utilizing sources that you won't find in Big Media, that is, not in American Big Media.
The American people have been seriously misled about the origins of the Al Qaeda movement blamed for the 9/11 attacks, just as they have been seriously misled about the reasons for America's invasion of Iraq.
The truth is that for at least two decades the United States has engaged in energetic covert programs to secure U.S. control over the Persian Gulf, and also to open up Central Asia for development by U.S. oil companies. Americans were eager to gain access to the petroleum reserves of the Caspian Basin, which at that time were still estimated to be "the largest known reserves of unexploited fuel in the planet."
To this end, time after time, U.S. covert operations in the region have used so-called "Arab Afghan" warriors as assets, the jihadis whom we loosely link with the name and leadership of al Qaeda. In country after country these "Arab Afghans" have been involved in trafficking Afghan heroin.
America's sponsorship of drug-trafficking Muslim warriors, including those now in Al Qaeda, dates back to the Afghan War of 1979-89, sponsored in part by the CIA's links to the drug-laundering Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). It was part of CIA Director Casey's strategy for launching covert operations over and above those approved and financed by a Democratic-controlled Congress.(1)
So just what is Al Qaeda?
Is Al Qaeda the super-duper terrorist organization we have been led to believe, or upon closer inspection does it visibly morph under scrutiny?
There is no doubt that there are organizations which can be characterized as Islamic fundamentalists, and which utilize terror as a tactic. However, when these organizations seem to crop up where geostrategic imperative is a priority; a pattern begins to emerge.
In the BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares", film-maker Adam Curtis presents us with a parallel account of the rise of Neoconservatism and Al Qaeda.(2) The Neoconservative cabal is shown to have a history of distorting reality, Team B was re-hashing intelligence data and coming up with different answers long before Saddam's WMDs were a gleam on Lorie Mylorie's word-processor screen.(3) Under Reagan, the "external threat" was the USSR. Despite reports from the CIA saying that the USSR's military capability was floundering, Team B found a way to make it seem like Papa Stalin was back from the dead on steroids, and also made it seem like the Soviets had found a way to develop undetectable attack and defense systems, that were all the more real because they couldn't be seen.
In other words, just because you can't find any evidence of those Super-Secret Soviet weapons systems, it doesn't mean they aren't right there, poised to kill you. Move up to 2003, and there's the same crew, Rumsfeld as front-man again, scaring the be-jeezus out of the non-believers. Just because we can find absolutely no evidence of active weapon programs, (never mind WMDs), in Iraq, doesn't mean they weren't poised to kill all of us.(4)
With the end of the Cold War came the end of the Red Menace, and with that, the end of an unparalleled cycle of profit for the loose affiliation known as the "Military-Industrial Complex", so aptly named by President Eisenhower.
For the Neoconservatives, this also meant the end of their favorite enemy. Neoconservatism is a dialectical synthesis which cannot function without a thesis and antithesis to set in play. Once it was "Democracy v. Communism", now, it's "Democracy v. Radical Islam". It shouldn't suprise anyone that ex-Trotskyists would employ a Hegelian tactic to enact their agenda.
What might suprise you, and should cause you concern, is the further synthesis of Hegelian dialectic and straight-up black coffee Fascism.
Neoconservative foreign policy centers on a fear of world government and the international institutions that might lead to it, most notably the United Nations. A rejection of multilateralism, and, as they say, above all, the ability to distinguish friends from enemies.
Neoconservatives are wont to describe this particular ability to distinguish friends from enemies to Thucydides but it belongs to Carl Schmitt, often called, `the Crown Jurist' of the Third Reich.
Schmitt regarded the distinction between friend and enemy as the foundation of politics, and along with this he argued that sovereignty came not from the people but from the decision, that is to say, the capacity of the ruler to decide matters. And that that arbitrary power was the foundation for sovereignty.
These ideas came to neoconservatism both directly through Carl Schmitt and through Leo Strauss who has taught many of the most prominent neoconservatives in the present administration and indeed in neoconservative think-tanks throughout the city, and indeed, throughout the country.(5)
Who could possibly make a better enemy than Al Qaeda? Let's face it, Osama is the David Lee Roth of terrorism, and Al Qaeda is on the "Monsters of Terror" tour of the World.
In the book, "NATO's Secret Armies", Swiss researcher Dr. Daniele Ganser proposes another paradigm to place terrorist acts within. This paradigm involved "staybehind" networks established by NATO to fight an insurgent war against a Soviet occupation.(6)
He proposes that throughout Western Europe, this staybehind apparatus which was a blend of military and intelligence assets, became entangled in a "strategy of tension" which involved acts of terrorism that were blamed on Leftist extremists, but were covertly conducted by intelligence assets who wanted to encourage a tilt to the Right in the overall political orientation of a particular country. Blending in with these assets are former Nazis and other Right-wing extremists who were more than happy to see a militarist reaction to supposed Leftist agression.
Italy was a fever-spot for this activity, and googling "Operation Gladio" will net you hours and hours of reading on this subject. This writer can't help but wonder, was the train bombing in Milan a modern-day example of the "strategy of tension"? If it was, it certainly backfired.
What is slowly emerging from Al Qaeda activities in Central Asia in the 1990s is the extent to which they involved both American oil companies and the U.S. government. By now we know that the U.S.-protected movements of al Qaeda terrorists into regions like Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Kosovo have served the interests of U.S. oil companies. In many cases they have also provided pretexts or opportunities for a U.S. military commitment and even troops to follow...
In one former Soviet Republic, Azerbaijan, Arab Afghan jihadis clearly assisted this effort of U.S. oil companies to penetrate the region. In 1991, Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn, three veterans of U.S. operations in Laos, and later of Oliver North's operations with the Contras, turned up in Baku under the cover of an oil company, MEGA Oil. This was at a time when the first Bush administration had expressed its support for an oil pipeline stretching from Azerbaijan across the Caucasus to Turkey. MEGA never did find oil, but did contribute materially to the removal of Azerbaijan from the sphere of post-Soviet Russian influence.(7)
Now we have Zarqawi in Iraq. How convenient. Simultaneously destabilizing Iraq and legitimizing a previously non-existent Iraq-Al Qaeda connection. The Scarlet Pimpernel Zarqawi, always one step ahead of death, gallantly fighting the Empire!
So, what is Al Qaeda?
I don't know, but I encourage you to follow these leads to try and find out. The writings of Peter Dale Scott are a great first step, and the recent work of Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed is top-notch collating of public domain material that shatters pre-conceived notions in our current media atmosphere of constant-spin.
FOOTNOTES
1. Peter Dale Scott, "9/11 in Historical Perspective: Flawed Assumptions - Deep Politics: Drugs, Oil, Covert Operations and Terrorism, A briefing for Congressional staff".
http://www.globalresearch.ca/...
(This is testimony provided during Cynthia McKinney's Congressional Briefing, "The 9/11 Commission Report One Year Later. A Citizen's Response - Did the Commission Get It Right?"
http://www.dailykos.com/...
2. Adam Curtis, "The Power of Nightmares".
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/...
3. Jeff Stein, " Bush team sought to snuff CIA doubts - Differences over Iraq WMD latest attempt to override agency".
http://www.sfgate.com/...
4. Adam Curtis, "The Power of Nightmares".
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/...
5. Anne Norton, testimony from McKinney's briefing.
http://www.gnn.tv/...
6. Three Monkeys Online, " N.A.T.O. Gladio, and the strategy of tension."
http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/...
7. Peter Dale Scott, "Al Qaeda and the U.S. Establishment".
http://www.gnn.tv/...
FURTHER REFERENCE
Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, Subverting "Terrorism".
http://reprehensor.gnn.tv/...
(This speech is the inspiration for this blog entry.)