Living so deep within the imperial web, behind so many layers of propaganda and paranoia, it is difficult to comprehend that there is somewhere still opposition to the power structure. The tendency on the left is, in dismissing the War on Terror, to minimize the targets of the ongoing Western military operations. The causes and cures of the conflict, in traditionally British/American shopkeeper fashion is to reduce the conflict to a bread riot, to be obviated by a distribution of third rate flour into the emaciated hands of the teeming colonials. On the right meanwhile, the war is of course presented as a struggle between good and evil.
But there are ways to cut through to another layer of reality. Youtube, for example. Look into the faces of the resistance. Listen to its defiant voice. Walk in their footsteps. And then ask, who are they and why are they?
I am using Youtube out of all the available points of immediate contact with the other side, because it is most visual and probably ends up putting us on t he lowest priority NSA monitoring track than viewing actual jihadist sites. Most of these Youtube videos are made by amateurs, not by the official propaganda arms of al Qaeda, Taliban or any other of the more developed mujahed organizations. To a Western observer, the techniques, imagery and audio seem crude, unpersuasive, primitive. The swagger appears misplaced, the willingness to die disturbing, the methods brutal and inhuman, and this reaction is normal when a human being views militarism in its full bloom, without the benefit of the conditioning provided by a lifetime of absorbed propaganda which habituates people to violence committed by their own society and state.
However, before we dismiss them as the products of an inferior culture, we should compare it to the torrent of similarly illeterate, fawning and even more homoerotic tributes from the American public which belie any claim that Western civilization is somehow above such blatant militaristic hero worship and deionization of the enemy. It should be noted that the militaristic porn videos, starring US soldiers in action set to rock ballads outnumber pro-Islamist videos by great numbers, undermining any claim that there is something in Islamic culture that worships war, while the Western civilization is a peace loving one. In fact, when you look at the numbers, out of the billion plus Muslims on the planet, only a few tens of thousands at most have become voluntary participants in the current round of wars, most of whom are fighting in defense of their immediate homelands, while out of 300 million Americans, over 1 million is currently voluntarily engaged in the wars, fighting them far from home. Both numerically and proportionally, Americans remain the most aggressive and militaristic culture on Earth, while continuing to implausibly maintain their self image as defenders of peace.
The American militarist tributes tend to add little new information, usually remixing old news footage. Videos made by the other side, however, cut immediately through the deliberate fog of Western propaganda, by showing us both the face of the war and the faces of our enemies. Probably the most startling footage every provided by the enemy was the release by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia of the "Baghdad Sniper Juba" tapes of a few years ago. Al Qaeda puts out a lot of material in English aimed at the Western public, which aids its propaganda's dissemination and impact. It is difficult for an American to watch Americans being killed or wounded, even in a war of aggression and occupation. The insurgents justified their actions by claiming the right of vengeance for the killings perpetrated by American forces. The Juba sniper videos have obtained global cult status, particularly in multiplayer shooter games which are so popular now around the world, and Youtube contains a plethora of tribute and American parody videos.
The jihadist movement is not new. Following the collapse of Arab nationalism and modernism as forces for self determination and independence in the Muslim world, nationalist insurgencies gave way to religious ones. This trend was initially welcomed by the West, because unlike nationalist movements, which were often socialist in tone and practice, religious movements could be counted on to be as virulently anti-communist as the Western side of the Cold War could desire. In this there is a parallel between the rise of Islamic militancy and German Nazism, both movements received key initial support by portraying themselves as a bulwark against communism, and then turned their guns on the major imperialist force of the world, Western liberal capitalism, as soon as they felt strong enough. There still exist numerous videos made by American journalists filled with admiration for Afghan mujahedin when they were fighting the Soviets. These fighters were the spiritual and often the physical fathers of the modern mujahedin, who hold essentially the same views on religion and nationalism. However, there are few voices in the West still willing to view these fighters as heroes now that their guns have been turned on the American empire.
One could get lost in the video scream coming from the jihad, and this diary cannot even attempt to present a small sliver of them. Whatever the reader's views on the war and the relative virtues of the participants, I encourage you to devote a few minutes to surfing this stream, looking into the eyes of the men who lay down their lives desperately fighting our countrymen. Watching the unprotected mujahedin, toting decade old rifles and vintage RPGs into battle with the top military machine in the world, into an unequal fight in which the ratio hovers above 10 to 1 mujahedin killed for every American even wounded, dying by the hundreds in the fields and mountains while their American counterparts are med-evacced immediately to the world’s best hospitals for treatment, it is impossible not to come away with a grudging respect for their bravery, even if one remains baffled by their ideology and fanaticism, and repulsed by the methods they employ in their desperate struggle.