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Setting the Stage for the Next Jihad
In an episode of the TV series "The Next Jihad" a tall, spare terrorist in turban and flowing robes approaches the American journalist who is bound crouched on the sand before him, and spits out these words: "Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. Is it in any way rational to expect that after America has attacked us for more than half a century, that we will then leave her to live in security and peace?!!"
What? You haven't seen it? That may be because I just made it up - except for the words spoken by the terrorist. Those are from Bin Laden's "Letter to America" of November 2002.
Normally I watch very little TV - a few hours a month, at most. But over Christmas I had the opportunity to spend several evenings watching news shows, sit-coms, movies and commercials.. It struck me that the real world we live in is now reflecting TV programming far more than TV programs depict reality.
The attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day was quickly slotted into existing scripts and scenarios and adjusted skillfully accommodate new information.
There was a news "story" suggesting that Iran is trying to buy enriched uranium from Kazakhstan. Denials are in progress; and a document that "proves" the purchase has been denounced as an Israeli forgery. AP treats the story as true; AFP is doubtful. Stay tuned, this will be a big one, if they can sell it.
I noted that the Ticking Time Bomb Scenario has been replaced. The new script has Al Qaeda terrorists plotting evil in a village in a small Muslim nation - say Yemen. Should the US demand that the Yemeni government bomb the village and blow up the Bad Guys? Or do we have our own CIA take care of it? (I understand that the CIA has its own drones and missiles, and doesn't have to work through the generals at the Pentagon.) Does the US, does any nation or person, have the moral authority to order the assassination of persons suspected or accused of "evil"?
Steve Fournier, in his Current Invective web-site12/29/09 (www.currentinvective.com ) addresses that question: "If Barack Obama had no constitutional authority to order or request an attack on residents of Yemen, might he have had some moral authority to do so? He did win the Nobel peace prize, after all .... That prize says that all of the killing, all of the destruction, all of the displacement, all of the desecration in Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama, Yugoslavia and, yes, Vietnam, have been in the interest of peace and not motivated by hubris or arrogance or, God forbid, profit. Universally acknowledged as the world's only superpower, America has and will always have the moral authority to kill people, even children, in the interest of peace. Because we can, acting through our president, wield this awesome power, we must."
That sounds a lot like the premise of the TV series "24" in which some people must die or suffer in the cause of the greater good. The series supported the Bush administration's use of torture, promoting the idea that violence and torture were necessary in dealing with terrorists.
While those of us who are trying to make sense of a world by discussing, debating, doubting, examining our consciences and calculating the consequences of various courses of action in the real world, those with simpler Operating Systems based on TV scripts and plots that divide the real world into Us /Them, Good Guys/ Bad Guys pass us on the Right. Those with money and power devise made-for TV thrillers both factual and fictional that keep us glued to our TV sets, eating ourselves to obesity, and concluding that truth and justice in the real world are best served by following the plots dreamed up by scriptwriters, generals, or presidents.
Fournier continues: "An American official plots with a Yemeni official to launch missiles on civilians. ... In the interests of peace, they kill some bad guys, along with many other people. In reply, and to deter further attacks, a fanatic plots with a bombmaker to kill passengers on an airliner in Detroit. Is there a legal distinction between these two plots?"
I tend to view both as made-for-TV events, and, with Fournier, I see no legal distinction, and believe both bombers should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. "But," Fournier admits, "there is no case against the US president ... because he is acting on the moral authority of the American people and not on his own account, and this places him above the law. As for the Detroit bomber, why put him on trial at all? We would just be giving him a soapbox from which to spout accusations against us, moral exemplars in a dangerous world. Why not just string him up?"
It seems that Al Qaeda is succeeding at tempting the US to engage in violence that fuels resistance, resentment, revenge and Jihad all over the Islamic world.
"The Next Jihad" is already in the can. Watch for it.
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18 Comments so far
Show All"It seems that Al Qaeda is succeeding at tempting the US to engage in violence that fuels resistance, resentment, revenge and Jihad all over the Islamic world."
That statement is So true. It's why Bush lied us into Iraq. Occupy their holy lands and watch the extremists go nuts... The neocons needed something to replace the USSR as the evil empire. If the populace is fearful, then control is easy. They sat back and let them bring down the towers, and they had their new "axis of evil." And the media hyped the meagre threat to make it seem that our very existence was at stake.
In reality, the extremist are few and far between---the threat is miniscule. There was no Al Queda until we hyped them into existence.
And now Obama continues with the talk of "evil" in the world. He seems to have bought the lie complete. The violence he sows will only reap more extremists. He fights against our civil-liberties in the courts---taking the baton from Bush's cold hand, and running with it.
Change? I don't see it.
The forgery the author refers to has been around and disputed for many months now.
Basically it is supposed to me an Iranian internal memo which lacks all the stamps that such a memo always has inIran.
- Does the US, does any nation or person, have the moral authority to order the assassination of persons suspected or accused of "evil"? -
No. Of course not. But many people, and more all the time, have the power to do so.
Let me mention again the mechanism that drives this madness, because ignoring it has done us no good whatsoever.
Public Law 107-40 states that the US military must prevent future terrorism. The only way to do that is to kill innocent* people.
*they are innocent now, but potentially future terrorists (just like you and me).
The CIA never needed public Law 107-40. According to the article they operate their own drones and missiles independent of the Pentagon. Whether or not that is true they are known to be in Yemen and certainly capable of influencing disaffected Nigerians.
If the "attempted assasination" on flight 253 had been sucessful there would have been no narrative. So are we to believe Al Qaida are now as incompetent as the US intelligence agencies who did not revoke the visa or put the bomber on the no-fly list while the UK did?
While I believe that "Al-Quaeda" is a myth and the author falls into some of the propaganda traps, I do believe that the Empire's death and destruction is causing blowback. It is pretty simple really.
It is a nice feedback loop for the MIC: the US bombs, slaughters, maims and displaces millions of people, and when a few try and fight back, they point their fingers and say: "look, I told ya so, Al Kayder terrsts are attacking us" and the cycle continues...It is good for business baby!
Besides all that, one is about 15,000 times more likely to be killed by an american citizen, than by a so-caled terrorist. The old Soviet commie bogeyman has been replaced by the crazed islamic terrsts.
Pretty much my thoughts, too, socialist. I was about to pick out some of the author's misconceptions and conclude that however little TV she watches, it's still too much.
Spinning off on your comments, however, and on the writer's illusions, I'll be a little more creative.
Imagine the back-room, secret strategy sessions of ultrasecret black-op operatives of CIA, Mossad, and MI5-MI6.
The ash falls from the Israeli's cigarette and onto the gameboard, within the boundaries of a country unnamed. Wiping it away, he accidentally brushes aside a few toy soldiers in Arab garb.
"Hey, watch it there!" yells the CIA spook. "That's my Al-Qaeda you just moved!"
"Your Al-Qaeda?" the Israeli asks insinuatingly through eyes reduced to narrow slits. "Ha ha ha!"
"Oh, come off it, lads, we both know that's MY Al-Qaeda," says the MI6 man jovially, but with a hint of nervousness.
TO BE CONTINUED
let's remember that 44,000 Americans die each and every year becasue of no access the health care......while we are spending billions a month to fight an enemy that we ourselves created - all in the name of endless profits and empire building.....
such as halliburton selling gas to the american forces in afganistan for 400 per gallon!
damn I miss the 600 a month welfare queens!
until June 5 (the day reagan died)becomes a national holiday there is not going to be a turnaround for the USA......
"It struck me that the real world we live in is now reflecting TV programming far more than TV programs depict reality."
Obama is Howdy Doody, for those of you old enough to remember who he was. Don't like Howdy Doody? How about that all-time great dullard Ozzie Nelson? Mad magazine always used to depict Ozzie Nelson wearing Mickey Mouse ears. Obama, on the other hand, thinks he's Paladin from "Have Gun Will Travel". The suave, sophisticated, well educated gunfighter who lives in an expensive hotel in San Francisco, dresses in black, always has an exciting babe or two on his arm and can kill you quick if the scenario calls for it.
bligh4
The author (and the posters on this site) fall into the equally dangerous falacy that the west can somehow appease people like Bin Ladin into "we'll play nice, if you play nice".
Well folks, doesn't work that way. They aren't going to give up, not if we nuked Israel into the sea. We are not following their way of life, and that is enough for them to continue to spin out plots of destruction.
I don't follow. It seems you are repeating the CNN/Fox fairy-tale.
bin laden was our partner and on the payroll until 9-11...and the bin laden family has been business partners with the bush family for decades.. and you think he atacked us because he hates our freedoms?
no wonder the bush and obama admin can get away with anything they want when people fall for any story no matter how unreal.....
"It seems that Al Qaeda is succeeding at tempting the US to engage in violence that fuels resistance, resentment, revenge and Jihad all over the Islamic world."
Of course it is! Why do you think the CIA courted the Mujahadeen (the very same people who would become "Al Qaeda") in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s?
Those who REALLY run the United States (and that's NOT "you" and "me," in case you were wondering) WANT permanent war -- and they've ingeniously manufactured Al Qaeda as a means of getting it.
But don't worry... "Everything is under control." (Well, at least this is, anyway.)
What is truely amazing is after causing the deaths of almost a million Iraq's ( including sanctions) and the deaths of thousands of Afghans and hundreds of Pakistanis.
Not one Iraqi, Pakistani or Afghan has killed anyone on American soil.
"It seems that Al Qaeda is succeeding at tempting the US to engage in violence that fuels resistance, resentment, revenge and Jihad all over the Islamic world."
******************************************
Well, it's not like the US did not engage in violence that fuels resistance, resentment, revenge and Jihad (do you even know what the word means?) before 9/11.
The US has been engaged in slaughtering civilians for decades. In fact, if we are to stick to the facts and the historical record, then the US was actually FOUNDED on the slaughter of civilians. Back then the victims were "savages". In the 1960s, the victims were "Gooks". Now the victims are "Muslims".
So true! The same people who a hundred or so years ago were shooting Indian kids in the face point-blank under the rationale that "nits grow into lice" are the same ones who have no problem with killing a bunch of poor brown villagers in some distant land to get one Bad Guy.
I'm the son of a "savage" and a Muslim. It wasn't right then, how this country has treated us, and isn't right now.
Reading Fournier's facetious and ironic quotes is reminiscent of watching Carroll O'Connor as "Archie Bunker" on "All in the Family".
Biting satire, yet a straightforward expression of a popular mind-set. Or more accurately, "mindLESS-set".
Because IMO, today the appalling chauvinism, triumphalism and exceptionalism in the quotes is pretty close to bi-partisan Received Wisdom.
· Yr Obd't Servant
When I review our (USA) treatment of the Arab nations in the mid-east, I have noticed all of the resolutions in the US House come fro Jewish Americans such as Representatives Berman (D-CA) Harmon (Dem CA), Ackerman, (D-NY), Ros-Leitenen (D-CA) and of Course Sen Leiberman (Conn). They have sponsored and wheedled and cajoled the other members to support resolutions such as the Iran Accountabilty Act, the Iraq Accountability Act, and similar punitive acts against Arab nations. Why to we abide such parasites in our government? They are dual citizens and are all about ISRAEL. No wonder we are hated around the world. Now Leiberman wants us to pre-empt Yemen. Let's defund and pre-empt Israel for the USS Liberty and the many acts of spying on we Americans.
When I review our (USA) treatment of the Arab nations in the mid-east, I have noticed all of the resolutions in the US House come fro Jewish Americans such as Representatives Berman (D-CA) Harmon (Dem CA), Ackerman, (D-NY), Ros-Leitenen (D-FLA) and of Course Sen Leiberman (Conn). They have sponsored and wheedled and cajoled the other members to support resolutions such as the Iran Accountabilty Act, the Iraq Accountability Act, and similar punitive acts against Arab nations. Why to we abide such parasites in our government? They are dual citizens and are all about ISRAEL. No wonder we are hated around the world. Now Leiberman wants us to pre-empt Yemen. Let's defund and pre-empt Israel for the USS Liberty and the many acts of spying on we Americans recently by Lawrence Franklin and AIPAC. I have just joined a group called J Street who is taking on the AIPAC Lobby.