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by Husayn Sayfuddiyn
The attack on the WTC has created a national bloodlust unsurpassed in modern American history. What is remarkable about this bloodlust is that there is no defined enemy. Moreover, the identities of the alleged hijackers are in serious question. The Saudi Arabian ambassador to the UK has stated on BBC that seven of the alleged hijackers are alive and well in Saudi Arabia. In its haste to make war with a vague, undefined, and shadowy enemy, the Bush administration has raised fears in the Islamic World that this is a war upon Islam.
Minutes after the attack, CNN began broadcasting video alleging that the Palestinians were dancing in the streets, celebrating the US tragedy. It was a week later before it was noticed that the video was file footage from their reaction to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Was this a deliberate attempt to inflame public opinion against Arabs and Islam? If not, then how could it have been an honest mistake? Even the time zones were wrong in the video and as Muslims point out, so was the event they were celebrating.
That some Palestinians celebrated shouldn't have been surprising given the circumstances and terms of their humiliating existence, and the role they see the USA playing in its perpetuation. The USA has not only acted like the backer of Israeli aggression, but has sided with Israel and intervened on its behalf in its aggression. When the Israeli's invaded Lebanon, they bombed and shelled Lebanese civilians indiscriminately. The toll upon the civilian population and infrastructure was horrendous. Then Israeli Commander in Chief Ariel Sharon ordered the massacre of the Palestinian women and children by its Christian Falangist allies in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps where they had fled after being driven from their homeland. Few should believe that Palestinians decided to flee to refugee camps after selling their land and property to Israeli settlers.
How many people have forgotten the ravaging of Beirut and the United States and French Brigades who intervened to assist in Israeli pacification? Many forget the mass arrests of innocent Lebanese Arabs and Muslims, their tortures and the Lebanese resistance ignited by these events.
The Lebanese of South Lebanon initially welcomed the Israelis who drove out the PLO factions that had virtually become a state within a state. Yet Israel's anti-Islamic and racist policies created the forces that spelled its imminent defeat on the battlefield in a guerrilla war, Amal and Hizbullah. The defeat resulted from the seizure and occupation of South Lebanon as a buffer zone.
This was the same rationale used by the Israelis for their continued occupation of the Golan Heights where they have placed illegal settlements, in violation of UN declarations. When forced to withdraw by the Hizbullah insurgents, Israel has perpetuated the hostilities by retaining Shaba Farms, a portion of seized Lebanese territory that the Lebanese government demands returned to it. Only in a grim, merciless struggle, Israel was forced to withdraw.
Who remembers the shooting of worshipper's in the Al Aqsa Masjid in Jerusalem? Was this terrorism? Many Muslims, and not just Arab Muslims, see Ariel Sharon as a War Criminal guilty of war crimes, torture, and genocide. A man, who even the Israeli government relieved from duty to disassociate itself from his crimes, is now PM of Israel and again US ally. To say that US policies in the Mid East were biased is a gross understatement.
So how could the USA in all reality, set up itself as a broker for peace in the Middle East that is based upon any principles of justice for the Palestinian people? Many Muslims, and not a few Americans, are arriving at the conclusion that perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye, since Taliban is the creation of the CIA. Usama Ibn Laden was privy to the massive funding and flood of equipment the CIA poured into the fray of Afghanistan. This flood of equipment added to the considerable stockpile already inherited from the Soviet conflict and even included Stinger and TOW missiles from CIA stores that gave the Mujahideen enough punch to inflict heavy damage upon the heavily armored Soviet forces and Hinds gun ships.
After the defeat of the Soviet Forces, the USA switched sides again and began to give its surreptitious support to Ibn Ladin and Taliban when the Soviet Union dissolved and the oil rich, newly independent states of the former Soviet Union in Muslim Central Asia signed contracts with Western oil companies. The Western oil cartels that were seeking a pipeline to ship oil to the West, wanted to avoid running pipelines through either Russia or Iran. They decided on a route through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.
However, political conditions were not feasible in Afghanistan because the Afghan Mujahideen were not able to form a stable government and inter-tribal warfare became the norm and was the direct result of Pakistani agitation, at the CIA's instigation, of the Pashtu warlords and mullah's against other ethnic and religious minorities. The Western oil cartels reasoned that their huge capital investment needed a stable and submissive Afghani government and many elements of the Rabbani coalition government were fiercely independent and not inclined to toe the Oil Cartels line.
So with the connivance of Pakistan whose government and elites stood to gain billions in revenues and baksheesh, millions of US tax dollars went into helping Taliban fight its way to power. Even then, Shaykh Omar headed Taliban and Usamah Ibn Ladin's Al Qaiydah group assisted in recruitment of volunteers in the Muslim world. Pakistan's role was even more inflammatory because with US encouragement and funding it fanned the flames of extreme Sunni Wahabbi-like fundamentalism in Pakistan to achieve the destabilization of the Rabbani government, that the USA itself had recognized, bringing utter destruction of the Afghani infrastructure and a halt to any economy. Saudi Arabia also contributed funding to Taliban until it discovered Usamah Ibn Ladin's presence.
Pakistan and the Gulf Sheikdoms fostered and funded the training camps of Taliban that were expanded to train not only the covert CIA-oil cartel operation in Afghanistan to overthrow the Rabbani government with the ultimate aim of reinstalling the ousted King Zahir Shah to the throne, but Taliban also began training cadres of other Muslim and Third world organizations still fighting post-colonial oppression. This included the Kashmiris who were fighting against India in that predominantly Muslims state (which explains India's interest) and the Palestinian struggle for a homeland.
Naturally this was not according to the CIA - Oil Cartel script. That script also reflected the anti-Shia posture of the West who were still licking the wounds from their Shia encounters in Lebanon, as well as the Arab and Muslim elitists anti-Shia aggression in both the Arab world and Pakistan because the Shia sect is based upon Islamic Statism, something the secular Muslim States and elitists want to limit proliferation of in the face of Shia Islam's revolutionary forces that condemned their very existence and legality under Islamic law. So Pakistan encouraged and allowed anti-Shia pogroms by Sunni extremists and massacres of Shias occurred in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It was Pakistan, with US encouragement that fanned the flames of radical Islam in its predominately Sunni, Pashtu regions. Ten members of the Iranian diplomatic staff were killed by Taliban soldiers and in Pakistan, an Iranian Shia scholar and diplomat was assassinated as he walked along the streets of Peshewar. Even Sunni scholars who denied Taliban's radical, un-Islamic fatwas or rulings were assassinated in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A subsequent trial of the perpetrators in the Iranian Scholar's murder in Pakistan saw the murderers freed with a not guilty verdict. Iran, in its own defense, then began to arm and ally itself for the growing storm it saw on its horizon. Just as the USA had encouraged, helped finance, and equip Saddam Hussein to invade Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, Iran saw the USA again mobilizing forces against it. Iran saw the storm clouds long before US citizens were rudely awakened to the terror of its own government's making.
The announcement and subsequent plans to attack the nation of Afghanistan in a self-proclaimed war against terrorism by the Bush administration is facetious for the aforesaid and many other reasons. The USA has maintained for decades that many resistance groups and nations are terrorist, or State sponsors of terrorism. This includes Iran, Syria, Libya, and Iraq. All Muslims nations and all embroiled in the struggle against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian homeland. But this list also includes Hizbullah and Hamas.
Thus, because of the ill-defined enemy and the vague declaration of war, the Bush administration is seeking a blank check to wage war upon anyone it views as a terrorist organization and sponsors of terrorism both domestically and internationally. Many fears are raised by this possibility because it means that Iran, Syrian, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Lebanon, the Palestinian Organizations and people, Hizbullah, the Albanians, Macedonian Muslims, the Moros of the Philippines, Chechnya's, all Balkan Islamic Groups and the nation of Afghanistan could be classified as terrorist by the grand crusading declaration.
Did the USA consider its previous support of Taliban with weaponry, funding and intelligence an act of State Sponsored Terrorism against a government it itself recognized as legitimate? And who will add the USA to the list of states who sponsor terrorism? Or Israel? But the chronology of USA sponsored terrorism is far greater and far exceeds the lifetimes of both the Burhanuddeen Rabbani government (which is now the Northern Alliance) or Ibn Ladin and Al Qaiydah. Who will forget Greneda, El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, Chiapas, or Nicaragua and the Contras? Who forgets the training camps for death squads at Ft. Benning, Georgia? Or the Mary Knoll nuns and priests killed by the very same trained and equipped in USA terrorists unleashed upon Latin Americans?
And who can forget the death squads that killed JFK and MLK Jr.? Surely they weren't trained in Afghanistan, nor are graduates of the madrassas that spawned Taliban. Because the domestic Death Squads were able to not only assassinate three of the USA's most prominent leaders, and one a President, and then accomplish pithy and grossly defective cover-ups of their crimes, who can deny that the USA is indeed governed by a shadow government? Americans like to maintain their self-deluding pantomime of freedom, and as long as they're able to vote in sham elections they maintain those delusions.
That the Nato countries are declaring a War without seeking the participation of the UN Security Council is strong evidence to support the conclusion arrived at by many Muslims, that this war is against Islam. Everywhere, Islam is under attack, the Balkans, Chechnya, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Middle East, etc. And now Islam is being attacked within the USA. Moreover, its declaration or war has no legal basis or evidence that it has provided to that international body. "Where is the missing link?" That is the question most Muslim nations have called for in their tentative positions to join this war against the accused Taliban and Ibn Ladin. Indeed, Taliban has already offered to surrender Ibn Ladin to a Muslim country for trial if provided with such evidence.
Few forget the manufactured attack in the Gulf of Tonkin by the US military that sparked US aggression against Viet Nam and the subsequent false White Paper used by the Johnson administration to justify its aggressions. They forget the sinking of the Maine, and allowing the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor to accomplish the corporate objectives. US history gives good evidence that its government will sacrifice the lives of any of its citizens to accomplish the corporate goals and gain the baksheesh resultant for achieving its objectives. Chaney's $20 million severance bonus from the oil companies could have been a prime example of a down payment upon suppressing the liberties and lives of both Americans and the world's people to maintain the Western Corporate stranglehold on the world's resources.
A year into the 21st Century sees the human race confronted with global warming, polar ice caps melting, rain forests denuded, atmospheric pollution and damage, massive ecological pollution, and the culprit, hydrocarbon emissions and waste products. It would seem that the human life threatening conditions would force world governments not to escalate fossil fuel usage. But on the contrary, the Bush Administration, the same administration which ripped off Californians in the so-called energy crisis for Texas based utilities, the same administration that oversaw the disappearance of the surplus Clinton urged be used to repay the social security benefits fund for the monies Congress has traditionally utilized to shore up its balance of payments deficits, has reversed the environmental protective processes and have indeed, scrapped them in favor of continued, indeed increased fossil fuel dependency. This administration has even considered opening up environmentally protected areas for oil exploration and development. For the Arab and Muslim elitists like the Saudis, Kuwaitis and Emirates and oil company and industrial corporate shareholders, this policy is the outcome of their own creation. Resistant even to human survival.
Most Islamic nations, uneasy at the ill-defined declaration of war by the NATO countries, await the terms and objectives of this vague, almost vigilantesque declaration. It is obvious that the USA desires to kill one of its Prometheuses again, just as it is busy pretending that it wants to remove Saddam Hussein who, during Desert Storm, US President Bush Senior allowed to remain in power by announcing the destruction of the elite Iraqi Republican Guard Divisions, and then called for the uprising of the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam, and when they did, called an end to hostilities. This allowed the unscathed Elite Republican Guard divisions to massacre the opposition in Iraq, and Saddam to maintain his destructive influence over the Iraqi people who the West and Arab elites wanted to remain in power to counter balance Iran's growing power in the region.
The USA played the same treacherous card Stalin played against the Polish Jews of Warsaw. And guess who was the General who ordered the truce and caused US troops to celebrate its victory and become un-innocent bystanders while Saddam massacred his Kurdish and Muslim opponents? Colin Powell. The bitter irony to the entire human tragedy which saw tens of thousands of Muslim and Arab people killed and still being slaughtered was the fact that the US Ambassador to Iraq created the war by encouraging Saddam to invade Kuwait and informing him the USA would turn its back.
The USA thereby was able to destroy the Iraqi war machine, and also indebt Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to the tune of trillions of dollars, as well as making them client states, dependent on maintaining US protective forces in the region, It must be remembered that US jets bombed the Kuwaiti oil fields, although the US Military alleged initially, that the Iraqis sabotaged them. There were too many Kuwaiti witnesses to maintain that lie.
One man's terrorist is the other man's freedom fighter. The USA has sponsored both international and domestic terrorism. Who forgets Ruby Ridge, Move, the Panthers, or Waco? This was an assault on domestic dissent and the invasions of nations because they sought in their self-determination, their own economic systems and forms of government. As many Muslim nations are now rejoining, "Sure let's have a war on terrorism, but let us first define terrorism."
Is Hizbullah a terrorist organization? And if so, why?" It has fought mainly against Israeli defense forces and its Arab mercenaries, and attacked military targets in a well-defined war zone in a war they themselves have not declared, but had imposed upon them. What is the difference between dropping bombs upon civilians, cities and villages and rocketing urban neighborhoods and a car bomb placed near a haunt of military personnel or a suicide bomber? The only difference is the delivery system. It is the same war and strategy fought by the Revolutionary American forces against superior British forces and firepower. War by stealth and ambush.
State terrorism is much more insidious because its weapons of mass destruction give it greater killing power and the result is a war of genocide and the decimation of the alleged enemy population and infrastructure. For State Terrorists, the lop sided ratio of killed and wounded to its credit is dismissed as legitimate while the small numbers of killed and wounded that they suffer is used as the basis of justification for their aggressions against largely civilian, disenfranchised, poor and refugee populations and their identification as being terrorist. .
A good example was the Apartheid regime of the Union of South Africa and the racist terrorism and social enslavement inflicted upon the South African people with the full support and connivance of the US government, and its designation of the freedom fighting ANC as a terrorist group. Moreover, the discovery in USA intelligence and Criminal Justice archives of Cointelpro (Counter Intelligence Program) of the FBI under the cloak of "national security" evidences the US government's own domestic genocidal operations as is extant in Israel and much of the Muslim, African and Latin American world.
Americans do not see the dissolution of their Bill of Rights seeking security in world oppression and the repression of its own citizens. The constitutional guarantees Americans have denied minorities in the USA have now come home to roost in the curtailment of their own civil liberties. The legislative and criminal justice systems of the US have already set the precedents for the complete take over by the shadow government.
The protective shield of the separation of powers is shattered when the Legislative Branch can abridge the Bill of Rights without a Constitutional challenge. Not even for one minute. The Supreme Court's concession and acceptance of this right by its failure to challenge this unconstitutional procedure that requires in all actuality, a constitutional amendment, is a de facto concession by default of America's Civil Liberties. Now they are seeking unlimited expansion of wiretaps, legalized racial profiling, and the ability to arrest people and hold them without the right of habeas corpus, all at the stroke of the legislative pen. Utilizing fear to expand its enthrallment over America, and bring Big Brother out of the closet.
Most Americans think, its against the terrorists and not God fearing Americans, forgetting the mockery its elected officials have already made of civil rights, and anti-trust laws allowing the concentration of both capital and power. Americans do not see the dangers of destabilizing the South Asia Region. And few care, believing the catalysts and sources of that destabilization to be found in the regional leadership or flaws in their cultures. Yet the hand of Western colonialism is found in every area of regional conflict. So we are confronted with the fait accompli presented to the Afghan people, "dismantle your government and install the doddering, 84 year old puppet King Zahir Shah…" to complete the US Oil Cartel's great conspiracy to acquire the oil from the Central Asian States. And yep, you guessed it; the pipeline will run through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.
Oh yes, an after thought! It must be remembered that Afghanistan was the source of 80 percent of the world's opium. That is, until Taliban banned the future cultivation of opium poppies. The ban and the subsequent diminishment of supply and production has caused the price of heroin and its derivatives to skyrocket in Western Markets. Despite the Taliban ban, opium stockpiles enriched the Afghani smugglers and cultivators, as it did Taliban who, nevertheless, through its taxes, received 30 percent of the profits. Whoever replaces Taliban will also inherit control over the drug trade of the Golden Crescent.
Husayn Sayfuddiyn THEQUILOMBO@AOL,COM
1955 San Pablo Avenue 301
Oakland, CA. 94612 510-268-1441
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