Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 27,
2005
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
Read How the
Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
January 27, 2005
Marginalizing Bin Laden
A
Bounty or Amnesty for Osama?
By
RUSS WELLEN
Does the US State Department's renewed
campaign to publicize its $25 million (soon to be doubled) bounty
represent an honest attempt to capture Osama bin Laden? It worked
with Saddam Hussein's sons, the argument goes, on whom there
was a bounty of $15 million each. However, they were turned over
with the expectation the US would prevail in Iraq.
Illinois Republican House member
Mark Kirk, who wrote the bill for the publicity campaign, said,
"We're looking for some young Pashtun. . . [who] can figure
out how to reach us safely."1 Allah be with you, young Pashtun.
First, dial (92) 51-208-00000 for the American consulate in Islamabad
and ask for Crock, as US ambassador to Pakistan Ryan Crocker
will no doubt ask you to call him. Keep in mind, however, that
you might find yourself negotiating away much of the bounty in
exchange for protective custody for yourself, your family, and
members of your clan. (It would be instructive to learn what
has become of the Husseins, informant and his people.) Furthermore,
by the time such complex negotiations are completed, bin Laden
is likely to have been re-safe-housed and the contract you were
hammering out will be rendered null and void.
Perhaps, however, in keeping
with US policy of using American contractors, that kind of money
is actually intended to lure American mercenaries or bounty hunters.
The story of Jonathan Idema suggests otherwise. Despite supplying
the US military with what he described as a Taliban intelligence
chief, he was arrested for imprisoning terror suspects on his
own. Idema's conviction and sentencing to an Afghani jail term
is sure to give pause to even the most grandiose soldier of fortune.
But from where do intelligence
officials in Kabul and Islamabad summon the gall to claim there
has been no trace of bin Laden for the past twenty months?1 Everyone
knows Pakistan's ISI and Al Qaida wallow together in a sty of
co-dependency.2 One can't help but wonder if the bounty's primary
function is to demonstrate not the sincerity, but the appearance,
of an intention to apprehend bin Laden.
If we really wanted bin Laden
would we subject ourselves to regular lectures by a mass murderer?
"No doubt you recall the words of the conceited one,"
he scolds, "who said I will settle the battle in six days
or seven weeks... [that the] whole thing is a picnic in Panama."3
Whether as a terror kingpin or in his new role as a foreign affairs
analyst for OBL-TV, bin Laden haunts us. Maybe that's because
instead of trying to collar him like a criminal, however uncommon,
we've fallen into the trap of trying to exorcise him as if he
were a demon.
In response to 9/11, waves
of shock and anger rippled forth from the Bos-Wash corridor.
Then, three months later, ripping the bandage off still suppurating
wounds, bin Laden issued the audiotape in which he took responsibility
for 9/11. A World Trade Center survivor, Mark Finelli, claimed
the tape made him feel "violent and enraged. . . . I just
wanted to punch the screen." Indianapolis firefighter Matt
Hahn said, "What we're all looking for now is a swift, stern,
exact punishment."4 In an article on Newsweek Web Exclusive,
another WTC survivor, Eileen Touhey-Kiniery, no doubt spoke for
many when she said, "I don't have the words to describe
this maniacal coward, this living subhuman organism."5
The response of one man who,d
lost a daughter, however, was a portent. "It should be filed
away and let the government and the CIA take care of it,"
he said.4 Meanwhile, immediately after 9/11, in Washingtonville,
New York, a town that lost five firefighters, an open grave was
dug and a huge headstone engraved with bin Laden's name was erected.6
Within a week, however, the headstone was replaced by the figure
of a white eagle surrounded by yellow chrysanthemums. Then, a
few months later, a poll revealed that we were willing to risk
large numbers of casualties among US troops in order to capture
or kill bin Laden.7 However, as was beginning to become apparent,
while this may have been a call for retaliation, it was also
a plea to the government to take over and relieve us of the need
to sustain messy feelings of revenge.
Instead many became preoccupied
with healing. Tibetan Buddhist Gehlek Rinpoche said, "Your
hatred, my hatred are our own Osama bin Laden. Your, my Osama
Bin Laden is hiding behind the mountains of our hearts."8
However profound, coming just nine days after 9/11, he seemed
like a waiter rushing us through dinner. We needed time to digest
the anger.
At the other extreme was "Why
We Should Love Osama Bin Laden," in which Kevin Williams,
who maintains near-death.com, an otherwise estimable clearinghouse
for near-death experiences, tells us: "Although I believe
that Bin Laden should be captured and imprisoned, I believe that
we should love the man as we should love everyone -- unconditionally.
. . . [the] terrorist attacks are really a cry out for help and
it is our obligation to help them."9 Leapfrogging over anger
might be standard operating procedure for a holy man like Gehlek
Rinpoche, but the rest of us need to run smack up against it.
Try entering hatred for, or
rage against, bin Laden into a search engine and watch what happens.
The phrase keeps flipping around, as if the search engine were
equipped with a spell check that automatically corrects, but
has a glitch in its dictionary. The proper usage, it insists,
is: Why do they hate us? In fact, this bewildered sense of victimization
has become all too familiar to us. Flogged by commentators, it's
emerged as a prerequisite for healing. Let's examine the forces
that are ostensibly strong enough to make us jettison the impulse
to vengeance.
1. Our innocence has been stolen
from us. This is a product of shameless ignorance of our own
military and CIA adventurism in foreign lands. It's aggravated
by therapy-nation's credo that anger is not about how we deal
with what provoked us, but how we handle the feeling itself.
As for the less self-absorbed among us . . .
2. We're just too busy. Living
in the most overworked developed nation, we scarcely have the
time, even if inclined, to chew over how we were wronged like
others in the developed world might, or stew over it like the
underemployed of developing nations.
3. Vengeance is so primitive.
To many on the East Coast, anger and vengeance are akin to fire
and brimstone, that is, the Red states. While recent polls show
Americans favor restrictions of Muslims, civil liberties, in
Manhattan no one turns a head at Arab music issuing from a Middle-Eastern,
sidewalk-food-vendor's boombox. Unfortunately, this comes off
less as a commendable reluctance to profile than, once again,
an inability to feel and express anger.
4. Since you asked, we're not
actually angry. Many Americans dwelling in points distant from
the attacks felt unaffected by 9/11. Others, though it's seldom
spoken of in polite company, we're secretly glad New York and
Washington were struck. Despite their disdain for the Islamic
religion, they weren't above feeling grateful to its most extreme
representatives for wreaking havoc on the real enemy: big government
and liberals. In fact. . .
5. We ain't got no quarrel
with them Arabs (no disrespect to Muhammad Ali intended). The
current conventional wisdom on why the president was reelected
was summed up by Jeff Jacoby in a Boston Globe column: "Americans
trust Bush's judgment on the overriding issue of our time: the
West's life-and-death struggle against Islamist fanaticism. .
. he got the core meaning of 9/11 right."10 If that's true,
it's only because the administration sensed perhaps because
of their own pet Saudis that Middle-Americans, whether or not
they were actually grateful to the perpetrators of 9/11, had
no innate antipathy toward Middle-Easterners. It wasn't widely
understood, especially by an already-spooked East Coast. But
the string of terror alerts that the administration issued during
the election year was a means of jolting Middle America into
upgrading Middle-Easterners to their "A" list of hatred
along with gays, Mexicans, and the aforementioned liberals.
6. Bin Laden is not enough.
Half of those polled by Zogby International in New York City
on the eve of the Republican National Convention agreed that
the administration had foreknowledge of the attacks.11 While
that may be chalked up to fashionable urban cynicism, more and
more Americans note the high Amazon sales ranking of Mike Ruppert's
Crossing the Rubicon -- suspect the administration either commissioned
or was complicit in 9/11. Still, Ruppert's revelations about
war games conducted in North American skies and a FEMA exercise
in New York on 9/11 has been the least reported story of the
year, as evidenced by a lack of significant rebuttals.12
One can be forgiven for succumbing
to the notion that, with its rush to judgment and retribution,
there's something to be said for a Scriptures-based society.
Our president, who acts under the assumption, right or wrong,
that he's leading one, displayed an
itchy plunger finger, if only
by proxy, while he was governor of Texas. Thus, when he fails
to pull the trigger on a mass murderer, you know there's something
rotten in Peshawar. One can only conclude that the administration
interpreted 9/11 anger that either flamed out or failed to materialize
as license to use bin Laden's status to its own ends. Whether
planned or evolved, its strategy comprises three stages.
Stage One: When After the US
allowed bin Laden to slip away from the Tora Bora cave complex,
National Review Online columnist Rich Lowry said, "There
is some legitimate worry about the fight against terrorism being
so personalized." Because, quoting Richard Perle, ".
. . if we do not get him, it looks as if we have failed."
But, Lowry maintains, there's
a political upside to an ongoing hunt for bin Laden, no matter
how much it resembles a leisurely spelunking expedition to Afghanistan's
picturesque caves. Retaining bin Laden's services as a "poster
boy" for terror, the administration can keep the public
focused on terrorism "as we take the fight on to the next
logical target, Iraq." Thus, Lowry maintains, it doesn't
matter too much whether he is killed before or after Saddam Hussein.13
Stage Two: Whether In the months
following the Tora Bora debacle, the "when" of eradicating
bin Laden degenerated into "whether." Top Pentagon
officials increasingly argued that, alive or dead, he was now
not only less important than Sadddam, but downright irrelevant.
"He could walk in here tomorrow and Al Qaeda would go on
functioning," Rumsfeld said. Meanwhile, Joint Chiefs of
Staff Chairman General Richard Myers chimed in. "I wouldn't
call [getting bin Laden] a prime mission." However, nothing
could have been more of a slap in the face to 9/11 families and
survivors than the anonymous Defense Department official who
said, "Everybody wants to know where Osama bin Laden is.
The next question is, who cares?"7
If the Pentagon was trying
to convince Americans that the fight against terror is about
more than one man, that explains. . .
Stage Three: Amnesty "The
world may be better off if Osama Bin Laden remains at large,"
the CIA's recently departed executive director Buzzy Krongard
claimed. The latest in a line of CIA mouths that roared after
spy-who-came-in-from-the-anonymity Michael Scheuer, Krongard
added that, "If [bin Laden] is captured or killed, a power
struggle [may occur] among his Al-Qaeda subordinates. . . . vying
for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing
a stream of terror."14
Other officials have privately
admitted that it may be better to co-exist with bin Laden rather
than make him a martyr or put him on stage with a trial. Effectively
granting him amnesty, whether permanent or temporary, also permits
the Defense Department to continue using him as a rallying point
for waging the war on terror in their own roundabout fashion.
The irony, of course, is that downplaying bin Laden's importance
to Al Qaeda undercuts his power to tug at the heart strings like
a good poster boy should.
Allowing bin Laden to roam
free, whether tethered to a dialysis machine, also nourishes
our relationship with Pakistan's President Musharraf. No matter
that the administration restrains the International Atomic Energy
Agency from demanding the handover of Pakistan's rogue nuclear
paterfamilias A.Q. Khan. As well, it looks the other way as Pakistan
buys nuclear parts and supplies on the clandestine market. What
apparently counts is that it spares Musharraf the coup attempt
that forcing fundos (as pedigreed Pakistanis refer to fundamentalists)
to cough up bin Laden might incur. Also, Pakistan turns over
the occasional terror kingpin like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and
feeds us information on Iran's nuclear ambitions.15
Finally, laissez-faire-ing
bin Laden makes it less likely that he'll be cornered. If he
were, he might blurt out the extent of US complicitness in 9/11
as well as his and the likes of Mohammed Atta's connections with
the CIA.16 So much for bringing a killer to justice.
Instead, bin Laden, who started
out as a businessman, is free to return to that role as a "venture
capitalist."14 Of course, the start-up company he funds
is likely to be a cell of bugged-out Qutbists, one of which may
someday seek to stage the product launch to end all product launches
the detonation of a nuclear suitcase. In addition, bin Laden
now apes American financiers who fancy themselves sages with
their Buffett-like pronouncements on the wisdom of the Dow. He
is, in fact, the self-appointed successor to Sayyib Qutb as errant
Islam's old philosopher.
Even those leery of any method
of apprehending bin Laden other than with an international force
should be able to comprehend how harmful it is for the body politic
to "stuff," as they say in support groups, its anger
toward an individual deemed a mortal enemy. For our inability
to feel or sustain anger towards him is not an isolated phenomenon.
It's paralleled by our difficulty experiencing or sustaining
outrage against our own government for its clearcut crimes, such
as torture and the failure to protect Iraqi munitions dumps.
A society passive to threats from without is a society passive
to threats from within. Thus is it ripe for either conquest by
an enemy or plunder by its ruling class.
Russ Wellen reviews books for the New York Press
and is a contributing writer for onlinejournal.com. Visit him
at Running
Commentary.
References
1. McGirk, Tim, "Bin Laden's
Head Now Worth 50 Million," Time Magazine, January 23, 2005.
2. Atal, Subodh, Ph.D., "The
Al Qaida in Pakistan: Clandestine Guests or Strategic Trading
Cards?", The Kashmir Herald, May, 2002. As clear an analysis
of how the US and Pakistan use each other as you'll find anywhere.
3. Bin Laden, Message to the
Saudi People, December 16, 2004.
4. Crary, David, "Anger,
and some disgust, as Americans watch bin Laden smile about the
attacks," Associated Press, December 13, 2001.
5. Touhey-Kiniery, Eileen,
"I Don't Have the Words to Describe This Maniacal Coward,,"
Newsweek Web Exclusive, December 14, 2001.
6. Wells, Kristina, "Monument
to hope replaces hate," The Times Herald-Record, October
19, 2001.
7. Tyson, Ann Scott, "Does
Bin Laden Matter Anymore?" Christian Science Monitor, March
1, 2002.
8. Gehlek Rinpoche, "Hatred Is Our
Own Private Osama Bin Laden," September 20, 2001.
9. Williams, Kevin, "Why
We Should Love Osama Bin Laden,"
10. Jacoby, Jeff, "Same
man, different president," The Boston Globe, January 20,
2005.
11. Zogby International Press
Release, "Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge
of Impending 9-11 Attacks and Consciously Failed, to Act,"
August 30, 2004.
12. Ruppert, Michael, Crossing
the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of
the Age of Oil, New Society Publishers, 2004.
13. Lowry, Rich, "Osama
Can Wait," National Review Online, December 19, 2001.
14. Allen-Mills, Tony, "Let
Bin Laden Stay Free, Says C.I.A. Man," The Times UK, January
9, 2005.
15. Hersh, Seymour, "The
Coming Wars," The New Yorker, January 24, 2005.
16. Hopsicker, Daniel, Welcome
to Terrorland: Mohammed Atta and the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida,
Mad Cow Press, 2004.
|