Tuesday, September 18, 2001
US and allies in armed pursuit of world peace
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The few days since that fateful date, Tuesday, September 11, 2001, have redefined the lives of Americans for years to come. In short order, we have gone through the emotions of shock, fear, outrage, anger and sorrow, we have found that we are a community and a nation united in more ways than we ever expected to be, and we have been forced into a profound self-examination of our basic principles, our freedoms and our way of life. We have discovered new heroes, new friends and may have converted some old enemies.
We have also realized that we all have to support our President, George W. Bush, who has the most profoundly difficult decisions to make and actions to take that will define our lives. It is scaresome, watching him declaring war and promising retribution for the cowardly attack on America without any of us knowing the "return address." We cannot just bomb a few thousand Afghans to death - that will brand us as butchers and create more anger toward us in the Muslim world, a result that the clever assassin Osama bin Laden wants to achieve.
It is therefore most reassuring to watch the State Department in action, carefully obtaining agreements from Afghanistan's Western and Eastern neighbors Pakistan and Iran to close the Taliban country's borders, inhibiting bin Laden's people's escape. It is obvious that they are heeding the Presidents warning that countries harboring the terrorists will be treated as terrorist. Other borders are a lesser problem - the Uzbek, Tajik and Turkmen republics in the North, members of the CIS, support the opposition Northern Alliance, as do Iran, India, and also China, although the latter signed a "mutual cooperation pact" with the Taliban on the fatal day, September 11..All NATO and EU countries, Russia, China, Iran and Palestinian Authority have condemned the bombings and will cooperate in exchanging intelligence on terrorist activities .
With such agreements and real intelligence on hand the US can request other countries to extradite terrorists associated with Al-Quaeda, bin Laden's word-wide organization. If countries found to harbor terrorists are under the theat of US attack, there is some potential of extradition without bloodletting, or internal prosecution. Candidates for special attention are Yemen (bin Laden family's original home land; he has considered it as his next residence), Libya, Sudan (his former residence, home of his training camps) and particularly Iraq (paymaster for kamikaze terrorist families; Saddam Hussein has threatened the Arab states not to collaborate with the US).
US must have the cooperation of intelligence organizations of many governments, since the bin Laden organizations at last report extend over some 34 countries, ranging from overt training camps to secret underground groups, and that includes the USA. His confederates can be checked in the reputable Federation of American Scientists' list of 370 national liberation and terrorist organizations worldwide.. How did the bin Laden organization grow?
Osama bin Laden is a prophetic religious leader (he accurately forecast Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait), and an opponent of the dictatorial royal rulers in the Arab peninsula. Angered by the presence of American troops on sacred Saudi Arabia (Mecca) soil during the 1990-91 gulf war, he formed Al-Quaeda, an organization dedicated to expulsion of the Americans from Muslim countries. Deported from his native Saudi Arabia in 1991 (with citizenship revoked in 1994), he settled in Sudan, was expelled in 1996 under US pressure, and moved to Afghanistan, ruled by the Pakistan-backed Taliban sect. Parenthetically, Pakistanis sponsored the 1996 takeover of Afghanistan by their Sunni coreligionists, fanatic extremists though they are (women cannot attend schools or work and cannot get professional medical care since male MDs may not touch them; the population is prohibited TV, films and all secular music; Hindi must wear identity tags on their clothing) because the legitimate Burhanuddin Rabbani government cooperated with India, recent enemy Russia and the Shiite Iran. Rabbani, the recognized head of Afghan state since the Russian withdrawal in 1992, still continues an exile government, as leader of the UN legation in New York.
In February 1998 Osama bin Laden, in conjunction with four Islamic extremist religious leaders from Egypt, Pakistan and Bangla Desh, formed an International Islamic Front and issued the well-known fatwa that proclaimed a Jihad, or Holy War, against Americans. It stated that the individual duty of every Muslim is to liberate Al Aqsa Mosque(in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (Mecca), by killing all Americans and their allies, in any country wherever possible, in order to force them to move out of all Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslims. This was a follow-up of his earlier 1996 fatwa, which may have initiated the planting of "sleeper" agents in the US and other Western countries. The Front has state-like confederation aspects, since over a period of time the Al-Quaeda, rich with bin Laden and conscripted Gulf oil sheik millions, connected with old and built new terrorist organizations. Al-Quaeda's organizations and its "sleeper" agents planted in the US and other countries were responsible for the bomb attack on the WTC in 1995, blowing up of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and the destroyer Cole in Yemen in October 2000, and the threats to US embassies in Uruguay, Paraguay and Ecuador, and particularly in New Delhi in June 2001.
If the US were to enter a war without the proper intelligence to substantiate claim of the subject countries' providing a sanctuary for the bombers, it would expose us to claims of butchery. The war would have to be justified, and most importantly, have an objective. Blowing up a chemicals factory, as in Clinton's 1998 war with Sudan, had no closure; neither did the gulf war, nor the Vietnam War. The Somalia peace force withdrawal in March 1994 left us with a reputation of cowardice, exploited by bin Laden. US has enough power to dictate the course of the war with any minor nation. In the world of asymmetrical warfare, the world's unanimous shocked response to the WTC raid has stripped the powerless of their right of disproportionate response to oppression. Note that the American militia extremists have not felt ready to emulate Timothy McWeigh, a terrorist overwhelmed by the enormity of his 1995 crime to the extent that he chose to die. Possibly even the PR-minded masters of Hamas and Hezbollah (who proclaim their activities to be local only) may cool down, in view of the outraged reaction of the world. ..
US has a diplomatic world peace strategy to pursue which has winning written all over it, if we are smart. We must minimize our righteous anger and not match corpses. Let the American martyrs serve the purpose of world's peace.
The few days since that fateful date, Tuesday, September 11, 2001, have redefined the lives of Americans for years to come. In short order, we have gone through the emotions of shock, fear, outrage, anger and sorrow, we have found that we are a community and a nation united in more ways than we ever expected to be, and we have been forced into a profound self-examination of our basic principles, our freedoms and our way of life. We have discovered new heroes, new friends and may have converted some old enemies.
We have also realized that we all have to support our President, George W. Bush, who has the most profoundly difficult decisions to make and actions to take that will define our lives. It is scaresome, watching him declaring war and promising retribution for the cowardly attack on America without any of us knowing the "return address." We cannot just bomb a few thousand Afghans to death - that will brand us as butchers and create more anger toward us in the Muslim world, a result that the clever assassin Osama bin Laden wants to achieve.
It is therefore most reassuring to watch the State Department in action, carefully obtaining agreements from Afghanistan's Western and Eastern neighbors Pakistan and Iran to close the Taliban country's borders, inhibiting bin Laden's people's escape. It is obvious that they are heeding the Presidents warning that countries harboring the terrorists will be treated as terrorist. Other borders are a lesser problem - the Uzbek, Tajik and Turkmen republics in the North, members of the CIS, support the opposition Northern Alliance, as do Iran, India, and also China, although the latter signed a "mutual cooperation pact" with the Taliban on the fatal day, September 11..All NATO and EU countries, Russia, China, Iran and Palestinian Authority have condemned the bombings and will cooperate in exchanging intelligence on terrorist activities .
With such agreements and real intelligence on hand the US can request other countries to extradite terrorists associated with Al-Quaeda, bin Laden's word-wide organization. If countries found to harbor terrorists are under the theat of US attack, there is some potential of extradition without bloodletting, or internal prosecution. Candidates for special attention are Yemen (bin Laden family's original home land; he has considered it as his next residence), Libya, Sudan (his former residence, home of his training camps) and particularly Iraq (paymaster for kamikaze terrorist families; Saddam Hussein has threatened the Arab states not to collaborate with the US).
US must have the cooperation of intelligence organizations of many governments, since the bin Laden organizations at last report extend over some 34 countries, ranging from overt training camps to secret underground groups, and that includes the USA. His confederates can be checked in the reputable Federation of American Scientists' list of 370 national liberation and terrorist organizations worldwide.. How did the bin Laden organization grow?
Osama bin Laden is a prophetic religious leader (he accurately forecast Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait), and an opponent of the dictatorial royal rulers in the Arab peninsula. Angered by the presence of American troops on sacred Saudi Arabia (Mecca) soil during the 1990-91 gulf war, he formed Al-Quaeda, an organization dedicated to expulsion of the Americans from Muslim countries. Deported from his native Saudi Arabia in 1991 (with citizenship revoked in 1994), he settled in Sudan, was expelled in 1996 under US pressure, and moved to Afghanistan, ruled by the Pakistan-backed Taliban sect. Parenthetically, Pakistanis sponsored the 1996 takeover of Afghanistan by their Sunni coreligionists, fanatic extremists though they are (women cannot attend schools or work and cannot get professional medical care since male MDs may not touch them; the population is prohibited TV, films and all secular music; Hindi must wear identity tags on their clothing) because the legitimate Burhanuddin Rabbani government cooperated with India, recent enemy Russia and the Shiite Iran. Rabbani, the recognized head of Afghan state since the Russian withdrawal in 1992, still continues an exile government, as leader of the UN legation in New York.
In February 1998 Osama bin Laden, in conjunction with four Islamic extremist religious leaders from Egypt, Pakistan and Bangla Desh, formed an International Islamic Front and issued the well-known fatwa that proclaimed a Jihad, or Holy War, against Americans. It stated that the individual duty of every Muslim is to liberate Al Aqsa Mosque(in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (Mecca), by killing all Americans and their allies, in any country wherever possible, in order to force them to move out of all Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslims. This was a follow-up of his earlier 1996 fatwa, which may have initiated the planting of "sleeper" agents in the US and other Western countries. The Front has state-like confederation aspects, since over a period of time the Al-Quaeda, rich with bin Laden and conscripted Gulf oil sheik millions, connected with old and built new terrorist organizations. Al-Quaeda's organizations and its "sleeper" agents planted in the US and other countries were responsible for the bomb attack on the WTC in 1995, blowing up of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and the destroyer Cole in Yemen in October 2000, and the threats to US embassies in Uruguay, Paraguay and Ecuador, and particularly in New Delhi in June 2001.
If the US were to enter a war without the proper intelligence to substantiate claim of the subject countries' providing a sanctuary for the bombers, it would expose us to claims of butchery. The war would have to be justified, and most importantly, have an objective. Blowing up a chemicals factory, as in Clinton's 1998 war with Sudan, had no closure; neither did the gulf war, nor the Vietnam War. The Somalia peace force withdrawal in March 1994 left us with a reputation of cowardice, exploited by bin Laden. US has enough power to dictate the course of the war with any minor nation. In the world of asymmetrical warfare, the world's unanimous shocked response to the WTC raid has stripped the powerless of their right of disproportionate response to oppression. Note that the American militia extremists have not felt ready to emulate Timothy McWeigh, a terrorist overwhelmed by the enormity of his 1995 crime to the extent that he chose to die. Possibly even the PR-minded masters of Hamas and Hezbollah (who proclaim their activities to be local only) may cool down, in view of the outraged reaction of the world. ..
US has a diplomatic world peace strategy to pursue which has winning written all over it, if we are smart. We must minimize our righteous anger and not match corpses. Let the American martyrs serve the purpose of world's peace.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 5:26 AM 
