Milestones in Crusades and Jihads

“America can do whatever we set out mind to," President Obama on killing of Osama ben Laden on May 1, 2011    

The announcement by US president Barrack Obama that US special forces have finally succeeded in killing Osama ben Laden at Abbottabad, next to Pakistan’s military training academy, has given corporate and government controlled media in US and some other western countries and Australia, another lease of life for Osamamania, with India’s copycat corporate media toeing the US line.

Since the author wrote the piece "More Brutal and Random" immediately after September 11, 2001, the situation has become clearer although the leit motif of crusades vs Jihads was and remains a major affliction between the West and the Muslim world. But it affects the rest of the world directly and indirectly. The latest episode is Euro-US bombing of Muslim Libya for its oil and acquiring a strategic position in south Mediterranean and for expanding Africom operations, with the unfortunate acquiescence of United Nations Security Council, a legacy of the WWII United Nations military Alliance led by Great Britain and USA against Germany, Italy, Japan and other states, which was again a war for control of colonial territories, their people and resources. What purpose does UNSC serve now! It has become a tool for the powerful and useless for others like the dead League of the Nations.

The timing of the Abbottabad operation comes when Obama’s ratings for re-election are poor, in spite of no rational Republican opponent. US as an economic power is fast declining, with debt of $ 14 trillion, an annual trade deficit of around $500 billion, surviving on purchase of US treasuries by China, Gulf kingdoms and others. Standards and Poor have threatened to downgrade USA’s credit rating of AAA. It would have been for any other country equivalent of bankruptcy.

In the wake of US caught in quagmire in Iraq and an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, the Arabs have revolted against US supported dictatorships. It is similar to the 1990s revolts in East Europe against Soviet imposed regimes, which finally led to the collapse of USSR itself. Which way the camel will sit in the Arab speaking world will depend on many factors, but the weakening of US hegemony, which had a Faustian deal to protect the Saud Dynasty in exchange for its energy resources and of others in the region is beginning to unravel. Washington and Riyadh have different perceptions and solutions about the outcome of revolts in say, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. 

With Shia Iran thus emerging an even stronger regional power, Saudi Arabia is worried about its own security and future.  Apart from a large percentage of its own unemployed youth, who look askance at luxurious lifestyle of the thousands of princes and princelings of the Saud dynasty, Riyadh has to worry about its disgruntled and ill-treated Shia population in its north east, adjoining Shia majority Bahrain and south of Shia south Iraq. So Riyadh, always close to Islamabad is coming even closer. Many ex-soldiers from Pakistan have been recruited for service for Saudi Arabia. Reports suggest that Riyadh has requested Islamabad to keep two Pakistan divisions on alert in case of an emergency.

So Osama, of little strategic value now, but who had many supporters in the Gulf region could be sacrificed. It is like taking a fly out of ointment. Both Riyadh and Islamabad want to close the Al Qaeda chapter. But would they succeed? And what about the backlash and blowbacks? Washington has manipulated ben Laden and the threat of Al Qaeda, more often than not as a useful tool for its policies, internal and external. Has there been any Al Qaeda operation in USA since 11/9!

As for 11/9 events, right from the beginning there have been suspicions that it was an inside job to provide a pretext to invade Afghanistan , occupy it and use it to threaten Russia and China and use it for transport of energy from central Asia to the Indian ocean. Before 11/9 Taliban leaders were in Texas with oil company UNOCOL in discussions for such a project. 

Washington used the pretext of fight against terror to obtain military airbases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Tashkent terminated permission to Washington after US tried to oust president Islam Karimov. US is just about hanging on in Kyrgyzstan for ferrying troops and sophisticated equipment for war in Afghanistan. 

The US is not only a declining power but a receding power too.

US Congress Commission of inquiry into 11/9 was a white-wash job, according to many well informed individuals and groups. Films have been made to prove this point. Even in USA, there is a growing opinion that it was an inside job. For example, Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth said 

"The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers' destruction. We are therefore calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials”  

The technical issues surrounding the collapse of the towers has prompted years of debate, rebuttal and ridicule. Gage is particularly disturbed by Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper, which was not hit by an aircraft, yet came down in "pure free-fall acceleration." He also says that more than 100 first-responders reported explosions and flashes as the towers were falling and cited evidence of "multi-ton steel sections ejected laterally 600 ft. at 60 mph" and the "mid-air pulverization of 90,000 tons of concrete & metal decking." There is also evidence of "advanced explosive nano-thermitic composite material found in the World Trade Center dust," Mr. Gage adds.