Hard News: Appeasing Osama
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weston, not sure whether you mean "white man" or "atheist".
i can see i'd better start shaving my head, pronto...
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I'm not resiling from my criticism of radical Islam, but I figure not all of the 1,300,000,000 Muslims on our planet can be entirely bad.
the reaction to the word "Muslim" is some quarters brings to mind that old fifties schlock horror "Them", which I saw years ago when the Classic Cinema was just that, with people running amok in the desert screaming "them, them...". Witness the attempt to swiftboat Obama, whose crime is twofold...having Hussein as a middle name, and allegedly being trained as a radical "Muslim" at the age of six in Java. Bizarrely, it was deemed newsworthy across a variety of outlets that should have known better.
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Here's my question to Weston - what do you think is 'right' with Islam?
From the wikipedia page on Sharia law:
<quote?Islam unequivocally allows both single and married women to own property in their own right. Islam restored to women the right to inherit property, in contrast with some cultures where women themselves are considered chattels that can be inherited. A woman's share of inheritance is completely hers and no one, including her father or husband, can make any claim on it. However, rich a woman may be, her male relatives in order of closeness are required to financially support her. It is her prerogative to forgive the male relatives their obligations of support.</quote?
I believe this makes Islam the only major organised religion that explicitly protects the property rights of women. Correct me if I'm wrong (Unfortunately I had trouble finding an internet source that cited references- can you help with that Anjum?
Also have a read through of
http://www.ias.org/articles/Women_in_Islam.htmlNo doubt the ideals of the prophet are often not actually practiced by Muslim men, but then the same applies to many cherised ideals of Jesus and of Western modernity, such as equality and personal liberty.
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i can see i'd better start shaving my head, pronto...
Even if you did you'd still be in a minority - Bhuddists make up only 5.89% of the worlds observers of religion!
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I believe this makes Islam the only major organised religion that explicitly protects the property rights of women
Javanese society, overwhelmingly Muslim of course, recognises the mother as the source of societal power. The family's mana flows, in a very complicated manner (Javanese society is very very complicated) from the woman and a man often gets his status from his mother. Sukarno's mana came from his Balinese mother, and indeed, his daughter was the 4th President of Indonesia.
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I find Manakura's views oddly similar to those of D'Souza's. Both believe that the problems within the Muslim world are caused by the West. Which I've always thought has a racist quality - those people are incapable of causing their own problems, it reduces them to some sort of infantile passivity.
I didn't come up with any direct quotes from bin Ladeb railing against liberal values but his support for the anti-liberal Taliban is good enough evidence for me.
Terence, yes my argument was a liitle wayward but bin Ladeb considers East Timor and Kosovo as part of the caliphate so his beef with the West is not just with US troops in Saudi Arabia.
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I find Manakura's views oddly similar to those of D'Souza's.
You could read it like that, but I assure you I think nothing is ever entirely one person or groups fault. Life is soe complicated shit. I just recognise the thoughtless exercise of military might by Western nations against Muslim populations plays a significant role in appeal of radical Islam. This is not to deny other factors of course, but to suggest Islam as a religion is inherently bad as Danyl seems to be implying is not particularly helpful.
Simon, that's very interesting, I wonder if it's an 'Islam thing' or if it's more to do with the places women generally occupy in Austronesian societies? I guess it's a case of the pre-existing culture gelling with the more recent Muslim layer.
Whoops I totally forgot my vow to not post on this topic from yesterday! This is why I've never bothered with NY resolutions.
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Manakura,
I think a little of both. Many Javanese are, naturally, as with all religion, very devout but clearly there is no clash. Islam came to Java about 600 years ago when Arab traders settled on the North Coast.
Generally, as with many religions, not least of which is Christianity, it was overlaid over local traditions. Hence the Islam practiced in Java varies greatly from the very conservative on the north coast and in Madura, to the more complex merging with past animist beliefs and the Hindu and Buddhist past elsewhere.
Then the Europeans came and threw Christianity into the mix.
Down the road from me is a Mosque, a Hindu temple and a church...all share a playgroup. Up in the hills near here the Hindu faithful still sacrifice to their ancient gods without seeing any contradiction.
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I'm not resiling from my criticism of radical Islam, but I figure not all of the 1,300,000,000 Muslims on our planet can be entirely bad.
I've lived in a couple muslim countries now, and there are, indeed, some very nice people who practise Islam. But I'm sure there are some great guys in the Flat Earth Society as well, and that doesn't validate their belief system.
Manakura tries to make the claim that Islam is admirable for it's treatment of women, in terms of property and legal rights, an argument that seems delusional when we read stories about Saudi Arabia, where last year firemen murdered several dozen schoolgirls by locking them in a burning building so they couldn't escape into public unveiled, or Iran, which regularly executes rape victims for the crime of adultery.
An argument can be made that these people don't follow 'the true faith of Islam'. But the Koran is pretty damn explicit in spelling out the inferior status of women: it requires the testimony of two women to offset that of one man (2:282) and every girl deserves exactly one-half her brother’s share of inheritance (4:11). It recommends that wives be regularly whipped (4:34).
The last reference is worth quoting in full:
Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for God's guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them. If they then obey you, look not for any way against them; God is All high, All great.
The reality is that - as with Christianity - misogyny is built into the core of the faith.
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but bin Ladeb considers East Timor and Kosovo as part of the caliphate
why would he consider East Timor, a predominantly Roman Catholic country, to be part of the caliphate?
I didn't come up with any direct quotes from bin Ladeb railing against liberal values but his support for the anti-liberal Taliban is good enough evidence for me.
life is so simple, eh? all black and white, isn't it? please allow me to paraphrase:
bin Laden = bad
liberal West = good
with us = good
with the terrorists = badbut the rather large fly in this logical ointment is this: bin Laden and his cohorts received most of their funding, weapons and training for many years from:
1. the CIA
2. the US-backed Pakistani security servicesAll sorts of high-tech weaponry and training was provided to attack the Soviets supporting the Afghan govt. fom 1979 to 1989, by Carter, Reagan and Bush Sen. Hey, don't you remember Reagan's "freedom fighter" mujahadeen? good ol' boys just trying to kick some commie ass!
In 1994, a new organization, the Taliban, emerged. Its members had been trained in the religious schools set up by the Pakistani government--with U.S. support--along the border.
Anyone who believes that this "war on terror" bullshit has got anything to do with religion or defending liberal values is either stupid or wilfully ignorant.
how about the real reasons:
1. geopolitical power
2. money, esp. from weapons manufacture and security infrastructure
3. economic imperialism
4. resource control -
WH,
Stephen,
Anyone who believes that this "war on terror" bullshit has got anything to do with religion or defending liberal values is either stupid or wilfully ignorant.
Don't you think this is an exaggeration?
All sorts of high-tech weaponry and training was provided to attack the Soviets supporting the Afghan govt. fom 1979 to 1989, by Carter, Reagan and Bush Sen. Hey, don't you remember Reagan's "freedom fighter" mujahadeen? good ol' boys just trying to kick some commie ass!
Frankly, even if I grant you this, so what if the Taliban and radical Islam are an unintended consequence of the Cold War? I think you'll find that there were a number of proxy wars during that period, and that both sides armed their client states. Are you saying that the Cold War wasn't, on balance, worth fighting? I know some Eastern Europeans who might see it differently.
Your characterisation of the US as power hungry, greedy and imperialistic is one-dimensional IMO, and even where it is true, isn't it trite to point out that nation states aggressively pursue their strategic interests? I'm curious to know: which horse were you backing? Or am I being unfair?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy -
Weston,
Don't you think this is an exaggeration?
No. Slightly immoderate language maybe, but exaggeration? No.
Frankly, even if I grant you this, so what if the Taliban and radical Islam are an unintended consequence of the Cold War?
That's a funny one--radical Islam an unintended consequence of the Cold War!!! You're joking, right?
No. In fact radical Islam was not unintended at all. It was a key tactic adopted by the US as a means of attacking and destabilizing the USSR. The mujahadeen were nurtured by the CIA and Pakistan's ISI becuase they were radical Islamists. Not coincidence. Not unintended.
Your characterisation of the US as power hungry, greedy and imperialistic is one-dimensional IMO, and even where it is true, isn't it trite to point out that nation states aggressively pursue their strategic interests?
Whose strategic interests? Not the interests of 98% of the US population. But quite likely the interests of the corrupt congress, lobbyists, security apparatus, aerospace and weapons manufacturers, their "private equity" investors, neocon "think tanks", Halliburton and an assortment of other contractors and large corporations, the Bush crime family, et al.
Look, the US has shown countless times that it is more than happy to nurture, train, arm, finance, assist and harbour terrorists when it suits someone's strategic interests inside the military-industrial-congressional complex. Anti-Castro Cuban exile terrorists? No prob. Kosovo Liberation Army (Muslim, even)? No worries. Unita in Angola, Renamo in Mozambique, Contras in Nicuragua, and the list goes on and on. But that was the Cold War, you say, so it was justified, because the Eastern Europeans were counting on us to fight the Russians in every corner of the globe.
Or, how about the real reason: because the Cold War meant money. Lots and lots of money for the military-industrial complex and its congressional/executive lackeys.
And when the Cold War was "won", they of course needed a new bogeyman to replace "communism". Needed something to scare the Western populace into supporting even more massive military, internal security and intelligence expenditures. And voila! We have "radical Islamic terrorism" right on cue. How...convenient.
I'm curious to know: which horse were you backing? Or am I being unfair?
None of the above.
Straw-man rhetorical flourishes are pretty tiresome and pointless, so please don't bother wasting your time, thanks. -
Stephen
bin Laden and his cohorts received most of their funding, weapons and training for many years from:
1. the CIA
2. the US-backed Pakistani security servicesIt's pretty unlikely that bin Laden recieved funding from the US or the CIA while he was in Pakistan or Afghanistan, since his entire reason for being there was to set up an alternate, Islamic organisation for funding and arming the mujihadeen. Most of his activity during this time involved recruiting fighters from Saudi Arabia and bringing in money from his wealthy contacts in the Saudi aristocracy, or using his Fathers company to carry out civil engineering projects. He certainly didn't need money or help from the US and I doubt he would have accepted it were if offered.
That's a funny one--radical Islam an unintended consequence of the Cold War!!! You're joking, right?
No. In fact radical Islam was not unintended at all. It was a key tactic adopted by the US as a means of attacking and destabilizing the USSR. The mujahadeen were nurtured by the CIA and Pakistan's ISI becuase they were radical Islamists. Not coincidence. Not unintended.
The Afghans were helped out by the West because they were fighting the Soviets, pure and simple. Being radical muslims had nothing to do with it, and if they'd been Seventh Day Adventists or Theravada Buddhists, Carter and Reagan still would have given them Stinger missiles.
The rise of radical Islam has a number of causes - I argue that it's largely a result of the inability of muslim states to develop into successful modern nations - almost all of them are economically stagnant corrupt dictatorships. Whatever the reason Islamic fundamentalism certainly wasn't a creation of the CIA.
Anyone who believes that this "war on terror" bullshit has got anything to do with religion or defending liberal values is either stupid or wilfully ignorant.
I'd be curious to know why you think Al Qaeda attacked the United States on 9/11? (Please don't tell me you think Bush or the Jews did it.)
I think it was part of a long term goal to establish true Islamic states in the Middle East, and if this ain't a religious reason then what is?
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merc,
It's strange that Panama is never mentioned. The US attacked a commonwealth nation state with no pretext.
Dieu et mon droit. If you're going to rule you need to have God on your side. And besides, just while we're using terminology, just what constitutes Militant Islam?
And what did AlQ say they attacked on 911 for? -
WH,
Stephen,
I agree that the US essentially supported anyone that opposed the Soviets and that some of this support, in retrospect, looks foolish and in some instances was demonstrably unjust. Not Khmer Rouge/Cultural Revolution bad, but South American/middle eastern dictator bad.
In fact radical Islam was not unintended at all.
The US backed Saddam after the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets armed the middle eastern states prior to '67 and '73, the US armed Israel. The US supported the South Vietnamese, the Soviets armed the North Vietnamese; it seems to me that Afghanistan simply formed part of a wider pattern.
However you seem to be arguing that the US - and by this you presumably mean then Democratic President Bill Clinton - deliberately fostered the radical Islamic movement in order to provide it with a bogeyman to feed its military-industrial complex.
And when the Cold War was "won", they of course needed a new bogeyman to replace "communism". Needed something to scare the Western populace into supporting even more massive military, internal security and intelligence expenditures. And voila! We have "radical Islamic terrorism" right on cue. How...convenient.
I'm not even saying that you are totally wrong. I'm just saying your narrative is simplistic and a little cynical.
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Danyl,
It's pretty unlikely that bin Laden recieved funding from the US or the CIA while he was in Pakistan or Afghanistan
From this statement, I see that you fall into the "wilfully ignorant" category. At this stage in the game, to deny that Bin Laden received many years of CIA and ISI backing is somewhat disingenuous. To put it mildly.
I argue that it's largely a result of the inability of muslim states to develop into successful modern nations - almost all of them are economically stagnant corrupt dictatorships.
...backed by who? Oh, that's right, our good friends the US of A.
Apart from Iran, which was a US-backed dictatorship under the Shah, and Iraq, a US-backed distatorship under Saddam until 1990, Syria and Lybia, virtually all Arab states are US clients. Care to explain?
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Um, folks?
As I read through these comments could everyone just take the time to realise that all faiths can be weilded and twisted to the benefit of leaders/warlords/organised crime/murderers etc?
There are not just fundamentalist Muslims in this world, I can think of a few murders instigated by fundamentalist Hindus for starters, or fundamentalist Christians who can't be said to represent the faith as a whole.
Just saying ...
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From this statement, I see that you fall into the "wilfully ignorant" category. At this stage in the game, to deny that Bin Laden received many years of CIA and ISI backing is somewhat disingenuous. To put it mildly.
Feel free to find some evidence from a reliable source (socialistworker.org is not such a source) and prove me wrong. At least three journalists who have written about bin Laden extensively - Lawrence Wright, Robert Fisk and Peter Bergen - have all dismissed the suggestion that bin Laden was a creature of the CIA as nonsense. Here's an interview with Bergen you might find educational.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/08/15/bergen.answers/index.html
Apart from Iran, which was a US-backed dictatorship under the Shah, and Iraq, a US-backed distatorship under Saddam until 1990, Syria and Lybia, virtually all Arab states are US clients. Care to explain?
If you can't figure out why the US likes to stay on the good side of the Saudi Royal family then you really are in trouble.
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Darryl,
I Know its Wikipedia but here's a linkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maktab_al-Khadamat
Fisk actually wrote:
Some of his current Afghan fellow fighters had been trained earlier by the CIA in the very camps that were the target of the recent US missiles--but whereas they had been called camps for "freedom fighters" when US agents set them up in the early eighties, now they had become camps for "terrorists." He and his comrades never saw "evidence of American help" in Afghanistan, he told me, but he must have been aware of the CIA's presence.
Quite a different thing from saying it's nonsense. Myself, I think its illogical to think that some of the billions funneled into the Soviet-Afghani fracas by the CIA did not get to MAK, either directly or otherwise. Bergen's dismissal of the link seems to be little more than "they didn't specifically target funds to him (B-L)" but to deny that Bin Laden was known to them, when one considers his role in MAK, must be treated as either dubious or an admission of utter incompetence. And its semantics to argue that organisations that Bin Laden played major part in, were not funded in part by either the CIA or the ISI.
From Zawahiri to Abdallah Schleife of NBC as early as 1980:
"Sure, we're taking American help to fight the Russians," Zawahiri replied. "But they're equally evil."
And we know that the US did not stop supporting the Anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan until 1989.
Perhaps the cheque did not have "Pay to the order of O.B.Laden" written on it, but he (by which I mean the various groups he was involved with) surely benefited from said support.
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Danyl,
You wrote:
If you can't figure out why the US likes to stay on the good side of the Saudi Royal family then you really are in trouble.
Please show me where I said I "can't figure out why the US likes to stay on the good side of the Saudi Royal family".
Quite the contrary, I stated back at the beginning exactly the reasons the US supports corrupt dictatorships in the Middle East (clue: same reasons as the fake "war on terror"):
1. geopolitical power
2. money, esp. from weapons manufacture and security infrastructure
3. economic imperialism
4. resource controlAnd you had blamed the rise of radical Islam on, that's right, "corrupt dictatorships". The ones supported by the US:
The rise of radical Islam has a number of causes - I argue that it's largely a result of the inability of muslim states to develop into successful modern nations - almost all of them are economically stagnant corrupt dictatorships.
So please feel free to continue arguing with yourself. This circular "debate" seems to be going nowhere fast.
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Simon:
You seem to be shifting the goalposts in this debate. Manukuras original claim was that:
<i>bin Laden and his cohorts received most of their funding, weapons and training for many years from the CIA</i>
This seems a very far cry from your latest position that bin Laden was merely 'aware of the CIA's presence'.
As for the CIA being unaware of bin Laden, it seems impossible to us because we know that 20 years later he goes on to destroy the WTC. But to a CIA section chief who deals mostly with Pakistani intelligence and groups of indigenous Afghan groups bin Laden simply wouldn't have been very important. No matter what Al Qaeda thinks, they didn't play a very significant role in the fighting in Afghanistan.
Stephen - the US is allied with some of the dictatorships in the US - but so what? The US has befriended dictatorships in Africa, Asia, Europe and South and Central America, most of which are now stable democracies (countries like Indonesia and Chile come to mind). Do you really think the US would object to the end of military dictatorship in Egypt? On the contrary, life for the State Department would be considerably easier if their closest allies weren't despotic regimes.
I'm intrigued by your notion that the war on terror is 'fake'. The bombings in places like Morocco, Bali, Madrid, London, Istanbul, Baghdad and so on seemed pretty real.
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Simon:
You seem to be shifting the goalposts in this debate. Manukuras original claim was that:
bin Laden and his cohorts received most of their funding, weapons and training for many years from the CIA
This seems a very far cry from your latest position that bin Laden was merely 'aware of the CIA's presence'.
As for the CIA being unaware of bin Laden, it seems impossible to us because we know that 20 years later he goes on to destroy the WTC. But to a CIA section chief who deals mostly with Pakistani intelligence and groups of indigenous Afghan groups bin Laden simply wouldn't have been very important. No matter what Al Qaeda thinks, they didn't play a very significant role in the fighting in Afghanistan.
Stephen - the US is allied with some of the dictatorships in the US - but so what? The US has befriended dictatorships in Africa, Asia, Europe and South and Central America, most of which are now stable democracies (countries like Indonesia and Chile come to mind). Do you really think the US would object to the end of military dictatorship in Egypt? On the contrary, life for the State Department would be considerably easier if their closest allies weren't despotic regimes.
I'm intrigued by your notion that the war on terror is 'fake'. The bombings in places like Morocco, Bali, Madrid, London, Istanbul, Baghdad and so on seemed pretty real.
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Darryl,
No, I'm not moving the goalposts. Your response to Stephen confused two different things, whether Bin Laden was a CIA asset per se, which, I agree, is doubtful, and whether the organisations he, and his cohorts were involved with, especially MAK, and the Egytian Brotherhood received funding. Which is not doubtful.Zawahiri, who I think you will agree is one of Bin Laden's cohorts, admitted American help in 1980....if it was not funding and weaponry..what would it have been?
What we do know is that both those groups were the primary source of Arab manpower to fight the Soviets, which was not inconsiderable, and they were, despite your claim, a major player:
From Eye Spy (but I could've used quite a number of sources):Osama bin Ladin entered on his current path of holy warrior in 1979, the year Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. He transfered his business to Afghanistan--including several hundred loyal workmen and heavy construction tools--and set out to liberate the land from the infidel invader. Recognizing at once that the Afghans were lacking both infrastructure and manpower to fight a protracted conflict, he set about solving both problems at once. The first step was to set up an organized program of conscription. Together with Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood leader Abdallah Azzam, he organized a recruiting office--Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK - Services Office).
MAK advertised all over the Arab world for young Muslims to come fight in Afghanistan and set up branch recruiting offices all over the world, including in the U.S. and Europe. Bin Ladin paid for the transportation of the new recurits to Afghanistan, and set up facilities to train them. The Afghan government donated land and resources, while bin Ladin brought in experts from all over the world on guerilla warfare, sabotage, and covert operations. Within a little over a year he had thousands of volunteers in training in his private bootcamps. It is estimated that as many as 10,000 fighters received training and combat experience in Afghanistan, with only a fraction coming from the native Afghan population. Nearly half of the fighting force came from bin Ladin's native Saudi Arabia. Others came from Algeria (roughly 3,000), from Egypt (2,000), with thousands more coming from other Muslim countries such as Yemen, Pakistan and the Sudan.
Superpower vs. superpower
The war in Afghanistan was the stage for one of the last major stand-offs between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. The Americans at that time had the same goals as bin Ladin’s mujahedin--the ousting of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. In what was hailed at the time as one of its most successful covert operations, America’s Central Intelligence Agency launched a $500 million-per-year campaign to arm and train the impoverished and outgunned mujahedin guerrillas to fight the Soviet Union. The most promising guerilla leaders were sought out and “sponsored” by the CIA. U.S. official sources are understandably vague on the question of whether Osama bin Ladin was one of the CIA’s “chosen” at that time. Bin Ladin’s group was one of seven main mujahedin factions. It is estimated that a significant quantity of high tech American weapons, including “stinger” anti-aircraft missiles, made their way into his arsenal. The majority of them are reported to be still there.From Global Security.Org:
There is a frequent claim that the CIA directly funded bin Laden. Top CIA officers involved in the effort say, no, their support went directly to the Afghans, or to the Pakistanis. (The Pakistanis, in turn, supported bin Laden and the other foreign fighters in Afghanistan.)
Which, if true, more or less substantiates Stephen's claim too.
Indonesia....the US went to quote some lengths to keep Suharto in power in 98, with William Cohen, US Defense Secretary and various CIA advisers taking a hands on approach to suppressing the peoples revolution, Cohen even flying in with a team to advise the military just before all hell broke loose
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WH,
I think Stephen, in his own charming way, is trying to say that:
a) The US government supports, and has in the past supported, regimes and people that do not adhere to liberal democratic principles;
b) It is bitterly ironic that during the Cold War the US trained, funded and armed the very people they are now trying to destroy;
c) the relative importance of radical Islam is being exaggerated in order that the US may achieve domestic and foreign policy objectives unrelated to the threat posed by radical Islam.While I prefer to reconcile these three propositions with the idea that the US is, on the whole, a positive force in the world, Stephen prefers to believe that the whole radical Islam thing is a CIA conspiracy undertaken on behalf of that whole military industrial complex thingy. Its about here that he loses me I'm afraid.
To be honest I'm just waiting for him to call me stupid and ignorant again. Count me firmly in the corner of the Great Satan.
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Weston,
Stephen prefers to believe that the whole radical Islam thing is a CIA conspiracy undertaken on behalf of that whole military industrial complex thingy.
No, nothing is ever that black and white.
Clearly, radical Islam is mainly a product of western interference (Russian, European, American) in the Islamic world, and particulary the Middle East, stretching back to the First World War.The US and its close allies, particularly Pakistan, have been very keen over the past 30 years to harness that sentiment for their own ends.
Even Israel got into the act by helping create Hamas in the 1980s as a counterwight to the growing power of Fatah/PLO. It's called divide and rule.
The "War on Terror" meme also conveniently keeps the military-industrial-congressional complex "thingy" in beer money for the forseeable future. Oh, and it also seems to help Exxon Mobil pry open previously closed sources of oil. Oh, and it also seems to involve invading countries that have absolutely no connection with radical Islamic terrorist groups. Who would have thought, eh?
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