topic by
nemesis
11/4/2001 (22:17)

http://www.thefridaytimes.com/ejaz.htm

Bin Laden wants last laugh

Ejaz Haider
wonders whether the Americans in particular, and the West in general, are playing into bin Laden’s hands

For better or worse, the first round goes to the bin Laden-Mullah Omar duo. The bombing has failed to pulverize the militia, the much talked about defections have not materialised and the US special forces’ first, and so far the only, foray into Afghanistan has two dead and several injured to show for its success. With increasing civilian casualties the coalition has begun to fray at the edges with pressure mounting on the governments not only in the Islamic world but also in Europe. The reluctance of Washington to commit ground troops promises a drawn-out war. To add to it, the political breakthrough — the post-Taliban or Taliban-alternative dispensation — is nowhere in sight.

But this is not all. Chances are that bin Laden may have the last laugh. Consider.

Conventional wisdom on unconventional warfare says that the more spectacular the terrorist attack(s), the greater the mobilization by the adversary to respond to it and, in inverse proportion, the lesser the ability of the terrorist group(s) to force the adversary into a negotiation mode. In other words, terrorist groups need to pitch violence at a level where, while highlighting the point they are trying to make, they should, nevertheless, be able to leave room for negotiating the issue. This means that like the state actors, terrorist groups also need to integrate violence with a political strategy, avoiding a need to force the adversary into total mobilization that leaves no room for a political compromise.

It is on this basis that western experts have been content with the explanation that the September 11 attacks were born of hatred and seething anger and did not evince a strategy. On the surface, Al-Qaeda does not appear to have a political dimension. Bin Laden does not plan to negotiate with the US. Did he then sanction the attack on the US — if indeed that is correct — merely because he hates the Americans?

In his brilliant analysis in last week’s TFT, Salman Tarik Kureshi ( Of Icons, Revolutionaries and Terrorists ) writes: “…Al Qaeda and other similar organisations are not affiliated with any mass political or revolutionary movement. Their tactics include neither electoral campaigns, nor mass mobilization, nor armed uprisings. More, no explicit social vision, political programme or economic manifesto has been proclaimed. What one hears of is injustices to the Islamic world and talk of ‘revenge’ and ‘anger’.”

Kureshi therefore likens bin Laden to the Russian nihilists, who found in the character of Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons a prototype, “committed to political violence for its own sake”.

There are indeed many similarities between bin Laden and members of Alexander Herzen’s The Will of the People movement. But there are as many differences. Nihilism began with total negation and aspired to a value, in Albert Camus’ remarkable description, “still to come”. Writes Camus: “A value to come is…a contradiction in terms, since it can neither explain an action nor furnish a principle of choice as long as it has not been formulated. But the men of 1905, tortured by contradictions, really did give birth, by their very negation and death, to a value which will henceforth be imperative and which they brought to light in the belief that they were only announcing its advent”.

Bin Laden is announcing the advent not of a value still to come but one that his puritanism tells him was revealed 1500 years ago and then lost by the Muslims. He is negating, surely, the historical accretions as well as the modern international security architecture, but only in confirmation of that value. And while bin Laden and what he stands for have to be contextualised, that does not take away the seemingly transcendental appeal of his message. For the followers, the message is non-temporal and non-spatial.

But if there is nothing political about Al Qaeda, would bin Laden end up as a nihilist? The question presupposes the apolitical nature of bin Laden’s strategy, which is incorrect. Bin Laden’s strategy is essentially political. He does not aim to negotiate with the West; he wants to exploit the fault-line within the Islamic world. And his political weapon is the people and the political parties within the Islamic world who are expected to rise up for his cause and topple the corrupt governments of the Islamic world.

His military strategy — draw the West into a conflict through spectacular attacks on its interests — is essentially political in nature. This is why it is not geared towards controlled violence. He is addressing us; not the Americans. He wants the West to attack with all the viciousness at its disposal. The greater the destruction, the better for forcing people in the Islamic world to rise and decide which side they are on. This can only be achieved through a sharpening of the internal conflict the reasons for which transcend bin Laden but the existence of which he has employed brilliantly to his own ends. As for social and economic programmes, there will be time for them yet.

The success of bin Laden’s strategy is clear from what he has forced Washington into doing. Any drawn-out campaign will surely build up the pressure on governments in the Islamic world and if the US, in its frustration, were to employ weapons of mass destruction to get to him, he would indeed have made his death an apotheosis.

reply by
Barb
11/6/2001 (20:39)

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The Sept. 11 attacks certainly got our attention! However, the problem with the attacks to prove their 'point' is that they don't allow the U.S. to 'save face' for either stupid or perceived stupid things it has done. Had the attackers tried peaceful tactics to get their very powerful message across, perhaps, it would have worked. I know this may sound naive by the 'intellectuals' here, but if Bin Laden had taken out full-page ads in the NY Times and other major newspapers across the U.S. PERSUADING people not to support Israel, etc, whatever other 'gripes' he and his supporters have, I really think he could have 'won' his case. The attacks have acted as a diversion, causing the major attentions to be in other places now; i.e, internal security, joblessness, etc, etc. rather than where the terrorists wanted the focus.

reply by
Nemesis
11/7/2001 (13:42)

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Barb, it doesn't realy matter what we think Mr. Laden 'could have' or 'should have' done. The fact is that he DID execute a well calculated act AND it does seem to have achieved the objective Mr. Laden had in mind!

You may want to revisit the last two poaragrphs of the original article to see Bin Laden's strategy and the status of it's success.

reply by
David
11/10/2001 (16:20)

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Re: O'Sammy's 'El Che' bin Ladens' plan to promote the killing of countless Arabs by the US and its allies ( i.e England ) in order to infuriate the Islamic world and therefore have them declare a 'Jihad' against the US, Israel and the West.

If you will go to www.JewsNotZionists.org you will find ( click on '10 questions for the Zionists' ) that the Zionist also preferred to see Jews murdered and even taken to the gas chambers by the millions--vs--accepting an SS (Gestapo) offer to ship all the Jews to Spain in the 1940's.

To the Zionists it was 'to Palestine or death for all Jews!'

Thus this plays well for the Arabs also and in the end the US will end up like Rome and its cheering coliseum perverts--'Cheering as the lions devoured the Christians' as the curtains fall on yet another imperialistic world power that thought they were 'forever.'

reply by
BArb
11/10/2001 (24:59)

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Weren't you one of the posters who thought that the U.S. didn't have any evidence linking Bin Laden to the attacks? You said 'he DID execute a well-planned and calculated attack...' How do you know? There isn't any evidence I thought.

reply by
Robert Ventura USA
11/13/2001 (17:57)

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nemesis - your viewpoint is at best laughable. HAHAHAHAHA.... Bin Laden... a strategy? There is nothing strategic about flying an airplane into a skyscraper. This idiot rat fuck (Bin Laden) is nothing more than a Jim Jones or a David Karesh - leading his mice to slaughter with rhetoric, money and a promise of great things to come. The fact that he has caught our eye has more to do with the mis-deeds he has done, not his strategy. We are too smart to waltz into his motivations for a grand war - east vs. west. We will crush him underfoot like the cockroach he is. We will not relent until every last Arab psychotic who is hell bent on destruction against us is D E A D.
You make me laugh... really.. did you think you even had a point to make?

reply by
Robert Ventura
11/13/2001 (17:59)

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Gas them as they sit in their caves, waiting and watching, scared, bewildered - rushing into the arms of 72 Virgins. Kill them, maime them, make them cough and sputter lungmeat from their nostrils... NOW THAT ...

is a strategy.