In a book published this week, Dr. George Friedman, the founder of the lucid Stratfor, a private for-profit think-tank and intelligence-gathering organization which has been dubbed "the shadow CIA", proposes to explain what the war in Iraq, and the larger "war on terrorism", is really all about.
It sure wasn't about WMD hidden in Iraq -- one of several public arguments for removing Saddam Hussein which, because it didn't work out, has been hailed by our media (which once bought into the argument but has since cashed out) as the only reason. Yet as both parties in the U.S. election maintain, the threat of nuclear or other mass-destructive weaponry in the hands of terrorists -- and quite possibly terrorists trained and directed by a foreign state or states -- is real, and must be dealt with. The arguments are only over how to prevent carnage on a scale seldom before seen.
In America's Secret War, Dr. Friedman argues that the enemy grew out of the Cold War, an artefact of Jimmy Carter's decision to use Saudi Arabian money and Pakistani expertise to create a guerrilla army that could harass the Soviets then occupying Afghanistan. "Al Qaeda", the product, mastered the art of covert operation, and as the Soviets collapsed, began turning it against the West, biting the hand that fed them. Their large ambition is the creation of a new, pan-Muslim caliphate, however, and they attack Western targets as a means of advancing an Islamist revolution at home.
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Posted by: tipper ||
10/07/2004 4:56:10 AM ||
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#1
Western "anti-terrorism" experts = seven blind man and an elephant.
#2
It remains convienent to blame the CIA for al Qaeda. However, bin Laden did most of his fighting from a hotel room in Pakistan. Most of the others, which BTW are pushing up the Afghan equivalent of daisies, joined the effort after the ouster of the Soviets. al Qaeda is a johnny-come-lately as outfits go.
And it ignores the indisputable fact that bin Laden's primary goal was to replace the House of Saud with the House of bin Laden. Mere power politics covered with a smokescreen of religion.
#3
Excerpts from the book here and here [PDF]. Good stuff from Friedman, he always has a clear head. Only problem is, you don't know what's true and what's not, and now that he's got "status", he has to think about what he talks about because it will anger his precious sources.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
