What We All Know Now
It is somehow not a story when the present British Defense Secretary says
that he would not have supported the Iraq War if he had known then what he knows now. But it is a story when the new Anglican Bishop to the Armed Forces says that not all “Taliban” are necessarily the Spawn of Satan.
Everyone knows that the “Taliban” – Islamically ultraconservative Pashtun nationalists, with no existence apart from the Pashtun as a whole and no desire to run anywhere beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan – will return to government, and sooner rather than later. They just won’t be the only people in government this time, that’s all. At least they didn’t legalize rape within marriage. Nor did they launch the 9/11 attacks. “Saudi Arabia”? Did someone say “Saudi Arabia”?
Those who owe an apology to the victims of 9/11 are those who are waging a war against a country which had nothing to do with it, having previously installed a President of the United States so embroiled in Saudi affairs as to call it forth in the first place. Of course Bush is too stupid to have staged it. But he was still the reason why it happened.
Just as there are no Taliban distinct from the Pashtun as a whole, so there is no “al-Qaeda” at all. It is not an organization. It is an idea, and thus vastly more difficult to defeat. The roots and heartland of that idea are in the country whose rulers bankroll the Bushes and the Clintons. The “al-Qaeda” idea defines itself against those rulers. Seeing another of those rulers’ hired help in the White House, those who hold that idea hit out. Not one of them was from Afghanistan. Not a single one.
But all that they did was give Bush a previously inconceivable second term, and the excuse to launch all the wars abroad and assaults on liberty at home that the people behind him had had in mind all along.
“Just as there are no Taliban distinct from the Pashtun as a whole, so there is no “al-Qaeda” at all. It is not an organization. It is an idea, and thus vastly more difficult to defeat. The roots and heartland of that idea are in the country whose rulers bankroll the Bushes and the Clintons. The “al-Qaeda” idea defines itself against those rulers. Seeing another of those rulers’ hired help in the White House, those who hold that idea hit out. Not one of them was from Afghanistan. Not a single one.”
If al-Qaeda–and jihadism in general–is an idea, then let it be countered by another idea that sets out to refute the Qutbists and Bin-Laden types. How about conservatives undergo a deep study of the history and ideology of the Islamist movement and reveal the jihadists true radical colors. That way, it will be known to all that the narrative of the West as an inveterate bully of Muslims is fallacious and that jihadists would attack the West even if it had a sterling foreign policy. This will inspire a coalition to press Muslim state leaders to nullify any attempts of jihadists to organize financially or militarily. With the burden of fighting terrorism now falling upon the Muslim leaders, America could then adopt non-interventionism and genuine conservatism. One could start by pointing out that the House of Saud and Wahabbis have been intimately linked from the first; whither America’s influence in that relationship?
If they were actually Pashtun nationalists, they would not have been supported by Pakistan. As a multi-ethnic state, Pakistan is in the position of the Ottoman or Habsburg empires. Stirring up ethnic nationalism would bring only ill winds. In fact, many have suggested they supported the islamist Taliban to deflate Pushtun nationalism. Within the Pushtun region, Pushtunwali competes with the Taliban’s sharia as the favored code of conduct.
Perhaps there’s not much of an al Qaeda now, but there was one before it was smashed to pieces.
TGGP,
I see your point, but the opponents of the Taliban were just other ethnic nationalists. The Northern Alliance always had some backing from Russian intelligence, and was linked to the ex-Soviet world via its ethnic composition (Tajiks, Turkmen, etc.). In the same way, a Taliban-run Afghanistan has closer links to Waziristan.
Secondly, al-Qaeda was always something of an invention. Its first attested use is in Fed documents (it translates something like “the network”, how crude a name is that?) and only later did some disparate Muslim groups adopt it. There may have been and continue to be such groups with the capacity to carry out terror attacks, but not at any level that can be deemed exceptionally dangerous by historical standards