It Sure Looks Like Osama bin Laden is Winning the Great War on Terror
In spite of half a dozen corporate conglomerates controlling almost 90% of US media ,there are still many courageous journalists in USA (and UK , very few in India , alas ) who are keeping the ideals of journalism and independent media alive .Alexander Cockburn is one of them .
Alexander Claud Cockburn (pronounced /ˈkoʊbərn/ KOH-bərn; born 6 June 1941 in Scotland ) is an American political journalist. Cockburn was brought up in Ireland but has lived and worked in the United States since 1972. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the political newsletter CounterPunch. Cockburn also writes the "Beat the Devil" column for The Nation and a weekly syndicated column for theLos Angeles Times as well as for The First Post, which is syndicated by Creators Syndicate.
I have great pleasure in reproducing his latest piece on the international situation . I am a great admirer of his courageous journalism.
I have taken his permission to use his article for my blog. Gajendra Singh, Delhi .28 February, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02252011.html
It Sure Looks Like Osama bin Laden is Winning the Great War on Terror
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
From Washington DC we hear brave talk about Uncle Sam leading the charge for democracy across the Arab world, and thus restoring himself to high esteem in Arab eyes as something other than the sponsor of tyranny and torture by neoliberalism, the electrode and the waterboard.
The only people fooled by this kind of talk are themselves. Barack Obama may have zig-zagged his way towards some tougher talk to tyrants, but there was no shilly-shallying about the lonely US Feb. 18 veto in the UN Security Council of resolutions condemning Israeli settlements. You think al-Jazeera did not broadcast that across the world?
(Washington invokes Twitter and Facebook, made-in-America tools in the struggle for democracy in the Middle East. Compared in significance to al-Jazeera they are like a couple of ticks on the rump of a water buffalo.)
Back in the fall of 2001, Osama bin Laden habitually cited among al Qaeda's motives for the September 11 attacks the following: America's oppression of the Muslim world, most specifically at that time of Iraq with sanctions (Albright's "we think the price is worth it" was the single greatest recruiting line in the history of Terror) and bombing; the condition of Saudi Arabia as a satrapy of the American empire; and Israel's oppression of the Palestinians.
Unroll the map of the Middle East and North Africa ten years later. As Vijay Prashad puts it in our new newsletter:
"The U. S. war in Iraq handed the country over to a pro-Iranian regime. In late January, the Hezbollah-backed candidate (Najib Mikati) became Prime Minister of Lebanon, and Hamas' hands were strengthened as the Palestine Authority's remaining legitimacy came crashing down when al-Jazeera published the Palestine Papers. Ben Ali and Mubarak's exile threw Tunisia and Egypt out of the column of the status quo states – [ie satrapies of Empire]. Libya's Qaddafi and Yemen's Saleh have been loyal allies in the War on Terror."
And here's the Saudi King, watching al-Jazeera and looking out at the encirclement: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon. Yemen unstable, Bahrein very dodgy, with all those Shia the other side of the causeway.
But are the Arab masses rallying towards a new Caliphate, as tremulously advertised by Glen Beck? Of course not. As Prashad writes:
"As the status quo withered, its loyal dogs tried out the old chant about the threat of Islamic Fundamentalism. Mubarak's chorus about the Muslim Brotherhood was off key. When Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi returned from his exile in Qatar, he did not play the part of Khomeini. The Sheikh opened his sermon in Tahrir Square with a welcome to both Muslims and Christians. Qaddafi's shrieks about a potential al-Qaeda in the Maghreb being formed in the eastern part of Libya repeated the paranoid delusions of the AFRICOM planners."
I imagine Osama is happy enough at the present turmoil, and we can add to Prashad's list the growing US desire to cobble together some kind of excuse to get out of Afghanistan, with plans dissected by our dashing and very well informed former brigadier, Shaukat Qadir, also in our current newsletter. Petraeus is a fading force. Want to see a general with more brains and less gold braid and medals?