wenn ich groß bin, werde ich science fiction autor: 3 Jahre später

Sonntag, 12. September 2004

3 Jahre später

From al-Qaeda's point of view, the political unity of the Muslim world was deliberately destroyed by a one-two punch. First, Western colonial powers invaded Muslim lands and detached them from the Ottoman Empire or other Muslim states. They ruled them brutally as colonies, reducing the people to little more than slaves serving the economic and political interests of the British, French, Russians, etc.

[...]

From al-Qaeda's point of view, the Soviet attempt to absorb Afghanistan was the beginning of the end of the colonial venture. They demonstrated that even a superpower can be forced to withdraw from a Muslim land if sufficient guerrilla pressure is put on it.

[...]

For al-Qaeda to succeed, it must overthrow the individual nation-states in the Middle East, most of them colonial creations, and unite them into a single, pan-Islamic state. But Ayman al-Zawahiri's organization, al-Jihad al-Islami, had tried very hard to overthrow the Egyptian state, and was always checked. Al-Zawahiri thought it was because of US backing for Egypt. They believed that the US also keeps Israel dominant in the Levant, and backs Saudi Arabia's royal family.

Al-Zawahiri then hit upon the idea of attacking the "far enemy" first. That is, since the United States was propping up the governments of Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc., all of which al-Qaeda wanted to overthrow so as to meld them into a single, Islamic super-state, then it would hit the United States first.

The attack on the World Trade Center was exactly analogous to Pearl Harbor. The Japanese generals had to neutralize the US fleet so that they could sweep into Southeast Asia and appropriate Indonesian petroleum. The US was going to cut off imperial Japan from petroleum, and without fuel the Japanese could not maintain their empire in China and Korea. So they pushed the US out of the way and took an alternative source of petroleum away from the Dutch (which then ruled what later became Indonesia).

Likewise, al-Qaeda was attempting to push the United States out of the Middle East so that Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia would become more vulnerable to overthrow, lacking a superpower patron. Secondarily, the attack was conceived as revenge on the United States and American Jews for supporting Israel and the severe oppression of the Palestinians. Bin Laden wanted to move the timing of the operation up to spring of 2001 so as to "punish" the Israelis for their actions against the Palestinians in the second Intifadah. Khalid Shaikh Muhammad was mainly driven in planning the attack by his rage at Israel over the Palestinian issue. Another goal is to destroy the US economy, so weakening it that it cannot prevent the emergence of the Islamic superpower.

Al-Qaeda wanted to build enthusiasm for the Islamic superstate among the Muslim populace, to convince ordinary Muslims that the US could be defeated and they did not have to accept the small, largely secular, and powerless Middle Eastern states erected in the wake of colonialism. Jordan's population, e.g. is 5.6 million. Tunisia, a former French colony, is 10 million, less than Michigan. Most Muslims have been convinced of the naturalness of the nation-state model and are proud of their new nations, however small and weak. Bin Laden had to do a big demonstration project to convince them that another model is possible.

Bin Laden hoped the US would timidly withdraw from the Middle East. But he appears to have been aware that an aggressive US response to 9/11 was entirely possible. In that case, he had a Plan B: al-Qaeda hoped to draw the US into a debilitating guerrilla war in Afghanistan and do to the US military what they had earlier done to the Soviets. Al-Zawahiri's recent message shows that he still has faith in that strategy.

[...]

It remains to be seen whether the US will be forced out of Iraq the way it was forced out of Iran in 1979. If so, as al-Zawahiri says, that will be a huge victory. A recent opinion poll did find that over 80 percent of Iraqis want an Islamic state. If Iraq goes Islamist, that will be the biggest victory the movement has had since the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. An Islamist Iraq might well be able ultimately to form a joint state with Syria, starting the process of the formation of the Islamic superstate of which Bin Laden dreams.

[...]

The US is not winning the war on terror. Al-Qaeda also has by no means won. But across a whole range of objectives, al-Qaeda has accomplished more of its goals than the US has of it.

Juan Cole, September 11 and Its Aftermath

... comment

Das bin nicht ich. Das ist Bruno Kreisky. Ich für meinen Teil bin 28 Jahre alt und ein kurzsichtiger, wenig- und langsamlesender, aufmerksamkeits- und noch vielgestalt andersgestörter, ungeschickter, linkshändiger, unausdauernder, übergewichtiger, un-unaufgeregter und unkonzentrierter stummer Schwätzer ohne Führerschein (sowie ohne Ehrgeiz, Ziel im Leben, eigene Wohnung, geregeltes oder sonstwie geartetes Geschlechtsleben, usw …), dafür mit unregelmäßigem Bartwuchs und Stoffwechsel sowie dem starken Wunsch, Drängen und Verlangen, der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft doch noch ein Ende zu bereiten (warum dennoch der Sonnenkönig dort oben hängt, darf jeder für sich selbst ausknobeln). In Ermangelung eines besseren ist mein Lebensmotto ‹wenn schon, denn schon›, was angesichts meiner Defizite im menschlichen, zwischenmenschlichen und übermenschlichen Bereich niemanden wundert, der mich kennt. Ich weiß nicht, was ich mit diesem Blog eigentlich will, aber ich schreibe es mit kleineren und größeren Unterbrechungen doch schon seit 2819 Tagen, und so lange es mich noch freut, wird weitergeschrieben. Das letzte Mal hat es hier am 22.05.2012 um 20:29 irgendetwas neues gegeben.

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