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Fitzgerald: Where In the World is the “Center” of the “War On Terrorism”?

Sep 19, 2009 8:27 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Somalia is the next challenge in efforts to stem Islamic terrorism, a report said Sunday.” — from a news article at Agence-France Presse here.

Let’s see. For many years, until just the day before yesterday, Iraq was “the central front” in the “war on terror.”

But now the theatre of war has mysteriously moved more than a thousand miles eastward, and the theatregoers — chiefly American soldiers and civilians — have packed up and moved over to Afghanistan, which with neighboring Pakistan, constitutes Af-Pak. And it is Af-Pak that is now “the central front” in the “war on terror.”

But for how long? If the Shi’a Zaidis in northern Yemen defeat the government forces, and that would worry the Saudi government, won’t the Saudis then tell the Americans that they have to take care of Yemen too (otherwise “we, your good friends, will be in trouble, and you wouldn’t want that”)? Then Yemen may very well then come to constitute, after Af-Pak, or perhaps quickly being substituted for it, the “central front” in the “war on terror.”

And Libya, don’t forget Libya, which thanks to the whims of Muammar Qaddafi can always become at a moment’s notice a good candidate for being the “central front” of the “war on terror.” For Qaddafy has for decades supplied money to all sorts of terrorist groups, and he could take it into his head to do so again.

And what about the Islamic Republic of Iran? Remember that Iran has been involved in all sorts of attacks abroad, including the blowing up of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires. And of course all over the Iranian diaspora, but especially in Paris, the Islamic Republic has been attempting to terrorize its exiled opponents by killing them, as they did to the noble Shahpour Bakhtiar, and others who, whether or not they were associated with the late Shah, were determined to resist the Islamic Republic of Iran. And Iran has supported Hizballah with money and weaponry so that it, in turn, can terrorize the Christians, the Druse, even the Sunnis of Lebanon. As a consequence, Lebanon appears now to be in a state of permanent political paralysis.

Would Iran, especially if it acquires nuclear weapons, not become, not almost certainly come to be recognized as, “the new center” in the “war on terror”?

And then there is Syria. The country is ruled of, by, and for
Alawites, who rule in the armed forces but who constitute only 12% of
the population. So far Bashar al-Assad appears to think he can continue
in power — the Alawites are not even regarded as orthodox Muslims by
the Sunnis who make up 70% of the population in Syria — by placating
the Shi’a of Iran (by acting as a conduit for Iranian weapons and money
to Hezbollah, and by standing by Iran diplomatically). Part of his
strategy also involves placating the Sunnis of Syria by allowing other
Sunnis — particularly the exiled Ba’athists of Iraq who want to
reinstall there something like the regime that Saddam Hussein had
created, with the Sunni Arabs on top — to enter Iraq to conduct
attacks to destabilize the Shi’a-controlled government.

Syria is not only a permanent threat to Jews in Israel (and as far
away as Buenos Aires) but also to Christians in Lebanon — even though
the Alawites protect the Christians in Syria. (The Christians in Syria
are a source of support for them and could never be a threat, unlike
the Sunni Muslims.) Syria is also a regime with close ties to both
Hizballah and various “Palestinian” terror groups. Why should not Syria
become at some point part of the “central front” in the “war on
terrorism,” possibly along with Iran? (It was Iranian clerics who
decided to officially elevate the Alawites to full-fledged Muslim —
albeit Shi’a — status.)

And then there’s Saudi Arabia, with a regime of those Al-Saud
princes and princelings who, all daggers and dishdashas and sneers of
cold command, toy with the Americans, even as they hire an army of
propagandists to write Op/Ed articles on the bestial behavior of those
quite unreasonable Israelis (when the Arabs have cried Peace! Peace!
for so long, but because of Israel, there is no peace). These princes
and princelings continue with their promotion of Islam, and of the most
uncompromising and therefore most sinister and malevolent form of Islam
— their own homegrown Wahhabi version. The Al-Saud, with a regime that
gets good press for its ballyhooed ability to “turn terrorists around,”
in fact does nothing more than persuade some Muslims who were attacking
the Saudi government for being in bed with Infidels, that the Saudi
regime is as true-blue Muslim as they come, not an Infidel-lover among
them. And how do they do it? Well, imams are sent in to the jails,
armed with the Qur’an, and also able to tell those prisoners all the
wonderful things the Al-Saud are doing to spread Islam everywhere,
conducting Da’wa, building mosques and madrasas, and step by step doing
far more to bring about the end result — the ultimate triumph of Islam
— that those prisoners so ardently desire. They convince them that the
Saudis, with their sly ways, have managed to do far more for Islam than
those terrorists did, in their obvious way, on the eleventh of
September, 2001.

And it’s true. Despite appearances — or despite what American
officials continue to pretend to believe because it is easier than
recognizing the grim truth — those Saudi princes are doing everything
they can, through deployment of the Money Weapon, to further the cause
of Islam. And they are more cunning and effective, in their bankrolling
of everyone. Didn’t the fact that 15 (or was it 16?) of the notorious
novemdectet were Saudis show that Saudi Arabia is doing something
right, and managed to remain regarded by those credulous Americans as
still a “staunch ally”? And isn’t this the very best way of being left
alone to promote, through money, the precious lifeblood of Islam in
Europe and North America and everywhere that mosques, madrasas, and
propaganda need to be funded? And isn’t that also Jihad? Isn’t that
just as important to swell, inexorably, the numbers of Muslims, and
thus the participants, directly or indirectly, in support of the Jihad,
or struggle, to remove all obstacles to the spread and then the
dominance of Islam?

And haven’t rich and powerful Saudis — above the laws of the West,
able to call of investigations of billion-dollar bribery scandals, for
example — given money to Bin Laden, and to other organizers and
recruiters of Islamic terrorists, even in Europe itself (see Bosnia)?
And all the mosques and madrasas and campaigns of Da’wa that the Saudis
pay for in the West create more and more and more Muslims. The more
Muslims there are, the greater the pool of potential terrorists, and
the larger the number of those who believe in Jihad and will support or
pursue it by other means. This in turn leads to a greater expense and a
more nightmarish problem (see Great Britain, see France) for the
security services of the Infidel nation-states that have allowed this
problem to build and build. They keep whistling in the dark, prating
about greater efforts at “integration” that, despite the texts and
tenets of Islam will somehow succeed with more than a handful of
Muslims within the Western, Infidel world — as if Muslim immigrants
posed exactly the same problems, but no more, as Chinese or Hindus or
Vietnamese Buddhists or other non-Muslim immigrants.

So even if you right now want to join the American government in
pretending, or even believing (it’s hard to decide which is worse) that
Saudi Arabia is a “staunch ally” in the “war on terrorism” because, you
see, “it too is threatened,” won’t you at least agree that Saudi
Arabia, too, might someday be recognized as a “center” in the “war on
terrorism”? (And remember: it is “threatened,” but the Saudis simply
re-program their homegrown terrorists to concentrate entirely on
Infidels, and to leave the Al-Saud alone, as devout promoters of Jihad
in every way they can promote it.)

And what about a member of NATO, Turkey?
In Turkey, once seen as thoroughly, permanently secular in its
orientation, Islam is back with a vengeance, as Erdogan step by
systematic step undoes the secularists. The systematic constraints put
in place by Ataturk and his followers are being taken apart, and an
attempt is made, by the imposition of a $2.5 billion dollar fine, to
simply crush the most powerful media opposition to Erdogan, and to
thereby threaten through misuse of the tax power to destroy others who
might oppose Erdogan, Gul, and all the others — don’t forget Fethuleh
Gulen, living safely in his American exile, which is also convenient
for the more efficient running of a pedagogic empire, the pedagogy in
question being that which focuses on Islam, a kind of higher-education
version of madrasas. The university rectors, and the journalists, and
the lawyers, and the professors, and the curators at Topkapi, and the
art gallery and bookstore owners and habitues, and a dozen Orhan
Pamuks, cannot prevent Turkey from becoming more and more like the Arab
states and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran ought to have been held
up by Turkish secularists, who let down their guard and allowed the
army to be the main guarantee of Kemalism instead of relentlessly
pushing the country westward. Could it be that in a future not far
away, Turkey, stout provider of troops to NATO during
the Korean War, listening post and provider of airbases during the Cold
War, might become — whether Erdogan succeeds in consolidating power,
and whether or not Turkey becomes part of the E.U. — a “center” of the “war on terrorism”?

And what about — oh, go around the world and ask what is going on
in Chechnya, or Bosnia, and whether you have heard of Chechens or
Bosnian Muslims being picked up in the most distant, seemingly oddest
places, for participating in terror attacks.

And while we are at it, are there no recruits? Has no one been
plotting, scheming, training, and then taking part, enough to make the
countries that they now live in possible future “centers” in the “war
on terrorism”? This is happening not in Iraq and Afghanistan, not in
Pakistan and Syria and Iran, not in Saudi Arabia, not in Yemen and
Libya, but in other countries, NATO countries
that possess arsenals of the most advanced weaponry, and
civilisationally are part of, and the heart of, the West. Wherever
immigrants may come from, America remains, in its political and legal
institutions, its language, its literature, its art, its science, a
child of Europe, and its fate is tied to that of Europe. America would
suffer terribly were it to see those who gave it birth succumb to
Islam.

We seek it here, we seek it there, we seek that “center” of the “war
on terrorism” everywhere. But we need not look here and there, because
there is no “center.” Muslim terrorism will take place wherever there
are a sufficient number of Muslims ready and able to participate
directly in violent Jihad, and those who one day are willing only to
promote Jihad through non-violent means could, at any time, and for any
number of reasons, metamorphose into those who are now willing to use
violent means — that is, qitaal (combat), including what we have no
trouble identifying as terrorism but that Muslims see merely as a form
of qitaal that is justified because Infidels are militarily superior,
and that just isn’t fair.

How long will it be before enough plots are hatched in such
unlikely-sounding places as England and France and Denmark and the
Netherlands and Belgium and Germany and Italy, and one or two or many
more of them, become “centers” in the “war on terrorism”? And long
before they become those “centers,” they are already places where the
Jihad, rightly defined, is underway. Now it’s a question of having this
most obvious of observations becoming recognized, and understood, in
those corridors of power all over the Western world — the ones that
have those banana-peels strewn about, and on which policymakers keep
slipping and taking their falls, and their pratfalls. La commedia è
finita, however. At this point, no one should be laughing.

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