While people around the world begin to celebrate George W. Bush's January 20,
2009 departure from the White House, senior administration officials are
crafting legislation, rule changes and executive orders that will make
permanent the worst excesses of this criminal regime.
And in an election year, you can count on a Democratic-controlled Congress to
continue abdicating their role as a brake on the executive branch, ever-fearful
that far-right attack dogs and their media accomplices will label them "soft on
terror."
In this light, a recent piece in The New York Times outlines the corporatist
trajectory that will cement in place the "friendly fascism" of the Bush
administration, inaugurated by the Republican party on December 12, 2000 when
the U.S. Supreme Court handed a stolen election to the Bush-Cheney cabal.
As Associate Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his bitter dissent to the
Bush v. Gore ruling: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the
identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of
the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an
impartial guardian of the rule of law."
Ponder those words and then consider all that has followed since that infamous
ruling eight long years ago undermined the rule of law and democratic processes
in the United States--and the capitulatory cowardice of the putative
"opposition" party, the Democrats, who sealed the deal.
Eric Lichtblau reports that as the November 4 general election approaches,
"Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision
that has received almost no public attention, yet in many ways captures one of
President Bush's defining legacies: an affirmation that the United States is
still at war with Al Qaeda."
Seven years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by the Afghan-Arab
database of disposable Western intelligence assets known as al-Qaeda, Bush
advisers are demanding that Congress "acknowledge again and explicitly that
this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban,
and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war
with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans."
That al-Qaeda attacks Western targets and visits outrages upon innocent
civilians does not mean it is not also a blunt-edged weapon selectively
deployed by imperialism to stoke ethnic and religious tensions in areas deemed
vital to U.S. geostrategic interests. As investigative journalist Robert
Dreyfuss has documented,
Sixty years earlier, when the United States began its odyssey in the Middle
East, there were other voices who wanted conservative Islam, and early
fundamentalist groups associated with the nascent Islamic right, to do battle
with the secular left, with Nasser, with Arab communists and socialists. Now,
six decades later, the Bush administration is pursuing a strategy in the Middle
East that seems calculated to boost the fortunes of the Islamic right. The
United States is counting on Shiite fundamentalists in Iraq to save its failed
policy in that country, and a major theoretician of that campaign explicitly
calls for the United States to cast its lot in with the ayatollahs and the
Muslim Brotherhood. (Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash
Fundamentalist Islam, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005, p. 342)
Long after the Bush administration has sailed off into the proverbial sunset,
policies launched across the decades by successive Democratic and Republican
governments will continue along the same imperial trajectory: war and covert
operations as the preferred instruments for capitalist resource extraction and
global domination.
Al-Qaeda: Asset and Adversary
One need only review the role played by al-Qaeda in the Balkans during the
1990s when the United States and their NATO allies, particularly Germany and
the United Kingdom, provided entrée to demobilized Afghan-Arab mujahedin
fighters as the West dismembered the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,
culminating in 1999 with NATO's murderous 78-day bombing campaign of Serbia to
"liberate" Kosovo.
Earlier in the decade, thousands of Islamist fighters flooded
Bosnia-Herzegovina, directly recruited by former Waffen SS Handzar Division
foot soldier and Islamist ideologue, Alia Izetbegovic, the President of Bosnia
and darling of liberal interventionists such as Bernard-Henri Lévy. In calling
for Western intervention, Lévy shamelessly described Izetbegovic's neofascist
statelet as an exemplar of "modern, secular Islam"! Quite naturally,
Izetbegovic's Nazi past was covered-up by Western interventionists intent on
smashing multiethnic Yugoslavia into smithereens.
Indeed, intelligence analyst and senior lecturer at the University of
Amsterdam, Cees Wiebes, documents in Intelligence and the War in Bosnia
1992-1995, how Western intelligence agencies, including the CIA, MI6 and BND
assisted major arms transshipments into Bosnia despite a UN arms embargo, often
in concert with the reactionary Iranian regime.
Some estimates claim that by 1994, as many as 4,000 mujahedin fighters were
present in Bosnia. Indeed, none other than Osama bin Laden himself visited
Izetbegovic in Sarajevo. As a gesture of appreciation for his support,
Izetbegovic gave bin Laden a Bosnian passport. And, a November 1, 2001 account
in the European edition of The Wall Street Journal claimed that bin Laden
continued to visit the Balkan region as late as 1996.
By 1995 as Wiebes documented, American Hercules C-130 transport planes
accompanied by jet fighters began landing at the Tuzla Air Base in eastern
Bosnia laden with arms, ammunition and communications equipment destined for
Izetbegovic's Islamist brigades. Similar arms pipelines were opened between
Albania, Bosnia, Croatia and later in the decade Kosovo, where Albanian
narcotrafficking networks rule the roost and continue to wreck havoc across the
region.
As I documented in "Welcome to Kosovo! The World's Newest Narco State,"
beginning in 1998 and perhaps earlier, the London-based cleric Omar Bakri
Mohammed, the "emir" of the al-Qaeda-linked al-Muhajiroun began a recruitment
drive for aspiring mujahedin for the "holy war" in Kosovo at London's notorious
Finsbury Park Mosque.
In 2005, in the wake of the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks in London, it was
revealed that Bakri, a probable MI6 asset and simultaneously an al-Qaeda
operative, was the "spiritual" force behind the deadly attacks that claimed 52
lives and wounded hundreds of others. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed reported that,
The reluctance to take decisive action against the leadership of the extremist
network in the UK has a long history. According to John Loftus, a former
Justice Department prosecutor, Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza, as well as the
suspected mastermind of the London bombings Haroon Aswat, were all recruited by
MI6 in the mid-1990s to draft up British Muslims to fight in Kosovo. American
and French security sources corroborate the revelation. The MI6 connection
raises questions about Bakri's relationship with British authorities today.
Exiled to Lebanon and outside British jurisdiction, he is effectively immune to
prosecution. ("Sources: August terror plot is a 'fiction' underscoring police
failures," The Raw Story, Monday, September 18, 2006)
During NATO's Kosovo aggression, analyst Michel Chossudovsky wrote,
Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had been fighting in Bosnia.
And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen mercenaries from
various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting alongside the KLA in
Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were reported to be training the
KLA in guerrilla and diversion tactics. ... According to a Deutsche
Press-Agentur report, financial support from Islamic countries to the KLA had
been channelled through the former Albanian chief of the National Information
Service (NIS), Bashkim Gazidede. "Gazidede, reportedly a devout Moslem who fled
Albania in March of last year [1997], is presently [1998] being investigated
for his contacts with Islamic terrorist organizations." ("Kosovo 'freedom
fighters' financed by organised crime," World Socialist Web Site, 10 April 1999)
As I documented, the Kosovo Liberation Army's links to both narcotrafficking
networks and al-Qaeda was a defining feature of Western intervention in the
former Yugoslavia. Indeed, Hashim Thaci's KLA served as the militarized
vanguard for the Albanian mafia whose "15 Families" control virtually every
facet of the Balkan heroin trade. Thaci is currently Kosovo's Prime Minister.
Kosovar traffickers ship heroin originating exclusively from Asia's Golden
Crescent. At one end lies Afghanistan where poppy is harvested for
transshipment through Iran and Turkey; as morphine base it is then refined into
"product" for worldwide consumption. From there it passes into the hands of the
Albanian syndicates who control the Balkan Route.
U.S. destabilization programs and covert operations rely on far-right
provocateurs and drug lords (often interchangeable players) to facilitate the
dirty work. Throughout its Balkan operations the CIA made liberal use of these
preexisting narcotics networks to arm the KLA and provide them with targets.
Today, similar features are visible for all the world to see as the U.S.
warlord state in Afghanistan battles the Taliban and al-Qaeda for control of
the lucrative opium growing and processing regions of that destroyed nation.
As a sometime Western intelligence asset, al-Qaeda is not simply a puppet of
the United States and NATO as some believe. Such simplifications mask a harder
and crueler reality. In the opinion of this writer, the 9/11 cover-up, rather
than burying the Bush administration's alleged orchestration of the attacks
(the "inside job" thesis), concealed something far more sinister: U.S.
imperialism's decades-long collaboration with Islamist extremists to achieve
geopolitical advantage over their capitalist rivals.
As with neo-Nazi networks that were reconstituted by the West for war against
their domestic leftist adversaries during the Cold War, al-Qaeda and related
terror organizations will, at times, share limited tactical goals with the
West, such as the destruction of secular, leftist opponents in the Middle East,
or as a force for destabilization operations in target countries such as Iran,
as investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has reported in The New Yorker.
That al-Qaeda has reconstituted its military-political-mafia structures along
the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands and continues to attack targets across the
region at will, is testament to the resilience of the organization and the
appeal of its reactionary ideology. There is a deadly irony here, since its
murderous "tradecraft" was quite literally bequeathed to it by Western
intelligence services and America's preeminent regional allies, Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia.
The Bush Legacy
As far-right Republican party hordes gather in Minneapolis/St. Paul for the
coronation of their presidential candidates, reactionary Senator John McCain
(R-AZ) and Alaska's Christian fundamentalist governor, Sarah Palin, the Bush
regime's strategy of preemptive war is viciously playing out on the home
front. Salon's Glenn Greenwald reports,
Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly
intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30
officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of
those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on
the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing
computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St.
Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed,
photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a
demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations,"
and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at
least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.
("Massive Police Raids on Suspected Protesters in Minneapolis," Salon, August
30, 2008)
The raids were orchestrated by local law enforcement agencies with major
assistance from various federal spy outfits such as the FBI, NSA and the
Pentagon's own Northern Command (NORTHCOM).. The raids are purely an
intimidation tactic designed to squelch peaceful dissent by citizens outraged
by Bushist policies throughout these long years of darkness.
Indeed, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that police and federal agencies
utilized the "services" of informants and provocateurs in their targeting of
the anarchist RNC Welcoming Committee.
Aided by informants planted in protest groups, authorities raided at least six
buildings across St. Paul and Minneapolis to stop an "anarchist" plan to
disrupt this week's Republican National Convention.
>From Friday night through Saturday afternoon, officers surrounded houses,
>broke down doors, handcuffed scores of people and confiscated suspected tools
>of civil disobedience.
The show of force was led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office in
collaboration with the FBI, Minneapolis and St. Paul police, the Hennepin
County Sheriff's Office and other agencies. (Heron Marquez Estrada, Bill
McAuliffe and Abby Simons, "Police Raids Enrage Activists, Alarm Others,"
Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 31, 2008)
The "preemptive" raids targeted activists, alternative media and lawyers
on-scene. All were handcuffed and forced to lie face-down, while SWAT teams and
federal agents ransacked numerous homes in a quixotic hunt for "weapons."
Greenwald avers, "Targeting people with automatic-weapons-carrying SWAT teams
and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning
dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in
no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a
police state as can be imagined."
After nearly eight years of massive surveillance and infiltration operations by
the federal government across a multitude of federal agencies, often acting in
cahoots with reenergized local "red squads" rebranded as Fusion Centers and
Joint Terrorism Task Forces coordinated through the Office of National
Intelligence, the mutant stepchildren of the FBI's COINTELPRO, the CIA's
Operation CHAOS and the NSA's Project SHAMROCK have brought the "war on terror"
home in a big way.
The Minneapolis City Pages reported back in May, that police and the FBI's
Joint Terrorism Task Force were "soliciting" informants to keep tabs on local
protest groups. According to journalist Matt Snyders's account, FBI Special
Agent Maureen A. Mazzola, flanked by a cop, attempted to recruit a University
of Minnesota sophomore as a paid "confidential informant." While the student
declined the feds' "generous offer," the wider issue of recruiting Stasi-like
moles to report "suspicious activities" by citizens exercising their
constitutionally-guaranteed right to say "NO!" cuts to the heart of the role of
dissent in a democracy.
Outraged by the "preemptive policing" on display in Minneapolis, Glenn
Greenwald comments on the virtual blackout by the corporate media,
all-too-willing to criticize the actions of repressive government's thousands
of miles away while silently acquiescing to the police state in full-bloom here
at home.
So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement
agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of
violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to
track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary
is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national
media and little outcry from anyone. And it's not difficult to see why. As the
recent "overhaul" of the 30-year-old FISA law illustrated--preceded by the
endless expansion of surveillance state powers, justified first by the War on
Drugs and then the War on Terror--we've essentially decided that we want our
Government to spy on us without limits. There is literally no police power that
the state can exercise that will cause much protest from the political and
media class and, therefore, from the citizenry. ("Federal Government Involved
in Raid on Protesters," Salon,
August 31, 2008)
As The New York Times reported, Bushist demands on Congress to "affirm" that
the U.S. is at "war" with international terrorism, "carries significant legal
and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to
claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention,
interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy," which as we see on a daily
basis, is a war on our freedom to exist as individuals rather than as
"soldiers" in an imperialist charade.
The Bushist proposal will provide the legal framework to assert broad executive
power "during a time of war," an interpretation of the commander in chief's
presumed wartime powers that Justice Department lawyers secretly used to gin-up
the illegal detention and torture of alleged terrorist suspects and the NSA's
driftnet surveillance of Americans outside the rule of law.
As readers no doubt recall, the September 14, 2001 congressional resolution
known as the "Authorization for Use of Military Force," still in effect, became
the pseudo-legal justification for the worst excesses of the Bush regime.
But as former Reagan Justice Department official Bruce Fein told the Times,
Congress should not "give the administration the wartime language it seeks."
"I do not believe that we are in a state of war whatsoever," Mr. Fein said. "We
have an odious opponent that the criminal justice system is able to identify
and indict and convict. They're not a goliath. Don't treat them that way."
The same can be said for the war criminals occupying high-office in the Bush
administration and Congress. I disagree with Mr. Fein on one salient point: we
are indeed "in a state of war." However, it is a one-sided class war waged by a
monstrous system of profit based on the exploitation of our living labor and
ecocidal resource extraction by mafia-like associations known as multinational
corporations.
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa
Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil
Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
© Copyright Tom Burghardt, Antifascist Calling..., 2008
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