On 7/31/06, you Jayson Funke further said:
> I think I have been misunderstood. I was not that
> [in the WTC 1993 bombing cases] the prosecution
> used Sterling's book as evidence against Yousef
> etc, . . . but rather that legal preceden[t] for similar
> acts of terrorism on US soil had been successfully
> prosecuted under laws against organized crime. As
> a result, Yousef etc had to be linked to an organized
> structure that had similar characteristics to
> organized crime syndicates.
>
> Al-Qaeda was adopted/created as a term to describe
> such a coherent and organized international terrorist
> organization with legal characteristics similar to the
> mob so that prosecution could proceed.
The term "Al-Quaeda" has numerous sources, and it could have been correct
if you had noted that one of them appears to be how CIA intelligence
analysts referred to so-called "Muhadjeen" with which the CIA had formed
alliances including by financially and otherwise supporting them in
Afghanistan in the late-1970s and thereafter in connection with the Soviet
invasion and occupation of that benighted country.
However, it is also a term (somewhat variantly) used by many others, not
least by persons leading and affiliated with Al-Quaeda.
Given these realities, the first of (as relevant here) several infirmities
with what you were not misunderstood in trying to suggest is that, in terms
of the law-related aspect of the referred to prosecutions themselves, your
comments earlier and above are a kind of "just so story" - a construct
evidently arrived at after the fact but without paying attention to the
actually relevant/operative facts.
You apparently here conflate a federal RICO ("racketeering") prosecution
(re. which you are correct that it would be necessary for the government to
allege and to prove an "enterprise" that is engaged in a "pattern" of what
is referred to as "racketeering activity" etc.) with the actuality of the
WTC 1993 bombing prosecutions -- namely, that the core charges made and
(yet not to put too fine a point on the matter) also proven beyond a
reasonable doubt in those proceedings against Ramzi Yousef and his
co-defendants were violations of the generic federal conspiracy statute (18
U.S.C. § 371) but, even then, almost entirely in the context of allegations
and proof also beyond a reasonable doubt of the underlying substantive
criminal offenses -- i.e., that defendants conspired to use then in fact
did use explosives as weapons to kill humans and severely damage property;
etc., etc..
A a second -- and, I suggest with all due respect, more important --
question which it is therefore you who also raises but which remains
unanswered by you is _why_ -- for what political and intellectual and
emotional reasons (let alone for reasons that would aid in understanding
and in political organizing) -- you have (incorrectly) reconstructed (in
your imagination) how and why the term "Al-Quaeda" has come to be used?
> Subsequently, many of the characteristics of Al-Qaeda
> were taken from ideas espoused by Sterling in her book,
> in which she focused considerable attention on KGB efforts
> to develop terrorist networks throughout the world in
> opposition to the West - an idea that still holds a strong
> following in neocon . . .
. . . and, in most respects, in basically all other actually
well-informed . . .
> . . . circles . . .
. . . of which one of the better informed such (one might think) includes
Osama Bin Laden himself, who has used the term "Al-Quadea" to refer
variantly to the places in/near Afghanistan/Pakistan in which his
organizations were based ("the base") and also to describe their
organizations themselves.
You said earlier (in a way notably less deflective that the 'plaint above
about being "misunderstood") that "[your] point" was that you "cringe
[sic] when [you] see the
term Al-Qaeda being used on the Left, because it indicates, to [you], that
we have
already swallowed one of the neocon/Straussian myths; etc., etc.
Still another "misunderst[anding]" you actually thus create is whether (as
you seem comparatively very clearly to imply) you believe that Al-Quaeda is
mostly a figment of Claire Sterling's or like-minded persons' imaginations
or of a law-formalistic yet also propagandistically oriented criminal
prosecutor and not a to some degree quasi-formal and in other ways de facto
and (however organizationally described) quite real amalgamation of what,
in fact, can be fairly (i.e., accurately) summarily described as terrorist
networks in many parts of the world that oppose what _they_ contend to be
their enemies (i.e., what it is you who refers to above as "the West").
And insofar as you refer to concerns of what you also characterize as "the
Left" which, you also appear to imply, you would prefer be adopted, it
might appear to some that you create your own related misunderstanding in
not frankly and in also fact-specific terms explaining what "myths" you
refer to. Indeed, were it not for your use of this term, I would not have
responded to your posting at all (especially not to the law-related
element, which some may find tedious).
But especially in terms of revivifying (or is it just attempting to put at
least a soupçon of a hint of at least some life into) "the Left" in a
manner that would be credible and otherwise effective, your suggestion (re.
which, in light of what you've so far said in this thread, it would be hard
for you believably to claim that you are "misunderstood") that "Al-Quaeda"
is not a meaningful term that refers to real life organizations and other
actors is perversely off-putting because false in fact . . . even thought
the execrable Geo. W. Bush and the arguably even more disgusting
overwhelming number of members of congress, and also neocons, use that
term, too.
