No connections yet between Al-Qaeda and Iraq, but more with Saudi Arabia & Pakistan?

Great Debates
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First off, what enemy? We’ve been going around and around on this one for months and the fact of the matter is that all evidence pointed away from Iraq’s ties with terrorists. Notice I used the past tense. Because what is happening now is the exact opposite. The link your side claimed over and over before the invasion was false then – it is very real now. I guess kudos is in order. The Iraqi resistance, while hardly monolithic, has found a common cause with terrorists fighting the invaders. And while terrorist methods are not unlike the “kill them all and let God/Allah sort them out” that I heard bandied about here from time to time at the start of hostilities, the fact of the matter is that any tactic that sinks Iraq further into chaos will only favor those opposed to the invasion in country.

Secondly, your claim that the Bush administration is doing “what it can” to make sure more pople don’t join the enemy, runs exactly counter to the facts on the ground. If anything, Iraq has become a breeding ground for terrorist and/or anti-American sentiments. The rosy picture you love to paint is nowhere to be found in reality. The American occupation is turning exactly into the kind of nightmare many predicted before the invasion, bleeding soldiers and budgets alike and with no end in sight.

Witness some recent ramdom quotes from regular Iraqis. Including a member of the hand-picked Iraqi Governing Council:

**AP news

**Original from LA Times

More “good” news? Why, I am almost glad you asked:

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Washington Post

**Groping in the dark

From the often forgotten financial side:

**Miami Herald

In closing, Sam, I honestly don’t understand where you, and others like you, get your “reality.” Because it has little to do with what is actually happening on the ground where shades of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and American intervention in Lebanon come to mind. IIRC, those two didn’t exactly have a Happy Ending.

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Meanwhile, this from James Carroll is thought-provoking:

His prescription is to eat crow, turn it over to other/multinational control, and pull out before more good people die.

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I’m not sure this will be easy. Turn it over and then what? More good people die. But this time Polish good people, maybe? I guess one has to give asap as much power as possible to the Iraqis!

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I’ll tell you what else is “old news,” sahib. This point about the educated middle class terrorists? It’s always been that way. Experts on Islamic fundamentalism like Gilles Kepel and John Esposito have been pointing out this fact since the 1980s.

For some reason, Americans have been laboring under the assumption that the Islamist radicals must be from the poor, ignorant underclass. Experts like Kepel and Esposito have been trying to fight this ignorance for going on 20 years now, but “fighting ignorance is taking longer than we thought!” Apparently we have this cultural meme that violent radicals must be ragtag scruffy plebians. The Muslim world is different, totally different from what we might expect based on our own history. We will never get a grip on the realities of the Muslim world until we can take off the blinders of our own cultural assumptions.

I have been to the Middle East and other Muslim countries. I can tell you that the real poor people are fairly moderate conservatives; they do not incline to radicalism. Their lives are governed by a sense of resignation to the system (what some Orientalists stereotype as “fatalism”). They have been brought up in a traditional Islamic ethos that teaches them: sedition and insurrection are worse than bad government, we must learn to endure bad government with patience but never cause turmoil (fitnah), the worst of evils.

The violent radicals, the “Jihad Islami” and “Hamas” and “al-Qa‘idah” types, tend to be middle-class youths with college degrees, usually in engineering or the sciences. They turn to radicalism because aspirations for a better world have been instilled in them, but they find no hopes for advancement within the present system. Their frustration boils over into rage.

This point is crucial to understanding Islamist radicalism, but Westerners have not yet grasped it, because they associate fundamentalism with backwardness and “medieval” attitudes. *Au contraire: * Medieval Islam taught people not to rebel. The most “backward” (i.e. traditional) levels of Muslim society tend to be placid and passive toward the system. The radicals have been radicalized because they have gotten a modern education, and found their aspirations stymied.

The small middle class has always been behind the extreme fundamentalist movements, since they first started in the second quarter of the 20th century. The only time Islamist radicalism has ever turned into a mass movement was in Iran, 1978-79, and that was only because the merchant class (bazaris) and other mainstream sectors of Iranian society became temporarily allied with the fundamentalist college students. The Arab world is different.

So I disagree with you, London_Calling. Nothing new has happened to say the jig is up. So far the plebian masses of the Muslim countries have not been stirred from their normal torpor. However, if Bush’s aggressive policies continue to antagonize Muslims needlessly, that may soon come to pass, and then America’s name really will turn to shit.

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Which Iraqis? Sunni Iraqis? Shiite Iraqis? Kurdish Iraqis?
This is a genuine mess - turning Iraq into a democracy will take a long, long time. Meanwhile turning Iraq into an American (or UN, or whatever) base to “stabilize” Saudi, as suggested by Sam Stone creates more trouble than it settles.
This whole thing is about Saudi - the US (and the west in general) has a huge problem. It needs the oil and it’s painted itself into a corner by supporting an unpleasant regime that is looking increasingly vulnerable. If the Saudi government falls there is no way America can invade and control the oilfields with out committing genocide - the religious sites guarantee that.

So “Operation Iraqi freedom” becomes “Operation Gain Control of Iraq”?
Except this pisses off even the most moderate Iraqis (and everyone else in the region) - but most crucially, any military base becomes a problem in itself. Just as the huge warships built to project power before WWII became worst than useless when the shooting started, anything that is valuable target can be more use to the enemy. Al Q. has attacked US military bases before and knows America has a weak spot when it comes to military deaths.

I hope all doom 'n gloom is unwarranted, but…

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Speaking of Pakistan, the Afghan Minister of the Interior was on The News Hour tonight, 2 Sept. 2003. He said that infiltration of Taliban from Pakistan is now a serious problem for Afghanistan. He was specifically asked about infiltration across the border with Iran and he said that to date there has been no Taliban generated unrest or fighting along the Iran border.

Pakistan, for those who aren’t keeping score, is our ally while Iran is a member of the “axis of evil” and must be watched at all times, if not invaded.

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Pakistan is our ally? Pakistan, not Iran, had direct links to the 9-11 attacks. The mastermind of 9-11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is Pakistani.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/khalidshaikhmohammed.html

Anybody who repeats the phrase “axis of evil” deserves to be…oh shit I just got whooshed (I hope).

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Heck, and when I say “Pakistan”, I’m accused of crying wolf. (Sorry, T. Mehr, but I couldn’t resist that! :D)

Seriously though, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The kiddy gloves Pakistan is being treated with need to be changed for something a lot more effective. Propping the country up with a little bit of aid money every now and then is not going to solve the fundamental problem, which is the continuous stream of terrorists that emanates out of that country.

The madrassas continue to churn out potential threats to civilian peace. The NWFP (where the Taliban and OBL are believed to be holed up) still remains out of control of the central government. The Taliban continue to infiltrate into Afghanistan. Jihadis continue to infiltrate into Kashmir. And no amount of rewarding Pakistan for it’s role as a frontline ally of the US in it’s war against terror is going to change that.

Sure, it’s a difficult situation. An extremely difficult one. But one that needs to be addresses urgently before repercussions of it are felt byond the borders of India and Afghanistan.

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** Jomo Mojo **
If this is true - and it seems you know what you are talking about - then we are in real trouble. 'cause up to now everybody thought, education was the key to end violence, suppression, poverty, etc. But can we deny a people education? It’s just as with the madrassas, the question is not if they learn, but who teaches them!

Capt B. Phart

Good question. Is anyone aware of whether the Iraqi ministers apointed these days have any plan? At least they are sort of multi-ethnical.

gouda
Good to see you again!
I’m still not sure how one could apply pressure on Pakistan, acknowledging, that the government itself is helpless about the situation.

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Here’s some interesting reading. Basically more of why I think Pakistan deserves a lot more attention than it’s getting. Yes, I know it’s from an Indian newspaper, but the author comes with impressive credentials and is Pakistani to boot.

IMO, the world needs to publicly and openly acknowledge that Pakistan is central to global terrorism issues, in terms of the conditions prevalent in that country which allow it to flourish to the extent that it does. . The opinion of India or Afghanistan or even the US may not count for much in Pakistan, but a unified gobal voice is a whole different ballgame. A tall order, I realise - maybe even one which belongs in La La Land - but I think it’s necessary

The Pakistani economy is intrinsically linked to foreign aid, and the threat of this aid drying up unless credible action is taken should hopefully be enough incentive for Pakistan to get serious. In reality, exactly the opposite is happening. While this may suit US interests in the short term, its long term impact is anybody’s guess.

Like I said in the previous thread, tough decisions need to be taken, otherwise we’re just running around in circles, achieving nothing, not unlike the Iraq fiasco.

The way I see it, going after individual terrorists should not be the short term objective. The Terrorist is for the most invisible, and looking for him is living the life of the colloquial Loser - sometimes you get lucky, mostly you don’t. The urgent need is to strangle the infrastructure that allows the terrorist to operate. That means funding infrastructure and training infrastructure. The long term goal should be paying attention to the root causes of terrorism, whatever they may be.

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The issue is not “education” grosso modo, but what kind of education. The problem is lopsided education. The extremists tend to have degrees in engineering and the sciences. You don’t find social scientists, philosophers, or literature professors throwing bombs. The mind needs to learn critical thinking, not just nuts and bolts, to be able to see human existence in perspective.

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gouda from the article you cite:

Let’s ask a rather painful question: Should we really wish for a free election in Pakistan at this point in time? What would be the result? If Musharraf is bad, can we hope for anyone better? Or is he at the moment the best partner we can get?
Actually it’s a similar situation in Iran. The country being in the focus of US suspicions now coincides with the most liberal president they had in a long time. But he’s spending his time fighting religiouse hardliners.

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I disagree. Scientists tend to be logic and rational thinkers. The problem is what else they learn - or let’s call it a brainwashing. If I read , that the latest suicide bomber was a father of two small kids, it blows me away. Can you explain an act like this by his lack of confidence in the future? Which he only arrived at because of his education. I’m not convinced.

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I have to admit your greater experience - mine is limited to Egypt.(hardly typical I know) I can only say it was my impression while there (some years back), was that nearly all the radicalism came from the poor rural areas. I seem to remember also that there were attacks on tourists in Egypt from members of the “tourist police” force - drawn from the rural poor. Possibly the ring-leaders where educated, I don’t know.

This, I think, is spot on
But… I’m not sure it’s a simple “Education = aspiration = anger = terrorism”
“Ignorance = fatalism = inertia = no terrorism” formula.
Almost all the Arab Muslims I’ve met (of various education levels) seem both very angry about the state of governance in the Muslim world and given to that stereotypical “fatalism” about changing it.

Really not convinced by this - admittedly a philosophy student’s bomb is less likely to be a practical threat than one from the engineering or chemistry departments (attempts to start a terrorist campaign in Wales, similar to that in Ireland, foundered on this point IIRC. The main instigators came from the “soft” science end of things, culture, language and literature were their areas of interest - they tended to get blown up by their own bombs!)

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As a retired engineer I would dispute this. However, I think now and have for a long time thought that technicians like engineers have a blind spot. We are trained in problem solving and spend all of our time doing that. So when something is presented as “a problem” we tend to start right in trying to solve it without stopping to ask, “is this really a problem that needs to be solved.” So if someone comes to an engineer and says how can I best build a big bomb, the engineer tends to concentrate on the “problem” of building a bomb and often doesn’t ask what the final purpose is.

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Jomo Mojo,

I sort of agree with you that the catalyst could be the small middle class type. However a small radical group might not be able to carry out terrorism without some numbers.

[The following isn’t based on anything; it is purely an IMHO] It seems to me that these middle-class radicals find their audience in the easily manipulated poor population. IOW, they are only capable to manifest their radicalism into action by participation from the disaffected poor population. So long as there are a lot of uneducated and poor people that can be manipulated they can always get the support.

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I’ll concur with that. I’ll also add that many of the politically shallowest, narrowest, most rigid, most belligerent, and most ideological people on the planet are our fellow engineers. For that matter, many of the broadest, most curious, most human people are, too - I refer the reader to anything written by Samuel Florman or Henry Petroski, or for that matter the lives of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter.

Many of us are attracted to an environment where laws are immutable and unappealable, where all questions have answers even if they’re hard to come by sometimes, and that approach is commensurate with refusing to accept that such is not the case in the human world. The psychological need to impose order on one’s perceptions to help them make the kind of sense one likes can lead to such stiff ideologuism, if it’s not recognized and fought like the ignorance it is. True, those with such a mental set can be drawn to engineering in the first place, as can those with the urge to create things that are fully integrated with and derived from the real world of physics and math. It does take all kinds in this profession.

Anyway, I too don’t see any conflict with supporting thoughtless, hateful, bomb-throwing “political activity” and being technologically-oriented and trained.

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Hm. You guys have brought in facts that I had, in fact, not fully taken into account. However, I must strongly disagree that engineering or science education, by virtue of being “logical” and “rational,” is sufficient to provide an antidote to fanatical extremism. As seen in the actual profiles of the ideological terrorists themselves, this is not the case. My argument is that humans need a perspective of the meaning of human life that comes from the self-reflection found in philosophy and belles-lettres, not newtons and ergs. The bourgeois of the Muslim countries, in their drive to modernize and develop, have made their minds lopsided by only stressing the technical and ignoring the humanities.

Capt B. Phart, I concede your point about the Egyptian fanatics. The situation you are describing is endemic in the Sa‘îd, especially centered around Asyût (not Egypt on the whole, though). Asyût is a nasty, nasty area by all accounts.* The violence of the underclass there is fed by the resentment of a miserable economy and lack of prospects, compounded by the ignorance of the undereducated (the small-minded “We don’t cotton to your sort 'round here” attitude); and religious prejudice serves as a cheap excuse for malcontents to latch onto. This sort of thing is massive blind rage, and you’re right, it does go counter to what I said about placid traditional Islam. However, I attribute the social disruption to the lumpen modernity that has taken over the provincial cities, not to traditional Islam, where this situation is abnormal. I stress that the ideological extremists are from the (mis)educated middle class.

*What really squicks me is that Asyût was the birthplace of the great philosopher Plotinus, my favorite philosopher.

Sorry for hijacking the thread. Back to the OP: yes, I agree with Baer’s new book that our coddling the Saudis bodes very ill for our own security. The Saudi security apparatus itself is compromised by its key figures’ conniving with the very terrorists it’s supposed to be stopping.

Wahhabism is what set this situation up. Wahhabism is the most vile, foul cancer ever to plague Islam, and is at the root of the terrorist problem. Uncle Sam never gave this a thought when going after that damn oil. Baer is, unfortunately, right and the picture is very disturbing. We’re in too deep to extricate ourselves. We have handcuffed ourselves to a fucking Tasmanian devil and lost the key.

Our situation is like that biker punk in Mad Max, chained to a time bomb. Either saw off your own leg… or die.

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There isn’t anything in a scientific or technical education that discourages reflection upon the “meaning of life.”

And it is a mistake to assume that because one is a Liberal Arts major that the philosopy teaching has been absorbed. The student might just be taking the class because it is a required part of a core curriculum. The real goal might be to go into some field where you can make a million dollars a year advising the CEO of Enron how to rip off the employees and stockholders.

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Some support for Jomo Mojo assertion that it’s the educated populace which is getting involved now. This is off this morning’s Indian Express newspaper. No cite, unfortunately, as the report doesn’t seem to be on the paper’s website.

Bombay has been victim to 6 bombings since December 2002. Of the 27 suspects being held by the police, most of them are young, well educated Muslims. Here’s an excerpt from the report:

They’re all Indian, relatively well settled in life, and have all admitted to being part of a group which came together to avenge the death of several hundred Muslims in rioting in the state of Gujarat last year. All bombings have been in those parts of the city with a large Gujarati presence.