December 19, 2002

U.S. Drops Armenian Men from List of Visitors Who Must Register

By JOHN M. BRODER

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 18 ? Reversing course, the Department of Justice has dropped Armenia from the list of countries whose adult male citizens living temporarily in the United States must register with immigration authorities.

The turnabout, on Tuesday, followed loud complaints from the government of Armenia and Armenian groups in the United States over a notice, published by the department in the Federal Register last Friday, that added Armenia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to 18 countries already listed in the so-called special registration program.

"I don't know why Armenia appeared on the list in the first place," said Arman Kirakossian, the Armenian ambassador to the United States. "We have no terrorist groups in Armenia. We are part of the campaign against terrorism."

Armenia is a predominantly Christian country, the ambassador noted. With the exception of North Korea, the 20 countries that remain on the list are Arab or predominantly Muslim.

Mr. Kirakossian said that roughly 1.5 million people of Armenian descent were living in the United States, at least a third of them here in the Los Angeles area. He said he had no estimate of the number of Armenians in the country on temporary visas who would have been forced to register with the immigration service.

The ambassador said that as soon as the notice appeared last Friday, he and other Armenian officials contacted the White House, Congress and the Justice Department to try to have the decision overturned. Armenian-American groups joined in the intensive lobbying effort, which continued through the weekend.

"What we were told was it was a misunderstanding, a mistake," Mr. Kirakossian said.

Jorge Martinez, a Justice Department spokesman, offered no explanation for the original decision or the change.

"I am not responsible for what is published in the Federal Register," Mr. Martinez said. "All I can say is that two new countries were added this week: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia."

The program requires men over the age of 16 from countries considered sources of potential terrorists to appear before officers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to be interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed. Failure to register can result in criminal charges and immediate expulsion.

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Hundreds of Muslim Immigrants Rounded Up in California

By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iranian and other Middle East citizens were in southern California jails on Wednesday after coming forward to comply with a new rule to register with immigration authorities only to wind up handcuffed and behind bars.

Shocked and frustrated Islamic and immigrant groups estimate that more than 500 people have been arrested in Los Angeles, neighboring Orange County and San Diego in the past three days under a new nationwide anti-terrorism program. Some unconfirmed reports put the figure as high as 1,000.

The arrests sparked a demonstration by hundreds of Iranians outside a Los Angeles immigration office. The protesters carried banners saying "What's next? Concentration camps?" and "What happened to liberty and justice?."

A spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service said no numbers of people arrested would be made public. A Justice Department (news - web sites) spokesman could not be reached for comment.

The head of the southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) compared the arrests to the internment of Japanese Americans in camps during the Second World War.

"I think it is shocking what is happening. It is reminiscent of what happened in the past with the internment of Japanese Americans. We are getting a lot of telephone calls from people. We are hearing that people went down wanting to cooperate and then they were detained," said Ramona Ripston, the ACLU's executive director.

JAILS OVERFLOWING

One activist said local jails were so overcrowded that the immigrants could be sent to Arizona, where they could face weeks or months in prisons awaiting hearings before immigration judges or deportation.

"It is a shock. You don't expect this to happen. It is really putting fright and apprehension in the community. People who come from these countries -- this is what they expect from their government. Not from America," said Sabiha Khan of the Southern California chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

The arrests were part of a post Sept. 11 program that requires all males over 16 from a list of 20 Arab or Middle East countries, who do not have permanent resident status in the United States, to register with U.S. immigration authorities.

Monday was the deadline for men from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan. News of the mass arrests came first in southern California, which is home to more than 600,000 Iranian exiles and their families.

Officials declined to give figures for those arrested or for the numbers of people who turned up to register, be fingerprinted and have their photographs taken.

"We are not releasing any numbers," said Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) spokesman Francisco Arcaute.

CALLS FOR HELP

Islamic groups and the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said they had been swamped with calls for help.

INS spokesman Arcaute said those arrested had violated immigration laws, overstayed their visas, or were wanted for crimes. The program was prompted by concern about the lack of records on tourists, students and other visitors to the United States after the Sept. 11 hijack plane attacks on New York and Washington.

Islamic community leaders said many of the detainees had been living, working and paying taxes in the United States for five or 10 years, and had families here.

"Terrorists most likely wouldn't come to the INS to register. It is really a bad way to go about it. They are being treated as criminals and that really goes against American ideals of fairness, and justice and democracy," Khan said.

The Iranian protesters said many of those detained were victims of official delays in processing visa and green card requests.

"My father, they just took him in," one young man told reporters. "They've been treating him like an animal. They put him in a room with, like, 50 other people and no bed or anything."

Khan said one of those in jail was a doctor, who was being sponsored for U.S. citizenship when his sponsor died.

One Syrian man said he went to register in Orange County with a dozen friends. He was the only one to come out of the INS office. "All my friends are inside right now," M.M. Trapici, 45, told reporters. "I have to visit the family for each one today. Most of them have small kids."

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All reason is about to be gassed, poxed and nuked

This week the countdown to war on Iraq may begin in earnest

Simon Tisdall
Monday December 16, 2002
The Guardian

This will be a big week for Iraq and all those who wish to bomb it. Since last summer's heady excitements, when George Bush seemed ready to go Saddam-hunting all on his ownsome, Washington hawks and assorted birds of prey have endured a series of false dawns.

First there was their rising hope that the UN security council, challenged by Bush in September to put up or shut up, would fail to agree a common course of action. That would have left the way clear for the US, claiming prior authority, to fire at will. But resolution 1441, passed on November 8 and mandating resumed weapons inspections, frustrated beaky avian hopes of early morning glory.

Next came the seven-day deadline for Iraq's full, unconditional acceptance of the UN's onerous new rules. Vultures gathering on the Potomac shore figured the terms were just too tough. Maybe Saddam could live with foreign busybodies clutching clipboards and bleeping gadgets zooming around the country like so many misguided Scuds. Maybe Iraq's famously paranoid dictator would be able, just, to ignore the humiliating media circus that followed the UN parade.

But surely even he, grimly locked though he is into best behaviour mode, would baulk at the prospect of Hans Blix plodding portentously through presidential palace boudoirs, magnifying glass in hand like a latterday Holmes, looking for the dog that didn't bark? No sir. Slippery Saddam disappointed them all. He met the deadline with time to spare and, in febrile US imaginings at least, went off to run an acid bath.

It's been tough being a hawk since then. Every time Bush suggested the UN inspection regime was up the spout already, that annoying Kofi Annan popped up to say it was all going fine. The more Donald Rumsfeld sent his bombers into southern Iraq, defending Shia human rights by blowing up their airports and killing their men, the more wimpy Euro-appeasers shouted foul.

There was minor consolation to be had in exposing the tawdry sex life of one UN inspector, in rubbishing Blix's professional qualifications, in playing soldiers in Qatar and conjuring spurious links between Iraq and al-Qaida. But when Saddam met his next deadline, the December 8 production of a dossier detailing his weapons of mass destruction (or rather, his lack of them), it seemed like all the fun was going out of this war before it had even got going. For thwarted Saddam-bashers, the whole process was turning out to be, well, too damn reasonable.

Sadly, help for the hawks is at hand - and reason is about to be suspended. In fact, reason, along with rational thought, objective analysis and calm, considered discourse are about to be gassed, bombed, anthraxed, poxed and nuked.

The US and the four other permanent security council members have now had a week to dissect Iraq's dossier. They have also, scandalously, had a chance to edit and censor it, omitting in all probabil ity Iraq's embarrassing list of western arms suppliers along with other inconvenient facts. On Thursday, Blix will submit his initial analysis of the declaration to the council. Whatever he says, that will also trigger the US and Britain's full, formal "preliminary" assessments.

No prizes in this doomsday guessing game: we already know what they'll say, since they've already said it. To cut a very long story short, our elected representatives and people's tribunes will solemnly intone, Iraq's voluminous dossier is lies, lies, videotape, and more lies (without the sex).

With this 12,000-page piece of recycled hocus-pocus, Saddam has proved he is not serious. By sins of omission, they will claim, Saddam has refused to disarm. By this irresponsible action, this unrepentant prince of darkness, this evil axle, this arch-foe of the free and the brave, this serial abuser of Kurds, Iranians and Kuwaitis has, regrettably, brought war very much closer. A pattern of non-compliance is developing, the US will assert. UN interviews of Iraqi scientists will be the next test.

But on the banks of the Potomac, at the Pentagon, at Langley and in the Oval office, the hawks will not really be sad at all. Their perch-bound penury is near an end. Now just watch them fly and soar! And just listen for their battle-cry, as from England's Henry before Harfleur: "Once more unto the material breach, dear friends, once more! For America and King George!" Oh, and for democracy, too.

Cock your B52s; unholster your bunker busters; let loose the doggerel of war. For this week the countdown to conflict may begin in earnest.

For all the on-off hopes of a peaceful outcome, this avoidable, illogical denouement should come as no surprise. Unreason permeates every aspect of Bush's slow-burn, post-Afghanistan campaign against Iraq. Unreason is the warlord now and is now unleashed. For just consider.

Bush says people planning to use weapons of mass destruction are the big global threat. So Washington has pledged itself to pre-emptive, any-time use of weapons of mass destruction if provoked. Is that reasonable or what? Bush says he has no quarrel with the Iraqi people. But for a decade the US starved and impoverished those same people with unleavened sanctions. Now, taking the direct approach, it is willing to kill them outright in order to "liberate" them.

Bush says Iraq is but part of his wider "war on terror". But while he plots Saddam's downfall, al-Qaida is plotting his (and maybe ours). Bush surely knows that nuclear-arming, desperate North Korea and its ballistically unstable "Dear Leader" present a far greater, wider and immediate threat than Iraq's rusting Scuds and mutinous army. But do his eyes turn from the gates of Baghdad? No, they do not.

Bush says he fights for democracy, in Iraq and beyond. No matter, apparently, that the US, not trusting the Iraqis with their own country, plans to install a US-confected military government or perhaps, a carefully vetted, pro-American puppet show, and tramples civil liberties at home.

Bush says that in his coming battle, he has a host of friends and allies. But most have been bought, bullied or destabilised into bogus solidarity. Bush's moralistic war will set a woeful precedent for an immoral era of "pre-emptive" intervention.

As long as the UN inspections continue, there is still a chance to stop this war. Maybe the French or Russians will dig in, will demand stronger evidence of Iraqi cheating going beyond the US's highly suspect dossier deductions. Maybe Blix and Annan will baulk. Maybe Colin Powell can hold the diplomatic line a little longer. All the same, this could be the week when the irrational becomes irresistible. Now, in dread, deadly prospect, is the dawning age of unreason. Or, as Byron put it:

"This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions."

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By Way of Deception ? Israel pulls a fast one ? and gets caught

Justin Raimondo, AntiWar.Com

he Israelis are riding high, these days ? but not, perhaps, for long. Ever since 9/11, the Israeli government and its American amen corner have been making the point that Israel's fight is now America's fight, and this argument has met with some success. A recent article in Ha'aretz notes that Israel is winning the struggle for American hearts and minds:

"The conventional wisdom among policy-makers in Israel and the United States is that if there is one front on which Israel enjoys a clear advantage in the international arena, it is hasbara ? information and public relations in the United States."

Congress is practically Israeli-occupied territory, and the Bushies are in their back pocket: however, there are still some elements of the American public who have not been brought to heel, and this, we are told, shows that "Israel has cause for concern."

It seems that only half of the "influentials" ? professionals in the media, politics, and academia, and others who regularly follow the news ? take the Israel-can-do-no-wrong line. The Israelis and their American supporters find this worrisome, as well they should. In spite of a constant drumbeat of pro-Israel propaganda, a well-organized cadre of American boosters, and the slavish support of our government, still a great many Americans are able to think clearly and critically about our troublesome "ally." As Ha'aretz puts it: "

"For every individual that supports Israel, there is another who opposes it. This is happening at time when the Palestinians are at a disadvantage in public relations, when the president has openly declared his support for Israel and Israel's political lobby is at its height."

Those numbers are bound to get worse as news of the latest Israeli caper hits the headlines. It really wasn't such a hot idea for the Mossad to recruit Palestinians into a phony Al Qaeda cell in Gaza. It was too easy to trace the cell-phone calls and emails back to Israel, as well as Germany and Lebanon. Aside from that, however, there was something a little fishy about their recruitment methods, such as this message cited by ABC News (via Reuters):

"After receiving reports from your brothers in the area about your good morals and Islamic beliefs...we appeal to you to work within the ranks of the mujahideen (Muslim fighters) and we will support you with money and weapons. Call us at this number...and identify yourself as Abu Anas. The telephone call should be made between three and five in the afternoon... After you read the letter and understand its content, burn it.

"(Signed), Your brother and humble slave of God, Osama bin Laden."

Recruits to this faux-Al Qaeda were given weapons (most of them didn't work) and money provided by "Palestinian collaborators with Israel," three of whom are in a Palestinian jail. According to PLO "preventive security" chief Rashid Abu Shbak, some of the money "was transferred from bank accounts in Jerusalem or Israel."

These revelations come in the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's claim that Al Qaeda is behind recent attacks on Israel, and is present in the occupied territories and Lebanon. A phony "Al Qaeda" website has been set up, which we are supposed to believe is the voice of the Evil One in cyberspace: its recent pronouncement that a Palestinian "branch" of Al Qaeda has been formed was duly reported by the Washington Post, which also transcribed the lamentation of one Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations:

"'The idea that al Qaeda is establishing a special cell to focus on Israelis is horrifying news?' ... Al Qaeda's role could be extremely destabilizing, she added, because 'it will be weighing in on the side of Hamas,' the Palestinian Islamic group that launches suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and has been deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S. government."

What is horrifying is that anyone takes such thinly-disguised disinformation seriously. Repeating such nonsense with a straight face is, one imagines, what makes Ms. Bronson so well-qualified for her job.

Israel's great achievement in the political and diplomatic realm has been to draw the unleashed anger of the American giant away from the perpetrators of 9/11 and toward its own enemies: Saddam Hussein, Hamas, and the fictitious "Islamic Al-Qaeda of Palestine," which exists only "by way of deception," to borrow a phrase from the official motto of the Mossad.

"By way of deception, thou shalt do war" ? a principle the Israelis have always lived up to. Juxtaposed against the mounting evidence ? a recent series of reports in the German and British media depict Mossad agents in the U.S. living "next door to Mohammed Atta" ? the exposure of this "false flag" operation draws the curtain on the terrorist enigma. This demonstrates that an Israeli connection to the worst terrorist atrocity in our history is not an "urban myth," as one Justice Department spokesperson put it, but a sinister and increasingly likely possibility.

In all the columns I've written on this subject, my thesis has been limited in scope. I've said only that the Israelis had a certain amount of foreknowledge ? to what degree is not known ? and failed to warn us. Not that they were behind 9/11. Nor am I saying that now. But I have a question: If the Israelis are running phony "Al Qaeda" cells in Palestine and Lebanon, why not in South Florida, or New York?

This question, you can be sure, won't be asked by the Kissinger Commission, as the "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States" will inevitably be called, and yet surely ? given the way in which 9/11 changed our lives ? it is one worth raising. Which brings us to the reason I'm taking most of this week off?.

Well, not really "off" ? I'll be working harder than ever, unfortunately, trying to get the first draft my new book in shape. The Terror Enigma: Israel and the 9/11 Connection will be published next year by Verso Books. The book lays out the evidence that Israeli intelligence not only shadowed the hijackers, but also succeeded in diverting the American authorities away from the plotters' trail. They launched a massive covert action aimed at government facilities in the U.S. ? the infamous "art students."

"By way of deception, thou shalt do war" ? a war for survival, as the Israelis see it, that must be waged against the West as well as the Muslim world. As long as Americans see the "war on terrorism" as the two-sided Manichean struggle described by George W. Bush ? "you're either with us, or with the terrorists" ? their anger and frustration can be mobilized in support of an all-out war on the Arab nations. But if Israel had some foreknowledge ? or even a connection with ? Al Qaeda in America, and not just the Palestinian "branch," then American rage will be directed at

another target.

Andrew Sullivan is outraged that opponents of the Iraq war are putting the "war on terrorism" in ironic quotes, and has initiated one of his tiresome campaigns to have it stamped out:

"QUOTATION MARK WATCH: Have you begun to notice how some commentators (mainly on the left but also on the paleo-right) have begun to put the term 'war on terrorism' in quote marks? I wonder what part of the phrase they don't buy. That we are fighting terrorism?"

You got that right, Andy. Surely there is a dangerous sort of irony in the act of declaring a war, and then failing to see one of your opponents. It is a danger that patriots cannot fail to point out.

Until Americans, particularly those in government, stop seeing the world with blinders on, the ironic quotes stay.

At any rate, as much as I dislike abandoning my readers for even a day, I'll be gone for the rest of the week, and back on my regular schedule starting next Monday: unless, of course, the shooting starts before then ?.

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Published on Sunday, November 10, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
A New Age of Empire in the Middle East, Courtesy of the US and UK
by Sasha Lilley

British Member of Parliament George Galloway says that a plan for the division of the Middle East is circulating in the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic. In a recent interview, Galloway asserted that ministers and eminent figures in the British government are deliberating the partition of the Middle East, harking back to the colonial map-making in the first quarter of the 20th century that established the modern nation-states of the region. An Anglo-American war against Iraq, he tells me, could be the opening salvo in the break up of the region. Galloway, who met with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad this August, states that the war aims of the US and Britain go well beyond replacing the Iraqi leader. “They include a recasting of the entire Middle East, the better to ensure the hegemony of the big powers over the natural resources of the Middle East and the safety and security of the vanguard of imperialist interests in the area – the state of Israel. And part of that is actually redrawing boundaries.”

Galloway is privy to such information as he is the Vice-Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party Foreign Affairs Committee with close relations to Britain’s Ministry of Defense. Galloway says that British ministers and former ministers are primarily focused on the break-up of Saudi Arabia and Iraq in the wake of an attack against Saddam Hussein, but are also discussing the possible partition of Egypt, the Sudan, Syria and Lebanon. These officials have become taken with the realization that the borders of the Middle East are recent creations, dating back only to World War I when Britain and France divided the region between themselves. Galloway adds, “There are many ways in which a new Sykes-Picot dispensation could be drawn up in the Middle East to guarantee another few decades of big power hegemony over the area.”

The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, codified by the League of Nations in 1920, parceled out the crumbling Ottoman Empire extending over much of the Middle East between Britain and France. By the early 1920s Britain, which as the reigning imperial power already effectively ruled Egypt, the Sudan, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar, made off with the lion’s share. This divvying up of the region by imperial powers led to the creation of the states of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq among others. Under the aegis of Britain, the modern state of Saudi Arabia emerged in the late 1920s, absorbing the hitherto separate eastern, central and western regions – including the holy sites of Mecca and Medina – of what constitutes the country today.

The partition of the Middle East was partially driven by the oil conglomerates of the time. Britain pushed through the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (British Petroleum’s predecessor) and Royal Dutch Shell, over American oil companies Exxon and Mobil by means of the colonial mandate it had established following WWI. Jockeying over oil resulted in an Anglo-French agreement giving Britain the northern Iraqi province of Mosul. This lead to in Iraq’s modern boundaries, formed in 1921 when Britain combined the three Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, which were predominantly Kurdish, Sunni and Shi’a Muslim respectively.

Today British and American petroleum interests dominate the scene once more, although Britain is reduced to the role of junior partner. The United States and Britain are home to the four biggest petroleum producers in the world – Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, British Petroleum-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell – with the French-Italian TotalElfFina following in fifth place. While a massive upheaval in the Middle East would hurt oil revenues initially, a new constellation of power there could in the long run safeguard the interests of the petroleum conglomerates from the present instability of the region. While the US government has been considering alternate sources of oil in the Caspian Sea area, Russia and Africa, analysts admit that none of these compare to the known riches of the Persian Gulf.

Not surprisingly then, if hawks on both sides of the Atlantic have their way, Saudi Arabia would be at the core of a hegemonically reshaped Middle East. Saudi Arabia alone contains a quarter of the world’s petroleum reserves and is one of the only countries able to increase production to meet rising demand for oil, expected to grow by fifty percent in the next two decades. Yet Saudi Arabia is no longer seen by the US and UK governments as a trustworthy ally, and certainly not one on which they can afford to be so dependent, given the kingdom’s internal vulnerability and its sponsorship of Islamic fundamentalist insurgents (Saudi nationals comprising fifteen of the nineteen September 11th hijackers) – even though such patronage had been coordinated by the United States in earlier, happier times.

“I think the United States in particular has lost confidence in the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, so far as their interests are concerned,” Galloway maintains. “They realize that the radicalization of the Saudi Arabian population has proceeded at very great pace, has reached very great depths, particularly amongst young people.” The United States and Britain are fearful that the unreliable House of Saud will be overthrown and that the new anti-American rulers will shut off the flow of oil. “The United States is afraid that one day they’ll wake up and a Khomeini type – or be it Wahhabi Sunni Khomeini – revolution would have occurred, and they would have lost everything in the country.” The British Foreign Office has warned that dissent, bubbling up from a dissatisfied population that sympathizes with Osama bin Laden and seethes at the pro-American stance of the ruling elite, has reached the point where the country risks being taken over by al-Qaeda.

“Saudi Arabia could easily be two if not three countries,” Galloway says, summarizing the neo-imperialist position discussed in British government circles, “which would have the helpful bonus of avoiding foreign forces having to occupy the holiest places in Islam, when they’re only interested really in oil wells in the eastern part of the country.” According to him, the US troops based throughout Saudi Arabia could be withdrawn from the areas containing Mecca and Medina, the most hallowed sites in the Islamic world, where US military presence is a source of great resentment for many Saudis.

Instead the soldiers would occupy only the Eastern Province of the country, which borders on the Persian Gulf and is inhabited by Saudi Arabia’s Shi’a minority. This area contains the major oilfields, including the largest oilfield in the world, Ghawar, as well as the industrial centers of the kingdom. “The theorists of this idea have fastened on to the fact that a very substantial proportion of the population in the Eastern Province, where the oil is, are Shi’ite Muslims with no particular affection for the ruling Wahhabi clique who form the House of Saud.” Galloway adds that for the first time, leaders in the West are becoming concerned with the human rights of the Shi’a population, which “now that they coincide with Western interests, are moving up the agenda.”

In the United States, those in interlocking circles around the Bush administration have been calling for the dismemberment of Saudi Arabia. This past July, an analyst from the US government-funded Rand Corporation presented a briefing in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s private conference room titled “Taking Saudi Out of Arabia,” which advised the assembled luminaries of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board that the US government should demand Saudi Arabia stop supporting hostile fundamentalist movements and curtail the airing of anti-US and anti-Israel statements, or its oilfields and financial assets would be seized. A month later Max Singer, co-founder of the rightwing US think tank the Hudson Institute, gave a presentation to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, in which he counseled the US government to forge a “Muslim Republic of East Arabia” out of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.

Whether the imperialist strategem of the neo-conservatives comes to pass remains to be seen. What is apparent, however, is that the potential for such a cynical adventure to go wrong would be quite high. Colonial undertakings have a tendency to not work out as expected, even if the fantasies of draughtsman in the Pentagon and Britain’s Whitehall are implement through “native” proxies. This is especially the case when the populations of the areas to be shaped, rather than viewing the US as deliverers of a pipedream of “democracy,” are intensely hostile to the imperial designs of the West.

Sasha Lilley is an independent producer and correspondent for Free Speech Radio News.

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Geov Parrish: 'The undeclared war'

Why Kenya takes last week's terrorist attacks as evidence of war -- waged by the United States

By Geov Parrish, Working For Change

Last week, American networks and newspapers boldly featured news of the coordinated terrorist attacks in Mombasa, Kenya. Almost simultaneously, a bomb killed 15 at the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel and an Israeli charter airliner was fired upon, unsuccessfully, in a ground-to-air missile attack.

The coverage was predictably sensational, particularly because of the implications of the missile attack and because even before seeing any evidence, American and Israeli authorities immediately pegged Al-Qaeda (along with two Somali-based Muslim extremist groups) as lead suspects in the attack.

Certainly, the notion that commercial planes can be shot out of the sky as easily as they can be blown up from within is an alarming and sobering one -- particularly in parts of the world where, thanks to American taxpayers and the magic of the marketplace, American- and Russian-made missiles and the equipment to fire them can be had cheaply and easily. But other, more subtle elements of the incident are at least as alarming.



Indicative of what's at stake is the reaction to the attacks by Kenyan's leading Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ali Shee, chairman of the Council of Imams. While unequivocally condemning the attack -- and forcefully denying, in response to the allegations of a French intelligence newsletter, that he was aware of or helped in its planning -- Sheikh Shee warned off Israeli and American tourists from coming to Kenya, saying, "There is an undeclared war between their countries and the Muslim world. It is not good for them to come until the [Palestinian] problem is solved." He also vowed to refuse any cooperation with Israeli or American investigators from Mossad or the FBI: "We will never cooperate with these people... They are criminals. This Bush is the worst leader ever. He is a man of war."

Kenya is a long way from either Palestine or Afghanistan, but such sentiments are common throughout the Islamic world -- a world that stretches halfway around the globe, from Morocco to portions of the Philippines. Each day in that world, reminders of America's empire and what it means for Muslims abound. While it has faded from American headlines, Israel's occupation of Palestinian West Bank cities and routine arrests, house demolitions, curfews, shootings, and assassinations continue to escalate -- as does the steady expansion of Israeli "settler" expropriations and vigilante actions against Palestinians. In Afghanistan over the weekend, the United States for the first time in five months used a B-52 bomber to try to protect American troops caught in the crossfire between the armies of two rival warlords near a base in the western part of the country.

The incident was a reminder of a number of things -- that the U.S. has set up permanent bases in Afghanistan, and is still using force there, that its puppet government has virtually no authority outside the capital city of Kabul, and that American promises of democracy and an end to decades of warfare were an afterthought to an agenda that had little to do with the well-being of Afghans themselves. And each day, as United Nations inspectors continue their apparently trouble-free weapons inspections in Iraq, stories continue to pop up from across the region of America's preparations for an invasion of Iraq - - an invasion that seemingly has nothing to do with any actual threat Iraq poses even to its neighbors, let alone the United States.

In such a context -- with, as background, a massive gap in relative wealth and the steady invasion of Western brand names, pop culture, and social values -- the idea that an undeclared war is afoot makes an awful lot of sense. Moreover, it's exactly the apocalyptic vision Osama bin Laden himself was quoted as desiring when the 9/11 attacks were unleashed. Remember bin Laden? The whole post-9/11 War on Terror, including an invasion of Afghanistan, ousting of its government, indefinite imprisonment of soldiers defending their country against foreign invaders, imprisonment or deportation without charges of thousands of Muslim non-citizens within the United States, and passage of freedom-eroding bills like the USA PATRIOT Act and (most recently) the Homeland Security bill were all ostensibly about bringing bin Laden to justice and ensuring that such attacks wouldn't happen again.

Last month came word that bin Laden was still afoot, and both then and after the Kenya attacks, an astonishing thing happened in response:

Nothing.

No vows of capture or bringing to justice, no renewed efforts at apprehension, no demands that the country "harboring" bin Laden (that phone call came from somewhere, right?) either hand him over or face the fate of the Taliban. It simply was, to all D.C. appearances, no big deal.

Hello? Is bin Laden a threat to the United States or not? If he is, then he and Al-Qaeda should be the country's top security concern, not Easter egg hunts in Iraq or warlord mediation programs in Nangarhar. If groups like Al- Qaeda and the threat they pose are of no military consequence, and simply a matter for criminal investigators ala the FBI, then can we start, oh, I don't know, pulling our military out of a few dozen countries and chopping a few hundred billion out of their budget next year?

(Speaking of law enforcement, what's the FBI doing in Kenya, anyway? It was a crime committed in Africa against facilities owned by a country in the Middle East. The only relationship to the United States is that other Muslims have committed similar crimes here, as well as in dozens of other countries. In other words, there's no more justification for the FBI to grab the case than investigators from, say, Yemen or Lebanon. The FBI's insistence on taking over for Kenya officials is exactly the sort of imperial arrogance that gets taken for granted here and noticed everywhere else.)

Either way, the last thing the Bush Administration should be doing is waging, or even being perceived as waging, a war against 1.2 billion of the world's people. That perception -- and, in many ways, reality -- is out there. It is the perception that the United States and Israel (seen, by many Muslims, as effectively interchangeable) are out to not only apprehend a small number of violent criminals who happen to be Muslim, but to subjugate the entire Muslim world, with those criminals as the convenient pretext for its actions.

Judged in that light, U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in its obsession with invading Iraq make a lot more sense. So does the seeming lack of concern at bin Laden's whereabouts. Oddly enough, the United States would at the moment have a lot more credibility in the Islamic world if it actually seemed serious about wanting to apprehend or thwart bin Laden. Instead, it is inspiring thousands of Osama imitators, and at the moment it's hard to imagine many of the world's Muslims using "United States" and "credibility" in the same sentence.

The Kenya attacks and their aftermath are reminding Muslims that the United States is not simply threatening war. It is already waging war; its targets are much, much broader than a few well-organized terror groups; and the people willing and inclined to fight back are also much, much greater in number than they were 15 months ago.

In any war each side invariably claims victimhood; they insist that the enemy started it and is at fault. And so it is in this war, undeclared or not. Americans remember 9/11, and attacks like last week's; Muslims draw upon the whole of American foreign policy for the last 15 months, overlain on decades of American abuses during the Cold War and centuries of Western colonial barbarism.

The Bush Administration seems intent on pouring massive amounts of gasoline onto this fire. While the good, Peace Prize-toting Dr. Kissinger investigates whether the last attack on American soil could have been prevented, who, anywhere, is asking why it is that the next attack is being so assiduously incited?

Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the daily Straight Shot for WorkingForChange.

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