New Nazis

(8) Terrorists

The Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) at the CIA head-

[p. 22]

quarters in Langley, Virginia, has become the spy organization's busiest outfit. It consumes hectares of space with computers whirring, phones jangling and TV sets turned on 24 hours a day. This main section of the CIA has grown so large, that corridors have been given street names like Saddam Street and Osama bin Lane. Some 1.100 analysts and clandestine agents are employed here. It receives every day 2.500 cables from CIA stations all over the world. The CTC grinds out 500 terrorism intelligence reports a month, some of which are being distributed to 80 other US government agencies. The group also prepares a daily top-secret report for the president, called the ‘Threat Matrix’ with an average of 25 pages. It contains a running tab of possible terrorism threats.

Time writers Douglas Waller and Christopher Preston further reported that the biggest prize they so far had captured was bin Laden's chief of operations and recruiting, Saudi born Palestinian, Abu Zubaydah (31), who was caught during a gun battle in a villa near Faisalabad, Pakistan. He was rather seriously wounded, but after he recovered, he began to spill some beans about future Al Queda operations. An estimated 10.000 documents were recovered from this Al Queda safe house. In order to find Zubaydah, the CIA had formed a task force and manned it with 100 covert operatives, CIA analysts, technicians and even agency rookies, who had agreed to interrupt their spy training to mine data banks for this special assignment. Actually, since 1995 a group of 50 CIA officers has been working full time on locating, killing or capturing Osama bin Laden. A similar group has been set up to find another of his top aides, Egyptian Ayman Al-Zawahiri, whom the CIA also still considers to be alive and on the run.

Americans say that they have arrested 2.000 Al Queda suspects around the world, with many thousands supposed to be still at large. Ten of the 24 men the CIA considers to be senior bin Laden lieutenants have been killed or are in custody. This leaves 14 top Al Queda operatives in command. Time writers call them, as do Bush, the US government, the CIA and CNN ‘terrorists.’ The serious reader, however, should not be misled and see them for what they are, namely anti-imperialist freedom fighters.

It would be a fatal mistake to assume, that capturing or killing bin Laden would end the current global guerrilla warfare against worldwide US imperialism. Aside from ETA in Spain, Red Brigades in Italy, Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, the IRA in Ireland or even Timothy McVeigh in the US, there are numerous lesser known resistance organizations, foremost in the Muslim world. Bush assumes he can stamp them all out by an insane War on Terrorism. He launched his very first assault on Al Queda, because he held them responsible for 09-11. Others are to be attacked next. According to Bush a terrorist is a criminal who deliberately kills civilians. The difference between freeddom fighter killing, deliberate assassinations, for instance with F-16's and collateral ‘damage’ victims, elude the man from Texas altogether.

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That is too complicated for his Yale and Harvard trained mind. Between 1960 and 1975 alone, millions innocent Asian civilians perished as a direct result of another US crusade. The one against communism. Through military intervention in Asia, which introduced open chemical warfare in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the United States ranks among the foremost nations that violated not only human rights but also it's legal and ethical obligations under international law. The US has committed some of the most hideous war crimes in human history. In Bush's mind there is a fundamental difference between the 3.800 victims of 09-11 in America or the 224.000 burned men, women and children in 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Atom bombs on open cities was fine. Airliners flown into buildings is unacceptable.

To US minds Osama bin Laden is a war criminal. Period. No discussion necessary. He should be shot, like the top Nazis were hanged in Nuremberg. Why? Beacause his suicide commandos deliberately killed Americans. (It remains unproven that 09-11 was a bin Laden operation.) On the other hand, Harry Truman is considered an undisputed nationale hero. Yes, he killed 224.000 innocent Japanese civilians with two atom bombs, but that was different. The Japanese had it coming, they had declared war on America.

What most Americans fail to recognize is, that millions of Muslims look upon Osama bin Laden and Yasser Arafat as icons of resistance. Al Queda is the same type of guerilla movement as we organised against the Nazis. To millions of Muslims, Osama bin Laden is a resistance hero. He is leading Muslims into the final battle against US-Israëli aggresion. That is why many Arabs were relieved and congratulated each other when they heard that their own young men had finally struck back at America. It was the same joy Americans felt when they bombed open cities of the Nazi Axis powers in retaliation for enemy aggression. Both sides are wrong, ofcourse. One does not aim at noncombattants ever.