The International Writers Magazine: Reality Check

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AL QAEDA SHELL GAME The Great Con Of Terrorism • James Campion There's a big article in this week's Newsweek magazine that echoes the fantasy that has been conjured by not only the mainstream media, but, more alarmingly, by the CIA and the Pentagon, and the whole of the United States government: This al Queda everyone has been so hot about since 9/11 is a tangible entity. It is not. And this bit of misinformation has been as dangerous an enemy as we're told al Queda is supposed to be. Those in charge don't admit it, or won't admit it in public, because they have no idea what or who al Queda really is, and that would not go over too well if they went that route.

The worst part is this is not any grand revelation. It's been a repeated mistake that has had grave consequences for this country before and after 9/11/01, not the least of which is the bloody dog and pony show currently going down in Iraq. And not only did those in charge of the thing mistake insurgents for guerrilla warriors, but also clumped at least three warring factions as "the Iraqi people" for four years running now. As in, "The Iraqi people yearn to be free of a dictator" and "The Iraqi people want the right to vote" and "The Iraqi people will treat us like liberators".

Wrong. Wrong. And, guess, what? Wrong.
There were never any Iraqi people. The "Iraqi people" didn't think so; therefore we shouldn't have gone along with it. But we did. We didn't recognize the Sunnis or the Kurds or the Shiites as completely separate religious, cultural, and geographical entities, which were held together by the iron fist of madness, and left to their own devices would fight to the death to gain control of the hearts and minds of a fractured nation. And because we failed to realize this, we now have our military embroiled in an all-out civil war, one in which we cannot abandon anytime soon without looking like master chessmen sacrificing pawns for a minor victory down the line.

But that is a discussion for another day. Now we speak of al Qaeda, and more precisely its latest fallen "leader", Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, made infamous by his televised beheading of American Nick Berg two years ago, and whose death a few weeks back drove confetti sales up inside the Beltway and had everyone giddy with joy.

And that's where we come to our Newsweek article and its query over "Who Will Be al-Zaqawi's Successor?"

Successor? What do we think this is some kind of hostile corporate take-over, an NFL coaching change, or the Queen of England here? There is no successor. There is no leader. There is no al-Queda. It is a ruse, a smokescreen, some kind of shell game that fractious hordes of murderous rogues are playing on the big bad U.S. of A. This is why this space has maintained for five years now that the celebrated figurehead of western hatred Osama bin Laden is dead. He had as many enemies within the radical Muslim community (and just using the word community here is short-sighted naiveté) as he did without. It's a free-for-all, kids. The sooner we cop to this, the sooner we'll be able to deal.

A prime example of this came home to roost this week when two U.S. soldiers were found mutilated beyond recognition by purportedly al-Qaeda in response to al-Zaqawi's death. A brand new loon by the name of Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, aka Abu Ayyub al-Masri, aka Youssef al-Dardiri, another Reagan-funded member of the 1980s' Afghani Freedom Fighter clan, claimed mastermind/leadership duties on this abomination, and according to reports and web blogs and other completely unreliable sources, Mr. Whatever is now the "successor" to al-Zarqawi. We call him Mr. Whatever because there are also more reliable reports out of London and Jerusalem the morning I write this that al-Muhajer and al-Masri are not even the same guy. But the real problem here is that some other branch or segment or off-shoot of al-Qaeda, whatever that is, (and there are now five or six of these in Iraq alone) claims responsibility.

Of course this is business as usual in the underworld kill-fest of terrorism. Usually in places like Israel or Pakistan you have to get in line to claim responsibility for this kind of brutal shit. On a fair day four different news organizations will throw a dart at a board with names of various independent terrorist organizations (and again I use the term "organizations" with the utmost irresponsibility) and hope for the best.

According to Newsweek, right now in Iraq there are at least eight known terrorist groups claiming to be an arm of al Queda. They are the Mujahedin Shura Council, which consists of the Victorious Sect Army, the Monotheism Supporters Brigade, the Al-Ahwal [Fear] Brigade, and the Al-Murabitun Brigades. Then there is the Ansar-al-Sunnah, the Islamic Army of Iraq, the Mujahedin Army, and the 1929 Revolutionary Brigade. And as far as we, the CIA, the FBI, the U.S. Military, Dick Chaney, Donald Rumsfeld, Katie Couric, or the gray-haired guy who won American Idol know, none of them wear any kind of uniform or espouse a specific political agenda or ideology, except to cause as much mayhem and murder as possible. I guess that's an ideology, but none that we, quite obviously, can fathom.

You see, and this has been brought up here in Hackwriters and elsewhere over and over but has not sunk in enough to be useful, this enemy is not the Nazis or the Soviets or pick-and-choose your direct identifiable enemy. This is a roaming pack of thugs and criminals and crazies that you cannot wage war on or give speeches about or pinpoint in any military conventional way. A glaring example of this is the "Mission Accomplished" flack the president takes to this day. The fact is the mission was accomplished: Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party were expunged from Baghdad. This was the mission, however steeped in lies and propaganda: This was the mission.

Since then the mission has been something else, which is why Republicans in Congress this past week arguing that pulling out of Iraq is tantamount to surrender is playing both sides of the fence. First they agree with me that the mission had been accomplished, and now we're trying to build a nation, but when the debate tumbles in that direction they conveniently try and make this about The War. It is not a War, it is an occupation/policing of a violent civil conflict and a fending off of random acts of murder, and it should have never come to this if the people running things had understood the bigger picture.

The bigger picture? There is no al-Qaeda. There is only chaos.
How do you fight chaos? I don't know. We pay people to handle that. But I know one thing: You don't do it like this.
© James Campion June 23rd 2006
realitycheck@jamescampion.com

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These guys can do anything. They are here to stay. Count on it.

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