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Last Thursday America’s president, Mr.
Barack Obama, spoke about the outcome of
the review of US intelligence he ordered
in the wake of the failed Christmas
bombing of an airline in American
airspace allegedly carried out by Mr.
Faruk Umar Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian
passenger in the airline which was
travelling between Amsterdam, Holland,
and Detroit.
The review, he said, has shown that the
failure of American intelligence to
“prevent a known terrorist from boarding
a plane to America,” was essentially a
failure of information management. “In
sum,” he said, “the U.S. government had
the information - scattered throughout
the system – to potentially uncover this
plot and disrupt the attack. Rather than
a failure to collect and share
intelligence, this was a failure to
connect and understand the intelligence
that we had.”
This, I am afraid, is fundamentally a
misdiagnosis of the risk that America
faces from so-called Islamic terror, at
least in the long run. What Obama has
said in effect is that American
intelligence must be foolproof. This is
an impossible standard for anything
human. American intelligence is only
human and can therefore never get it
right each and every time. A more
sensible, if not the only, solution
therefore is to eliminate the root cause
of the problem.
In this sense the greatest danger
America faces from so-called Islamic
terror is not of another 9/11, horrible
as it is to contemplate. The greatest
danger, as one, Stephen Flynn, said in
an article in last year’s Special
Edition of Newsweek, is that the country
is almost likely to overreact in the
event of another 9/11. If the failed
Christmas attack allegedly by an
apparently misguided young man would
lead an American president, who is as
liberal as they come, into putting the
man’s country of origin on America’s
terror watch list which includes
countries like Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and
Afghanistan, that are theatres of war,
one shudders to think what he would have
done if the bombing had succeeded.
I have said it repeatedly before on
these pages - the last time being only
last week – that so-called Islamic
terror is the consequence of America’s
abuse of its massive military might and
therefore the only real solution to the
problem is to put an end to American
hegemony in the region as in elsewhere;
but this bears repeating again and
again.
A recent book by Christopher A. Preble,
Director of Foreign Policy Studies at
the American Cato Institute and a former
commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy,
titled THE POWER PROBLEM: How
American Military Dominance Makes Us
Less Safe, Less Prosperous and Less
Free, underscores the validity of
the argument that America’s over
reliance on its military might abroad to
secure its interests constitutes the
greatest danger unto itself.
As Preble pointed out, if America’s
mighty war machine “did not deter
nineteen angry young men from flying
airplanes into buildings on 9/11,” twice
or even three times as mighty a war
machine could not have. On the contrary
such a machine stationed abroad
especially in predominantly Muslim
countries as America’s is, as he said,
is propaganda tool for recruitment by
Al’Qaida and similar organizations in a
world where no one likes being under
anybody’s jackboot, more so a
foreigner’s.
Gore Vidal, an American essayist, put it
even more bluntly in a collection of his
essays titled The Last Empire.
America which likes calling the
countries it does not like rogue states,
he said, has since “become the largest
rogue state of all. We strike
unilaterally whenever we choose. We
complain of terrorism, yet our empire is
now the greatest terrorist of all. We
bomb, invade, subvert other states...Our
Congress has been hijacked by corporate
America and its enforcer, the imperial
machine.”
Another American was even more damning
by his use of statistics. “From 1945 to
2003,” said William Blum in his book,
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A.
Interventions Since World War II,
“the United States has attempted to
overthrow more than 40 foreign
governments, and to crush more that 30
populist/nationalist movements fighting
against intolerable regimes. In the
process, the U.S. bombed some 25
countries, caused the end of life for
several million people, and condemned
many more millions to a life of agony
and despair.”
Much as former U.S. president , George
Bush, whose fellow neo-conservatives
coined the phrase “Islamic terror”
would disagree, Blum’s statistics is a
fitting reply to the rhetorical question
he asked in the wake of 9/11 when he
said in apparent exasperation, “Why do
they hate us?” For Bush, of course, the
answer was America’s material success
and freedom. Yet poll after poll of Main
Street everywhere, including the Muslim
world, shows clearly that people by and
large admire America. What they hate is
the overweening use of its mighty force
by its leaders, ostensibly to promote
its virtues of democracy and free
market.
Until America checks itself in its self
appointed role of global cop it cannot
hope to solve the problem of so-called
Islamic terror or, for that matter, any
other type of terror.
Mutallab Jnr may seem a “crazed,
fanatical (and) spoiled brat,” to use
the rather disagreeable description – at
least in my view – by his namesake,
Farooq Kperogi, a writer in the Weekly
Trust of January 2, but the widespread
condemnation of the young man begs the
pertinent question of why anyone, no
matter how seemingly crazy, would choose
not only to take his own life, ungodly
as it is but, worse, take those of
others, mostly innocent onlookers,
along.
The answer, outrageous as it seems, lies
mainly in the element of desperation on
the part of the Mutallabs of this world
who probably think the answer to
America’s hegemony, especially as it
seeks to stigmatize and even, to some
extent, criminalize their beliefs, lies
in the use of terror. To rephrase the
words of Justice Brandeis of the
American Supreme Court in sentencing
Timothy McVeigh, the infamous American
Alabama bomber, if, as America does in
pursuit of its self-interest, it shows
total disregard for international laws
and conventions when it reckons that
they get in the way, then they invite
everyone to do the same.
“Crime,” said Justice Brandeis, “is
contagious. If the government becomes
the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for
the laws; it invites everyman to become
a law unto himself.”
Apology
The editors at Saharareporters.com
have drawn my attention to my mistake
two weeks ago when I accused them of
sloppy journalism by prematurely
reporting the death of Maryam, former
military president, General Ibrahim
Babangida’s wife. The authors of two
texts and a phone call I received
seeking confirmation of the first
rumours of her death said they had read
the story on the website. I took their
word for it but have since learnt that
was my mistake.
I wish to apologize to
Saharareporeters for the error.
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