BBC's The Power of Nightmares was another incisive exploration of the origins and mutations of al-Qaeda. It includes the often-overlooked detail that it was the Americans during the Clinton Administration, and not Bin Laden & Associates, who applied the moniker "al-Qaeda" on all they could make stick in public perception to Bin Laden. The neoconservatives later picked up that ball and ran for endzones only they could see.
The Power of Nightmares notes that Bin Laden bought his way into mujahhed prominence with money, and not with any particular masterminding gravitas; his role in the organization has been greatly distorted by American propagandists seeking to shape and limit public perceptions and curiosity about al-Qaeda- to focus the emotions of the public on a marketable villain, and limit our examination of the causitive, ideological, and logistical connections that lead back to live connections in places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt; to limit our examination of US policy that resulted in delayed but severe blowback. American attention is being distracted by our own leadership, because they know we could never be so trusting of them if we considered the loaded past. So through a wildly distorted lens, a lanky, effeminate rich-kid plays mujaheddin, and dresses up like a religious saint, like a future caliph, and is projected into our minds as a menacing super-villain and replayed, and replayed, and replayed as a fearsome spectre.
Anyone serious about understanding what al-Qaeda, and more broadly terrorism against the West really has been about must look beyond the exploitation in the West of al-Qaeda as boogey-man and simplistic totem. Any serious understanding requires descriminating the exploitation of the al-Qaeda brand in describing, for example, various insurgents in Iraq- often a deliberate distortion of exactly whom we are fighting there. Serious understanding of the Mideast origins of terrorism against the USA and American interests requires an especially attentive review of the history of America's closest client state in the region- Israel. And you can't be attentive for long without learning to recognize a consistent pattern of oversimplifications and spin being deliberately injected into public consciousness. We're being told from authority not to bother ourselves with these causitive connections. Instead Americans are instructed by authorities in government and major media to assume it's all happening because we're good, and socially advanced in the USA, and those terrorists and crazy "Hajjis" are not as good, and not as advanced as us; hate our freedoms; are a new menace like the old Iron Curtain, etc.
Understanding the agonies of Lebanon requires examining the implications of the dispossessed Palestinian diaspora.
countezero for example interjected Lebanese issues in such a way as to demonstrate his ignorance of the connections. Neglect toward these aspects will always and inevitably muddle up any thought or discussion of issues involving the Mideast and terrorism, including this discussion of the psychological blowback upon US troops who have been assigned the mission of sorting all this out while even American leadership persists in demonstrating deep ignorance, deliberate deception, and criminal negligence in formulating and explaining policy to the public they serve, and to the foreigners whose lives they are disrupting and often destroying.
Discussions like this require a lot of sidebars, because the most misinformed often try to impugn what they disagree with as ideologically-driven fabrication. What I am expressing, what
iceaura expresses, and what
S.A.M. expresses is not in the least monolithic- we each have differences in perspective.
But there is a much greater contrast in how
countezero, or
Baron Max respond: These shrink away from taking a closer look at the issues; at the perspectives of opposing sides. They are quick to cry out that I and others are vacuous ideologues; heartless soldier-slanderers; that we do not understand war, or sacrifice, or suffering; that we do not understand or possess honor; that we are conspiracy theorists, etc, and etc. There is a recurring pattern of resorting to ad-hominems, to questioning of the motives and character of other posters, apparently in a rather desperate effort to avoid getting into detail on the causes and effects, and exploits of terrorism; of unpopular conflicts; of "collateral" casualties; and of vetern suicides.
There is a marked contrast in response to the issues here among two general camps. One camp is eager to project a support-the-troops, warrior-elitist bravado (and sadly a large proportion of the American public still persists in fawning torpidly on similar memes). This mindset is consistently at a visible disadvantage in preparedness to explore and address the background of what we are discussing, because a more objective and empathetic approach is destructive to cherished but false assumptions. This intellectual and moral apathy produces behaviors of denial that are readily apparent with every diversion into ad-hominems and feigned righteous and patriotic outrage.
Centering back on topic, this debilitating handicap born of deception and perpetuated in denial is no small part of why many combat veterans cannot hope to re-connect with society after their traumatic reveltions: Having witnessed the horrific truth in the most violent ways possible, certain veterans come home to find themselves hopelessly isolated within a military and national culture that is bristling with contrived illusions. Often they are viciously isolated, as when the morally sensitive and as when PTSD victims are maligned as weak pants-pissers. All for the sake of denial of realities incompatible with deadly illusions that go on wrecking lives, souls, and nations.
