On March 20, 2003 the US launched the War against Terrorism. This was in response to three passenger jets being launched as bombs against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Fortunately, many brave passengers forced the crash of the third plane somewhere in rural Pennsylvania before it could reach its target, the White House.
According to what became a part of the official story, a scion of the Saudi Arabian bin Laden financial empire, Osama, chose himself to become the mastermind of a shadowy Muslim fundamentalist group called al-Qaeda that had been formed with the aid of the Pakistani and support from like-minded Islamist from Egypt.
What is not commonly know is that CIA operatives working within the hierarchy of power within Washington, DC, capitol and home of the Chief Executive of America, the President, have been operating undercover as diplomats within the US Embassy at Islamabad.
They have consistently vetoed the CIA's recommendation to continue with intelligence gathering in the Middle East, leaving that job to the National Security Agency, which according to reports keeps a close eye on the region via the Israeli spy satellite that US investors owns a good chunk of.
As a result of influence by the CIA-trained diplomats in Islamabad, numerous trade deals and also various offers of US aid courtesy of the American taxpayers have been made, or are ongoing. Thus, the Pakistani military has accepted these offers with the tacit approval of government officials in Islamabad.
For Pakistani's military secret service, ISI, has been well funded to supply training to the Taliban, and in aiding in the overthrow of the legitimate government in Afghanistan circa 1989.
However, this move by proxy via Pakistan is the indirect result of US foreign policy, which has been influenced by anti-communism since the McCarthy era in the mid-1950s.
For Afghanistan had been under the thumb of Soviet domination for a decade preceding the civil war that continued throughout much of the 1990s.
Intelligence sources indicate that Osama bin Laden was originally the son of the family that formed the bin Laden corporation which has enjoyed strong trade ties with the Bush family's Carlyle Group since the 1960s.
Officially, Washington has associated bin Laden with al-Qaeda, and has denied any ties between the Bush family and him.
Furthermore, bin Laden had not been captured as of January 31, 2009, and his escape into Pakistan has been confirmed and denied and reconfirmed so many times that President Bush has stated that bin Laden isn't important to the war cause that now has seized the imagination of the American people today.
In my option, the War against Terrorism is American foreign policy just as much as the War against Drugs is.
For this is what American foreign policy consists of: economic dominance of the world in the interests of national security.
This explains American legislation on drug use, mental health, and poverty, both within domestic policy and in influencing other nations to follow suit. Such laws are purported to serve the people, to regulate their happiness, their peace of mind, and their material benefit. Instead, such laws are being abused, serving to oppress the poor even more, and to divide the community.
Drug abuse and its effect on community, the drive to close down mental institutions while retraining mental health care personnel, and the social security system with its overworked administration has only served to prove the old adage that "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer."
Yet American foreign policy only indirectly led to September 11, 2001.
We have to question over $2 billion going to Israel, almost a billion to Egypt, and millions to other nations such as Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
In total, at least $4 billion from the US go to the Middle East, the majority of it to Israel.
We thought it was for oil, but it's more than that that runs the American money machine. There's also millions of thirsty people in the Middle East, but it is developed nations that own most of the fresh water.
However, it's not just about oil or water; it's also about political power.
Bush's administration went to war because it couldn't afford to alienate millions of Americans who wanted justice to be served in the name of the 3000 people who died in 9-11.
Yet, are lives of thousands of innocent Muslim children, men and women worth the lives of 3000 people? A lot of Americans think so.
I don't. Neither do the Democrats, some of whose representative in DC regret the invasion of Iraq.
Even so, I do not believe it is wise to fully withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq because the threat of al-Qaeda still lingers as of January 15, 2013.
Although Osama may have been executed in Pakistan and his body supposedly dumped in the ocean by the US, al-Qaeda used Iraq as the launching ground against Sunni Muslims' enemies including Shi'a Muslims both in Iraq, Syria and the Levant.
It is not in the US's best interests to bring the troops home, for the enemy is threatening the homeland of the Syrian Arabs whose ancestors chose Jesus over Mohammad. Even though today, in Syria there are Shi'a and Sunni Muslims fighting against each other with Bashar al-Assad depending on Shiite militants, both domestic and abroad (Hezbollah being funded by Iran).
According to the reports from Syria, many Muslims from Syria have become refugees in Jordan (mostly Palestinians), Egypt (predominantly Sunnis), Iran (probably Shiites) and Turkey (secular Syrians and possibly some Christians). I have not read one report about Syrian Christians, but possibly they are refugees in Lebanon along with some Shi'a and a few Sunni militants).
Most likely though the Syriacs are refugees in France and the UK, due to the former colonial powers' ties to the Levant, including Palestine.
There may even be some Syriacs arriving in the US and Canada, for all I know.
In any case, the death of Osama bin Laden has not weakened al-Qaeda. Instead, other home-grown militants in the West are willing to train to become a vital part of what could be seen as the mythical hydra, a beast with many heads.
According to the myth, Hercules was challenged with the task to rid a certain Greek city of this beast, the Lemaean Hydra, a water dragon with heads too numerous to depict. When he cut one head off, two heads replaced it. In a cave beside Lake Lerna the dragon lives, guarding the entrance to the Underworld.
An offspring of Typhon and Echidna, both of whom were noisome children of the earth goddess Gaia, it was lured out by Hercules using fire arrows. After realizing cutting off the heads of the Hydra would be a long task, he retreated to his camp where his nephew Iolus awaited his return. During his absence, Iolus had been visited by the goddess Athena who slyly gave the young lad the inspiration to cauterize the wounds after cutting off the heads of the beast.
With this knowledge, Hercules returned to battle the creature and succeeded in cutting off all the heads but one. At this point, Athena turned his sword golden and Hercules slew the beast. Then he took the arrows in his quill to dip the heads in the poisonous blood of the Hydra.
In actual fact, Hercules was a pawn in the rivalry between Athena and Hera, the wife of Zeus who was King of the Greek Gods and father to Hercules. The reason for this rivalry is that Athena was born from Zeus' head thus making her equal in power to her father. Hera had to learn to give birth on her own to Hephaestus to match him.
Within context of modern times, the myth of Hercules' second task of slaying the Hydra can be applied to Syria and the Middle East. Al-Qaeda is the hydra. America is Hercules. The UK is Zeus. Hera is France, since they had a riot recently that burned a part of Paris. Syria and the Levant represents the cave in which the hydra dwells, and the Lerna is the Mediterranean Sea, whose waves wash on shores of nations from which came most of the members of al-Qaeda. The poisonous blood of the hydra represents the works of Sayyid Qutb and the messages of its current leaders on-line today at Youtube e.g. hate propaganda.
However, the problem here is the firebrand necessary to burn the heads of the hydra might mean more than conventional munitions, for it suggests the pacification of Iran regarding nuclear development might hide the movement of plutonium the US and other nuclear power desire from Iran.
For the nuclear powers were afraid that Iran would arm itself and provide arms to North Korea and other nations who are not too close to the US, including the Ukraine. But that's fodder for another myth at another time.
Originally posted: January 31, 2009 6:34 PM
Hercules and the Hydra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernaean_Hydra
The works of Sayyid Qutb: In the 200s CE the Ghassanids migrated Syria due to a dam flooding their villages in Yemen.
