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National
Review Online
recently posted "Ten
Questions for Adel al-Jubeir," yet another rant by
Stephen
Schwartz, the Michael
Ruppert of the Right, who claims that the Saudi government
was really behind
the 9/11 attacks. It is the usual fare from the neocons'
resident Saudi-phobe, a weird mixture of smears and unintentional
humor. For example, Schwartz asks when terrorists arrested
by the Kingdom are going to be named, and given public trials
– but he might well ask the same question of John Ashcroft,
who has rounded up thousands without
identifying them and claims the authority to haul them
before secret
tribunals.
Schwartz
also wants to know "where has bin Laden ever denounced,
by name, the Saudi regime or anybody in it? Where has bin
Laden ever called directly for the overthrow of the Saudi
state?"
Peter
L. Bergen, author of Holy
War, Inc., who interviewed Bin Laden, has the answer:
"Bin
Laden also believed the House of al-Saud, the family that
has ruled Arabia for generations, were 'apostates' from Islam.
Apostasy is a grave charge to level against the Saudi royal
family, who style themselves the protectors of the two holiest
places in Islam, Mecca and Medina, and practice the most traditional
form of Sunni Islam."
Bergen
reiterates the accusation of Khaled
al-Fawwaz, an Al Qaeda sympathizer who acted as Bergen's
intermediary with Bin Laden, that "several assassination
attempts have been mounted against [Bin Laden] by Saudi intelligence
services."
More
recently, Bin Laden's desire to overthrow all the governments
of the Middle East – a goal shared with Ariel Sharon – is
reiterated in his latest letter, reproduced here.
Addressed to the American people, the letter complains, in
the midst of a long litany of grievances, that America has
in effect already conquered the Muslim lands:
"c)
Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments
of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a
daily basis;
"(i)
These governments prevent our people from establishing the
Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so.
"(ii)
These governments give us a taste of humiliation, and places
us in a large prison of fear and subdual.
"(iii)
These governments steal our Ummah's wealth and sell them to
you at a paltry price.
"(iv)
These governments have surrendered to the Jews, and handed
them most of Palestine, acknowledging the existence of their
state over the dismembered limbs of their own people.
"(v)
The removal of these governments is an obligation upon
us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the
Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight
against these governments is not separate from our fight against
you."
The
idea that, because the Evil One doesn't mention them by name,
the Saudis are excluded from his holy wrath, is just flat
out loony. What other nation of any size in the Middle
East could be accused of stealing the nation's wealth and
selling it to us "at a paltry price"? Could it possibly
be the Saudis, who sit atop the largest known oil and gas
reserves in the world? Duh-uh!
But
facts – Bin Laden's own words, and the testimony of those
who have direct knowledge of his views – are of no interest
to ideologues of Schwartz's ilk. Schwartz is embarked on another
one of his fanatical crusades, and isn't about to let reality
get in his way. Back
in Schwartz's radical-Trotskyist-"punk" days,
he was pushing "world revolution," and it
seems like only yesterday that he was promoting a Kosovar
"revolution" in the Balkans – you know, the one
that ethnically cleansed the former Serbian province, and
set up an Albanian thugocracy. Today it is in the Middle East
where revolutionary instability – specifically, the fall of
the Saudi monarchy – is his latest project.
Busy,
busy, busy, and always in the service of conflict. Where there
is war – class war, senseless war, eternal war – there is
Stephen Schwartz, circling over the battlefield and feeding
off the carnage. Caw! Caw! Caw!
Schwartz
lived for a while in Bosnia, where he converted to Islam –
the Sufi version – and became a fervent
supporter of the Bosnian government – and, when he got
back to the U.S., a tireless advocate of U.S. military intervention
on behalf of his Bosnian Muslim and Kosovar brethren. In a
piece for the Weekly Standard, Schwartz effusively
praised Bosnian fundamentalist leader and "President"
Alija
Izetbegovic in terms he once reserved for the pro-Government
"heroes" of the Spanish
Civil War:
"Many
strategists in Western capitals ask where we will find Muslims
prepared to stand by the West. One tested Muslim statesman
who is widely respected, even idolized, in the Islamic world
is the wartime president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegovic.
A learned and pious Muslim who was imprisoned for his faith
by Tito's Communist regime, Izetbegovic led the fight for
the survival of Bosnian Islam. He is an authentic warrior
in a legitimate jihad."
So
I have a few questions for Schwartz, ten to be exact:
1. Why,
as reported in Dani, September 24, 1999, a Bosnian
Muslim newspaper, did the Bosnian government, through their
embassy in Vienna, grant
Osama bin Laden a passport in 1993?
2. Why
did the Bosnian government grant Mehrez
Aodouni, a known Al Qaeda terrorist, a passport?
3. In
February of 1996, NATO
forces raided the training center of the Bosnian Muslim
secret police (AID), located in the ski resort near
Fojnica, and arrested several persons for planning terrorist
actions. Iranian instructors were teaching future terrorists
from AID how to make bombs disguised as children's toys
and plastic ice cream cones. Yet you have consistently claimed
that the Bosnian government is an "ally" of the
U.S. in the fight against terrorism – so what's up with that?
4. Why
don't you ever mention the pro-Al
Qaeda "muhajedeen" in Kosovo and Bosnia, who
fought alongside your beloved Kosovo "Liberation"
Army fighters and were granted citizenship, passports, and
state support for their terrorist activities? And why did
your hero, Bosnian "president" Alija Izetbegovic,
have direct
links to the Third
World Relief Agency, since busted
for terrorist ties, along with leading members of his Muslim
party?
5. The
Dayton peace agreement, that ended Bosnia's civil war, ordered
all foreign soldiers to leave the country: but hundreds
of these foreign
fighters, connected to Bin Laden, remain
in Bosnia
and Kosovo – why don't your Bosnian-KLA friends arrest
them?
6. Why
don't you ever state in any
of your numerous articles that you
are a Muslim convert?
7. You
have been quoted as saying:
"We
Muslims know that Allah permits us to take up the sword. We
know that Allah permits us to fight the Jihad. That Allah
permits us to fight the Jihad in Allah's way...As it says
in the Quran: 'Never say of those who have died in Allah's
way that they are not with us, They are with us even though
you cannot see them.'"
Do
you deny this?
8. Your
Muslim name is "Suleyman
Ahmad." Have you changed it back to "Stephen
Schwartz"?
9. Back
when you were a Commie (of the Trotskyist variety) you
called yourself "Comrade Sandalio." What's
up with all the phony names?
10. On
May 6, 1987, the following account was published in the
San Francisco Examiner:
"When
'New Age Rightist' Stephen Schwartz discovered graffiti calling
him 'the philosophical whore of North Beach,' the former Trotskyite
turned red with rage. He uncapped his felt-tipped pen and
was printing a reply to the scurrilous scribblings when he
was busted by Mayor [Diane] Feinstein's anti-graffiti police
squad on a charge of malicious mischief, defacing the wall
of a Vallejo Street construction site. Schwartz...has demanded
a trial to exonerate his exercise of free speech. 'I was just
going to answer that I was not the philosophical whore of
North Beach,' said Schwartz, 37."
So,
what was the upshot of the trial, Stephen – are you "the
philosophical whore of North Beach," or not?
–
Justin Raimondo
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