BURDEN
OF EMPIRE
Hitchens
has been in the vanguard of the War Party, post-9/11, and
his pronouncements on the subject rival those of right-neocon
Andrew Sullivan in their fervor for exporting the benefits
of Western civilization at gunpoint. Both Sullivan
and Hitchens are fulsome in their praise of the US "liberators"
of Afghanistan, and both have signed
on to the new Popular Front against "Islamo-fascism" – the relentless campaign to turn the war on terrorism into
a holy war of the West against Islam. Both of these Brits
have the bright idea that America must pick up where the Mother
Country left off, and take up the white man's burden – the
burden, that is, of Empire.
BUTCH,
AT LAST
Of
course, as an editor of The New Republic, which makes
no bones about its Israel First editorial policy, Sullivan's
antipathy to all things Arabic is hardly surprising. He has
been calling for an all-out attack on Iraq from the beginning:
as the only openly gay neocon, Sullivan has his "butch" image
to keep up, and perhaps this partly explains why he has been
among the most bloodthirsty of the laptop bombardiers: he
and Rich Lowery, over at National Review, are currently
in a contest to see who can come up with the most ingenious
rationalizations for nuking – yes, nuking! – Afghanistan.
THE
NEW DISPENSATION
Sullivan
is a careerist, whose self-infatuated ramblings can always
be counted on to synthesize the conventional wisdom: far more
interesting is Hitchens, a relative newcomer to the War Party,
whose feats of ideological gymnastics in support of the new
interventionism are instructive. Writing in his column
in The Nation, Hitchens states the premise of this
new dispensation with characteristically charming hyperbole:
"The
United States of America has just succeeded in bombing a country
back out of the Stone Age. This deserves to be recognized
as an achievement, even by those who want to hasten past the
moment and resume their customary tasks (worrying about the
spotty human rights record of the Northern Alliance is the
latest thing)."
ON
THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY
Reading
Hitchens, one is reminded of those Nation articles
of the 1930s praising Stalin's Russia and hailing the liberation
of women, the rollback of Russian feudalism, and the over-fulfillment
of the Five Year Plan as an "achievement" of similar magnitude.
Like the Nation writers of the Red Decade, who downplayed
or denied the "spotty human rights record" of the KGB, Hitchens
is disdainful of petty hagglers and sticklers who bother their
silly little heads about such necessary brutalities as are
required to construct the new order: they are, after all,
on the wrong side of history. All that's changed, in some
seventy years, is the object of such blind idolatry.
A
NEW SITUATION
Hitchens
attacks "those ultraleftists and soft liberals" who are against
giving the Bushies a blank check to wage an eternal "war on
terrorism" and avers that they could
"Safely
be ignored and needn't be teased too much now. The rescue
of the Iraqi Kurds in 1991 taught them nothing; they were
for leaving Bosnia and Kosovo to the mercy of Milosevic; they
had nothing to say about the lack of an international intervention
in Rwanda. The American polity is now divided between those
who can recognize a new situation when they see it, and those
who cannot or will not."
THE
NEW ROMANTICS
This
"new situation" is, of course, the unchallenged supremacy
of the American Empire to do what it damn well pleases, from
Bosnia to Baluchistan. This is what unites the neoconservative
"Right," represented by Sullivan, and the neo-Wilsonian Left,
embodied by Hitchens: the romanticization of American military
power as the instrument of a new world order.
THE
BOSNIAN CONNECTION
That
Hitchens can mention our great "victory" in Bosnia – presumably with a straight face – in connection with the
war on terrorism is a testament to the awesome ability of
some people to ignore facts that contradict ideology. For
if Bosnia is to come up at all, in this discussion, it is
as an object lesson in how the US directly aided bin Laden
and his followers. Indeed, in Bosnia – and later in Kosovo – the US and the bin Ladenites were allies, with the former
shielding and perhaps covertly aiding the latter. The arms
pipeline that supplied the Bosnian Muslim government of President
Alija Izetbegovic, evading UN sanctions, was operated by bin
Laden and his associates with the full
knowledge and complicity of the US. The same US-bin Laden
alliance held firm in Kosovo, as Professor Marjorie Cohn pointed
out in an
excellent article in Jurist:
"The
United States gave considerable assistance to the Kosovo Liberation
Army – a Muslim terrorist group financed by the Third World
Relief Agency, through which bin Laden funneled $350 million – and its twin,
the National Liberation Army in Macedonia."
BIN
LADEN IN BOSNIA
The
three-year civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina led Izetbegovic
to seek help from his Muslim brothers abroad, and links with
Iran, Islamic groups in Egypt, and Al Qaeda were forged. When
the war went into full tilt, Izetbegovic got back in touch
with his old buddy, Elfatih Hassanein-omal-Fatih, a top leader
of Sudan's ruling party, the National Islamic Front. In the
guise of "humanitarian aid," Fatih's Third World
Relief Agency (TWRA) began smuggling arms into Bosnia, enough
to stave off almost certain defeat. Linked to Sheik Omah Abdel
Rahman, the radical imam who was convicted of organizing the
terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York in
1993, TWRA has also been identified as one of bin Laden's
assets. In his best-selling book, Holy
War, Inc.,
Peter L. Bergen writes:
"A
Vienna-based charity linked to bin Laden, Third World Relief
Agency, funneled millions of dollars in contributions to the
Bosnians. Al-Qaeda trained mujahideen to go and fight in Bosnia
during the early nineties, and bin Laden's Services Office
also maintained an office in neighboring Croatia's capital,
Zagreb."
INTERLOCKING
DIRECTORATES
The
Balkan Centre for Peace in the Balkans has identified
several prominent Bosnian officials with direct ties with
TWRA, including Irfan Ljevakovic, a founding leader of the
Stranka Demokratske Akcije (SDA – Izetbegovic's
ruling Muslim party), and the man responsible for bringing
bin Laden's followers to Bosnia; Alija Izetbegovic, SDA and
Bosnian Muslim president who guaranteed Fatih's credentials
to Austria's Die Erste Osterreich Bank, enabling him to open
an account there and begin the gunrunning operation. Bosnian
Muslims listed as Executive Directors of TWRA include: Hasan
Cengic, Husein Zivalj (deputy foreign minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina),
and Faris Nanic (an advisor to Izetbegovic).
PROTECTED
FROM SCRUTINY
The
assets of the Third World Relief Agency in the US and Europe
have been frozen – but what about the government of Bosnia,
which is getting off scot-free? The Bosnian Muslims, it seems,
have some powerful protectors in Washington, and have so far
managed to escape the post-9/11 wrath of the US. Strangely,
they seem to have also escaped the ire of the professional
Islamophobes, such as Daniel
Pipes and Stephen Schwartz. Writing in the Weekly Standard,
Schwartz homes in on the Saudis as the real threat to the
US, and goes
out of his way to extol the Bosnians, and specifically
Izetbegovic, as model Muslims and devoted friends of the West.
STEPHEN
SCHWARTZ, CONSPIRACY THEORIST
Schwartz
has constructed
a conspiracy theory based on the idea that the Saudi-backed
Wahabi sect is akin to Soviet Communism and fascism, a dire
threat to the West. The Bosnians, not being Wahabis, are supposedly
examples of all that is good in Islam:
"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."
Gee,
it looks like this "legitimate jihad" got a little out of
hand – or else what is the supposedly pro-Western Izetbegovic
doing as an Executive Director of the Third World Relief Agency,
a known terrorist organization?
Schwartz
blithers on about how "most of the world's Muslims, given
the chance, would gladly side with Izetbegovic against both
bin Laden and his patrons in Saudi Arabia, a culturally incoherent,
politically two-faced country that we should regard as a state
backer of terrorism at least as dangerous as Libya or Iran."
For the
former leader (and sole member) of the Fomento Obrero Revolucionario
Organizing Committee in the United States (FOCUS) to call
anyone two-faced is laughable. What is interesting about this
hypocrite's sustained campaign against the Saudis, however,
is how it diverts attention away from the real center
and fulcrum of bin Laden's terrorist conspiracy – Bosnia.
FOLLOW
THE MONEY
It
was during bin Laden's residence in Sudan that the primarily
Saudi Al Qaeda was internationalized, incorporating fundamentalist
groups in Egypt, Algeria, Chechnya, and elsewhere. It was
also during this time that the Bosnian struggle fused all
these disparate elements together, and created the financial
operations that make the bin Ladenite empire run. In the effort
to trace and uproot Al Qaeda's financial tentacles, a
recent New York Times article revealed the significance
of the Bosnia-Al Qaeda connection:
"To
support Al Qaeda, some operatives work like organized crime
crews. Government officials exploring Al Qaeda's operation
in Bosnia found that operatives skimmed money from relief
charities and linked up with Bosnian crime bosses. The success
in Bosnia made it a model for Al Qaeda to use in embattled
countries around the world."
OFF
THE SHELF
In
President Izetbegovic's Bosnia, said one intelligence officer,
bin Laden and his lieutenants "found a very hospitable
environment." The Times reports that "the
bin Laden financial machine blossomed, according to officials
who have been informed of intelligence information on the
matter. Charities around the Arab world proclaimed that
they were raising money for humanitarian purposes in Bosnia,
but in fact portions benefited Islamic extremist groups
in the area, including Al Qaeda."
The
Al Qaeda militants also linked up with what the Times
calls "Bosnian organized crime figures" (i.e. Albanians)
and found a ready market for Afghan heroin, which provides
a good chunk of the terrorist budget. Their Bosnian operation
proved so successful, according to US government officials,
"that it became an 'off-the-shelf' model for fundraising
and recruitment used by the terrorist organization again and
again in Kosovo, Albania and Chechnya."
THE
'EXPERT'
Schwartz,
rising out of a well-deserved obscurity as a fringe leftist,
is now reinventing himself as an "expert" on Islam. When the
Islamophobes want an article on this or that aspect of the
evils of Wahabism, they turn to him; a
recent interview with Schwartz on MSNBC consisted of the
news anchor asking him leading questions about the alleged
evil of Saudi Arabia, and Schwartz answering "Absolutely!
Absolutely!" What a farce. The campaign against the Saudis
is intended to draw attention away from the real culprits,
the Bosnian Muslims, who protected, profited from, and allied
themselves with bin Laden and his confederates. A secondary
motive is to isolate America from the Arab world, and draw
the US ever closer to Israel.
RUMORS
OF WAR
There
are disturbing indications that our boy President is firmly
in the grip of the "get Iraq" crowd: the recent
announcement that the Third Army Corps is moving its headquarters
to Kuwait is just the most public. Aside from that, there
are rumors in Washington that the number of troops in Saudi
Arabia – purportedly 5,000 – is now closer to 25,000. A war
with Iraq would seriously destabilize the Arabian peninsula
at a time when a more nationalistic monarch, Crown Prince
Abdullah, is in line to take over. The impending crisis of
the Saudi regime and what to do about it is now the chief
topic of conversation in Washington circles.
PRELUDE
TO OCCUPATION
One
solution, widely proposed by the prophets of neo-imperialism,
such as Max Boot, Mark Steyn and the airheaded Jonah Goldberg,
is to simply take over the Middle East – including
the Saudi oil fields. A vilification campaign directed at
the Saudi monarchy, and the demonization of the state-backed
Wahabi sect: all of this is a necessary prelude to any military
occupation. As the most prolific if not the chief ideologue
of the Islamophobes, Schwartz never relents from his task:
to point an accusing finger at the Saudis, while distracting
us from the real jihadists ensconced in Bosnia, Kosovo, and
now Macedonia.
PHYSICS
AND LIFE
US
foreign policy had nothing to do with the growth and development
of Al Qaeda? Bullhockey! If it is treason, or "anti-Americanism"
to say so, then so be it. US taxpayer dollars built the Bosnian
Muslim state, from the ground up: our soldiers protect it,
and the same is true of Kosovo, where a separatist state is
taking shape under UN-US tutelage. It was Bill Clinton who
took up the Bosnian Muslim cause, along with Bob Dole for
the Republican side of the aisle: this culminated in the Kosovo
war, which, we are learning, was the crucible that led to
the spread of Al Qaeda beyond its previously limited sphere
of influence. Actions have consequences, for every action
there is an equal and opposite reaction: it's a simple rule
of physics, and of life.
A
LOGICAL PROGRESSION
The
"humanitarian" interventionism peddled by NATO in the Balkans
took in Hitchens and a whole raft of rather gullible lefties,
who saw no reason why the US – under King Klinton and his
Red Queen, Hillary – could not right every wrong, from Sarajevo
to Rwanda. Now we must all stand in awe of the towering "achievement"
of the Afghan war, and humbly contemplate the awful majesty
of American military power: this is, actually, quite a logical
progression for Hitchens and some other leftists who, after
all, have no objections to power – as long as they are
the ones wielding it. The old Soviet Union may be dead and,
by now, half-forgotten, but for many of these poor lost souls
the "liberating" power of a global crusader for justice has
been transferred to the US. They still want to export their
egalitarian delusions at gunpoint, only now it is Americans,
and not Russians, who are holding the guns.
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