US: world empire of chaos (Will we now 'make nice" with the world?)

[rodeodance]

http://mondediplo.com/2006/10/03uschaos

US: world empire of chaos

The US seems not to understand that its current global war on terrorism is an asymmetrical war, and that the last military superpower is losing its engagements. The resistance in occupied and bombarded lands can still claim victory when the US fails to impose its will.

By Marwan Bishara

THE scheduled date for a seminar at the American University of Paris on asymmetrical warfare in the age of globalisation was 12 September 2001; the previous day’s events in the United States provided us with the best possible case study of the subject.

Al-Qaida, allegedly involved in 9/11, is a non-state transnational group that functions according to the Spin (segmented, polycentric, ideologically networked groups) model. It is a loose and horizontally structured network rather like ecological, feminist and other modern transnational groups, and is secretly organised in the same way as mafias, drug cartels and similar illegal traffickers (1).

After 9/11, however, definitions of asymmetric threats and enemies have changed according to the principle of “who’s with us or against us”, the us being the US, and relative to the mood and interests of decision-makers in Washington, with little or no connection to real new threats. Lumping classical anti-colonial resistance movements and national secular regimes together with al-Qaida and other criminal networks as the target of Washington’s global war against terrorism has proved not merely wrong but catastrophic.

..........

It is generally understood that global asymmetrical threats of the al-Qaida type stem from the insurrection of those who have been hurt by globalisation. From failed states such as Somalia and from the belts of poverty around the richest countries, they rebel against the world’s dominating, affluent centre. Inflamed by the inequalities generated by neoliberal globalisation, they exploit the new information technologies that unite rebels internationally...

[lapfog_1]

1. Continuing to propagate the myth

that all of the Al-Qaida members are coming from impoverished nations... that's simply not the case. A majority of Al-Qaida members are from middle to high income families from relatively rich countries. Bin Laden didn't go out and recruit a bunch of poor kids to turn into terrorists, most of them came right out of the mosques that he and his followers attended.

[CJCRANE]

2. I agree with you.

It's true that anti-occupation resistance (as per Gaza or Iraq) may recruit from the poor but international terrorism is a middle-class and upper-class game (also helped along by state infiltrators/agent provocateurs from both Eastern and Western countries).