26 REDS & A BOTTLE OF WINE

It’s easy to take a sarcastic view of the War on Terror as simply a war against brown people. It’s been pointed out time and time again that if the terrorist were European we would have developed more sophisticated methods of screening potential threats. After all, we can’t go around pulling everyone named John Smith off international flights. There is something morally bankrupt about a society so eager to sacrifice it’s most disenfranchised citizens to such useless security notions as racial profiling. It’s worth noting that racial profiling doesn’t work; in a 2003 survey of motorist stopped on the notorious New Jersey Turnpike only 7% of African Americans searches produced an arrest, compared to 11% of whites. No one has suggested profiling white motorist. The use of profiling by law enforcement nationwide hints at a larger security problem, and a particularly grim one in the war against terror.

In the immediate aftermath of September 11 the intelligence community, armed with unprecedented new powers swept up thousands of brown faces in an international dragnet that stretched from Yemen to Hollywood, Florida. The immediate problem seemed clear enough. Prevent an impending terrorist attack at all costs. Suspects were arrested, detained and tortured with little or no oversight. The fruits of this labor was this. A rich, complex and extensive network of individuals, small groups and multi-nationals. Al Qu’ida, or The Foundation. At the core of the organization seemed to be Osama Bin Laden, but to call him ‘The Boss’ seems inaccurate.
More after the Jump!

Click on and open Mohamed Atta’s entity and you’ll find connections to Hamburg, Frankfurt, The UAE, Prague, Berlin, Syria, Bavaria, Egypt, several American cities and others. He had his hand in a multitude of organization used for recruiting and funding. His connection to Agus Dwikarna connects him to the Bali nightclub bombing in Oct 2002. Mr. Dwikarna is also connected to Ayman Al-Zawahiri, involved in the bombing of two US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Jamal Zougam connects Mr. Atta to both the Casablanca bombing in May of 2003 and the Madrid bombing in March of 2004. All without the help of Mr. Bin Laden, and this is just what’s been de-classified. Further exploring these links can be a terrifying experience. Each link daisy chains into a massive network of connected entities.

Try to imagine the thousand and thousand of man hours spent interrogating, sifting through intelligence and posthumously constructing timelines. But when the well dries up, where do you turn? In the past few years intelligence officers, both American and otherwise have noted a “significant decrease in ‘chatter’.” ‘Chatter’ here defined as any number of ways of sending international communication. But of course! The banking structure that supported Al Qu’ida was disassembled in 2002, and although new sources of support have risen to the occasion (due, I’m sure in no small part to an unpopular war in Iraq) a system of international monitoring has made it harder to transfer large amounts. Without massive funding Al Qu’ida cells have set their sights on smaller, ‘softer’ targets. Ones that require less equipment and fewer communications with the ‘home office’.

Isn’t this a nightmare scenario? Hundreds of tiny cell plotting attacks nearly independently of their cave dwelling bosses? The possibilities are frightening, and yet there is some irony here. The war in Iraq is often called “Al Qu’ida’s greatest recruitment call.” At last, proof positive of the American imperialist agenda. While this may or may not be the case it is true that attention for Al Qu’ida has focused away from America and Chechnya and onto Iraq.

Through much of 2002 and 2003 Al Qu’ida focus was the seemingly winnable war in Chechnya against the Russians. The Russian Army had not been able to take or hold Chechnya’s capital of Groznyy in over ten years of conflict. Russian public opinion on the conflict was confused at best and Putin was unprepared or unwilling to spend more resources on an increasingly unpopular affair. Sound firmilar? With a constant influx of Islamic Jihadists from fresh loses in Afghanistan and Pakistan Chechnya was a winnable war. An al Qu’ida victory against Russia could galvanize the base, left scrambling for cover by American strikes. Then came the School Hijacking in September of 2004, a tense standing-off that ended with 200 dead, mostly school children. A high portion of the hostage takers were Arab, others were Chechnyian. Public opinion in Russian turned against Chechnya in a heartbeat and Putin quietly dropped the hammer on Chechnya and within a short few months there were was no question that Al Qu’ida had lost the battle.

So it was on to Iraq where American opinion of the war mirrored Russia’s in Chechnya in 2002. Iraq has proved a confusing fight for American forces unclear as to who they are fighting and when. Roadside bombs, sniper attacks and mortar fire are so commonplace that even the roads leading to and from American bases aren’t safe. Only this fall was the road to the Baghdad airport secured. Al Qu’ida sees Iraq now as the best chance for victory. The message of an American defeat would be clear through the Arab world. Al Qu’ida is a force to be reckoned with. But a knock down dirty fight in Iraq takes valuable resources away from international terrorism. With little to fall back on and little chance of the Americans leaving anytime soon, Al Qu’ida is dug into Iraq too. Factor in the lack of any clear metric for victory or defeat on either side (does Al Qu’ida win if America leaves? Do they keep fighting an Iraq national force?) It seems both sides are bogged down in Iraq.

But is a “quagmire” in Iraq for Al Qu’ida enough? George W. Bush thinks so. He is fond of repeating that we are fighting the terrorist over there so we don’t have to fight them here. Interesting concept but the London subway bombings seem the proof of Mr. Bush ‘s pudding. Here it seems that British nationals and legal immigrants from a variety of countries were involved with little help from The Foundation. It might be relieving for American to note that we have smaller populations of such foreign nationals and that here they are much less disenfranchised than in Europe. Still a small group, splintered off and out of communication with Al Qu’ida overseas, remains an American threat.

So with a small, leaner and quieter Al Qu’ida overseas and an American military stretched to the limit in Iraq and Afghanistan it seemed fitting that during these last few week three events would converge. First was last week ‘white flag’ from Osama Bin Laden, an offer of a truce of sorts, sighting growing unpopularity for the war in Iraq among Americans. This is out of character and seems the best evidence that Al Qu’ida is getting the same pressure from their supporters and financiers that George W. Bush is getting. No one likes a war that no one can win. Secondly was a Washington Post article exposing the secret and warrantless wiretapping of American citizens authorized by George W. Bush and carried out by the National Security Agency after September 11. A program, the article reported, that had recently be reinstituted. It’s a program the President has stood by, calling it key in the war on terror. This despite FBI reports that these wiretaps yielded no credible leads and drains thousands of man-hours. Thirdly, the Patriot Act, the massive and unprecedented document granting ridiculous wartime powers to the State Department, the Justice Department and the President is set to expire on Friday, Feb 3. Several of the acts more outrageous provisions are under the scrutiny of Congress.

The President has asked Congress to make these provisions permanent, sighting their effectiveness in the past. Yet as we can see, what has been effective before may be useless now in the face of a “New Al Qu’ida”. Certainly a program dubbed ‘useless’ by the FBI in the days after September 11 will still be useless now. It’s a grasping at straws mentality. The same logic that supports racial profiling. If you tap enough phone calls, open enough letters or stop enough black folks you’re bound to find something. That might have been true on September 10th, but as the President is fond of saying, “We live in a post-September the 11th world.