Nemesis

Threats

By Steve Coll The New Yorker January 18, 2010

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

While Americans and international law are violated by the fiendish jihadists and the U.S. is involved in a relentless war with these fanatics, Clemons is concerned with “inhumane detainee operations.” What a memorial of mockery Clemons makes of Americans killed by the jihadists.

Here we have the ‘playwright’ Steve Coll staging on The New Yorker his burlesque play of al-Qaeda and terrorism and receiving the plaudits of Clemons in the form of a standing ovation. Proudly displaying his originality by writing, that because “Al-Qaeda provides no social services [like Hamas] and thus has built no political movement” it has no mass support among Muslims. But Al-Qaeda is and remains a powerful ideological movement and Coll is oblivious of the historical fact that ideology is the sire of politics and the foundation stone of political movements. Think of Lenin’s Bolsheviks.

Furthermore, no radical imam has denounced bin Laden or al-Qaeda in Muslim countries or in Western ones and there are thousands of worshippers who follow those imams who vehemently preach violent death to the infidel West and its Great Satan America, and therefore many Muslims are sub rosa, if not open, supporters of al-Qaeda.

Also the closing of Gitmo for the purpose of improving “America’s image abroad” does not come free and pays a heavy price: U.S. weakness in the eyes of terrorists and thus a centripetal force for recruiting jihadists.

Obama’s “forward defense” is a red herring. He has already adumbrated the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and his latest stupid ‘forward’ announcement that he is not going to deploy U.S. forces in Yemen, and by implication in Somalia, makes his “forward defense” a fiasco. As this advanced announcement by Obama signals and encourages jihadists from other Muslim countries and from the Muslim Diaspora to move into these two countries without fearing that they will be met by the might of the U.S. military.

Lastly, it’s monumental idiocy for Obama to believe that by ‘recruiting’ American “values and institutions” in the fight against fanaticism, he will defeat the “hateful ideology.” And, indeed, President Obama “has neither overestimated nor underestimated terrorism,” he has nullified it. For what else means his initial reaction to the Nigerian suicide bomber when he dubbed him as being an “isolated extremist” not connected to a terrorist organization?