[lbo-talk] The 'Al Qaeda' Industry

[Joseph Wanzala]

What you posted only buttresses my point, and contradicts Chris Doss'. Of 
couse there are elements within the establishment who have a more subtle 
view of Al Qaeda. Missing from all of this is the degree to which US and 
other western intelligence have worked with or infiltrated these 'terror 
networks'.


>From: "Michael Pugliese" <michael098762001 at earthlink.net>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] The 'Al Qaeda' Industry
>Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 13:12:07 -0600
>
>On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 10:11:53 -0700, Joseph Wanzala <jwanzala at hotmail.com>  
>wrote:
>
>>  What is the clear connection between Zarquawi, Bin Laden, the Chehens,  
>>Moslems in Cape Town and Sudan and Zanzibar, Arab radicals in Paraguay  
>>and Ecuador, Moslems in the Balkans and China, the PLO etc. - the point  
>>is that there isn't and the 'war on terror' is predicated on the  
>>assumption that this is one large integrated entity.
>
>    Terrorism scholars and policy makers, from the RAND Corporation's  
>Arquilla and Ronfeldt to those that publish in journals like Parameters  
>from the US Army War College don't postulate such. Instead they see a  
>"network if networks, " decentralized in a cellular structure, (the Madrid  
>train bombings, for example were not ordered by a "Terrorist Int'l.",   
>only far rightists like Yossef Bodansky would say so).
>http://www.google.com/search?q=Al++Qaeda+%22network+of+networks
>http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4646_132/ai_105656700  
>(John Gray on al-Qaeda and Burke.)
>http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=400&issue_id=2909&article_id=23535 
>  (Conservative think tank focusing on Russia, interview w/ Burke.)
>http://www.boomerangbooks.com/reviews/al_qaeda.htm
>Book Review
>Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror by Jason Burke.
>The basic premise of Burke’s analysis is to question whether Al Qa’eda 
>was  and is a coherent organisation or a network of networks controlling 
>and  directing trans-national Islamist terrorism. He concludes that Al 
>Qa’eda  usually operated at the margins of the real threat of Islamic 
>terrorism.  Many of the acts attributed to Al Qa’eda, such as the East 
>Africa bombing  in 1998 or the ‘Millenium Plot‘ in 1999, were conceived 
>and attempted by  individuals or groups outside the aegis of the inner 
>hardcore grouping of  Al Qa’eda. Osama Bin Laden was and is by no means 
>the master controller.  Consequently the jihadi-salafist Al Qa’eda 
>worldview acts more as a  formula than a network, a function not an entity. 
>‘Islamic militancy is a  broad based, multivalent, diverse movement. It 
>goes far beyond the deeds  or words of one man or one small 
>organisation’. There is no ‘network of  networks’ nor are there 
>‘tentacles of terror’, as each applies a degree of  central control 
>that Burke believes simply does not exist.
>
>--
>Michael Pugliese
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