The $30bn pair of underpants by GinoBiffaroni

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The $30bn pair of underpants

POSTED BY: GINOBIFFARONI
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 5, 2010 15:02
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Tuesday, January 5, 2010 8:55 AM

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/01/20101391534922682.html

The $30bn pair of underpants
By Mark LeVine

Almost immediately after it was learned that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a US airliner using explosives concealed in his underpants, received training in Yemen, US politicians called for Barack Obama, the US president, to expand the 'war on terror' - which remains very much a war despite the administration's official ban of such vocabulary - to that country.

The president obliged, declaring that the US would strike anywhere to prevent another attack.

Such calls were in fact unnecessary, as the US is already involved in Yemen, supervising attacks on militants that have been credited by analysts with helping to further inflame anti-Americanism and support for al-Qaeda in the country.

Indeed, far from heralding a more successful US effort to stamp out Islamist terrorism, the soon to be deepening footprint in Yemen is a sure sign of America's defeat in the war against violent extremism in the Muslim world.

'Boots on the ground'

Think about it. One angry young man with about three ounces (around 80 grams) of explosive material, $2,000, and a pair of specially tailored underwear has completely disrupted the US aviation system.

It does not even matter that he failed to blow up the plane.

The costs associated with preventing the next attack from succeeding will measure in the tens of billions of dollars - new technologies, added law enforcement and security personnel on and off planes, lost revenues for airline companies and more expensive plane tickets, and of course, the expansion of the 'war on terror' full on to yet another country, Yemen.

And what happens when the next attacker turns out to have received ideological or logistical training in yet another country? Perhaps in Nigeria, which is home to a strong and violent Salafi movement, or anyone of a dozen other African, Gulf, Middle Eastern or South East Asian countries where al-Qaeda has set up shop?

Will the US ramp up its efforts in a new country each time there is an attempted attack, putting US "boots on the ground" against an enemy that is impossible to defeat?

Such a policy would fulfill al-Qaeda's wildest dreams, as the US suffers death by a thousand cuts, bleeding out in an ever wider web of interconnected and unsustainable global conflicts.

The European connection

As with the 9/11 attacks, Europe figures prominently in the current attacks. Then it was Germany, this time it was London, where Abdulmutallab studied and apparently began his descent into extremism.

Europe's role is not surprising, and in the case of London, particularly apt.

in depth

Profile: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

Profile: Al-Shabab
Video: Yemen - New frontline for US wars?
Neither wars nor drones
Obama links bomb plot to al-Qaeda
US shuts Yemen embassy over threats
After centuries as a primary purchaser and transporter of slaves to the Americas from west equatorial Africa, the British used the abolishment of the slave trade to interfere ever more into the economy of the Niger Delta until it assumed increasing colonial control in the mid third of the 19th century, creating the modern state of Nigeria as part of the process (the British gained control of Aden and surrounding areas of Yemen around the same time).

The rampant poverty, corruption and violence that today plague Nigeria are an inheritance of British rule, which itself was built up on centuries of slave raiding and trading - among the most corrupt and violent of activities - by the indigenous elites of the region with Europe, a devil's bargain that haunts this part of the world to the present day.

Should the US be invading London for providing material support to terrorism?

It took decades after the end of the British empire for the impact of British colonialism in South Asia and Africa to blow back onto British soil. The US has not even finished her imperial moment and it has already arrived.

The US will now become ever more deeply involved across the arc of instability beginning in Nigeria and stretching across Africa, the Middle East and into Central Asia.

In the process, it will deepen the mistakes that have made attacks such as the one attempted by Abdulmutallab inevitable.

Poverty and oppression

This is clear from the New York Times' New Year's eve editorial about Yemen, which warned of the importance of "heading off full chaos" in the country.

"Yemen's government is corrupt and repressive," the paper intoned. "But President Ali Abdullah Saleh seems to want to cooperate."

The world's paper of record is utterly clueless as to the intimate link between the corruption and oppression of the Yemeni government and its willingness to "cooperate" with the US, and the roots of radicalism in Yemen.

The New York Times, along with the rest of the mainstream media, have also ignored the role growing up so privileged in a country such as Nigeria had on Abdulmutallab, who likely saw the "moderation" (in Western eyes) of his wealthy banker father as a sign of his participation in a system that violated the most basic ethical premises of his religion and helped support poverty and oppression at home and across the Muslim world.

If the mainstream press, and with it no doubt the Obama administration, are unwilling to recognise the inextricable ties between oppression, poverty, corruption and violence by governments like Nigeria and Yemen, and the rise of religiously grounded extremism and violence there, then its increasing foot- or boot-print there will strengthen rather than weaken al-Qaeda and similar movements.

Strategy of shame

As I stood in the security line at JFK airport waiting to be frisked before boarding a New Year's day flight home, another goal, or at least consequence, of the most recent attack became apparent, one deeply tied to the obsession with physical and sexual honour in radical Islamist ideology: With this one failed action, the movement will succeed in routinising the systematic physical violation of airline travellers by our own security personnel as a part of the price of air travel.

Invasive frisking of the most intimate areas of the human body and revealing full body scans represent from a hardcore Salafi perspective an almost unbearable indignity -one they will surely relish seeing millions of the enemy routinely suffer, especially when such violations mirror the daily indignities and sexual humiliation infamously suffered by inmates in Guantanamo and other US-run prisons.

Call it a politics or strategy of shame - another weapon in the al-Qaeda arsenal that the West will have a hard time finding an answer for and which will erode support for the 'war on terror' from within even as Western governments strengthen their ties to oppressive front line states.

Osama bin Laden could not have planned it better if he tried.

Hmmmm perhaps time to give up on what the US has been doing, and try something new

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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Tuesday, January 5, 2010 3:02 PM

GINOBIFFARONI

Another story same point

WELCOME, AMERICANS, TO MYSTERIOUS YEMEN
January 04, 2010
Yemen, the likely source of the failed Christmas Day airliner bombing at Detroit, has just rudely intruded into the West’s awareness. Militant sources there claim the attack by a young Nigerian was retaliation for extensive covert US military operations in Yemen. Welcome to the Afghanistan of Arabia

Thanks to the ineffective pyrotechnic device in his underpants, the wannabe Nigerian jihadist has and will inflict billions of dollars in security costs on the United States, and disrupt its vital air travel - all for a $2,000 economy airplane ticket. American-hating jihadists everywhere are clapping their hands in glee. Osama bin Laden must be smiling as the US stumbles into yet another anti-American tar pit.

President Barack Obama has just declared Yemen a new hotbed of anti-American extremists.

Yemen is a magical, beautiful country, but it is not a place for the timid traveler or faint of heart. I first explored Yemen in the mid-1970’s when it was just creeping into the 11th century AD.

Located at the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula, mountainous, verdant Yemen was the Biblical land of the Queen of Sheba, and the originator of perfume. It was an important bridge between East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.

Sana’a, the walled capitol, was straight out of the Arabian Nights. At dusk, a ram’s horn would sound and its gates would close for the night. Beyond lay warlike tribesmen who would slit your throat for your watch.

Almost every man wore a curved tribal dagger in his belt. Mud-walled sky-scrapers filled the city, along with open sewers and teeming markets with eldritch names like the “souk of daggers” and the “souk of salt.”

There were no hotels to speak of, so I slept in the dining room of one of the palaces of the former ruler, Ahmed the Devil, who much enjoyed nailing annoying people to his palace gate. Old Ahmed spent the rest of his time smoking hashish and cavorting with his well-stocked harem.

The state of North Yemen came into being at the end of World War I as the dying Ottoman Empire gave up its Arabian possessions. During the 19th century, the British Empire had gobbled up the entire southern coast of Arabia, creating South Yemen, with its strategic seaport of Aden, and turning the kingdom of Oman into a protectorate. South Yemen became a hotbed of Arab leftists and anti-British militants. In the 1960’s, Saudi Arabia and Egypt battled for domination of Yemen. Both lost.

North Yemen has been ruled since 1978 by a military dictator, Ali Saleh. In the 1990’s, the former British colony of Aden joined North Yemen, creating today’s united Yemen. After some bloodshed, Saleh became ruler of united Yemen.

Oil was happily discovered, but has pretty much run out, leaving Yemen dirt poor and in dire financial straits. Saleh’s regime, like other US-backed Arab governments, is accused of extensive human rights violations and deep corruption.

The two Yemen’s 23 million people have feuded for decades.

Yemeni Shia and Sunnis are at scimitar’s drawn. The nation has deep tribal and clan divisions and rivalries. The south and north are at odds, with talk of secession by Aden. An assortment of anti-western militant groups has found a home in lawless Yemen. On top of all this, Shia Houthi tribesmen on Yemen’s undemarcated northern border are battling Saudi forces, backed by US air power. Yemen’s warlike tribes hate any outside authority, starting with their own government.

Yemen has also battled with neighbor Oman, which remains a virtual colony of MI6, British intelligence.

In a wonderful colonial punch-up during the 60’s and 70’s, Britain’s fabled SAS commandos driving pink-painted jeeps (they blended perfectly with sand) battled Yemeni-backed nationalists in Dhofar known as the `Red Wolves of Radfan.’

I naturally fell in love with medieval Yemen, in spite of getting caught in tribal gun fights in the north, nearly kidnapped, and falling dreadfully ill with parasites from the local cuisine.

At four pm daily, nearly everyone Yemeni would go off duty, sit in groups, and chew the mild narcotic shrub qat for two hours while getting silly and swapping tall tales and jokes. Qat curbs the appetite, so most lucky Yemenis are skinny. The shrub has become Yemen’s primary crop. Farmers grow qat rather than food, creating chronic malnutrition in Yemen.

I still recall been amazed to see tall, majestic Yemeni Jews proudly striding down the street dressed in flowing robes, turbans, and sporting daggers, long beards and large silver stars of David around their necks – a vision straight from the Old Testament.

Today, turbulent Yemen has become a haven for anti-American militants. Osama bin Laden’s father came from Yemen. The destroyer USS Cole was bombed in Aden harbor in 2000, and the US Embassy in Sana’a was attacked by gunmen in 2008. Fearing another attack, Washington and London just announced the temporary closure of their Sana’a embassies. Islamic militants deride these large, fortified embassies, as modern “crusader castles.”

The most prominent Yemeni militant group is al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a fusion of local Yemeni and Saudi jihadists dedicated to overthrowing the Saudi monarchy and Yemeni military regime and replacing them with an Islamic government.

AQAP numbers around 100-200 core members, with thousands of supporters. It is not an organic part of Osama bin Laden’s group but, like similar al-Qaida franchises in Iraq, North Africa, Somalia, and West Africa, a like-minded local revolutionary group.

In December, the Saudis, backed by US air power, CIA and special forces, intervened against Shia Houthi tribesmen along Yemen’s northern desert border. A semi-secret US base in Djibouti is being used for attacks on Yemen, Somalia and Kenya.

Just before the Detroit air incident, US warplanes killed 50-100 Houthi tribesmen fighting the American-backed regime. US Special Forces, warplanes and killer drones have been active since 2001, assassinating Yemeni militants and anti-government tribal leaders. It was only a matter of time before Yemeni jihadists struck back at the US.

Now that Washington admits Yemen is a new hotbed of anti-western jihadist activity, the current US argument that US and NATO forces must remain in Afghanistan to deny jihadists a safe haven appears absurd.

The US is being drawn into turbulent Yemen just as it is also expanding military operations across the Red Sea in Somalia and northern Kenya, and engineering the breakup of Sudan into two states. Britain, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also getting involved in Yemen.

Another hornet’s nest kicked. Expect more nasty stings.

Americans, who still struggle to understand the difference between Croats, Bosnians and Slovenes, or between Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara, now face a crash course in the mysteries and wonders of Yemen

http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/welcome-americans-t
o-mysterious-yemen.aspx

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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