The rebirth of al-Qaeda

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Remember the group that killed nearly 3,000 Americans? Remember the rage and anger, and the determination to make sure that we destroy the group to make sure that it never happens again?
Maybe Americans have forgotten. After all. Obama 'neutralized' al-Qaeda in 2011.

“It took us quite a few years before we were able to eliminate Osama bin Laden and the top leadership and neutralize them as an effective force,” Kerry insisted, which raises the rather surprising suggestion that al-Qaeda, still active around the world, is “neutralized” in the administration’s view.

There are countless ways that our Forever War on some Terror is insane, but these two articles I'm about to list perfectly encapsulate this craziness.
First of all, do you remember Afghanistan?

Al Qaeda training camps are reportedly reappearing in Afghanistan, where the US has been focused on fighting ISIS (also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh) and the Taliban, according to The New York Times.

Really? 14 years, a trillion dollars, and 2,378 American lives later, al-Qaeda is right back to where it was in Afghanistan. Except even better positioned.

If the training camps had popped up several years ago, "they would have rocketed to the top of potential threats presented to President Obama in his daily intelligence briefing," The Times reports. "Now, they are just one of many — and perhaps, American officials say, not even the most urgent on the Pentagon’s list in Afghanistan."
And the newly strengthened Taliban could be a force multiplier for Al Qaeda. Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the CIA who recently wrote a book about US efforts to destroy Al Qaeda, told The Times that the Taliban will give Al Qaeda a safe haven in Afghanistan, as they did before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on US soil.

This is just mind-blowing to me. Is there any better example of a complete and epic failure than this?

Well, now that you mention it, yes, there is an even better example.

Today, Al-Qaeda is not working alone. It’s getting help from one of the United States’ Middle East allies—Qatar. A little noticed event highlights Qatar’s influence.

Sure, our wonderful Gulf allies sends Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, money and weapons, but that isn't what made this deal so awesome.

A prisoner swap between the Lebanese government and al-Qaeda's branch in Syria, Al-Nusra Front in early December showed how powerful the group has become on the ground. The deal released 16 Lebanese soldiers and police officers who were captured during a joint ISIS-al-Nusra operation along with 29 civilians, some of whom are known terrorists.
The heart of the agreement guarantees al-Nusra free reign inside what had been a safe haven in Lebanon’s Hamid valley, bordering Syria, with access to the Lebanese town of Arsal. After the deal was signed, TV footage broadcast by Al Jazeera Arabic showed an armed group of al-Qaeda fighters with the group's black banners cheering al-Qaeda’s victory. Lebanon’s Minister of Interior, Nouhad Machnouk, put it bluntly, saying Arsal is occupied by al-Nusra Front.
The official mediator in the Lebanese deal was the small Gulf country of Qatar, which hosts the advanced headquarters of the U.S. Central Command. Sources claim that Qatar paid al-Nusra $25 million and persuaded the terror group to accept the deal.

Say what?!? Say WHAT?!?!
Lebanon? Has the world gone insane?
Yes. Yes it has.

Three years after they were kicked out of several cities in south Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has come back and overrun two cities in the province of Abyan, local government officials and residents told Middle East Eye. But people who lived through al-Qaeda’s reign of Abyan in 2011 now talk about new “tolerant and friendly” militants.

Because when I think of al-Qaeda “tolerant and friendly” are the two words that come to mind.

Nowadays, instead of spending their days chasing intelligence officers or those who play music, al-Qaeda in Zinjibar has embarked on a “hearts and minds” campaign to convince people to embrace their rule.

Believe it or not, that is not an TheOnion article. That is actual news.
It's important to recall how small of an organization al-Qaeda was in 2001.

By 2001, al Qaeda still had no formal branches or franchises. Its membership included a core of just under 200 people, a 122-person martyrdom brigade, and several dozen foot soldiers recruited from the 700 or so graduates of its training camps.

Al-Qaeda in 2001 was so small that you could fit all of them into a high school gymnasium.
Al-Qaeda in 2001, just before we started dropping bombs on Afghanistan, occupied no territory and barely existed outside of rural Afghanistan.

Unlike 2001, al-Qaeda actually occupies territory, rules major cities, and has several self-declared Islamic Emirates. The largest of which are in Syria, Yemen, and Somalia.
These three groups, plus smaller affiliates, brings the number of hard-core al-Qaeda militants to around 20,000 today, up from a total of 200 just 14 years ago. And this doesn't include successful spin-off groups like ISIL, which has between 50,000 and 250,000 hard-core militants, depending on who's counting.
That's a 10,000% growth rate for al-Qaeda, which by any measure means they are doing something right. Or we are doing something very, very wrong.

But al-Qaeda is "not even the most urgent on the Pentagon’s list" anymore. I wonder what the families of the 9/11 victims might think about that?

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divineorder's picture

Jill Stein calls the WOT catastrophic

As we grieve for the latest victims and their families, we must resist the demagoguery that would turn grief into vengeance and expand the catastrophic war on terror.

We must likewise resist the deplorable expressions of xenophobia and stand up for the civil rights and civil liberties of Muslims who are in no way implicated in the crimes of ISIS. To the contrary, we must ensure a pathway to dignity, self-respect and full inclusion in society that will undermine ISIS recruitment to the path of violence.

We must also look to rein in senseless violence where it occurs. In particular, we must end weapons profiteering, that fans the flames of violence domestically and over seas. Whether by Lockheed Martin, Northrup Gruman or the NRA, the promotion of brutality and violence for profit needs to be stopped. Congress and the White House need to stand up to the enablers of terror at home and around the world.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

For a few days after 9/11, friends and I sat around talking about the events and what to do. I remember saying, "I have absolute faith in my government to make the wrong decision always." Someone asked me, "What would you do?"

Perhaps I am hopelessly naive, but I think it is time to change our behavior, admit our folly of having tried to force our will on others (Sykes-Picot, etc.), and to state that we now realize it is essential to learn to work with and share with all human beings. We must acknowledge the lack of trust in each other, after all these years of animosity, might makes right, etc. But we must also recognize that the lethality of the weaponry we have evolved mandates that we find a better, more sharing way, of solving our problems. Fighting, wars, forcing one's will on another no longer works because we now have the power to destroy the whole planet. This is the mandate of evolution. Either we learn this lesson or we destroy each other.

Very simple really. And it would have been a lot easier back in 2001 than it is today. Now we have another 15 years of really bad actions to add to the lack of faith and to the difficulties. Either we learn to live together or we die together. Enough! We've had enough death!

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Remember war on cancer? Now Cancer is even more prevalent.
War on Drugs? Ditto.
War on terror? Ditto. sigh....

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essay "The Algebra of Infinite Justice" back in 2001 :

http://progressive.org/node/1713

It's absurd for the U.S. government to even toy with the notion that it can stamp out terrorism with more violence and oppression. Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease.

Terrorism has no country. It's transnational, as global an enterprise as Coke or Pepsi or Nike. At the first sign of trouble, terrorists can pull up stakes and move their "factories" from country to country in search of a better deal. Just like the multinationals.

Terrorism as a phenomenon may never go away. But if it is to be contained, the first step is for America to at least acknowledge that it shares the planet with other nations, with other human beings, who, even if they are not on TV, have loves and griefs and stories and songs and sorrows and, for heaven's sake, rights.

The September 11 attacks were a monstrous calling card from a world gone horribly wrong.

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lotlizard's picture

will have drawn the obvious conclusion that if Pentagon doublethink on this scale is possible, "Al-Qaeda" was not actually the orchestrating political power behind 9/11 at all.

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Big Al's picture

Our government plays a double game, they're doing the same thing with ISIS, which is actually just an offshoot of Al CIA Duh. They train, fund (through auxiliaries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, supply and guide these manufactured groups to act as proxy armies (Afghanistan/Russia, Libya, Syria, Vietnam) while also giving them an enemy to scare the American people into acquiescing to more imperialism, more wars.
There have always been some 9/11 families questioning the government conspiracy theory about 9/11 but we don't hear about it because the ruling class media won't allow it.

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MarilynW's picture

people from 115 Nations were killed that day.

http://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm
25 Canadians were killed in The World Trade Center.

15 of the attackers were from Saudi Arabia and yet the West continues to look upon that country as an ally.

The Pentagon has acknowledged that climate change is more of a threat to the USA than terrorism.

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To thine own self be true.

shaharazade's picture

has a chilling response to climate change. To them it's another opportunity to kill humans as they are planning and ready to put down civil unrest which undermines the authority of the government and US global corporate hegemony. Talk about insane ass backward priorities. One again disaster capitalism trumps any consideration of human or planetary life.

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MarilynW's picture

to protect a forest, a lake, a river? Deforestation is one of the top threats to our environment, where are the armed guards protecting our forests?

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To thine own self be true.

Pluto's Republic's picture

…Cliven Bundy and a group of American insurgents (enemy combatants) showed up with guns and rifles and drove them off.

That teabilly militia, dispatched by hate radio, is our very own al Qaeda.

The Fed troops haven't been back to Nevada since.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato