[blind-democracy] 14 Years After 9/11, the U.S. and Israel Are Tempted to Ally With al-Qaida in Syria (Video)

  • From: Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2015 09:45:53 -0400

Perhaps just keeping armaments out of Syria and allowing Syrians to resolve
their own issues might be the best strategy? I don't think our government
should be interfering with other governments, ostensibly, to replace them
with better ones.
Miriam

Truthdig

14 Years After 9/11, the U.S. and Israel Are Tempted to Ally With al-Qaida
in Syria (Video)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/14_years_after_9_11_us_israel_tempted_al
ly_al-qaeda_syria_20150913/





Posted on Sep 13, 2015


By Juan Cole




The 9/11 Memorial and Freedom Tower in New York City. (Andrea
Izzotti(http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-1241671p1.html?cr=00&pl=edit-00)
/ Shutterstock.com)(http://www.shutterstock.com/editorial?cr=00&pl=edit-00)


This post originally ran on Juan Cole's
website(http://www.juancole.com/2015/09/years-israel-tempted.html) .

The Jabhat al-Nusra or Support Front is one of the major rebel groups in
Syria, holding extensive territory in the hinterland of cities like Homs and
Aleppo and in the province of Idlib. The Support
Front(http://www.juancole.com/2015/07/washington-syrias-taliban.html ) is
just al-Qaeda. It has announced allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader
of al-Qaeda and one of the figures who planned out and helped implement 9/11
(al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician from an elite family in Ma'adi, Cairo,
was Bin Laden's number 2 and is now number 1.)

The terrible thing is that the Support Front, unlike core al-Qaeda, has
actually managed to take territory and is ruling parts of Syria as a
mini-state.

So the Support Front of Syria would be America's worst enemy, right? The US
military and the CIA would be plotting its demise? Staunch American allies
like Israel are joining in the effort to destroy it, correct?

Not so much.

The US is heavily and regularly bombing Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), itself an
offshoot of al-Qaeda. But strikes against al-Qaeda in Syria are rare.

Israel appears to be de facto
allied(http://www.wsj.com/articles/al-qaeda-a-lesser-evil-syria-war-pulls-u-
s-israel-apart-1426169708 ) with the Support Front in the Golan Heights
against Lebanon's Shiite Hizbullah and against the Baath regime of Bashar
al-Assad. Israel has been bringing wounded al-Qaeda warriors over to
Israeli hospitals for treatment, a policy that provoked a riot by Israeli
Druze in the Occupied Golan (al-Qaeda has targeted Druze populations, which
it considers heretics.)

In Idlib Province and around Aleppo, the far right but less radical Ahrar
al-Sham (Free Men of Syria) rebel militia has made some advances against
al-Assad's troops. Its representative argued in an NYT op-ed that the US
should support the Free Men of Syria. But they don't believe in democracy
and would like to erect a Taliban-style state in Syria.

That set of values might give Washington pause about an alliance. But it
gets worse. The Free Men of Syria are actively and genially allied with
al-Qaeda.

Maybe I'm just funny that way, but I object to allying with allies of
al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans in a single day.

Amazingly, a US joint effort alongside al-Qaeda doesn't seem out of the
question. Former general and former CIA director David Petraeus advocates
wooing the Support Front away from their allegiance to
al-Zawahiri(http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/31/petraeus-use-al
-qaeda-fighters-to-beat-isis.html ) and then deploying them against Daesh.
This policy would be a repeat of what Petraeus and other generals did in
Baghdad and al-Anbar Province in 2007, getting Sunnis to turn on al-Qaeda
and fight against it. But Iraq's Shiite government never forgave the "Sons
of Iraq" for having previously been al-Qaeda, and it prosecuted some of them
after Petraeus left. Others it just left twisting in the wind, so that they
were executed by their former al-Qaeda colleagues.

Nor would a US-al-Qaeda alliance on the ground be unprecedented.

The first American alliance with al-Qaeda came in the 1980s, when the Reagan
administration deployed the Mujahidin or holy warriors of Afghanistan
against the People's Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and its Soviet
patron. US allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, supporting this
anti-Communist jihad, released their radicals to Peshawar in Pakistan as
support for the Mujahidin, a development that was fine with the United
States.

The American support for radical Muslims against the left seems foolish for
two reasons decades later. First of all, it was unnecessary. The Reagan
jihad was launched on the eve of the collapse of the East Bloc and of the
Soviet Union. Contrary to what right wing pundits allege, the Reagan covert
war against the Soviets had nothing to do with the latter's fall. Military
spending in Moscow's annual budget was flat in the 1980s. Reagan did not
bankrupt the commissars via the Mujahidin. The other development that makes
this strategy appear foolish in retrospect was the September 11, 2001,
attacks themselves, carried out at the orders of Usama Bin Laden and other
al-Qaeda leaders who previously had been allies of the US-backed Mujahidin.
Encouraging Muslims to radicalize was foolish because it was like pulling
the pin on a grenade and then just sitting on it.

It is heresy to say so in hyper-capitalist Trumpland, but everybody might
have been better off if Reagan had just left the Communists in Afghanistan
alone. We don't usually hear dire things from Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan
would likely have evolved in similar directions. Instead, the Mujahidin
took over and then some morphed into Taliban, who hosted al-Qaeda.
Kazakhstan is hardly paradise but compared to Afghanistan today it is a kind
of heaven.

Because of the 3,000 dead, I can't accept a US alliance with al-Qaeda in
Syria or with groups like Ahrar al-Sham that in turn are allied with
al-Qaeda. You can't suck up to Ayman al-Zawahiri and then get close US air
support in your battles. On the other hand, Bashar al-Assad has been
dropping barrel bombs on kindergartens and has tortured thousands of
political prisoners to death. He can't be allowed to remain in power.

The US needs to work with Iran, Russia and China to convince the Baath Party
high officials to dump Bashar al-Assad and then to go to national elections
for a pluralist parliament and a new form of provincial federal
decentralization. The Baath Party has already lost 60% of the land area of
the country and over a third of the population. If it goes on like this
with war criminality, it will lose everything, and al-Qaeda will pick up the
pieces. If hard ball diplomacy and trading of horses has to be done, it
should be done with Moscow and Tehran, not with al-Qaeda. Another 1980s
style American jihad has the potential to create another 9/11, which I'm not
sure our democracy can survive.

---

Related video added by Juan Cole:

CCTV from 3 weeks ago: "Russia, Iran present united front on Syria"
(https://youtu.be/e0p7M1fqvRQ )
<p>






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C 2015 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.


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Truthdig

14 Years After 9/11, the U.S. and Israel Are Tempted to Ally With al-Qaida
in Syria (Video)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/14_years_after_9_11_us_israel_tempted_al
ly_al-qaeda_syria_20150913/





Posted on Sep 13, 2015


By Juan Cole




The 9/11 Memorial and Freedom Tower in New York City. (Andrea
Izzotti(http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-1241671p1.html?cr=00&pl=edit-00)
/ Shutterstock.com)(http://www.shutterstock.com/editorial?cr=00&pl=edit-00)


This post originally ran on Juan Cole's
website(http://www.juancole.com/2015/09/years-israel-tempted.html) .

The Jabhat al-Nusra or Support Front is one of the major rebel groups in
Syria, holding extensive territory in the hinterland of cities like Homs and
Aleppo and in the province of Idlib. The Support
Front(http://www.juancole.com/2015/07/washington-syrias-taliban.html ) is
just al-Qaeda. It has announced allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader
of al-Qaeda and one of the figures who planned out and helped implement 9/11
(al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician from an elite family in Ma'adi, Cairo,
was Bin Laden's number 2 and is now number 1.)

The terrible thing is that the Support Front, unlike core al-Qaeda, has
actually managed to take territory and is ruling parts of Syria as a
mini-state.

So the Support Front of Syria would be America's worst enemy, right? The US
military and the CIA would be plotting its demise? Staunch American allies
like Israel are joining in the effort to destroy it, correct?

Not so much.

The US is heavily and regularly bombing Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), itself an
offshoot of al-Qaeda. But strikes against al-Qaeda in Syria are rare.

Israel appears to be de facto
allied(http://www.wsj.com/articles/al-qaeda-a-lesser-evil-syria-war-pulls-u-
s-israel-apart-1426169708 ) with the Support Front in the Golan Heights
against Lebanon's Shiite Hizbullah and against the Baath regime of Bashar
al-Assad. Israel has been bringing wounded al-Qaeda warriors over to
Israeli hospitals for treatment, a policy that provoked a riot by Israeli
Druze in the Occupied Golan (al-Qaeda has targeted Druze populations, which
it considers heretics.)

In Idlib Province and around Aleppo, the far right but less radical Ahrar
al-Sham (Free Men of Syria) rebel militia has made some advances against
al-Assad's troops. Its representative argued in an NYT op-ed that the US
should support the Free Men of Syria. But they don't believe in democracy
and would like to erect a Taliban-style state in Syria.

That set of values might give Washington pause about an alliance. But it
gets worse. The Free Men of Syria are actively and genially allied with
al-Qaeda.

Maybe I'm just funny that way, but I object to allying with allies of
al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans in a single day.

Amazingly, a US joint effort alongside al-Qaeda doesn't seem out of the
question. Former general and former CIA director David Petraeus advocates
wooing the Support Front away from their allegiance to
al-Zawahiri(http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/31/petraeus-use-al
-qaeda-fighters-to-beat-isis.html ) and then deploying them against Daesh.
This policy would be a repeat of what Petraeus and other generals did in
Baghdad and al-Anbar Province in 2007, getting Sunnis to turn on al-Qaeda
and fight against it. But Iraq's Shiite government never forgave the "Sons
of Iraq" for having previously been al-Qaeda, and it prosecuted some of them
after Petraeus left. Others it just left twisting in the wind, so that they
were executed by their former al-Qaeda colleagues.

Nor would a US-al-Qaeda alliance on the ground be unprecedented.

The first American alliance with al-Qaeda came in the 1980s, when the Reagan
administration deployed the Mujahidin or holy warriors of Afghanistan
against the People's Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and its Soviet
patron. US allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, supporting this
anti-Communist jihad, released their radicals to Peshawar in Pakistan as
support for the Mujahidin, a development that was fine with the United
States.

The American support for radical Muslims against the left seems foolish for
two reasons decades later. First of all, it was unnecessary. The Reagan
jihad was launched on the eve of the collapse of the East Bloc and of the
Soviet Union. Contrary to what right wing pundits allege, the Reagan covert
war against the Soviets had nothing to do with the latter's fall. Military
spending in Moscow's annual budget was flat in the 1980s. Reagan did not
bankrupt the commissars via the Mujahidin. The other development that makes
this strategy appear foolish in retrospect was the September 11, 2001,
attacks themselves, carried out at the orders of Usama Bin Laden and other
al-Qaeda leaders who previously had been allies of the US-backed Mujahidin.
Encouraging Muslims to radicalize was foolish because it was like pulling
the pin on a grenade and then just sitting on it.

It is heresy to say so in hyper-capitalist Trumpland, but everybody might
have been better off if Reagan had just left the Communists in Afghanistan
alone. We don't usually hear dire things from Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan
would likely have evolved in similar directions. Instead, the Mujahidin
took over and then some morphed into Taliban, who hosted al-Qaeda.
Kazakhstan is hardly paradise but compared to Afghanistan today it is a kind
of heaven.

Because of the 3,000 dead, I can't accept a US alliance with al-Qaeda in
Syria or with groups like Ahrar al-Sham that in turn are allied with
al-Qaeda. You can't suck up to Ayman al-Zawahiri and then get close US air
support in your battles. On the other hand, Bashar al-Assad has been
dropping barrel bombs on kindergartens and has tortured thousands of
political prisoners to death. He can't be allowed to remain in power.

The US needs to work with Iran, Russia and China to convince the Baath Party
high officials to dump Bashar al-Assad and then to go to national elections
for a pluralist parliament and a new form of provincial federal
decentralization. The Baath Party has already lost 60% of the land area of
the country and over a third of the population. If it goes on like this
with war criminality, it will lose everything, and al-Qaeda will pick up the
pieces. If hard ball diplomacy and trading of horses has to be done, it
should be done with Moscow and Tehran, not with al-Qaeda. Another 1980s
style American jihad has the potential to create another 9/11, which I'm not
sure our democracy can survive.

---

Related video added by Juan Cole:

CCTV from 3 weeks ago: "Russia, Iran present united front on Syria"
(https://youtu.be/e0p7M1fqvRQ )
<p>






Garrisoning the Globe: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Undermine National
Security and Harm Us All




Southern Ocean Starts to Soak Up Carbon Again




U.S. Intel Chief Admits Iraq and Syria May Not Survive as States (Video)




VIDEO: John Oliver Explains Why We're All 'Fucked' Thanks to Our Broken
Public Defender System








Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines





C 2015 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.


Signup for Truthdig's newsletter








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  • » [blind-democracy] 14 Years After 9/11, the U.S. and Israel Are Tempted to Ally With al-Qaida in Syria (Video) - Miriam Vieni