A Gambit Opening Without An End Game

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It is quite likely that definitive proof on the identity of the culprit
behind 9:11 attacks cannot be assembled.  On the other hand, the list on
those who are not above suspicion or who can be implicated by
circumstantial evidence is very long.  The list on those who have
reasons or incentive to do harm to the US system is not any shorter, so
is the list on those who can hope to benefit and who stands to benefit
from such attacks.  Thus in this complex world of incredible political
conspiracy, the possibilities of
imaginative conclusion are limitless.

The question then can be asked: why is the US so keen on quickly pin the
guilt on O. bin Laden, a known terrorist the whole world knows was
created by the US itself, by the very people who are now calling for his
death?

On the top of the list of explanation must be a desperate strategy to
protect the client Arab oil states from Islam fundamentalist backlash.
In the absence of a culprit that can be singled out for deranged
personal
responsibility, the Bush administration cannot hang on to a finely
balanced strategy of framing the war on terror as separate from a war on
Islam, particularly Arabic Islam.  The risks of being misunderstood is
unmanageable, not only by Arabs, but by red blooded Americans as well.
An American war on Arabic Islam would spell the end of all the current
US client Arab states, the kingpin being Saudi Arabia, whose
royalties have already fled their palaces for safe havens in
Switzerland.

Any state that has been hit as severely as the 9:11 attack has no option
but to retaliate.  Popular outrage demands as much, and American culture
does not permit turning the other cheek.   Thus the US government is
between a rock and a hard place.  It desperately needs a focused target
for surgical retaliation, preferably executable through remote
controlled cruise missiles. One of the reason why the US resists
self-examination is that self-flagellation is damaging in domestic
politics, even though it may appease the moderate Muslims and lead to a
more effective coalition.  O. bin Laden fits the profile of convenient
target.  As someone has said, if he is not guilty on this one, he has
certainly been quilty of a
long list of offenses. And if this is a war between good and evil,
whether bin Laden is guilty for the 9:11 attack specifically is
immaterial, he is certainly guilty for other terrorist acts, thus the
elimination of him is good for the whole world, taking Bush off the hook
and preventing the total collapse of the US Mid East system due to a
real holy war from dispossessed Arabs, and may even please many secular
Arab leaders, not to mention Russia and China whose separatists have
been trained and financed by bin Laden.

Now, if the front page report of the US being ready to accept a
Palestinian State prior to 9:11 is true, then there is a logic that the
attacks could be planned or at least orchestrated by those who would
view this development as a something worse than death.  In the Mid East,
the US has two mutually contentious clients: Israel and the group of
Arabic oil states.  Both clients were kept in best behavior during the
Cold War both for their service in anti communism which was also a
convenient pretext to suppress the dispossessed Arabic nation.  Islam
fundamentalism, being also anti-Communist, is also kept in check. If the
fundamentalists think capitalistic imperialism, including cultural
imperialism, is bad, wait till the
communists come, so argued the CIA.

After the Cold War, the glue of anti communism which held this delicate
political superstructure, lost its adhesion, and all hell broke loose.
Since the fall of the USSR, I have always maintained that the US will
live to miss global state communism, a mature and more civilized enemy
than the post Cold War political juvenile delinquent regimes who have no
respect for superpower rules of engagement.

Now, the war game is to build an international coalition to attack
Afghanistan, a non Arab nation ruled by an international outcast
extremist regime which has the misfortune of having inherited the bin
Laden problem from a previous government. The US had supported the
Taliban against Soviet communism.  The rich Arabs had supported bin
Laden on condition that he left the Mid East and promoted his fanaticism
in Central Asia, a fantasy land of no consequence two decades ago.
Around the time of the fall of the USSR, the advance in petro-extraction
technology suddenly made Central Asia an economically
important region in terms of oil and gas, not to mention all kinds of
exotic minerals increasingly important in high tech military science.
Thus unrest in Central Asia after the USSR left serves both the long
term interest of the US and its Western Allies, to give them a pretext
to gain control of the region, The Arab
oil states also see unrest in Central Asia as useful in delaying market
competition for Mid East oil and to keep fanatic fundamentalism away
from home.  China and Russia see the decade-long US support of Islam
fundamentalist separatism as having the dual goal of gaining control of
the region's rich resources and reducing the size and power of the two
giants.

What threw a monkey wrench in this US strategy is the success of
globalization. What the US ignored was that it will come a time that
traveling from Kabul to Boston would be as easy as going from the WTC to
Times Square, and costs no much more, and that a handful of box cutters
can turn commercial jets into guided missiles of deadly force and
accuracy.

The foaming at mouth Department of Defense plan of hitting everyone in
sight was easily contained, most effectively by the opposition from the
professional Joint Chiefs who have no intention of wasting the US war
machine on a campaign it was not designed to fight.  The State
Department's more sophisticate plan of hitting Afghanistan is also
coming up against a brick wall, with the post invasion geo-political
scenario totally unpredictable and the price of coalition building
prohibitive.

Israel, sensing that it may well be told to play the role of the
sacrificial lamb, now that the Jewish state no long serves any real
geo-political purpose, decided to go for broke and invoke the Munich
argument.  After all, it was Bush who first called Arab Islam
fundamentalism fascist.  The price for keeping the Arabic oil nations in
the US tent is a Palestinian state. Israel's argument is Czechoslovakia
did not prevent Nazi invasion Poland.  If Israel is Czechoslovakia,
Saudi Arabia may well be Poland.

Bush needs to study the end game before he starts the bin
Laden/Afghanistan gambit. The war on terrorism will change the drifting
dynamic of post Cold War geo-politics.  Even if a coalition of
recognized sovereign states can be build successfully, it is not certain
that a world order based on state power on one side and the permanently
disfranchised on the other can effectively stop terrorism.

Henry C.K. Liu





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