Posted on 03/20/2011 2:00:59 PM PDT by Virginia Ridgerunner
Statements of support for Libya's revolution by al-Qaeda and leading Islamists have led to fears that military action by the West might be playing into the hands of its ideological enemies.
WikiLeaks cables, independent analysts and reporters have all identified supporters of Islamist causes among the opposition to Col Gaddafi's regime, particularly in the towns of Benghazi and Dernah.
An al-Qaeda leader of Libyan origin, Abu Yahya al-Libi, released a statement backing the insurrection a week ago, while Yusuf Qaradawi, the Qatar-based, Muslim Brotherhood-linked theologian issued a fatwa authorising Col Gaddafi's military entourage to assassinate him.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
This has me very uneasy since my sense is that the Libyan “rebels” may be Islamist fighters previously trained and toughened in Iraq. A 2007 U.S. Military Academy Study, based on captured documents during the insurgency, suggests that Libya sent more fighters to Iraq on a per-capita basis than any other Muslim country, including Saudi Arabia, AND that most of them came from eastern Libya, the current hotbed of revolt against Qaddafi.
It stands to reason that many of those Libyan jihadists survived Iraq and returned home with their own “lessons learned,” which they may be applying now.
Qaddafi is no Saddam, and this "revolution" in Libya appears to be much different than the ones in Tunisia and Egypt. Indeed, Abu Yahia al-Libi, the Libyan head of the Sharia committee of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan, has urged his Muslim countrymen to overthrow Qaddafi's regime and establish Islamic rule
And thus it seems that the U.S., the British, the French, and the U.N. are all swallowing the propaganda that Al Qaeda in Libya is dishing out through Al Jazeera. Indeed, initial reports indicated that it was Al Qaeda who attacked Qaddafi's forces and his armories to obtain weapons and that he had no choice but to fight back. But this was soon drowned out by breathless media accounts of yet another Middle Eastern democratic revolution, despite the known facts or any serious analysis of the situation.
Moreover, the U.S., Britain, and France have attacked Libya with no attempt at diplomacy or negotiations - we risk our credibility for decades to come in the Third World after this "Wag the Dog" action. And as far as the U.S. Administration goes, Hillary Clinton appears to be the acting President since Obama has been too busy filling out his NCAA brackets, playing pick-up hoops and golf, and now living it up in Rio. And based on his Meet the Press appearance this morning, Joints Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen seems utterly befuddled over what the U.S. military’s mission is supposed to be, or how the operation is supposed to end.
As usual, the U.S. media is doing a miserable job of covering the uprisings---no serious investigative reporting, no following the money, and no connecting the dots. Al Qaeda is making a BIG move, and nobody seems to want to admit or acknowledge it. Instead, the American public is hearing that it is 1776 all over again, and that democracy and freedom is breaking out in the Middle East. It’s maddening that the rose colored glasses remain firmly and permanently attached to the faces of our government officials and reporters.
I’m no fan of Qaddafi of course, but I can’t help but wonder if the U.S. and the U.N are backing some very bad people in this thing? Our political and military leaders need to answer the question "are we sure we aren't fighting along side Al Qaeda this time?" It certainly seems so. Qaddafi is bad, but having Al Qaeda depart the caves and desert to pitch their tents on the "Shores of Tripoli," and suddenly find itself flush with billions in oil money with which to continue its global jihad would be catastrophic.
Al Qaeda in Libya must be stopped before it is too late. And the Obama Administration cannot be allowed to cover-up its grotesque miscalculation in attacking Libya on behalf of Al Qaeda.
We didn’t need wikipukes to tell us this.
Couldn’t agree anymore with the analysis...
Just like in Kosovo.
Ridgerunner you are on target. Good analysis!
Maybe worse since Libya is in the Mediterranean and has oil where Kosovo just has murdering Albanian Islamofacists.
It’s coming together on who the rebels are and why Obama and the democrats support a new war.
That may be but its not news to FReepers...which was my point.
As for the infomer, he should be hung.
As far as this story goes, it doesn't matter.
What is important is that Obama is AWOL, and that Hillary let herself get bullied by Sarkozy into attacking Libya on behalf of Al Qaeda.
Well-stated. As I said in another thread...
Mix the best programming propagandists, crybaby collectivists, useful idiots mesmerized by entertainers, dhimmis, arrogant elected representatives who are totalitarian wannabees and what do you get? Barack Obama and state of our nation yesterday, today and tomorrow.
I hear ya, but that little puke Assange just ticks me off.
You think Hillary got pushed into this by Sarkozy?
Why would he do that to support al queda?
I can see the oil part but not al queda.
What am I missing?
I find it amazing that an al-Qaeda leader of Libyan origin, supported the rebels BEFORE the Failure-in-Chief Obama found his way out from under his wet bed.
Of course, there is no longer any such thing as a terrorist, so Obama may not have understood the importance of such a bonding.
AQ, the MB and other extremists absolutely love this Freedom Agenda where democracies are supposed to sprout all over the ME like wild flowers in the spring. Gaza is what democracy looks like in that part of the world.
They are playing us like a fiddle.
Yes they are. Just like Stalin played us to defeat Hitler.
Remember this IS the French, whose susceptibility to self-delusions of grandeur are well documented.
Vietnam all over again.
Forcing Mubarak from Egypt and Ben Ali from Tunisia should result in bad outcomes, and be the pattern for Middle East unrest as it spreads to Libya and elsewhere. The demise of these dictators precipitate political wildernesses resembling the lesson ignored 32 years ago when Carter discarded the Shah of Iran. The Obama Administration and other media sources encouraged, and applaud the demise of these oligarchies, but studiously ignore evidence of attendant brittle economic, social, and political environments. In the Middle East the most violent aspiring Islamic and secular totalitarians should exploit these strains to follow traditional malevolent roads to power energized with lethal political intrigues and religious heresies.
About 1100 AD Hassan bin Sabah, who inherited the Assassin’s Guild, enlightened Islamist societies to terrorism as foundational statecraft for political prosperity. Philosophical and religious lawyers retained their lives, and obtained support for dictators by backwards engineering the Koran into useful totalitarian heterodoxies. Concurrently, foundational thought including Jews, Christians and Muslims as ‘People of the Book” became hazardous. Concurrently, Saladin’s Sufism stressing individual relationship with God, and exalting individuals in society became marginalized. Concurrently, extraordinary Arab achievements in mathematics, philosophy, science, and medicine submerged within authoritarian and feral societies. Omar Khayyam, Ibn al-Haytham, and Abu Ali al-Hussain Ibn Sina had no successors for uncompromising, independent thought. Such simultaneous extinctions provide compelling evidence of a pervasive contagion subverting the Middle East.
What remained was bloody electioneering among aspiring totalitarians causing them to grasp and retain their power by crafting superior alliances of human cunning and animal brutality. For them dazzling spectacle and mercurial oratory belie principled commitment to a continuum where politics is war without bloodshed, and war is politics with bloodshed. Once acquired these skills easily replicate through generations for managing secular philosophies from Democracy to Communism. Why would the Muslim Brotherhood or any organizations like Ai Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and successors ever abandon strategies proven throughout a millennium? The natural result in our present time establishes “The Democratic (or) Islamic Peoples Republic of Whatever”.
To council a Middle East contending against such electioneering, Obama brings his newly minted Nobel Peace Prize, and all the nominating committee’s comforting assurances. However, he must deal with people sharing the perception of Greg Lewis in American Thinker, who painted the picture of Obama as displaying classic beta male behavior. The alpha male dog approaches directly, while the beta male displays acquiescent gestures signaling uncompromising submission. Lewis saw submissiveness in offering conciliatory gestures to Sudanese leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir, in sending John Kerry to meet Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, in bowing to King Abdullah, in airy discussions with Hugo Chavez and David Ortega, and in generally ridiculing the U.S. whenever he appears on an international stage.
Of course these actions were constructive within the worldview continually vetted by the liberal constituencies Obama cherishes. For these people the best approaches to diplomacy and politics reside within modern game theory for which John Nash and others received their Nobel prizes. All believe Islamic societies should realize the brilliance of Western conflict resolution, and should enter into peaceful, meaningful dialogues achieving gentle understandings and transitions. When instead Oriental opponents manage perceptions of submissive posturing into concessions exchanged for photo ops and sound bites, liberals become befuddled by the intricacies and chicanery of this unorthodox diplomacy.
In case one considers this a Democrat affliction only, consider that the Bush Administration also embraced thinking from our best universities. It abandoned the interim council of 25 ethnically and religiously diverse members, who produced the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) as basis for a new Iraq constitution. Its’ 39 articles were unique in the Arab world for conceiving republican, federal, democratic and pluralistic government guaranteeing rights for speech, religion, private property, etc. for all including Christians, Jews and former Ba’athists. Instead they artlessly marginalized these unique leaders and this document by adopting a U.N. brokered plan put forth by Algeria, which encouraged traditional authoritative Arab rule.
T. E. Lawrence provides valuable insights about Arab countries, because though he was clearly an intellectual, his education was tempered by extensive travels from 1909 to 1914 away from the colonial community, even before he lead the Arab revolt in WW I. In the Seven Pillars of Wisdom he says, “They are a people of starts, for whom the abstract was the strongest motive, the process of infinite courage and variety, and the end nothing. They were as unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail. Since the dawn of life, in successive waves they had been dashing themselves against the coasts of flesh. Each wave was broken, but, like the sea, wore away ever so little of the granite on which it failed, and some day, ages yet, might roll unchecked over the place the material world has been and God would move upon the face of those waters”.
The United States is a super power and the beneficiary of an anomalous revolution resulting in personal liberty. I believe it has a moral responsibility to bear any burden to spread the ideals to which the country aspires, not only in Egypt and Tunisia, but throughout the Middle East. Notwithstanding the necessity for real politick, our country should first offer moral leadership by seeking out and supporting the yet anonymous, selfless individuals and constituencies willing to endanger their lives and those of their families to establish durable economic models and representative governments. With our help such people and constituencies might not be broken by the granite of secular totalitarianism or Islamic Fundamentalism.
The United States should be considered a dependable, if difficult ally or enemy. Unfortunately, with recent administrations, I think there seems little chance this country will base foreign relations on the intangibles which define the best aspects of our national character, but move too quickly to real politick. Most likely the U.S. will follow others who prosecute national interests by making deals for access to economic resources with the ruling elite of the ascendant tribe. A generation later new leaders will likely follow the same process during the next revolution.
Yeah, when I think of that Libyan powerhouse Hitler is always the first parallel that comes to mind.
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