Transcript of Trial Hints at Terror Motive

Newsday ^ | 9/27/2001 | John Riley

[LSJohn]

Khalfan K. Mohamed trained in Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. When he went home to Tanzania and received orders to help grind TNT to bomb the U.S. Embassy there, he did his duty. And when he was caught in Cape Town, South Africa, he talked freely to the FBI about the plot.

He hated the United States because it backed Israel, he told FBI agent Abigail Perkins, and because it had troops in the Islamic holy land of Saudi Arabia. He felt it was his Islamic duty to kill Americans.

[LSJohn]

[Emphasis above is mine]

At least one terrorist who sees wreaking death and destruction on America as a political/religious act, not to advance a cultural/"civilizational" agenda.

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Hard to believe this hasn't been posted, but I searched every way I could think of and found nothing.

[LSJohn]

fyi

[LSJohn]

fyi

[MizSterious]

I hadn't seen it yet either. Excellent find.

[LSJohn]

Oops!

Glad you spotted this on your own -- neglected to ping you.

My humblest . . . . . . . . . well, you know.

[LSJohn]

fyi

[MizSterious]

Not a problem. I have a lot of catching up to do in any event--haven't been able to spend as much time as I would like need on Free Republic.

[AtticusX]

Thanks for the flag John

[Askel5]

I don't wish to get your thread deleted so let me preface by saying I don't hate the Russian people (hardly!), I don't hate Jews, I don't hate Muslims, I don't hate Christians.

I just like things to MAKE SENSE, that's all.

Some thoughts:

1. If I were a militant atheist who had no compunctions whatsoever about wholesale slaughter, torture, prevention and terrorizing of human life ... certain options would be open to me. Lying would be my stock in trade, as it were. I would have no compunctions whatsoever about assuming whatever identity, ideology, faith, objectivism, philosphy was necessary to effect my ends. In fact, I might even thrive and capitalize on the confusion caused by my changeling persona.

2. If I were a militant atheist (atheism being anti-thetical to nearly all human history, pagan or religious), and interested in world domination, it's VERY POSSIBLE I would tend to use faith to effect my ends wherever possible. In fact, I might make the infiltration and co-opting of faith a priority knowing as I do that the human will I wish to tranform to my own ends is capable of Extraordinary things when powered by faith.

   Working from within, then, I would accomplish a dual objective by excising from religion anything approaching Objective Enduring Truth and capitalizing -- through these denuded forms of religion -- on the force and will of those unable as yet to embrace my faith in Man and the Material.

   • I might destroy Christianity from within by politicizing the Gospel, "organizing" -- particularly within the worldwide Catholic Church -- diocese by diocese those radical feminists, liberation theologists, social justice types whose "Peace and Justice" offices and whose "Cosmic Walk" spirituality served MY purposes, not Christ's.

   • I might conceive of using some combination of terrorist action and "Clean Hands" globalist sanction to confect a religious flashpoint in the Middle East.

     This might serve not only to organize Islam to whatever extent and degree I wished, it might also afford me a most intimate window through which to gain intelligence on and influence with the United States whose money and protection and Judeo-Christian "religious" fealty would force them into turning the other cheek when -- as circumstances required -- I let on, via the USS Liberty for example, that I was quite capable of handling my own business as necessary. (My business being the occasional cranking of the stakes to perpetuate the unrest, fear and hate essential to my world revolution.)

   • And I certainly would avail myself of "circles" (as Putin put it last week) within Islam ... corrupting the Koran into "jihad" as neatly as I'd turned Christianity into a pansy social worker partner of the selfsame government who has stripped the Public Square of God and his Commandments and used Scripture like a spoonful of sugar to help the ECSR go down.

3. And, just as I tipped my hand once -- during Stalin's allowing God for the length of the war -- I might once again use faith as a means to strengthen and unite my own. Were my goals of world domination within reach, I might even encourage faith, ascribe my former greatness to faith and thereby use faith as a bridge to ensuring my own peculiar brand of "solidarity" on the so-called spiritual plane.

   It's just that my sphere of influence thus would be marked by two things:

   • Use of "God's Will" to rationalize Hate and Death;

   • Ted Turner/UN/"Multi-Culturalist style deconstruction of faith -- "Have one if you feel you must" -- into confucian style creed-less bits of 'Character Training'.

     It's no accident Gorbachev supplies a veritable smorgasbord of spirituality at his annual World State confab.

This picture under plexiglass caught my eye in a hallway as I exited Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

At first glance, it would appear Yeltsin's is a sour scowl. Upon closer inspection, I tend to think his aide is concerned that what's left of Boris's human heart might be breaking ever so slightly under the assault of incense, candlelight and the powerfully transcendant language of the soul that is the music and song of the Russian liturgy.

I remembered a book I had the other night ... "Reading the Muslim Mind". I may post from that for a while to further underscore the fact that terrorism -- be it Muslim, Jewish, Christian -- is the abberant act of individuals conditioned to hate in the name of God. It is heretical, offensive, evil and in no way "religious".

There will always be those who seek to pervert the Truth to their own ends.

[annalex]

Exactly so. In other words, we rarely see a naked agenda, for two reasons: (1) the agenda needs to be dressed up for mass consumption; (2) the implementer of the agenda is not consciously motiveted by the agenda, but by one of its public faces.

Back to our Tanzanian mutton, most people don't even know what a civilization means as a word, let alone can embrace a civilizational agenda. They always look at some thing concrete to hate or love.

[LSJohn]

Now maybe I'm understanding your "civilizational" point better:

The leadership in this anti-Western jihad is mostly driven by a civilizational imperative, while the footsoldiers are inflamed and manipulated by the leaders using political/religious grounds?

If that is your case, I think you may be largely correct, but the least that can be said is that U.S. foreign policy has made it easier for them. If we had NO presence in the Middle East -- which I'm not saying would be wise -- it would be hard to find very many suicide bombers who were willing to die because they didn't like our religion and culture.

[annalex]

Yes. Thank you for clarifying for me this distinction.

I would say that even the leaders may be fuzzy on what exactly motivates them, but they sense the hostility in the air and shape it as they know how. The hostility in the air is that huge abstraction, civilization.

[LSJohn]

The hostility in the air is that huge abstraction, civilization.

Can we say it this way: The sum total of all of the things to which radical Islam (even Fundamental Islam) is hostile -- to varying degrees -- amounts to Western civilization?

If that does it, we're finally got it so we agree. Where we may disagree -- and I don't know enough to have much confidence that my view is more correct -- is the number or percentage of Muslims who fit into "radical" or "Fundamental" categories or the extent of their empathy on civilizatinal matters with those who do. I am of the impression that lots of Muslims are quite fond of the material aspects of Western culture, and even more would be seduced[?] if they had rational hope of ever enjoying them. Do their "leaders" intentionally keep them poor for this very reason?

[independentmind]

Do their "leaders" intentionally keep them poor for this very reason?

Their leaders keep them poor because a great many of them are extremely corrupt. There's not a whole lot of difference between them and the Mexican ruling class, IMO.

It does not reflect well on the U.S. that we have propped up and materially benefitted from the corrupt leadership of many third world countries.

[annalex]

The sum total of all of the things to which radical Islam (even Fundamental Islam) is hostile -- to varying degrees -- amounts to Western civilization?

Tha tis a true statement, although I wouldn't define any civilization in negative terms like this. Please see Defense of Liberty: The Contours of Victory where I attempt a positive definition.

[LSJohn]

Their leaders keep them poor because a great many of them are extremely corrupt.

No question that is true, but I'm asking whether it goes beyond that.

The poorer people are the easier they are to manipulate on the cheap. In the U.S. it costs big bucks to manipulate the sheeple. In Iran, for example, the audience is much more receptive to scapegoating.

[Lysander]

It does not reflect well on the U.S. that we have propped up and materially benefitted from the corrupt leadership of many third world countries.

We arm them, then make them obey us, then they lose power or get pissed at us. Our "big stick" approach to the world back fires most of the time.