Terrorism

Terrorism is a type of warfare fought with inexpensive weapons.

It's also the name applied by the western imperialist nations, particularly the United states, to the irregular armies ranged against them throughout the Muslim world and concentrated most intensely at the moment in Iraq and Palestine.

Characterizations of the enemy as "terrorists," or "Islamofascists," or "illegal combatants" may be emotionally gratifying to those who use such loaded terms, but they are neither accurate nor useful.

On close examination, Mr. bin Laden proves remarkably similar to President Bush, with a couple of significant differences. One is that bin Laden and his ideological counterparts don't have a trillion dollar, technologically advanced armed force at their disposal, so in prosecuting their side of the current war they have to use cheap weapons, or even improvise free weapons such as stolen commercial airliners. Another difference is that bin Laden is much more intelligent and articulate than Mr. Bush, and possesses a learned grasp of history, something the American president is totally lacking.

Their ambitions, however, are identical. Bin Laden's 1996 Declaration of War reveals that he hopes to inspire Muslims to restore the Ummah, or pan-Islamic nation formerly known as the Caliphate. It would stretch from Pakistan in the east to the Straits of Gibralter in the west, would control the lion's share of the world's petroleum resources, and hence control the world.

The first step in the reconstitution of the Ummah is to drive out the "crusaders" (not surprisingly, the "terrorists" also possess pejorative terms with which to characterize their enemies).

The Ummah would be united politically under a single faith, and at its center would be the "two holy places" of Saudi Arabia. Its legal system would be based on Koranic law -- Shar'ia.

I would strongly urge anyone who's interested in knowing the real al-Qaida, rather than than the ideologically informed, chauvinistic construct of wingnuts and neocon ideologues, to read this document, even though it's long (21 standard single-spaced pages in Microsoft Word), repetitive, and frequently tedious.

The Americans' ambition is likewise control of the Persian Gulf region and its oil resources, and hence control of the world. Like the so-called "Islamofascists," the Americans, who were once a secular and a civilian society, have reverted to tribalism, and are united by a religion. It's not, however, the religion of Jesus Christ, who for all but the most fundamentalist Christians is something of an auxiliary totem, but a fanatical worship of patriotism, the military, including the death cult of the "ultimate sacrifice," and their flag, whose desecration is about to be prohibited by an amendment to the dead, departed U.S. Constitution.

There is no such thing as "terrorism." The so-called terrorists are soldiers on one side of a two-sided tribal conflict for control of the world's most valuable real estate and resources.