- The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki a U.S citizen in Yemen
by a CIA drone missile on September 30 has been publicized by the mass
media, President Obama and the usual experts on al-Qaeda as "a major
blow to the jihadist network founded by Osama bin Laden" US officials
called Awlaki "the most dangerous figure in Al-Qaeda" (Financial
Times Oct. 1 and 2, 2011).
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- There is ample evidence to suggest that the
publicity surrounding the killing of al-Awlaki has greatly exaggerated
his political importance and is an attempt to cover up the declining influence
of the US in the Islamic world. The State Department's declaration of
a major victory serves to exaggerate US military capacity to defeat its
adversaries. The assassination serves to justify Obama's arbitrary use
of death squads to execute overseas US critics and adversaries by executive
fiat denying the accused elementary judicial protections.
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- Myths About al-Awlaki
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- Al-Awlaki was a theological blogger in a
small, poor Islamic country (Yemen). He was confined to propagandizing
against Western countries, attempting to influence Islamic believers to
resist Western military and cultural intervention. Within Yemen, his organizational
affiliations were with a minority sector of the mass popular opposition
to US backed dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. His fundamentalist group was
largely influential in a few small towns in southern Yemen. He was not
a military or political leader in his organization, dubbed by the West
as "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" (AQAP). Like most of
what the CIA calls "Al-Qaeda", AQAP was a local autonomous organization,
meaning that it was organized and controlled by local leaders even as it
expressed agreement with many other loosely associated fundamentalist groups.
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- Awlaki had a very limited role in the Yemeni
groups' military and political operations and virtually no influence in
the mass movement engaged in ousting Saleh. There is no evidence, documented
or observable, that he was "a very effective propagandist" as
ex-CIA and now Brookings Institution member Bruce Riedal claims. In Yemen
and among the mass popular movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain or elsewhere
his followers were few and far between. One "expert" cites such
intangibles as his "spiritual leadership", which is as good a
way as any to avoid the test of empirical evidence: apparently a crystal
ball or a tarot read will do.
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- Given the paucity of evidence demonstrating
Awlaki's political and ideological influence among the mass movements in
North Africa, the Middle East or Asia, the US intelligence agencies claim
his "real influence was among English-speaking jihadi, some of whom
he groomed personally to carry out attacks on the US."
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- In other words Washington's casting Awlaki
as an "important threat" revolves around his speeches and writings,
since he had no operational role in organizing suicide bomb attacks
or at least no concrete evidence has been presented up to now.
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- The intelligence agencies "suspect"
he was involved in the plot that dispatched bombs in cargo aircraft from
Yemen to Chicago in October 2010. US intelligence claims he provided a
"theological justification" via e-mail for US army Major Nidal
Malik's killing of 13 people at Fort Hood. In other words, like many US
philosophical writers and legal experts like Princeton's Michael Walzer
and Harvard's Alan Dershowitz, Awlaki discussed "just wars" and
the "right" of violent action. If political writings and speeches
of publicists are cited by an assassin as the bases for their action, should
the White House execute, leading US Islamophobes like Marilyn Geller and
Daniel Pipes, cited as inspiration by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring
Brevik? Or does their Zionist affiliation provide them immunity from Navy
Seal assaults and drone missiles?
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- Even assuming that the unsubstantiated "suspicions"
of the CIA, MI 16 and the Al Qaeda "experts" are correct and
Awlaki had a direct or indirect hand in "terrorist action" against
the US, these activities were absurdly amateurish and abject failures,
certainly not a serious threat to our security. The "underwear bomber"
Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab's effort to ignite bomb materials on a flight
to Detroit, December 25, 2009, led to roasting his testicles! Likewise
the bombs dispatched in cargo aircraft from Yemen to Chicago in October
2010 were another bungled job.
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- If anything the Yemenite AQAP's hopeless,
hapless operational planning served to highlight its technical incompetence.
In fact according to Mutallab's own admission, published on NBC news at
the time, Awlaki played no role in the planning or execution of the bomb
attack. He merely served to refer Mutallab to the Al Qaeda organization.
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- Clearly, Awlaki was a minor figure in Yemen's
political struggles. He was a propagandist of little influence in the
mass movements during the "Arab Spring". He was an inept recruiter
of English-speaking would be bombers. The claims that he planned and "hatched"
two bomb plots (Financial Times, October 1 and 2, page 2) are refuted by
the confession of one bomber and the absence of any corroboratory evidence
regarding the failed cargo bombs.
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- The mass media inflate the importance of
Awlaki to the stature of a major al-Qaeda leader and subsequently, his
killing as a "major psychological blow" to world-wide jihadists.
This imagery has no substance. But the puff pieces do have a very important
propaganda purpose. Worse still, the killing of Awlaki provides a justification
for extra-judicial state serial assassinations of ideological critics of
Anglo-American leaders engaged in bloody colonial wars.
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- Propaganda to Bolster Flagging Military Morale
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- Recent events strongly suggest that the US
and its NATO allies are losing the war in Afghanistan to the Taliban:
top collaborator officials are knocked off at the drop of a Taliban turban.
After years of occupation, Iraq is moving closer to Iran rather than the
US. Libya in the post-Gaddafi period is under warring mercenary forces
squaring off for a fight for the billion dollar booty. Al Qaeda prepares
battle against neo-liberal expats and Gaddafi renegades.
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- Washington and NATO's attempt to regain the
initiative via puppet rulers in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Yemen is being
countered by a "second wave" of mass pro-democracy movements.
The "Arab Spring" is being followed by a "hot autumn".
Positive news and favorable outcomes for Obama are few and far between.
He has run out of any pseudo-populist initiative to enchant the Arab-Islamic
masses. His rhetoric rings hollow in the face of his UN speech, denying
recognition of an independent Palestinian state. His groveling before
Israel is clearly seen as an effort to bolster his re-election campaign
financing by wealthy Zionists.
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- Diplomatically isolated and domestically
in trouble over failed economic policies, Obama pulls the trigger and shoots
an itinerant Muslim preacher in Yemen to send a "message" to
the Arab world. In a word he says, "If you, the Arabs, the
Islamic world, wont' join us we can and will execute those of you who can
be labeled "spiritual mentors" or are suspected of harboring
terrorists."
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- Obama's defense of systematic killing of
ideological critics, denying US constitutional norms of judicial due process
to a U.S citizen and in blatant rejection of international law defines
a homicidal executive.
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- Let us be absolutely clear what the larger
implications are of political murder by executive fiat. If the President
can order the murder of a dual American-Yemeni citizen abroad on the bases
of his ideological-theological beliefs, what is to stop him from ordering
the same in the US? If he uses arbitrary violence to compensate for diplomatic
failure abroad what is to stop him from declaring a "heightened internal
security threat" in order to suspend our remaining freedoms at home
and to round up critics?
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- We seriously understate our "Obama problem"
if we think of this ordered killing merely as an isolated murder
of a "jihadist" in strife torn Yemen Obama's murder of
Awlaki has profound, long term significance because it puts political assassinations
at the center of US foreign and domestic policy. As Secretary of Defense
Panetta states, "eliminating home grown terrorists" is at the
core of our "internal security".
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