NEW YORK – Two years ago this week, US special forces shot and killed Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man.

American TV is filled with chest-thumping and flag-waving about how bin Laden was hunted down and executed. For most Americans, bin Laden was the acme of evil and author of the 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 people. Good riddance.

Hunting “bad guys” is a venerable American tradition from the days of the Wild West and the Roaring 20’s: Billy the Kid, Pancho Villa, Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger. The TV program “America’s Ten Most Wanted” remains one of the nation’s most popular programs. Osama bin Laden was the ultimate most wanted.

However, this simplistic “good guys v. bad guys” tale remains troubled by the facts. Why, for example, was a clearly retired bin Laden living without bodyguards in a villa in Abbottabad, Pakistan? Was he really found by the CIA’s patient detective work, or betrayed for the $25 million put on his head by Washington? Did Pakistan really not know Osama was in Abbotabad, and hour’s drive from its capital, Islamabad?

Why was bin Laden executed gangland style and not brought to stand proper trial in New York City? A trial could have finally determined if he was in truth the author of 9/11, as alleged by the US government and media. If not, who was?

Circumstantial evidence regarding 9/11 points to bin Laden. But he always denied responsibility for the attacks, though he applauded them after the fact. The Afghan Communists produced fakes tapes supposedly showing bin Laden demonstrating how the attacks were made. These fakes tapes ran widely on US TV.

The 9/11 attacks were planned in Hamburg, Germany and, apparently, Madrid, Spain, not by al-Qaida in Afghanistan, as the US claimed. The planners and executors of the attacks were mostly Saudis, not Afghans.

After the attack, US Secretary of State Colin Powell demanded Afghanistan’s Taliban government hand over bin Laden. Taliban refused to do so without a proper extradition request detailing bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11. Powell promised to issue a White Paper about bin Laden’s guilt, but never did so. Why? Probably because the US could not assemble a convincing case. US forces invaded Afghanistan and began their hunt for the elusive bin Laden.

The Bush administration, caught sleeping on guard duty, needed a target for America’s fury over 9/11: Afghanistan, Taliban (which had nothing to do with 9/11), bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization were blamed. Al-Qaida was wildly exaggerated by western governments and media into a nefarious worldwide network of fanatical Islamic conspirators worthy of Dr. Fu Manchu.

I was in Afghanistan and Pakistan at the birth of al-Qaida and spent many hours with its founder, Sheik Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden’s mentor. Al-Qaida was a rest house for jihadists going to fight in Afghanistan; it never had more than a few hundred members. Al-Qaida was not run by CIA, but the US planned to use bin Laden’s men against Muslim regions of western China in the event of a US-China war.

Al-Qaida’s so-called “terrorist training camps” in Afghanistan were in fact mostly run by Pakistani intelligence to train guerillas for use in Indian-ruled Kashmir.

Al-Qaida was dedicated to battling Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Afghan Communists, and KGB agents of influence, warlords Ahmad Massoud and Rashid Dostam.

In 2010, then CIA chief Leon Panetta admitted there may only be 25-50 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan. But the convenient myth of al-Qaida continues. While America glories in killing bin Laden, many in the Muslim world still see him as an Arab Che Guevara, one man against the mighty US imperial order. Most Muslims disapproved of the 9/11 attacks, yet many felt a sneaking admiration for the Saudi firebrand whose goal was to drive western influence from the Muslim world.

Osama bin Laden is dead, and discarded at sea in true pirate “dead men tell no tales” tradition. But the anti-western movement he began is alive and growing: al-Qaida was not an organic organization but a trans-national movement.

Anti-western groups have sprung about across the Mideast, Africa, Central and South Asia. Many have adopted the al-Qaida brand name. That was bin Laden’s plan.
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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2013

NEW YORK – In the colorful, pithy Scottish language, there’s a delightful expression, “greet an’ gurn.” Which means to loudly moan and groan.

That’s what’s happened this week across the United States as the fiscal Ides of March grow close. On
March 1, unless Congress and the White House come to an agreement on cutting taxes and/or spending the dreaded “Sequestration” takes effect.

According to this plan promulgated by President Barack Obama, automatic federal spending cuts over 10 years of $1.2 trillion will take effect, with $85 billion hitting in 2013.

Listening to all the special interests moan and groan, one would think it’s the end of the world for poor America – a giant leap backwards into the Stone Age. Everyone agrees the dangerous US budget deficit must be cut – provided cuts come out of someone else’s hide.

Claims are made that al-Qaida will attack Kansas City if military spending is cut, or the Chinese will seize Hawaii. Consumer spending will fall, warn critics, sending the US economy backwards – even though the respected Congressional Budget Office estimates the total sequester will only cause a small .6% drop in consumer spending.
America will grind to a halt, claim doom-sayers.

Granted, $1.2 trillion is a lot of money, even by Washington’s standards. But it’s not as catastrophic as the huge number suggests. The Federal Budget is $3.6 trillion and GDP $16 trillion annually. The $85 billion in cuts mandated for 2013 are not a big percentage of the huge US economy. The Pentagon’s total combined budget alone is around $1 trillion annually.

Most Americans, grown deeply cynical by the cowardice and doubletalk of their politicians, expect a last-minute deal between the president and Congress to kick down the road really painful spending cuts. The axe won’t fall until they are long gone from office.

The loudest cries of anguish are coming from Washington and its suburbs where the so-called “Beltway Bandits” – the colonies of private contractors and intelligence agencies, and America’s military-industrial complex that feed off government. There may actually be some real cuts in America’s military spending, which accounts for almost 50% of world military spending.

Horror-stricken military contractors are waiting to see where the axe will fall: the impossibly expensive F-35 fighter, new navy carriers and surface ships, ground forces, anti-missile systems – the list is endless.

Military cuts raises a key strategic question: for what new war should the Pentagon prepare? The old Cold War plan of the US being able to fight 2.5 wars simultaneously, is gone for good. The choice facing the Pentagon is: to plan and equip for more colonial-style energy wars in the Muslim world, or to get ready to confront China in the Pacific. No two conflicts could be more different.

Before World War I, the British Empire’s colonial armies were trained and armed to put down “native” uprisings. They were very good at this. But when Britain’s colonial troops had to face German regulars in Flanders, they were slaughtered and nearly defeated.

The US faces this same problem. Ground and air units configured to hunt guerillas in Afghanistan and Iraq will be useless in a Pacific conflict. All the tens of billions poured into anti-guerilla arms and equipment will be useless. Confronting China will mean more $25 billion-apiece aircraft carriers and surface battle groups, more drones and satellite systems, more Marines and Pacific air bases.

So the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, whose budgets doubled after the 9/11 attacks, face a serious diet; and they must decide on which war to plan for.

Having just been defeated in the $2 trillion Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Pentagon may actually be relieved to go back to conventional warfare against Chinese targets they can identify.

But if the choice is China, the Pentagon will need 5-10 years to re-equip and rearm its forces for the Pacific. And, of course, trillions in new spending. Military competition with increasingly high-tech China in its backyard will prove ruinously expensive. What’s more, American forces have become too costly to use in war, as Iraq and Afghanistan showed. The US has grown soft and flabby fighting small nations with no air power: China will prove a very different story.
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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2013

PARIS – The bloody attack on an Algerian gas installation and France’s invasion of Mali are the result of troubles that have been brewing for years – we simply have not been paying attention.

Jihadist guerilla leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, headlined as a new Great Islamic Satan by French media, has been making trouble in the Sahara for a long time, kidnapping westerners, robbing caravans, smuggling cigarettes.

Belmokhtar was known as a “man of honor,” one of the western-financed jihadists who went to battle the Soviets and their communist allies in Afghanistan in the 1980’s and 90’s.  He retuned to his native Algeria, minus an eye lost in combat, and, with his fellow “Afghani,” sought to overthrow Algeria’s western-backed military regime, a major oil and gas supplier to France.

In 1991,  Algeria’s junta, bankrupt of ideas, allowed a free election.  Big mistake.  Algeria’s Islamists won the first round parliamentary vote.   The military panicked.  Backed by France and the US, Algeria’s military crushed the Islamic movement and arrested its leaders.

As a result, one of our era’s bloodiest civil wars erupted as Islamists and other insurgents battled the brutal Algerian military and intelligence forces, who called themselves, “the Eradicators.”

During a decade of savagery, over 200,000 Algerians died.  Entire villages were massacred.  Both sides committed frightful atrocities.  The Algiers government used special forces disguised as rebels to stage mass murders. Pickup trucks with guillotines were used to chop off people’s heads.

After the uprising was crushed, one particularly violent Islamist guerilla group, formerly GIC,  reformed itself into AQIM – al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.  This caused a frenzied reaction in the West.   But AQIM had next to nothing to do with Osama bin Laden’s Afghan-Pakistan group. But the al-Qaida name brought instant media attention – a primary goal of radical groups.

After Mali’s soldiers overthrew its feeble, corrupt government last March,  the vast north went into chaos.  Nomadic Tuareg tribesmen declared the independent state of Azawad.  Assorted jihadists, including some of Belmokhtar’s men, imposed draconian sharia law on the north.   Mali’s southerners called on former colonial master France for help.

Two months ago, President Francois Hollande declared France would not again intervene in Africa.  Since granting nominal independence in 1960 to the states that comprised former French West Africa, France has intervened militarily 50 times. French technicians, bankers and intelligence agents run most of West Africa from behind the scenes.  There are 60,000 French in Algeria and west Africa, seen by Paris as its sphere of influence.

Niger is a major supplier of uranium to France’s nuclear industry which provides 80% of the nation’s power.  French mining interests cover West Africa, which is also a key export market for French goods and arms.

After jihadists proclaimed they would nationalize Mali’s resources, Hollande turned from dove to hawk.  French forces went into action behind a barrage of media propaganda about brutalities committed by the Islamists – just as French forces in Afghanistan were being driven out by Taliban fighters.

Hollande’s popularity ratings, driven down to 32% by France’s dire economic problems, tax hikes, and plant closings, soared to over 80%.  Military adventures and patriotic flag-waving are always surefire remedies for politicians in trouble at home.   Belmokhtar was declared the Osama bin Laden of the Sahara.  Mali became a humanitarian mission lauded in the West.  The US began quietly tiptoeing into the conflict.

Though a tempest in a teapot involving only a few thousand French troops,  the Mali fracas threatens the unsteady French and US-backed regimes of resource-rich West Africa. Most particularly so Ivory Coast, Chad and Central African Republic, where 5,000 French soldiers and aircraft are based. An Islamist uprising in oil-rich Nigeria is growing fast, a major worry for Washington, whose regional energy resources are under threat.

Getting into little wars is always easy. Getting out is not, as Afghanistan has shown.  Even French generals are now saying their troops will be in Mali, which has no real government,  for a long time.

Patriotic euphoria in France is already abating.   France’s belligerent unions are back on the war path over plant closings.  Efforts to cut France’s huge deficit will hardly be helped by the little crusade in Mali.

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copyright  Eric S. Margolis 2013