BY PHK
I simply intended to set the historical record straight when I decided to write “V is for Victory, C is for Caliphate” a few days ago. The Bush administration’s rendition of Islamic history was so specious that I figured it would be easy – but important - to challenge the myth being spread by some of W’s highest level minions that Al Qaeda intends to “reestablish”(or more accurately establish) a 7th century Islamic caliphate beginning with Spain – or Morocco – or Iraq depending upon the storyteller - and ending with Bali, Indonesia “on the Pacific.” Why? As I explained earlier, no such Islamic elephant existed - ever. And besides, Bali does not border the Pacific Ocean.
But what I also unearthed to my surprise raised a rat’s nest of questions. Most significant was the W Administration’s repeated reference to the restoration of THE CALIPHATE. The reference, I discovered, primarily derives from a paragraph in a letter purportedly written by Bin Laden’s right hand man and fugitive Egyptian doctor, Al Zawahiri. The paragraph in question describes Bin Laden’s intent to implement his deadly game of World Conquest by establishing a caliphate in Iraq then expanding from there. The letter addressed to Al Zarqawi, the Jordanian Palestinian terrorist known for beheading his captives in Iraq, was intercepted by coalition forces in Iraq last summer and was posted on the Director of National Intelligence’s website on October 11.
As a side bar to my research, I discovered December 16, 2005 news reports that Al Zarqawi himself had been intercepted by Iraqi forces in Fallujah over a year ago – but subsequently released unrecognized – a story that has passed almost without notice in the U.S. Since Al Zarqawi is said to have a wooden leg and his photograph reportedly plastered all over Iraq it makes one wonder how competent the training of Iraqi security forces was, is, or is likely to be. The tense is your choice. Also, tell me how effectively you think Iraqi forces will be able to police their own country in the next year or two.
But back to the Zawahiri letter to Zarqawi
I took the letter’s contents and origins at face value until I read Duke University Professor Bruce Lawrence’s article in The Chronicle of Higher Education published in early November. Lawrence, an American scholar on Bin Laden, is about to publish a book of and on Osama Bin Laden’s writings if he hasn’t already, and he, Lawrence, stated in the Chronicle article that Bin Laden had dropped references to the reestablishment or establishment of an Islamic caliphate sometime ago.
Lawrence’s observation, therefore, made me wonder about the veracity of the recent Zawahiri letter, a document that also cautioned Zarqawi against continuing the nasty practice of beheading his hapless abductees because it did not sit well with either Iraqi Shiites or westerners. The letter further stated that over half the battle was winning “hearts and minds” and concluded with details about current realities relating to the centuries old rift between Iraq’s Sunnis and Shiites.
The letter’s contents, by the way, don’t appear to have stopped Zarqawi from his “off-with-the-head” approach to life and death since. If I’ve got it right, he murdered at least one hostage in that fashion in recent days.
But looking at the letter through the prism of psyops warfare so ill-adroitly conducted by the W administration and paid for by American tax dollars, one has to wonder whether the letter’s contents are fact or fiction. And if the letter falls into the fairy tale category, who wrote it - and why? How did this letter fall into the hands of coalition forces last summer? Just how much of a lucky break was it? Is this perhaps another story the New York Times has been blugeoned into sitting on – as it did the one about the three women Marines killed by a suicide car bomber in summer 2004 that it finally printed last week? Have other journalistic sources investigated the Al Zawahiri’s letter’s provenance?
If however, the letter is genuine and American intelligence and on-the-ground intercept capabilities are that good, why then is the W administration still trying to frighten us into believing that Bin Laden’s about to launch another stealth attack against a U.S. target?
I always thought the roads to Washington, D.C. led through Virginia and Maryland, not Baghdad – caliphate or not. Bin Laden’s purported interest, however, in establishing such an entity in Iraq strikes an off-key note for several reasons not-withstanding my understanding that caliphates were Sunni religio-political constructs not Shiite ones yet Shiites represent about 60 percent of Iraq’s population. So how realistic would Bin Laden’s chances be for establishing a CALIFATE in Iraq today?
Meanwhile: what ever happened to America’s credibility?
What troubles me as much, however, is why I might even question the letter’s veracity.
One reason is the vast amounts of cash the Bush administration has poured and is pouring into its enormous clandestine media psychological warfare operations – in comparison with its anemic efforts to openly tell the truth - and in my view far more effectively - through public diplomacy. (Note: see PLS’ December 20 post “So That’s Where the Money Went” and Public Diplomacy Blogspot’s December 22 post “More than Information Warfare” on this point).
Yet who’s to say that SAIC, the Lincoln Group, SY Coleman, ISI (Pakistani Intelligence,) the Israelis or another Pentagon financed organization – or a group under some other pay master didn’t fabricate the letter and then let it drop – like a date off a date palm tree - into coalition forces hands? Its contents would haven been useful for a variety of purposes and to any number of individuals - including some in the current administration.
Can anyone help answer these questions?