Bush is about to make Osama bin Laden's day

By PAUL WATSON*

Somewhere in the mountains bordering Afghanistan, in a deep cave, heated and illuminated by generators, comfortably furnished with carpets and a few luxury goods, there most likely sits a very happy man.

By now, word has reached him about President George W. Bush's ultimatum to Saddam Hussein.

The "Sheriff from Texas" has given the bully-boy dictator of Iraq 48 hours to get out of town – or else.

Finally, a year and a half after Osama bin Laden planted his horrific, fiery seeds in New York City, his plans are coming to fruition.

What he has so long wanted, planned for, worked towards, and dreamed of, is coming to pass.

The very idea of his enemy Bush striking down his enemy Hussein makes his day.

The day that the Americans invade Iraq will be the day that will firmly entrench bin Laden as the Saladin of the 21st Century. If he is captured or killed after this date, it will be of little consequence, because he will have achieved most everything he could have ever wished for.

He will have successfully engineered an incredibly brilliant strategy of destabilisation of not just the Middle East, not just the Islamic world, but the entire world.

Ironically, Saddam Hussein is the very type of Islamic leader that Osama bin Laden has long wished to overthrow.

The forced removal of Saddam was an objective that bin Laden was incapable of achieving -- unless he could engineer a chain of events that could lead to the manipulation of one enemy against another.

And this is exactly what he has done. For whatever the outcome, Osama bin Laden will win.

The death of every American soldier will bring him joy.

At the same time, the greater the Iraqi military and civilian casualties, the happier he will be, because dead Iraqis will help al Qaeda stoke the fires of terrorism throughout the Islamic world.

The spectre of American occupation of Iraq will incite further acts of global terrorism, and the United States will be forced to devote huge resources to occupy a hostile country in a hostile region. How many American soldiers will it take, and for how long?

An occupied Iraq will be considered a blasphemy to Islam - an Islamic nation occupied by not only a Christian Army, but an army led by a sworn Fundamentalist Christian Commander in Chief, who has openly declared that God is on his side, and has anointed him to lead a crusade.

As every student of Middle East history knows, there is nothing that inflames a Muslim more than a call for a Christian Crusade. In the Islamic world it has the same effect that the word Jihad has on the West.

The anger that bin Laden cultivated in America with the unprecedented attack on American soil has caused the United States to over-react, to cast diplomacy out the window, and to rush into a world conflict with the same blind courage and audacity that the New York firemen displayed when they went into the doomed World Trade Centre towers.

Despite the fact that President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair continue to use the United Nations as their justification to invade Iraq, the two world leaders have now dismissed the UN as irrelevant, and in so doing have revealed the shallowness of their justification.

The United States is attacking Iraq out of blind anger and as every martial artist understands, anger is not an emotion for a warrior to utilise when approaching a battle – not if they want to achieve their objective.

And what is the objective?

There is no doubt that Saddam will be overthrown. But what then? This will be one of the easiest wars to enter and win, and one of the most difficult wars to disentangle from.

Initially the Blitzkrieg will turn parts of Iraq into a fiery hell where thousands of innocents will die or be horrifically wounded.

All of this to remove one man. It is reminiscent of the words of the Bishop of Navarre after taking Damascus during the Holy Crusades. When asked how infidels could be distinguished from Christians, he replied, "Kill them all, God will protect his own".

After the invasion there will likely be a lengthy civil war similar to the situation in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Soviets. One of the warring factions, and one that is bound to win support, is al Qaeda, although it will probably use different names.

Up until now, Saddam Hussein has been the single greatest obstacle to al Qaeda recruitment in Iraq.

And what about Iran? Will that nation, defined by President Bush as one of the three members of the "Axis of Evil", sit idly while Americans watch from across the Arab el Shat River? No, what the Iranians will hear is "Today Baghdad, tomorrow Tehran".

The Iranians will pursue their own nuclear programme and, a year from now, the United States will be demanding the destruction of weapons of mass destruction in Iran. What then? Invasion? Occupation? An ever-expanding war?

Where to then: to Pakistan, to North Korea, to China perhaps?

With every step, the potential for inciting terrorism increases because terrorism is a disease that thrives in an environment of war, chaos, confusion, and humiliation.

The United States has never really understood what terrorism is. The Americans have failed to recognise that they are fighting the legendary Hydra, the multi-headed monster that grows two heads for every head taken with the sword.

Osama bin Laden understands this very well. He is the man who unleashed the Hydra.

He also believes that terrorism is merely the means for the weak to wage effective war against the strong, and what Americans regard as "cowardly acts of terrorism" are in fact to him and his followers – effective strategies of warfare.

Look at what bin Laden has achieved. Al Qaeda took out a state-of-the art warship, the USS Cole, using an inflatable boat. This is in effect the most successful naval attack in history.

Bin Laden unleashed the first enemy strike on the continental United States since the War of 1812. He was also able to strike the greatest military target of all – the Pentagon.

And to add insult to injury, he used four American civilian planes as his weapons of mass destruction. All of that, with only a few dozen al Qaeda casualties.

With one well-placed bomb, al Qaeda destroyed the economy of Bali and pulled Australia into the chaos.

In the year and a half since the attacks of Sept 11, 2001, bin Laden has been responsible for turning the United States into a virtual police state. Racial profiling is back in vogue. Middle Easterners have become the new pariah. Old ladies are divested of their nail files at airports. Borders have been tightened, in a circle-the-wagons mentality that has seen the emergence of the United States of Paranoia.

If the object of terrorism is to terrorise, then Osama has won, because Americans have been effectively terrorised and they appear to have forgotten former President Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous words: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself".

The "War on Terrorism" has not succeeded, nor can it ever be successful, because out of chaos created by terrorism arises more terrorism.

Yes, the day that Baghdad falls will be a great day for one man. Unfortunately, that man is Osama bin Laden.

* Paul Watson, a Canadian author and conservationist, was a founder of Greenpeace.

Herald Feature: Iraq