Ten years or so after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri remain at large, while the terrorist group al-Qaeda has ‘spawned' several al-Qaeda-style groups from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Gulf, and even Indonesia. Frankly, I don't believe that the United States could not kill Bin Laden or Zawahiri and their al-Qaeda henchmen on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. What I remember is that the U.S. forces, following the invasion of Afghanistan, chased Bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora and found him. However, the U.S. command did not respond to the request of the pursuing forces to send reinforcements, and as a result, Bin Laden escaped and remains at large today. Why? If Osama bin Laden was killed and al-Qaeda's core was destroyed, the administration of George W. Bush would have been denied the pretext to wage a war on terror (which it lost magnificently) and to invade Iraq, while threatening every Arab or Muslim country. Nor would the administration have had an excuse to earmark record allocations for the Department of Defense year after year, in a bankrupt country, reflecting a clear exercise of hegemony by the military-industrial complex over the government, which what Dwight Eisenhower had warned against once. This is all history. I would not have returned to it were it not for my fear that history is about to repeat itself in Libya, wherein we and the people of Libya would live the nightmare of Muammar Gaddafi in power for another ten years. Just like I could not believe that the United States could not hunt down Bin Laden, I cannot believe that the NATO is incapable of taking out Muammar Gaddafi weeks after military operations were started by the U.S. and handed over to NATO. What's even harder to believe is what I read in the Washington Post last week, on my mobile phone when I was in Riyadh. The Post ran a story entitled “NATO runs short on some munitions in Libya”. Now I know that I and the reader are two simpletons from the Third World with limited comprehension, but still, it is impossible for us to believe that the world's biggest military alliance cannot find bombs to bomb Gaddafi's forces to protect civilians. All this while the mentally and humanly retarded Gaddafi, who is besieged and pursued, finds an unlimited supply of ammunition to kill the Libyans. The Post's story even went as far as saying that there is a limited and insufficient number of aircraft available for the operations, even though NATO possesses ninety percent of military aircrafts around the world. George W. Bush was a fool and a front for neoconservatives and Likudnik supporters of Israel. It suited them to have al-Qaeda as an excuse for implementing their ambition to impose an American empire on the world, an ambition that eventually backfired with America losing its wars. On the other hand, Barack Obama is intelligent and I accuse him of nothing. For this reason, I do not understand why the United States or its NATO allies do not take out Gaddafi's leadership once and for all. The newspaper story was published a day after the New York Times ran an article written by Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, entitled “Libya's pathway to peace”. The three leaders said that it is not logical that a man who attempted to slaughter his people be given a role in the people's future. I agree with them that Gaddafi must leave before the Libyans can chart a better future. However, they also said that UN Security Council 1973 authorized the protection of the Libyans but not the removal of Gaddafi. Listen carefully. This article was written with the help of professional speechwriters from three major countries who draft the three leaders' speeches. So what are they saying? They are saying that Gaddafi kills Libyan citizens, and that the international resolution authorized the protection of civilians. However, they do not consider the resolution to be authorizing the removal of Gaddafi, even when they noted that he is killing his people. This means that the only way to implement the international resolution and protect the people is to remove Gaddafi. One last point: I trust the intentions of Obama but I fear his incapacity for turning them into actions. This is while I accuse Cameron of nothing, but do not trust the policies and intentions of Nicolas Sarkozy vis-à-vis Arabs and Muslims, so long that he accepts counsel from the pseudo-philosopher and extremist Likudnik Bernard-Henri Levy, who endorses all wars against Arabs and Muslims, while defending Israel, its racism and its terrorism. I am afraid therefore that we may find ourselves with ten more years with Gaddafi in power, just like Osama bin Laden remained at large in the past ten years. [email protected]
