Will
The Real Osama Stand Up?
By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
10 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
It
took a few minutes to sink in – the new tape of Osama Bin Laden
that was shown and analyzed on MSNBC’s Keith Oberman show on Friday,
September 7, 2007. Perhaps the most striking thing was his black beard.
From all accounts, what sets OBL apart from others, even his most devout
followers, is his devotion to Islam*. While Islam allows the trimming
of the moustache, it calls for fully growing the beard in full. Henna,
a known dye, is permissible in Islam as not only does it have medicinal
qualities, but it may be used to enhance beauty – in women. How
likely is it that OBL who is a strict adherent of fundamental Islam,
would dye his beard and trim it to appear in front of a camera in order
to meet the expectations of the ‘Western terrorist specialists’?
What was said was even more
suspicious. OBL was said to have been surprised that the democrats were
not able to bring the troops home. The intended message by ‘OBL’
was that Democrats may have House majority, but they are as impotent
as they have always been and clearly the Cheney/Bush team are the emperors
running the world.
I was even more shocked to
hear him endorse books by two American authors, one of them being Noam
Chomsky’s “American Imperialism”. Here my head started
spinning. It was far graver than Mr. Bush addressing the APEC audience
OPEC. American Imperialism was authored by non other than Michael Scheuer,
a superhawk who was the top CIA agent for years tracking OBL. Chomsky
wrote “Hegemony or Survival; America’s Quest for Global
Dominance” 2004. oops – Is the word ‘intelligence’
an oxymoron in this country or what?
Given the benefit of the
doubt, or lost in translation, I have to wonder how ‘OBL’
being on the run and being pursued by the world’s greatest military,
the only superpower, and while hiding in a cave with a bounty of $50m
on his head, got the book in the first place? Perhaps if we followed
DHL to some place in Bora Bora, we may catch him dying his beard while
reading Chomsky. My guess is that this was a smear campaign to connect
Chomsky to al-Qaeda. Here is a brilliant intellectual who speaks to
the truth and spills the beans on American foreign policy, what better
way to destroy his reputation than to have America’s number one
enemy, the leader of al-Qaeda, endorse his work?
And finally, there is the
fear factor. As a judge slams down parts of the Patriot Act as unconstitutional,
it would seem that Mr. Bush has found a way to remind the American public
that they should remain petrified. Nothing intimidates a nation better
than fear, not even ignorance. Mr. Bush said the message was "a
reminder of the dangerous world in which we live". CIA director
Michael Hayden, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New
York on Friday, warned that al-Qaeda was plotting new attacks on the
US. "Our analysts assess with high confidence that al-Qaeda's central
leadership is planning high impact plots against the American homeland,"
he said. “[i]
Fear will allow more liberties
to be taken away. Not only will there be justification for the troops
to remain in Iraq, as planned, but there will be justification for another
war – Iran. The options are in the air – the nuclear armed
B-52 bombers, all that is needed is a panicked populace. There was never
a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. With persistent lies, this White House
committed genocide in Iraq. With the same lies, they are planning genocide
next door.
* Osama Bin Laden framed
his anti-US arguments in the language of Islam, but what he was, and
continues to voice, is anti-colonist sentiments. The banner of Islam
broke the geographical boundaries to fight and imperial power that had
sprawled all over the Moslem world.
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
has lived and studied in Iran, the UK, France, and the US. She obtained
her Bachelors Degree in International Relations from the University
of Southern California, Los Angeles. She is currently pursuing her education
in Middle East studies and Public Diplomacy. Soraya has done extensive
research on US foreign policy towards Iran and Iran’s nuclear
program. She can be reached at [email protected]
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