Al-Qaeda's anniversary

This is worth a look. The far-right palaeo-conservative anti-war.com site informs its readers that its editor, one Justin Raimondo, took part in a televised discussion this week, on al-Jazeera, about the twentieth anniversary of al-Qaeda. Christopher Hitchens was also a guest. I make no comment on the respective merits of these gentlemen's arguments, lest you suspect me of "spinning" in favour of a comrade. But the anguished comments posted by Raimondo's supporters tell their own story. One rationalises the whole fiasco by assuring the faithful that: "Justin is a writer not a debater. Maybe a commenter, but definitely not a debater. He comes across as shallow, uninformed and at loss for words. If he debated as good [sic] as he often writes, he would have ripped Hitchens a new one." There's an especially rich moment around six and a half minutes into the second part of the programme.

Raimondo is indeed not the most articulate proponent of his case, but the notion that Jihadism is provoked by Western foreign policy is quite a durable reflex nonetheless. And just as the easiest way to maintain the inerrancy of Scripture is not to read it, so the surest route to concluding that al-Qaeda is an unthreatening force is not to examine it. There are many sins of omission and commission in the history of Western foreign policy, but the motivation for theocratic terrorism is no mystery and has nothing to do with them. As Osama bin Laden urged in a statement dated 23 February 1998, under the auspices of the “International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders” (included in Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East: A Documentary Reader, eds. Barry Rubin & Judith Colp Rubin, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 150):

"The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order to for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim…. We – with God’s help – call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it."

Raimondo, by the way, is no more cogent in print than he is on television, but he possesses what he presumably calculates is some shock value. To that end, he lauds Charles Lindbergh as an "American hero sprung from the heartland". You can read here - on a reputable educational site; there are numerous highly disreputable sites that carry the same thing, for obvious reasons - Lindbergh's notorious Des Moines speech of September 1941, in which the aviator charged that America was being drawn into war by Great Britain, the Roosevelt administration and the Jews. His reputation has of course never recovered.   

Comments

[Tony Francis]

Watching the so-called debate, I was impressed that neither side really gets it. It seemed to be on the level of a high-school forensics tournament. The arguments were just as shallow and as bad. If there are one billion Muslims, and al-Qaeda has one percent support among them, that is ten million. Seems impractical to kill them all, much less figure out who they are. An inferiority complex probably fuels it as much as anything the US has done. The battle is over ideas: should we live in caves and beat our women folk? Or should be strive to have hair dryers, cars and indoor plumbing? So it's a battle over modernity vs. antiquity. So far, modernity has won every such war in every culture. I like Chris Hitchens "blind beggar" look. But then I always liked Hitchens. He seems to have lost his punch lately.

[MarkC]

Hello Oliver
would be interested to hear from you regarding any updates/opinions on the current situation in Afghanistan ?
Your take on the politics there is always highly readable, not to mention side splittingly amusing.

[William McIlhagga]

Jeez, Oliver, take it easy on them. Pointing out that the commenter said "good [sic]" instead of "well" is just dirty fighting.

[Mark]

Justin Raimondo is a noted paleocon as you state.I believe he also claims to have coined the term 'laptop bombardier', so the airing of his dire performance on al Jazeera is clearly an opportunity too good to miss for those who warrant that label, particularly as Hitchens has clearly done his homework on this occasion.
Your attempt to smear his website with a 'far right' branding is however over the top.The site links daily to reputable news sources, and as frequently to soft left US commentators (Tom Engelhart) and Israeli peace activists (Uri Avnery) as to fellow paleocons such as Pat Buchanan.

[Oliver Kamm]

No, I won't accept that. I don't smear those I'm hostile to. I'm careful to describe them only so far as their statements and public positions will support it. Raimondo's site is eclectic in its links, but then so are many extremist sites that seek substantiation for their weird ideas. The philosophy of Raimondo is a nativism and isolationism that explicitly echoes Lindbergh's America First movement. As Raimondo himself lauds Lindbergh, that seems to me hardly a contentious point. And Lindbergh did not regard Nazism as an enemy; rather, he believed that the US, France and Britain should ally with Germany to defend the white race: "Race is what binds us to Europe, not ideals."

You'll find, BTW, that Raimondo regrets that Imperial Japan did not win the Pacific War.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3080

I should in fairness add that he has since maintained that when he said "life would be far more civilised" if Japan's racist imperialism had been victorious, he was having a laugh. And very amusing I'm sure my readers will find it.

[Mark]

You quite rightly place Raimondo in the nativist/isolationist strain of US political life.I'd be the first to admit that for a half a century (1941-1991) that movement was rightly at the periphery of US policymaking- and that its marginalisation then was a good thing for this country, and the western european democracies in general.
In 2008 however the circumstances are very different; the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union are long gone, US policymakers dream of eternal 'full spectrum dominance', and the threats from militant Islam and a resurgent Russia, while not chimerical, are over hyped. It's not surprising therefore that the isolationists have come in from the cold and that Raimondo's website gets endorsements from pillars of the US left like Engelhardt (apologies for the earlier typo) and Daniel Ellsberg.And a good thing too.

[Oliver Kamm]

I do not agree with your assessment of the current international conjuncture, and particularly not with your last sentence. But I'm pleased we do agree at least that Raimondo represents a current of US political opinion that is directly descended from Lindbergh, and that supposed "pillars of the Left" now ally with it. That, after all, is the point that Hitch, Paul Berman, Nick Cohen and I have been making for a long time, and not to universal approbation.

[arnoldo]

Raimondo shares another characteristic of The Left.
He blustered with relish when attacking wicked USA foreign policy but floundered when Hitchens asked him for his idea of a solution to the problem.
The Left, in similar fashion, are always at their loudest and most enthusiastic when campaigning negatively, but often become coy when asked for positive proposals.