I don't like the rhetoric of 'defeating al-Qaeda' [View All]

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President Obama in announcing his Afghan plan:

"I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That is the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just. And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: we will defeat you."


Al-Qaeda is more of an ideology than it is an organization. It's an ideology of resistance to the military and economic advance of the U.S. empire across the sovereign borders of the Middle East. Al-Qaeda is an organizing principle which is a blank slate for displaced and disaffected individuals to apply whatever resistance they can contrive, wherever they are, against whatever they're resisting or perpetrating.

There are certainly dangerous individuals who had some part in the 9-11 killings in America, either supporting the original perps or aligining with them. Those individuals need to be brought to justice or killed in the pursuit. Killing those perps and their accomplices, however, won't 'defeat al-Qaeda'.

There will always be an al-Qaeda as long as there is some displaced, angry youngster willing to identify his or her cause or resistance with America's 7-year nemesis. The prospect of that ready-adoption of the terrorist organization's moniker by disaffected youths is made all the more likely in the face of our frontal military assaults on the resisting populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I would prefer more of a strategy and effort to 'discredit' al-Qaeda and their organizing philosophy than I would choose the counter-productive and destabilizing, self-perpetuating attempts to score some series of military victories and to intimidate the populations into some sort of obliging submission through the force of our weaponry.

It shouldn't be forgotten that the original justifications used for the unjustifiable 9-11 killings centered on opposition to our presence in the Middle East. I'm not buying, or even interested in, the babble from bin-Laden and company about the U.S. empire-building, military aggression as a reason for their treachery. U.S. empire is a fact, but it's neither an excuse for the 9-11 violence and the subsequent orchestration of the rest of the devastating attacks which have occurred in its wake, or even a believable concern of the perpetrators tucked away, imperially, in their 'safe havens'.

Yet, American's tolerance and support of empire-building and imperialism is what the perpetrators counted on as they worked to generate as much hatred and resentment as possible against the U.S., even as they drew our military forces into their region with the sure expectation of face-to-face reprisals and retaliation in response to their despicable plotting and recruiting of these young men (and women) to sacrifice their lives in resistance against the American invaders.

It's hard to believe that our military and administration are still susceptible to that lure - still invested in the belief that al-Qaeda can be intimidated into submission by attacking and killing every Afghan or Pakistani who dares identify their resistance to our military presence and activity across their sovereign borders. Did our commanders and leaders forget that they've been creating more 'terrorists' with their arbitrary attacks than they've been able to stifle or eliminate?

NATO may well 'stabilize' Afghanistan enough for the protected regime to continue in their assumed power and authority. Or, through some dumb luck, or brilliant plan, our military may find and take-down the original mouthpieces from the original Sept. 11 killings. If that improbable feat actually happens, the martyrdom will outmatch any intimidation which would lead to some defeat of al-Qaeda - in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or anywhere else.

Al-Qaeda will only begin to become irrelevant and outcast when the populations in these countries cease to have any reason to align with and support them. Right now, I can't help but believe that our president has just given them 21,000 more reasons to covet and animate their pernicious al-Qaeda monikers.