Al-Qaida is now an idea, not an organisation

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,1542898,00.html

Bin Laden may not be capable of organising terror attacks directly, but then he does not need to

Jason Burke
Friday August 5, 2005
The Guardian

So another blast and, a month or so later, another tape. This time it is Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian militant who has been the professional partner of Osama bin Laden for the best part of 15 years, who has surfaced on our screens.

The iconography is relatively easy to decode. The gun to his right is a more potent looking weapon than usual, with a grenade launcher fixed to its barrel, indicating a desire to reinforce the threat of violence. The black turban like that worn by the Taliban suggests a concern to show solidarity with the rump of the movement still fighting, just about, in Afghanistan.

The white robes are fairly standard but, combined with the long white beard and the military props, indicate a warrior-statesman or a fighting cleric, an archetype familiar to anyone with an interest in Islamic political history.

Al-Zawahiri is not saying much that is new. The London bombs are an opportunity to restate what is, with certain variations, the standard Islamist extremist argument: that the west is oppressing Muslims around the world, America and its allies are set on the humiliation, subordination and division of the lands of Islam and that this justifies self-defence by many different means, including suicide bombing.

[wli]

1. al Qaeda is Emmanuel Goldstein

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[wli]

3. no, but I'm not surprised someone else noticed the similarities n/t

[Igel]

4. The similarities were rather too striking

not to be pointed out. :-)

Personally, it's been 20+ years since reading 1984, and I had to google Emmanuel Goldstein.

[thebigidea]

5. when was it any different?

my gawd, they've been pushing this "Al Qaeda 2.0" horseshit for what, 2 years now? "blah blah blah they are smaller decentralized groups now blah blah blah blah."

though truthfully, this article is much better than most. its the headline and the cnn/msnbc/fox terror "expert" line of hooey i'm really criticizing.

[bemildred]

6. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive.

Al Qaeda can be "real", that is real people that really do things and are not puppets of some government, and "propaganda", that is a line of bullshit used by various governments for various political ends. In fact, that seems to be the case to me, that both things are going on.

Now as to the larger issue raised by this piece, it's dubious that Al Qaeda EVER was a hierarchical organization with a command structure as we think of it. At least I've never seen any such thing shown to exist, it's more a communications network than a command structure, and that is the way one would want it to be for the purposes it purports to serve (terrorism, political resistance, however you want to put it).