| The Al-Hayat account today of the latest "Bin Laden" tape is accompanied with a screen-capture or whatever you call that, a still, showing the SITE Institute moniker in the upper corner. And Al-Quds al-Arabi, for its part, refers to the same SITE institute as an authority for saying the latest tape is "new". The Hayat picture suggests that that London-based pan-Arab paper possibly wasn't able to find the tape on any of actual "jihadi" sites. And the Al-Quds reference is probably an indication that there wasn't any better "analysis" to rely on. Peculiar. What has happened is that in recent weeks or is it months, the web-sites where normally you could browse the jihadi comment-boards, and find the latest releases, have become unavailable. (...) Most or all of these, reportedly, were hosted in the United States, which also seems a bit strange. Just to be clear, it isn't clear how or by whom (or as far as I am concerned, exactly when) these were shut down. (...) [T]he news from "AlQaeda" is increasingly filtered through anti-Islamist entities like SITE, and also Lauramansfield.com (you can check some of her antecedents on the Wikipedia, or you could just check the sites listed on her blogroll which include Daniel Pipes, Michelle Malkin and other superstars of the extreme right). What strikes me as even more peculiar is that this is happening at the same time that the "Al-Qaeda" message is becoming noticeably more Bush-like, by which I mean that the stress is more and more on the irreconcilable and open-ended "war of cultures" nature of the conflict, (as opposed to earlier positions that in effect said "as you kill you will be killed", suggesting that the conflicts were thought of as defined). And in this context the Zawahiri remarks about killing the French and Spanish in the Maghreb are particularly telling. |
What Dr. Z. said was
| "Taking back al-Andalus is a responsibility borne by the Ummah as a whole, but particularly on you in particular [to the Islamic people of the Maghreb], and this cannot be done without cleansing the Muslim Maghreb of the children of France and Spain...") |
At Mu’ámara Junction they pretty clearly read mainly to confirm their own biases, which means that actual examination of "Daniel Pipes, Michelle Malkin and other superstars of the extreme right" will not be happening very often. One consequence is that they are most likely simply ignorant of MEMRI's kind offer to ISP's in the holy Homeland to translate all those inscrutable chickentracks on their customers' websites and find out whether they are selling Islamophalangitarian terrorism or only preowned camels. It looks as if some success is bein' achieved, though no doubt the bad hats will e-relocate to Vanuatu or Bolivia without too much difficulty.
MJ does pay some attention to the more intellectually respectable mainstream outlets of invasion-language journalism, if only to remind themselves of their sad inadequacy and cartooning, so perhaps they noticed the New York Times story about how State Department employees get paid taxpayer dollars to counterblog the bad hats. However,
| The team concentrates on about a dozen mainstream Web sites such as chat rooms set up by the BBC and Al Jazeera or charismatic Muslim figures like Amr Khaled, as well as Arab news sites like Elaph.com. They choose them based on high traffic and a focus on United States policy, and they always identify themselves as being from the State Department. They avoid radical sites, although team members said that jihadis scoured everywhere. |
E-warfare as such is not the crux of the nebulosity, I don't think. I'd focus on the fog, so rather peculiarly to speak, of "the 'Al-Qaeda' message is becoming noticeably more Bush-like, by which I mean that the stress is more and more on the irreconcilable and open-ended 'war of cultures' nature of the conflict, as opposed to earlier positions that in effect said 'as you kill you will be killed,' suggesting that the conflicts were thought of as defined."
Exactly how much sheer ignorance there is at Mu’ámara Junction is difficult to gauge. Have they never heard of Huntin'ton of Harvard, then? Or do they know all about Uncle Sam, but twistify his views over to the Dynasty Boy deliberately? In any case, that's an absurd thing to mean by "Bush-like." Of course Little Brother and Big Management would dearly like to have themselves a Long War, but hardly any open-ended war of cultures. I can't even guess how this mirage of "earlier positions that ... the conflicts were thought of as defined" might have arisen. Militant extremist Republicanism has been almost 100% consistent from 12 September 2001 down through 23 September 2007, and consisent on the side of what one might vaguely describe by saying "the conflicts were thought of as defined." There was one brief bobble over towards "irreconcilable and oped-ended" rhetoric for six or eight or ten weeks before the last midterm elections, but once Neocomrade K. Hughes and Dr. C. Rice made it clear to Himself that such rhetoric made it more difficult for them to handle the lesser breeds without, that baloney vanished without a trace and normalcy returned. After the polls closed, there was no more point in talkin' "Islamic fascism," really, so Little Brother gave it up without protest -- a sufficient indication that he never took what the rhetoric means seriously in the first place. Apart from that, you and I and Helena Cobban get endless enjoyment from mocking how the Party perps have switched from kiddie-kusadin' against "global terrorism" to kiddie-krusadin' against "extremism," but of course the reason that's a joke is that the bozos are so obviously playin' with their words rather than dealin' with their Party's enemies. The little laddie from Yale has the highest respect for most Muslims' ’Islám, after all. (Master Dubya is rather a sucker for religionism all 'round, actually, and therefore all the more remote from the Yankee Clashism™ of Huntin'ton of Harvard.)
Now since it is entirely a mirage to see Bush imitatin' Huntin'ton, to fancy that M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí are imitating an imitation that is not in fact happening my reasonably be labeled a supermirage or hyperfantasy, a great step forwards in the direction of around the bend and out of sight altogether, which is of course the general direction in which most of the mu’ámariyya are fated to eventually drop off the real-world scope at last.
Still, at CJ they must profess to see a resemblance between the Busheviki and the salafiyya of Outer Khurasán, resemblance being a sort of lesser included offense under imitation. Imitation of A by B once dismissed, how about imitation by B of A, which would equally well account for the resemblance of A to B? Fas est et ab hoste doceri, Mr. Bones, so perhaps Little Brother and Big Party really are takin' lessons in "the irreconcilable and open-ended 'war of cultures' nature of the conflict," only with tutoring from Dr. Zawáhirí rather than from Prof. Huntin'ton? We ourselves have somehow missed the conspiratorialists' perceived resemblance between A and B altogether, although it is always fun to draw mischievous rhetorical parallels of our own between Kiddie Krusaders and the paynim chivalry and neo-Saladins. At CJ, though, resemblance in respect of Clashism is mirage-like perceived, so we neutrals may legitimately speculate on two points: (1) Is it possible that the militant extremist GOP really is becomin' more and more like the bad hats? (2) Is the salafiyya of Outer Khurasán genuinely Clashist in something like Prof. Huntin'ton's originally intended sense?
For the moment, though, let us have the vicarious politeness to speculate upon only to the extent that Mu’ámara Junction might be interested in them. Which extent as regards question (1) is zero. However, (2) is more fruitful of immediate discussion. At very least we may wonder how the peculiar MJ species of conspiratorialist mindset would react to the notion that Dr. Z. is quite as bad as Prof. H. and bad in more or less the same way.
Now it is not as if they like M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí very well at MJ, Mr. Bones, for to call these militant extremist Sunni theogentry "noticeably more Bush-like" was certainly no compliment. Maybe MJ liked the Outer Khurasání salafiyya better the less Bush-like way they miraged them before, but in any case they do not like them much right this moment and they cite Dr. Z.'s dottiness about the reclaiming of the ’umma's irredenta in al-’Andalus as nothing better than dotty.[1] The dottiness was the whole point of the citation, for the very pith and gist of the current MJ fog is that lately one hears through a veil or filter darkly about al-Qá‘ida only when al-Qá‘ida looks dotty or bloodthirsty to almost every rational creature alive. MJ concedes implicitly that at least sometimes The Base really is dotty.
Circumstantial or a priori evidence may be adduced as well, for The Base is a sore trial to the sweet-throated bards of Mu’ámara Junction when they sing us their siren tales about the former Iraq. It would be so much simpler for MJ if there was only a strictly self-defensive muqáwama untainted by any 'proactive' or aggressive designs on al-’Andalus or schemes for a neo-Caliphate, and even simpler and easier still if that muqáwama were very strictly (sort of) a muqáwama wataniyya, a spontaneous and untampered-with upwelling of that beautiful utter unsectarianism that has especially characterized Mesopotamia -- crossroads of the world, meeting-ground of peoples! -- ever since Sargon of Akkad or thenabouts. How should The Base not be a sore trial for the fogbound ideological druthers of Mu’ámara Junction? [2]
M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí are perhaps too obviously conspirators for any serious conspiratorialist mindset persons like the MJ gentry to take them quite seriously. They say what they want, and they want what they say, and if their list of demands and grievances varies from manifesto to manifesto, that's probably only because life is short and one can't always remember to stick in EVERYTHING.
Little Brother and the Big Party are much better game for the MJ gentry, for they really do act guilty and shifty and lurky like one vaguely supposes every proper wannabe Catalina ought to enact the rôle of conspirator: ta-DA, Uncle Sam's "national interests" are announced to be at stake in the Occupyin' Party's Peaceful Freedumbia, but after the drums-and-trumpets fanfare, we never hear anything more about our Sam's rock-bottom interests, only about what "David" (Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and West Point) has ephemerally accomplished with Bribe-a-Tribe™ schemes and suchlike for his Boy and his Party. They act guilty, they skulk, they shift, they lurk, they require Guantánamos in Cuba and who-knows-what in the way of secret prison facilities and black-box "renditions" to tortune-prone elsewheres, they hand holy Homeland Rulalaw itself over to a thoroughly contemptible and incompetent General Gonzales in practice, and to even more odious and irregular Yoos and Kmieces in theory.
What strikes ME as "even more peculiar" is that all these trashy boobish Big Party sneaks and Harvard Victory School MBA lurkers are somehow simultaneously the Masters of the Universe, or at least the temporary Custodians of Sole Remainin' Hyperpower. Is ours not a mad, mad world, Mr. Bones, in which Big Party Hyperpower has to behave like Catalina and the cave-bound negligible salafiyya of Outer Khurasán at "undisclosed locations" can obtain a sort of monopoly on frankness by mere default?
To be sure, Castle Cheney chez nous must basically operate on Outer Khurasání salafí and "undisclosed location" lines, but what's the virtue of a TOP SECRET EYES ONLY frankness, then? The dottier reaches of the Sunnintern want their al-’Andalus back and, more immediately and slightly less dottily, a total restoration of Sunni Ascendancy in the former Iraq. Very deplorable objectives both, in my opinion, but at least clearly discernible objectives and objectives publicly proclaimed. The fog of neogentrified druthers at Mu’ámara Junction seems almost positively transparent compared with the fog of authentic gentry druthers at Château Kennebunkport and Rancho Crawford and Castle Cheney. What the deuce do our regnant GOP bozos concretely WANT, for Pete's sake? Why can't they hire themselves some thirty-something neo-con scribbler to write it all up for "us" at least clear and perspicuous (and therefore coheretly disagreeable with) as Outer Khurasán writes its manifesto stuff up per contra from as yet unbetrayed cave locations? One would expect that "we" ought to have a Big Party Agitprop as well as a Big Party Hyperpower on "our" side, but such expectation seems futile, Neocomrade K. Hughes to the attempted contrary notwithstanding.
Looking thus at "our" weaknesses, Mr. Bones, one is almost tempted to succumb to Sunninterni or mu’ámarí absurdities about how the militant extremist GOP has already been almost pushed out of the former Iraq. "We" examine "ourselves" and discover very severe Andover/Yale-HVS/MBA-Kennebunkport/Crawford-AEI/GOP fractures and weaknesses; out in the semiconquered GOP boondocks THEY think (and Mu’ámara Junction automatically re-echoes such congenial thoughts) that THEY have as good as won and THEIR Victory Parade is to be held in an even-newer-still New Baghdád tomorrow or the day after.
"Is that not a convergence?" you may well ask, Mr. Bones, and I concede the goodness and the opportuneness of such an asking, but all the same, sir, there ain't any convergence here at all, none whatsoever. What decent political grown-up can ever sympathize with either a shudder-quote-worthy GOP-tainted "us" or a scare-capitalized THEM? Please try to keep your head, sir. Punch and Judy, Wingnut City and neo-Islam, will be only a minor sideshow in Century XV/XXI, sir, and as what the main show is, well, how about 1.4 Euros (or 1.0 Canadian bucks, begorrah!) to what GOP-tainted bucks are worth nowadays?
___
[1] It's rather a cheap shot, but let me put it to you anyway, Bones: is it likely that the idea of snatching back Spain was suggested to Dr. Z. by either Master Dubya or Prof. Huntin'ton?
[2] That parenthetically "sort of" may be too important to relegate to a note, but here goes: this fantastically desiderated muqáwama wataniyya ‘Iráqiyya seems to be polemically conceived of at MJ as involving quite a large admixture of qawmiyya ‘Arabiyya or what a macaroni might call "qawmiyya Sunninterniyya." This particular admixture of impurity has little or nothing to do with M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí and The Base, however, and so I make footnote fodder of it, although understanding that the modern Sunni International has very little strict and necessary linkage to traditional Sunni theology or the Big Four of mediaeval Sunni jurisprudence is a necessary preliminary to many more important things than working out exactly which way the trendy gentry are slanted at Mu’ámara Junction.
It's all rather like the wataniyya of M. Charles Maurras and Action Française, as far as I can make it out, Mr. Bones: one can be a devout atheist personally and yet acknowledge that one's watan is radically ultramontane Papist for all the practical purposes of reactionary politics and chauvinism. 'Tis rather a subtle business, of course, and only properly certified and credentialled Uppers ought ever to attempt it at home, yet still, it is a trick that demonstratedly can be pulled off from time to time. Hopefully here and now in the bloody bushogenic shambles and quagmire of the former Iraq is no more appropriate time than M. Maurras ever encountered! But God knows best.
No comments:
Post a Comment