Why Osama likes George W. Bush

Osama bin Laden launched the 9/11 attacks to force the United States to retaliate and help him and other radical Islamists take over Arab and Muslim governments, Gwynne Dyer, an internationally renowned journalist, columnist and broadcaster, told students at Nipissing University Thursday.

But 9/11 also had another affect: allowing the neo-conservative movement in the US to influence foreign policy, resulting in the ultimate attack on Iraq.

Dyer said over the last 25 years Islamic fundamentalists such as bin Laden have been using terror to try to overthrow generally moderate and pro-Western Arab and Muslim governments, and impose their strict doctrine for living.

“There’s probably been a quarter-million Arabs killed in this struggle over the last 25 years, 100,000 killed in Algeria in the last 10 years alone, blood all over the walls,” Dyer said.

“But they haven’t succeeded even once and in the Arab world there are no Islamist governments.”

Very little attraction
The Islamists, Dyer said, utilize terrorist tactics in the hopes the governments they’re attacking will crack down on them “and force the people out into the streets and into their arms.”

But it hasn’t happened yet, Dyer said, because the type of regime the Islamists want to impose has very little attraction to the average Arab or Muslim.

“They’re thinking ‘why should I do this when what I’ll end up with is a bunch of crazy radicals with counter-rotating eyeballs who will make me live in the early 18th century? So I think I’ll stay home,’” Dyer said.

The far enemy
The Islamist project has two phases, Dyer said: uniting all Arab and Muslim countries into a radical alliance, and then taking on the West “and anybody else who stands in our way.”

Then, when the Islamists realized their plans weren’t working, they came up with another idea, Dyer said.

“They said ‘maybe rather than bash our heads endlessly against the wall trying to bring down these apostate Arab governments directly, maybe we need to stop attacking the near enemy and start attacking the far enemy,’” Dyer said.

“That far enemy is us, the West, and that is basically the strategic line that Al Qaeda begins to follow in the early ‘90s, although it doesn’t come out in the open in a big way until the end of the decade.”

Horrible example
The neo-conservatives, who believe in imposing American supremacy around the world, finally were able to exert their influence when George W. Bush became president, Dyer said.

“Basically Mr. Bush, from the outset, is surrounded by people to whom this project is here, indeed it defines their view of the world, ‘Pax Americana, American hegemony, in the interest of everybody, of course, but we might make a little profit at it too,’” Dyer said.

The 9/11 tragedy triggered the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. And, Dyer, said, the neo-conservative cabal within the Bush administration also wanted to find a country it could use “as a horrible example of somebody who has defied America.”

The so-called Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq and North Korea, provided the pool of potential candidates.

“Those are the sorts of candidates which would occur to people who had it in mind to impose Pax Americana because they are all countries which successfully defied the United States, and what you want to do in order to get this project rolling is pick one of those countries and whack it very severely in order to demonstrate to everyone else that they better shut up and sit down,” Dyer said.

The obvious choice was Iraq, Dyer said, “because it doesn’t have any weapons of mass destruction and is a relatively easy target because it’s small in population, and very flat.”

Pipe dream
Dyer doesn’t believe that, even with the American invasion, Osama and his colleagues will be able to achieve their ultimate goal.

Still, bin Laden hasn’t done too badly, Dyer said.

“The United States has invaded and occupied two Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, it now rules directly with the 82nd Airborne Division and various other units over 50 million Muslims, so Al Qaeda is doing reasonably well,” Dyer said.

“But the idea they will come to power across the whole of Islam and unite it and take on the West is nonsense, a pipe dream.”