General Discussion

eridani

(51,907 posts) Tue Dec 11, 2012, 07:34 AM Dec 2012

Syria and Libya: reprise of funding Islamic militants in Afghanistan in the 80s?

http://www.nationofchange.org/case-just-looking-stupid-not-so-bright-bulbs-white-house-and-pentagon-1355156668

Flash forward a decade or so. As the Arab Spring, a wave of popular uprisings against sclerotic dictatorships and anachronistic, ossified sultanates in the Middle East, swept across the Arabian peninsula and North Africa, eventually the cartoonish tyrant Col. Muammar Gaddafi came under threat. Libyans of many political persuasions poured into the streets in the capital of Tripoli, the second city of Benghazi and elsewhere, and a civil war erupted. The US, which in many of the Arab Spring uprisings chose to side, at least until the cause was seen as doomed, on the side of the dictators (Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain) or the royals (Tunisia), in Libya’s case quickly moved to back the rebels. Oddly though, many of those rebels the US was backing turn out to have been fundamentalist Muslims, sometimes linked directly to Al Qaeda. The blowback came quickly too, with a deadly attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, in which the visiting US ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans were killed.

That disaster hasn’t deterred the US from a policy of backing Al Qaeda, though. In Syria, where another popular uprising against a brutal tyrant, this time Bashar Hafez al-Assad, the son of long-time Syrian dictator Hafiz al-Assad, finds the US enthusiastically if surreptitiously helping to arm and organize the rebels, despite knowing that much of the rebellion’s leadership and many of its fighters are fundamentalist Muslims who self-identify with Al Qaeda. These people are being supplied with not just rifles, machine guns, mortars and anti-aircraft weapons, but with deadly Stinger wire-guided, shoulder-fired missiles -- the kind that are easily smuggled and that are easily capable of taking down a 747 or A330 jumbo jet on takeoff or landing from as much as a mile away.

You might think that at least someone in the White House War Room, or in the Pentagon, would look back at the history of arming and training terrorists and fanatics and say, “Hey, we provided those kinds of weapons to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan back in the 1970s and 1980s when they were fighting the Soviets there, and we provided money, arms and training to Osama Bin Laden back then too to help him organize an army of volunteer Muslim “freedom fighters” against the Russians, and that didn’t work out so well in the end.”

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Syria and Libya: reprise of funding Islamic militants in Afghanistan in the 80s? (Original Post) eridani Dec 2012 OP

There's that "Al Qaeda" boogeyman again Kolesar Dec 2012 #1

Al Qaeda is no longer an organization--it is a brand eridani Dec 2012 #2

Yes, I agree Kolesar Dec 2012 #4

This is a far, far worse fiasco. We're taking sides in a Sunni vs Shiia religious war. leveymg Dec 2012 #5

In Libya and Syria, there are a dozen groups which would enjoy dropping some US flag carriers. leveymg Dec 2012 #3

Kolesar

(31,182 posts)

1. There's that "Al Qaeda" boogeyman again

Reply to eridani (Original post)

Tue Dec 11, 2012, 07:43 AM

Dec 2012

Did they clone Osama Bin Laden and recreate the magic of the religious madman?

eridani

(51,907 posts)

2. Al Qaeda is no longer an organization--it is a brand

Reply to Kolesar (Reply #1)

Tue Dec 11, 2012, 08:42 AM

Dec 2012

Fundie nutcases find it attractive whether or not they belong to any formal organization.

Kolesar

(31,182 posts)

4. Yes, I agree

Reply to eridani (Reply #2)

Tue Dec 11, 2012, 08:55 AM

Dec 2012

And we are not recreating the fiasco of arming Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and building the organization. It is not a parallel situation. I cannot say we are not making mistakes, though.

leveymg

(36,418 posts)

5. This is a far, far worse fiasco. We're taking sides in a Sunni vs Shiia religious war.

Reply to Kolesar (Reply #4)

Tue Dec 11, 2012, 11:28 AM

Dec 2012

You're right, it's not a parallel situation. With bin Laden & Co. in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya, we were primarily dealing with ISI and Saudi GID, the Director of which, Prince Turki, was bin Laden's case manager. We were fighting a secret war using regional proxies against the Russians and Serbs, and their regional allies. Just as we have been since 1917. Nobody thought twice about that conflict - situation normal, not a destabilizing change.

But, this is different. The US has not until now so openly taken sides in an overtly Sunni vs. Shi'ia Holy regional war that goes back 13 centuries. In the Iran-Iraq and Gulf wars there wasn't the same intra-Muslim Jihadi element and motive driving it. Since 2011, the regime change operations in Libya and Syria had the CIA running guns and fighters through databases and distributing them through dozens of Islamist groups from countries all over the Muslim world. But, they are all Sunni. Nobody seems to be in charge of the Holy War in Syria against Iran and Shi'ia, except maybe the Saudi Salaafists, and we sure as hell aren't in control once these fighters and heavy weapons are in the field, and what they will do later with the missiles we give them or allow them to loot.

leveymg

(36,418 posts)

3. In Libya and Syria, there are a dozen groups which would enjoy dropping some US flag carriers.

Reply to Kolesar (Reply #1)

Tue Dec 11, 2012, 08:45 AM

Dec 2012

And, with 15,000 looted Libyan MANPADs floating around, you don't have to be a jet-setting sheikh former CIA contractor to do it. The stinking things go for all of US$2,000 on black markets around the world. Less, now that the supply has just expanded by maybe 500%

Terrorism for the hell of it, and with Libyan MANPADs and portable antitank weapons supplied by the Saudis in Syria, it's cheap and it's easy.

One technical correction offered to the OP: MANPADS (shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles aren't wire guided - that would be a TOW antitank missile), and the ones the Syrian opposition has been provided with are Russian design SAM-7 or SAM-16, not the US Stingers that went to the Mujahaddin in Afghanistan.

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