The Shadow of Osama bin Laden

I don’t know what to say about this, though it’s not entirely unpredictable, America being America.

Like the brutal slaying of an innocent Brazilian electrician by trigger-happy police in London in July this year, Osama bin Laden has successfully ‘pulled the strings’, again.

Countless zillions of dollars have been spent on meaningless security measures throughout the western world that have made our daily lives more difficult, when just a small fraction of that could have been invested in genuine and successful chase of the terrorist fugitive in Afghanistan or Pakistan immediately after the US invasion.

But no, instead the usual Washington strategic interest, otherwise known as ‘American greed’, dropped the focus on Osama, and pivoted onto an entirely different direction, like one of those divining forked twig that seeked out oil (instead of water), inevitably towards pre-designated Iraq.

What and who was al Qaeda before Iraq? At most, just a terrorist band of crazies, shunned even by the majority of Arabs and Muslims. The occasional embassy bombings in Africa or the suicide attack of an unsuspecting warship at Aden.

But look now - What are they now after the American invasion of Iraq, the reckless killing of Iraqi innocents a la Vietnam, and the criminal brutality perpetrated on Falluja, even cold bloodedly executing an already wounded and unarmed man in a mosque.

The Americans have unwittingly but unforgiveably turn this pack of murderous fanatical thugs into a band of martyrs cum folk heros. al Qaeda has benefited from the unexpected windfall of American blunders and bumbling.

Today, many Muslims support and secretly praise their terrorism as the Israelis had once praised the terrorist organisations of Menachem Begin's Irgun and the Stern Gang. Even with Dr Azahari's known terrorist bombings of innocent people in Bali, especially the Balinese, some Muslims still attempt to justify his unforgiveable slaughter of women and children.

The common strand that binds these terrorist supporters is the hatred for the USA in particular and the West in general. The war in Iraq has heightened Arab and Muslims' sense of grievance, a feeling of being unjustly treated by pro-Israel USA and the primordial instinct to strike back, either directly or by heroic and fearless surrogates.

So Rigoberto Alpizar, like Brazilian de Menedes in London, was executed as if Osama had ordered the slaying. Thanks to the Bush Administration.