Welcome to a new decade. Not surprisingly, al-Qaeda – that formless, shadowy global juggernaut – continues to rule the headlines. It’s been nine years since one of the world’s fastest assumptions of guilt turned the once obscure ‘organization’ into a worldwide threat. Nine years on, al-Qaeda is viewed by many as a well established, well funded, global organization with operatives and training camps in a variety of countries. In short, it is perceived to be a well organized radical militant organization that has the power to seriously threaten the West.

It is here that two very interesting curiosities have to be addressed. The first is an Op-Ed by Robin Cook published in The Guardian four weeks before his death. Cook served as British Foreign Secretary between 1997 and 2001, and later as the Leader of the House of Commons, a position from which he resigned in 2003 in protest over the invasion of Iraq. In the Op-Ed, Cook wrote the following…

“Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.”

This, of course, contradicts widespread assertions that the group’s origin was organic. It is further bolstered by the fact that during the Bosnian conflict some of the same mujahideen assets employed in Afghanistan were tapped to partake in operations in Bosnia with the same system of covert funding and support provided them.

The second curiosity comes by way of Pierre-Henry Bunel, a former member of French intelligence. In an interview in the 2004 spring edition of World Affairs, Bunel said the following…

“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the ‘TV watcher’ to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money.”

In December of 2001, Bunel was convicted by a special French military court for “passing classified documents that identified potential NATO bombing targets in Serbia to a Serbian agent during the Kosovo war in 1998”. His case was transferred from civilian court to ensure that his assertions regarding al-Qaeda would not become public knowledge. In short, with regards to Yugoslavia, Bunel was correct. Those with whom he was accused of passing information to routinely claimed that Bosnian and Albanian guerrillas were being backed by al-Qaeda. In truth, while some of the very same assets used during the Afghan conflict were in play, the Bosnian Defense Fund, which funded the afore mentioned guerrillas, was actually an entity created by way of the Riggs Bank and directed by Richard Pearle and Douglas Feith, the latter of whom would go on to become the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy between 2001 and 2005 during which he supervised the Office Of Special Plans which played an integral role in engineering the perceived, though entirely false, connection between ‘al-Qaeda’ and the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Is all of this merely conspiracy theory? Personally, I’m not a fan of the term. There’s the truth and there’s the perception of it that we’re comfortable with. One thing that remains factual is that on the FBI’s most wanted page, Bin Laden’s crimes do not include those committed on 9/11, though entirely vague language is used to slightly imply the possibility (and please don’t bring up the video tape ‘evidence’, there’s more holes there than could be produced by gofers). The fact remains that even the FBI doesn’t have enough substantial evidence to hold him to account for it…

“USAMA BIN LADEN IS WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH THE AUGUST 7, 1998, BOMBINGS OF THE UNITED STATES EMBASSIES IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA, AND NAIROBI, KENYA. THESE ATTACKS KILLED OVER 200 PEOPLE. IN ADDITION, BIN LADEN IS A SUSPECT IN OTHER TERRORIST ATTACKS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

No direct mention of the attacks of 9/11 despite the fact that he was singled out as the ring leader in the same conspicuously expedient fashion as Lee Oswald was with regards to the Kennedy assassination.

“MURDER OF U.S. NATIONALS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES; CONSPIRACY TO MURDER U.S. NATIONALS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES; ATTACK ON A FEDERAL FACILITY RESULTING IN DEATH”.

That last bit – “attack on a federal facility resulting in death” – also applies to the afore mentioned attacks outside the United States unless it’s implying that the facility was The Pentagon. Were that the case, one would think the FBI would spell it out a little better. Instead, it remains wholly ambiguous.

If anything, this decade should see the diminishment of the use of the term ‘al-Qaeda’ as a representation of some ominous, global ‘legion of doom’. Three days into it, that doesn’t seem too likely, even though I could leave this house, recruit some troubled soul to carry out an attack, and then claim it the work of ‘al-Qaeda’ and probably have a plethora of different groups throughout the world applaud me for it and help generate an entirely false sense of attachment to them. In the end, the power that we give the name only makes the fear of it greater. That fear, though initially focused on an external threat, has been used to diminish our rights and freedoms more than anything else. And don’t think for a second that the peddling of the name as some representation of a high functioning global network isn’t in the best interest of those that desire, and profit, from the War On Terror – because it’s the ace in the hole. In these troubled economic times the defense sector remains as vital as it always has been. The United States spends more on defense that the rest of the world combined, and it cuts deals abroad to ensure that the defense sector is protected. Case in point, one of the largest “aid” pledges made recently was to Israel. The sum total? $30 billion dollars over the next decade. The catch? That the Israelis promise to spend 75% of it to purchase military hardware manufactured in the United States.

According to The Congressional Research Service, some 17% of the total aid budget of the United States in 2008, some $5 billion dollars, was spent on military aid. Of that $5 billion dollars, $4.7 billion of it came with the caveat that it be spent purchasing US arms.

Of course, that isn’t the whole story, nor is $5 billion dollars the ceiling with regards to ‘aid’. In 2009, the Obama Administration increased the strategic aid to Iraq and Afghanistan to $50 billion dollars. Of that, $15 billion dollars alone went towards Afghan defense. It’s what one refers to as a win-win. On one hand, the American people support the defense sector given the burden created by foreign operations. On the other, the government gives military aid to those nations that it occupies who then turn around and invest it back into the US defense sector. And without al-Qaeda out there, well, business wouldn’t be as good.