M
Max Power
Guest
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/...1523838,00.html
Robin Cook, former Foreign Secratary of the U.K.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaida
Al-Qaeda (Arabic: "the foundation" or "the base")
And then of course, there's the rest of the article.
Robin Cook, former Foreign Secratary of the U.K.
So, that's a very interesting definitino of Al Qaida, partially backed up by wikipedia.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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaida
Al-Qaeda (Arabic: "the foundation" or "the base")
And then of course, there's the rest of the article.
Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.
The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.