The United States has reaffirmed that it will attack Iraq and remove the present regime from power — not because it is afraid of the regime but because it is afraid of Al-Qaeda. This looks like a puzzle but is a fact.
The US says that it fears that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction may end up in the hands of Al-Qaeda. That means it does not fear Saddam and his formidable army with hundreds of thousands of men who possess, as claimed by Washington, weapons of mass destruction.
But Washington fears the fewer than 300 Al-Qaeda members whom US forces besieged in the Tora Bora mountains. The US failed to find these men and was forced to launch bombing campaigns against them.
The Al-Qaeda members were able to resist and then withdraw to hideouts around the world. They might have dispersed into small groups, but the United States fears that they have become ghosts, with the biggest and most dangerous among them being Osama Bin Laden, who is still threatening the United States. Assume that 200 of the 300 Al-Qaeda members escaped the US bombings in Tora Bora. America is now mobilizing its forces to attack this small number of people. Surprisingly, it will not be in the form of a direct confrontation but by chasing and destroying the means which the US fears might fall into the hands of those ghosts.
The US knows that it will not be able to exterminate Al-Qaeda. So it is now chasing the means which Al-Qaeda may try to use it against it. The US wants to confiscate and destroy the weapons. I cannot say that the claims of the United States — the protector of international security and the world’s only superpower, which also has a major humanitarian responsibility — are false.
However, I should understand that its fears are not going to end there. The fears will turn into embarrassing dreams and then nightmares disturbing its sleep. After chasing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it will then turn to the nuclear weapons in Iran and Pakistan and then in North Korea. It will not stop there but think of destroying the nuclear weapons in Russia, in France and in other countries.
So long as Washington believes that these 200 Al-Qaeda men, who are in hiding and who are looking for weapons of destruction to use against the US, pose a big threat to its security, it will take the necessary precautions against them and confiscate all weapons of mass destruction, which may fall in the hands of Al-Qaeda ghosts.
The United States should also think of the mass destructive weapons in its own factories, laboratories and arsenals. What will the US do when it comes to destroying its own weapons?
I have been looking for a long time for an answer to another intriguing question. Why have we not seen even a single subversive act inside the US after the 9/11 attacks? We have seen terrorist attacks linked to Al-Qaeda suspects all over the world, mostly in Islamic countries. Any sane man would say that these Al-Qaeda ghosts should have concentrated their operations against the US, which considers them enemy number one, and not in the lands of their relatives and loved ones. I want to know more about the reality of these ghosts the United States wants to chase.
Arab News From the Local Press 17 February 2003
