{"id":4247,"date":"2010-07-22T08:56:27","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T12:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4247"},"modified":"2010-07-22T15:43:05","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T19:43:05","slug":"did-we-create-al-qaeda-the-database","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/07\/22\/did-we-create-al-qaeda-the-database\/","title":{"rendered":"did we<\/u> create al Qaeda [the Database<\/em>]?…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"RobinRobin Cook<\/strong><\/a> was the Leader of the House of Commons who resigned over the UK’s involvement in the Iraq War. He was Foreign Secretary during Blair’s first term, but was demoted in June 2001 with Blair’s reelection and replaced by Jack Straw. This is from an opinion piece he wrote after the terrorist attack on London, some two weeks before his death from a heart attack at age 59:<\/div>\n
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The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means<\/a>
The Guardian<\/strong>
by Robin Cook
8 July 2005<\/div>\n

…Osama bin Laden is no more a true representative of Islam than General Mladic, who commanded the Serbian forces, could be held up as an example of Christianity. After all, it is written in the Qur’an that we were made into different peoples not that we might despise each other, but that we might understand each other. 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. 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.<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

… In particular, it would be perverse if the focus of the G8 on making poverty history was now obscured by yesterday’s bombings. The breeding grounds of terrorism are to be found in the poverty of back streets, where fundamentalism offers a false, easy sense of pride and identity to young men who feel denied of any hope or any economic opportunity for themselves. A war on world poverty may well do more for the security of the west than a war on terror. And in the privacy of their extensive suites, yesterday’s atrocities should prompt heart-searching among some of those present. President Bush is given to justifying the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that by fighting terrorism abroad, it protects the west from having to fight terrorists at home. Whatever else can be said in defence of the war in Iraq today, it cannot be claimed that it has protected us from terrorism on our soil.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The Wikipedia<\/font><\/strong><\/em><\/a> article on al Qaeda summarizes the counterargument to Robin Cook’s assessment:<\/div>\n
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Alleged CIA involvement<\/a><\/strong>
Main article: Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama bin Laden<\/a><\/u><\/sup><\/div>\n

Experts debate whether or not the al-Qaeda attacks were blowback from the American CIA’s "Operation Cyclone<\/a><\/strong>" program to help the Afghan mujahideen. Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, has written that al-Qaeda and Bin Laden were "a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies", and that "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.<\/p>\n

Munir Akram, Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations from 2002 to 2008, wrote in a letter published in the New York Times on January 19, 2008:<\/div>\n
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