Al Qaeda is supposedly organizing a big attack against the United States. On August 4 Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahiri, appeared on al Jazeera television. He warned the United States, "What you have seen in New York, Washington and Afghanistan, are only the initial losses and if you continue the same hostile policies the result will make you forget these horrors." Zawahiri is promising to hit us again, and harder than ever. On February 23, 1998 bin Laden's declaration of war on America stated: "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies ... is an individual duty for every Muslim ... in order to liberate the Al Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated an unable to threaten any Muslim." This is an Arab war of "national liberation" described by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in the following words: "We understand the aspirations of the peoples of Arab countries who are fighting for complete liberation from foreign dependence. At the same time the actions of Israel, which from the very first days of its existence began to threaten its neighbors and to pursue an unfriendly policy toward them, should be condemned."
In 1956 Khrushchev's opposition to Israel was based on a crude insight. "The population of Israel amounted to 1.5 million," he explained, "whereas the population of the Arab states was over 70 million." Arab victory was therefore inevitable. In communist thinking, inevitability is morality. And so the Russians supported Arab terrorism for many years. They trained and supported Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They equipped Egypt, Syria, Libya and Iraq with weapons. And when President Sadat broke with Moscow, the assassination of Sadat was yet another inevitability.
There are those who yearn to see the liquidation of Israel and the collapse of the United States. It is not only bin Laden's goal, but an old communist goal as well. Khrushchev said that he would bury us. He said, "Your grandchildren will live under communism." Of course, he was speaking to our grandparents. He was talking long-term objectives, long-term strategy. And when a former Russian intelligence officer (Alexander Litvinenko) says that Ayman al Zawahiri is a Russian FSB agent, we shouldn't be too surprised.
Of course, the lunatic fringe has long held that bin Laden is an American agent and 9-11 a CIA or Mossad operation. There is a curious preemptive symmetry to certain claims, perhaps on the order of a confession; and these may deserve further analysis. With a wink to the lunatic fringe, Russia's Sorcha Faal routinely feeds anti-American hokum to gullible conspiracy buffs on the Internet. Faal is worth noting because Russian crackpots are special - as seen in the example of Tatyana Koryagina and 9-11. The Russian special services know what's going on, and they cannot resist using their knowledge. Russia's president was a career KGB officer. Going back more than 100 years, the Russian secret police concocted some of the greatest conspiracy hoaxes of all time (including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and items related to the Kennedy assassination). With Sorcha Faal we stumble upon a rich tapestry of similar offerings. According to Faal, Russia is preparing for war against the United States. Russia's allies include China, Iran and the usual suspects. Furthermore, Faal suggests that America will be driven to "aggression" by a "triggering event" (presumably terrorist). Already, she says, elements in the U.S. military are seeking to avoid war through an uprising against President Bush. (Please note: rumors of an alleged U.S. military uprising are part and parcel of Moscow's pre-war gray terror scenario as described by a GRU defector Viktor Suvorov in a book titled Spetsnaz.) Faal suggests that World War III will begin with U.S. strikes into Iran, unless the American military overthrows Bush. She also says that plans have been laid for martial law in the United States (similar to the claims of other conspiracy theorists).
We should not take the ramblings of conspiracy theorists seriously, but there may be a method behind their madness. (It is something to keep in mind.) Nonsense is always nonsense, but sometimes it serves a purpose. Modern men are as credulous as medieval men. Rubbish may be elevated to holy write by a solitary yet successful prediction. And credibility has its uses.
Consider two related items - alleged speeches from the bowels of the Chinese Communist Party (as described by San Renxing at Epoch Times). Admittedly, Epoch Times isn't the most sophisticated publication, but there is something deeper than sophistication at work in its pages. In a speech titled "The war is not far from us and is the midwife of the Chinese century," the strategic situation is described in terms of "two scenarios." The first scenario is optimistic and the second is pessimistic. "If our biological weapons succeed in the surprise attack, the Chinese people will be able to keep their loss at a minimum in the fight against the U.S. If, however, the attack fails and triggers a nuclear retaliation from the U.S., China would perhaps suffer a catastrophe in which more than half of its population would perish. That is why we need to be ready with air defense systems for our big and medium-sized cities." In this alleged speech, war with America is described as inevitable. "It is indeed brutal to kill one or two hundred million Americans. But that is the only path that will secure a Chinese century, a century in which the CCP leads the world. We, as revolutionary humanitarians, do not want deaths. But if history confronts us with a choice between deaths of Chinese and those of Americans, we'd have to pick the latter...."
Epoch Times also refers to another speech, titled "The war is approaching us," allegedly delivered in 2003 by China's defense minister. "Cooperation is temporary," said Chi Haotian, "while competition and conflicts are absolute. They are the true subject of history." (This statement is fully consistent with Lenin and Mao.) Gen. Chi noted that, "China needs to import oil for its economic development." China will need 100 million tons of oil in 2010 and 200 million tons in 2020. Will the United States tolerate this? "The source of the majority of wars ... has been the struggle for basic living resources," Chi supposedly said.
I am skeptical of the speech's authenticity, though there is truth in it. Whoever wrote the speech was making an elementary calculation. And further: "[O]nly with the power that is capable of totally extinguishing Japan and crippling the United States can we win the peace; otherwise the Taiwan problem cannot be prolonged for more than 10 years, and there will be war within 10 years!"
If Gen. Chi Haotian didn't write these words he would nonetheless be inclined to second them. After all, the man is a communist; and the founder of Chinese communism (Mao Zedong) once wrote: "Every communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'" Mao also wrote: "The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution. This Marxist-Leninist principle of revolution holds good universally, for China and for all other countries." In preaching the inevitability of war with the capitalist West, Mao noted that "war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun."
Rumors of war abound. The contenders for global hegemony are Russia, China and the United States. Can anyone imagine World War III without these countries? The reason for this is simple. More than 90 percent of the world's military power is located in these three countries.
