SADDAM Hussein and Colonel Gadaffi led Arab nationalist, secular regimes in Iraq and Libya, and were both opposed to Al Qaeda on principle and fought it. They were both murdered after US-UK imperialist invasions of their countries, which brought Islamists to power and strengthened Al Qaeda’s position in both countries.
These invasions and murders took place after the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attack on the ‘Twin Towers’ in Manhattan, which killed thousands. However, the attack was greeted by Bush and Cheney with some enthusiasm as creating just the situation which they were looking for in order to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam, using lying propaganda that Iraq threatened the world with wmds.
Thus, after a very short, limited military campaign to overthrow the Taleban regime in Afghanistan, the hunt for bin Laden was ditched and forgotten in favour of a full-blooded invasion of Iraq to take over its oil, and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
In fact, bin Laden and his movement were very well known to the West. Part of his family lived in London and so did he for a period. A close alliance with the US emerged during the war to drive the Red Army out of Afghanistan in order to overthrow the Stalinist regime of Najibollah in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden’s movement was financed, armed, equipped and trained by the CIA, as part of their plan to bring down ‘soviet communism’. They were allies.
The imperialist masters and their Saudi servants fell out when it became obvious after the first Gulf War, that US imperialism was not going to leave the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. From that came the attempted attacks on the US, leading to September 11, 2001.
Bin Laden was then forgotten for years, as if he was dead. This was until President Obama, half way through his first presidential term, sought a way to reverse his declining fortunes. Osama bin Laden was quickly located and murdered to provide just the patriotic cloak – avenging the dead of the Twin Towers – that was needed to open Obama’s campaign for a second term.
Under the nose of the Pakistani military, who were protecting him, bin Laden was shot to death and his body dumped at sea – he obviously had too much to tell to be allowed to live and stand trial.
However, a Pakistani court has just sentenced the US collaborator, who located bin Laden, to 30 years in jail for treason.
Gadaffi and Saddam fought Al Qaeda and were murdered by the US and UK, despite the fact that Osama killed thousands of US citizens. Pakistan has jailed for 30 years the ‘hero’ who led the death squad to the bin Laden residence. As a consequence, Pakistan has neither been bombed, had enormous sanctions imposed on it nor occupied. The US is not demanding that he be freed or else.
Instead, US aid to the Pakistani ruling class has been cut by $30 million, a million for every year that their agent received – and the US remains a strategic ally of the Pakistani ruling class.
Obama and Clinton have delivered their cynical slap on the wrist. They were not going to allow memories of the Twin Towers collapsing on thousands of corpses get in the way of their secret diplomacy to to try to further US imperialist interests in Central Asia.
US imperialism is bloodsoaked from head to foot and cynically rotten to the core. Along with its UK ally, it will never change. They must be overthrown by socialist revolutions to secure humanity’s future.
