The US war on terror was stopped in its tracks by Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network. He used the same techniques the Americans had used to challenge Islam. This is, whatever you might call it, a religious war. The Christians are trying to push the Muslims into irrelevance, but the Muslims are fighting back. The British faced a similar war in India. But that took 90 years to fruit: from the Brahmin, Mangal Pandey, who objected to lard on the bullets the East India Company provided, to Mahatma Gandhi, who perfected the non-violent fight for independence, who led the movement to fight for independence. Only the Muslims could have stopped the United States in an open war. But their victory would not last 90 years, probably half that. The tactics used to confront the invader is different.

Today, only the insurgent's dastardly behavour, as they say, is reported. Even the Arab media has toned it coverage. To make sure it does, its media is regularly killed. It is dangerous to be from the media if one has a different view from the West of the civil war in Iraq. The reporters were the megaphones of the invasion. Later, they took a more neutral stance, and now are cowed because their number is killed, both by the Americans and the insurgents. Iraq is now more dangerous than Vietnam ever was. But instead of understanding the enemy, the West not only annoys it but gets the world to accept its assessment. Osama Bin Laden is kept alive, at least in the public imagination, since he is the leader that the war on terror is hoping to kill. But he has become the beneficiary, just as Ho Chi Minh was. Ho Chi Minh's death robbed the Americans of an enemy in Vietnam, and they had to leave with tails behind their legs, This will happen in Iraq too.

But Al-Qaeda is an American creation. It was used to get the Soviet Union out of Afghanisation so that it could get into the mess there. It forgot, or did not realise, that Al-Qaeda members were Islamic fundamentalists, who accepted American money and training to eventually overthrow them as well. To it, the Soviet Union, now Russia, and the United States were foreigners out to rule Afghanistan, and that it would not allow. The US knows a lot of about Al-Qaeda – its operations, its senior operatives. that it is built like an American organisation – but Al-Qaeda is successful because it gives its leaders in the field the freedom to operate within a set of rules given it. Washington pokes holes in what it sees as Al-Qaeda's operations, but it says them so that the Americans are not unduly frightened. Al-Qaeda taunts the United States with frequent video and audo tapes to keep the Americans frightened. It came into Iraq after the US invaded the country. Most of its fighters are foreign, now in about the same proportion of the US-led coalition. For all this interest in seeing Osama Bin Laden dead, it is a fact that if he is, the Americans would in time leave Iraq with their tails behind their back. It took only seven years after Ho Chi Minh's death for the Americans to leave South Vietnam in defeat.

THE MESS IN IRAQ today would not have happened if the United States had planned before Iraq was invaded. Their plans were of quislings, who were not given positions in the Iraqi government unless they held Western citizenship. In Australia, its citizens could not be in politics if they held dual citizenships. In Iraq, that was a necessity. Iraq had a working government, but that was destroyed for no reason than no planning. No one could be in the new government who held a Baathist Party membership. That restriction threw the experienced Sunnis out of the new Iraq. It was a precipe for disaster. The United States and those who followed it depended on quislings who had an agenda of their own, and who told lies without batting an eyelid. The United States was sucked into a quagmire. The Sunnis created an insurgency, knowing it would not be ruling power, and had no interest in a new Iraq. It got fighters from the Middle East, those who could not go back to their countries after fighting for the United States in Afghanistan against Russia. Osama Bin Laden. a wealthy Saudi Arabian who is not allowed back, was, after all, once a CIA agent. So was Saddam Hussein, whose trial makes him a great figure in the Middle East each time the trial fumbles. And it has fumbled more often than not. The United States wants to hang him for what he did as a head of state. All his arguments are waved aside. They created a law that did not exist when he ordered the killing as head of state. The United States had, after all, supported Augustino Pinochet as president of Chile, and turned a blind eye when he allegedly committed the offenses for which he is now found guilty. The killings were done with United States connivance, in Iraq and Chile. The new circumstance in Iraq meant he would have to be killed.

Singapore, priggish at the best of times, now consider casinos, to attract the foreigner. Elaborate rules are drawn to keep the Singaporeans out. Singaporeans are warned not to enter these casinos except under very stringent rules that favour the rich and the powerful. Similar rules are in force in Malaysia, but there is a special room in Genting Highlands casino, for instance, for Malaysian cabinet ministers, sultans and Muslim highrollers - for whom, like the Muslim poor, gambling is banned in Islam - and kept hidden from the populace. But how many former and present cabinet ministers break it every time they enter the casino in Genting Highlands? The casinos, in Singapore and Malaysia, are for the foreigner, for whom facilities are built to which its own citizens are banned. Singapore is a rest-and-recreating centre for American troops who were then fighting in Vietnam in the 1960s, and is today host to about 2,000 troops of the island. mainly as insurance against Malaysia attacking the island republic. But both are kept on a tight leash by the West and Caucasian countries. The governments in both keep the citizens in the dark while its leaders take orders from the West, usually the United States. Especially in the war on terror. The governments of Singapore and Malaysia are with the United States, but most of the people are not. To stay in power, they believe they must. They warn of 'Muslim fundamentalists' on behalf of the United. And behave as prostitutes do. They expect to remain in power for all times. But so did Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. And look where they are now!

But in this information war, the enemy is stupid, reacts to what the Americans do, and cannot think or act on their own. But they are not. The Americans thought Ho Chi Minh stupid. But and his advisers, one of whose books on guerilla warfare is taught in military schools in France and the United States. They blame them for not fighting set piece battles. But they will not. In guerila warfare, they fight when the enemy is not looking. Any damage it causes is victory for them. Ho Chi Minh wrote poetry in his free time while he was leading the guerilla warfare or as President of North Vietnam or as President of Vietnam. Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian son of privilege who exchange a cave for a big house, and riches for poverty. He is obviously a strategist. The Americans recruited him to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, and gave him weapons and everything needed. But Osama had a different aim. And that aim he is perfecting. The more the West particularly the Americans blame him for their difficulty in Iraq or in the Middle East, the more his support grows. He remains intractibly opposed to the West, has touched base with the poor Muslims around the world in which the Muslim leaders are supportive of American global war on terrorism. Malaysia's rather harsh words on the bombing of Amman is a case in point.

The problem in Iraq is also globalisation. President Bush and the Western leaders have taken the Christian crusade seriously and promises to drive the Muslim out to the sea. But so has their enemy, Osama Bin Laden. So they are in intractible position. Their respective positions are sent throughout the world, and the West does not know either Islam or the messages Osama Bin Laden sents to the Muslims. We know that by the Western leaders reassuring the battle is won by elaborate explanations on why Osama Bin Laden will lose. But Osama Bin Laden's message is simple: Islam is under attack by the hated Christians, and it is the duty of all Muslims to fight it. And the message is distributed by globalisation. If the West thinks the average Muslim is illiterate, so is the average Christian. His explanations of why they are winning is meant for the average Christian or others. But globalisation spreads it around, and the Muslim in the Pacific Island hears of it. The Western system of communication is far superior; it needs it to spread its message, but unwanted messages also go through. In the present battle against Islam, the West fights through proxies throughout the world. And given a twist by the communications giants it controls. The news reporters, many of whom have been found to be their agents, are now in the forefront of that battle. In Iraq, they are targetted by the US military for fear of their reporting what it does not want the outside world to see, hear or read. But the Muslims in power are with the United States, as the Shah of Iran's senior officials were, while those who oppose what is happening in the Middle East are not. As the South Asian eartquake revealed, while President Musharraf and his governemt are with the United States in this war on terror, those in the rural areas destroyed last week had made martyrs of those killed fighting the United States.

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI HAS left the "security" of the Green Zone for the "security" of London. He wanted to tell the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, of his government's plan for the referendum on October 15. But neither he nor members of his government has visited the people of Iraq of what the referendum brings. It is too unsafe. He and his ministers have not ventured out of the Green Zone for fear of being killed by the people. In President Talabani's terms, those people who are against the referendum and those who create mayhem in Iraq are terrorists, and should be eradicated, preferably by the United States or Britain or by the other countries who are part of the US-established multi-lateral force. But the insurgency would not last if locals do not support it, as President Talabani should know by now. First the country is invaded, then the election is set so that the elected are kept isolated in the Green Zone, and those elected ask those who put them in power to remain. President Talabani was "thankful" in London for the multinational effort in Iraq. He blamed Iraqis for protesting against the US-led invasion, as "Saddam Hussein as a bad man". But the United States dealt with the "bad man" for nearly 30 years, had made him a prime CIA source, like Osama Bin Laden, and then turned against him, because he did not agree with Washington's plans for the region. President Talabani now faces Saddam Hussein in this attempt to turn Iraq into a US colony. The British tried it earlier, turning the Kurdish, Sunni and Shia provinces of the Ottoman Empre, and called it Iraq after the first world war. They knew their Middle Eastern history, and made sure the Sunnis, who formed 20 per cent of Iraq, as the rulers. They formed Iraq to defeat the French colonial power, who took Syria earlier, and established a Shia president there although he was from a minority Shia sect, the Aluwaites. Nearly 80 per cent of Syrians are Sunnis. The Prime Minister of Iraq, dressed in a woman's dress and flayed alive in Baghdad in 1958 was a Sunni Muslim. The governments that followed is Sunni, of which the latest is Saddam Hussein, which the Americans, like a bull in a China shop, erased, and brought about the present civil war.

What we see in Iraq is Vietnam redux. What was once a clash between capitalism and communism is today between Christianity and Islam. But the thinking of the Cold War is superimposed on it. Generals fight their wars tomorrow by what they learnt yesterday. They do not have to think afresh. But his opponents fight the war in Iraq with nationalism and religion, powerful rallying points, and the fact that the country has been invaded, and they are sitting pretty, while the generals just invade the country at the behest of the politicians. Since this is also an information war, we do not hear much of what the opposition, the insurgent, does. But, as the Vietnamese showed, it does not matter. This time, in Iraq, the street view is broadcast by Al Jazeera, which became even closer to the Arab street by supporting one of its reporters who has gone to jail in Madrid for interviewing Osama Bin Laden. We are now told that all journalists the West has in Iraq do not report as they see fit, but only report what the West want it to report. It is us versus them all over again. And it is them that will wil the war in Iraq. That is why Abu Musab's twelve top lieutenants being killed, as the US generals say, has no effect on the war in Iraq.

The war in Iraq is an information battle. The collapse of the two towers in Iraq is blamed on the Moslems, but, as we learn, how why were the Jews and others moving away from the twin towers a week before the attack? They knew something the rest of the world did not. In Britain, an Algerian pilot is arrested while he is resting from a regular flight because his name mistakenly appears in the American records on the 9/11 disaster. But it is the West that controls the information. So it thinks. But the people around the world, Muslims and others, see a West cracking up, plugging information hole after another, to see that its press releases get pride of place around the world. But education is a great leveller, and the great unwashed are mostly educated, though not in Western universities, and certainly not in the Western tradition, and they think for themselves. The Al Jazeera reporter in Spain is jailed for interviewing Osama Bin Laden. It puts out a dangerous signal for Western media reporters, especially if they are caught by the insurgents. It is a de facto statement that the Western reporters are bedded with the Western governments all over the world. I have always had a suspecion this is true, but the Western governments, by its action, confirms it.

The ordinary people in the Muslim world did not believe in the world as dictated by the West, and it was affecting the West's relations with Indonesia, particularly its leaders led by its president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Australia has even offered its police and forensic teams to assist the Indonesian police in solving the Bali bombings. Or is it to ensure that the Indonesian police do not implicate it? The West has gots its reading right, even if it killed a few thousands of its citizens in a country it has long wanted to destabilise. In the matter of real politik, what does it matter if a few thousand of its citizens are killed? After all, its citizens have turned out to be its worst enemy. It can kill more of them and lay the blame on Al Qeada or its fraternal organisation. That appears to be what has happened in Bali, and the West is hoping that the people will eventually accept it as the work of Osama Bin Laden or his fraternal cousins. It is not right, you understand, that the governments in the West are accused of killing its own citizens. It can killed Third World citizens with impunity, and keep no record of it as in Iraq, while it maintains the fiction that its own citizens are sacrosanct. Lyndie England is jailed for three years for abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, while prisoners are kept in Guantanano prison for years for being a Muslim and are denied rights in a US court to challenge their illegal detention.

President Bush's reign should also be the end of America as a great power. President Bush diverted more money to rebuild the south than it has in iraq, which it first destroyed and now tries to wriggle out of rebuilding it. He, as commander in chief, allowed the US armed forces to use Depleted Uranium bullets in Iraq. The US does not announce in advance that its troops are using DU bullets or its navy ships are using nuclear weapons. But it obviously does. It has withdrawn USaid from those countries who are not prepared to vote against any attempt to bring the US to the International Criminal Court. It has signed an agreement with North Korea not to make nuclear weapons in return for American recognition and aid. All the time, US forces in South Korea carry DU bullets and other weapons of mass destruction. It is reverse side of globalisation. There is an assumption that globalisation should only be good. But the good is only for the Western powevers, as China is finding herself. But Osama Bin Laden, who may be dead but is kept alive by the United States, and the Arab Muslim revolt in the Middle East is the reverse of globalisation. The US has got countries around the world to decry the Arab nations and Al-Qaeda and the Arab attack on New York. It is President Bush and the Western countries that now shiver in their pants. President Bush had a great role in this. And for which he will rue in his retirement.

The Hindus ended the British empire. The two men credited with ending the British empire are Mangal Pandey, who objected to biting off the lard off British bullets, and paid with his life, and Mahatma Gandhi, a British agent at one time. But he destroyed the British Empire. The Muslims now fight against the American empire. The Americans thought there was no difference in Shia and Sunni Islam in Arab lands. There is. Sunni Islam is dominant in Arab lands, Shia Islam in Iran, which is not an Arab nation. If Saddam Hussein is put on trial, Sunni Muslims all over the middle East will rise in his favour. A death sentence for him, which if not carried out, will evoke victory for Sunni Muslims. Saddam Hussein, a former CIA agent like Osama Bin Laden, will be fighting for Arab Islam with his death or with his time in jail. The US have aroused Muslims all over the world, by trying to control the Middle East, and who are now in jihad over the United States. The moderate Islamists in the West and elsewhere will you that it is wrong, but the Muslim street do not read the talking heads or the intellectuals in Islam. What happens in Pakistan is instructive. The government of Parvez Musharaf is with the United States, even helping the US capture Pakistani citizens to Guantanamo prison where they are held without charge and without hope of release. But the people do not agree with their government, and go about calling the US a "satanic" country. The Muslims will be the end of the American empire.

I spent some time in Vietnam. When i arrived in 1965, the US forces stood at 49,000 but when I left it was was 500,000. The US eventually lost the war there. Similarly, The Iraqis are united in their aim to throw out the invader. The Syrians do not like the pressure their government is under and would rally to its aid no matter what. In Lebanon, the US cannot dictate terms. So why should Washington believe it can control the shots in Teheran? Twenty years as an Islamic theocracy has not dulled the Iranian worldview. The Iranian knows it had had more peace in 25 years of an Islamic government than it had in 50 years of an American rule. There is a freedom allowed no where else in the Middle East, and the government does not intrude in the people's lives. It is an autocratic government but it is an elected one. There is, I dare say, more freedom under the mullahs in Teheran than there is in Malaysia. With this one difference, that the unity of the Iranians are such that they will defend their government and their nation to the death. They spill their blood to protect their state. Death in the defence of their state is glory. Death does not have the terror and fright it has in the West, especially if it is on the battlefield. The US moves to punish individual Middle East states for its failings. But each attack is seen collectively as an attack on the Arabs and Muslims. So one Muslim hurt in one country is the hurt of all. The unifying factor here is Osama Bin Laden. I have to harp on the Iraq experience before I can of Iran. The attack on Iran is targetted in the say it was on Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the other states. Iran is not in the Middle East, but it is a Muslim country. So there is a unity of purpose against Washington's threat in all Muslim and Middle East countries. That is a greater inhibitor of Washington's threats than the Iranian response.

And they were aided by the Malayan Communist Party, whose leader Chin Peng was awarded the OBE for his help against the Japanese during the Second World War. The British were forced to let get of Malaysia, and held on till 1957 by which time they had enough Malaysians educated (and brainwashed) by then. Just as the British-belever Gandhi did in India, and Osama Bin Laden, the CIA operative turned intractable enemy of the US, Chin Peng was forced to confront the British. Chin Peng is not allowed to settle in Malaysia as the other communists are, and whether he can is before the courts here. The next history of Malaya will reveal all this.

Others were shocked – why am I not shocked at this? – that the Malaysian government presence was non-existent. It does not understand, they said in high dudgeon, what it could have learnt from this occasion. The country is after all going to the dogs, Pavlovian or otherwise, and no wonder. It is not conditioned as they are, and it is the loser for that. But it is when they cast their votes for the little reality game show the hosts had prepared for them that they outdid themselves. It was Kerry, of course, who won. Nader came in third. They voted John Kerry as firmly as they voted the BN in March. But the US Embassy also ensured that those of their guests would not do the unPavlovian thing and write in instead some anti-American rascals for the US presidency like Tun Mahathir Mohamed for president with Osama Bin Laden as vice-president. This is not as far fetched a pair as you might think. After all, President Bush has Mr Richard Cheney for vice-president.

Getting the citizens to panic or be deluded is an old political trick to divert attention from reality. The United States relies on its old friend, Osama Bin Laden, to frighten its citizens to return a bumbling Administration to power.

When this theory runs aground, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, it flounders to a degree that frightens the Orientalist. Osama Bin Laden is criticised as a Muslim extremist, and his actions are poured on Islam. But is he not an extremist fighting to secure his space who happened to be a Muslim? Is it not strange that when Catholicism rears its ugly head in Northern Ireland, it is the Catholic extremists, not the Catholic religion, that is blamed. Could it not be so in Islam, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or whatever?

Pak Lah (1364)   United States (636)   Straits Times (412)   Samy Vellu (224)   Putra Jaya (200)   Chief Justice (200)   Saddam Hussein (188)   Vincent Tan (164)   Civil Service (154)   Parti KeADILan (148)   Islamic State (118)   Johore Bahru (100)   Sungei Buloh (94)   Bukit Tinggi (88)   Abdul Razak (80)   Pengkalen Pasir (68)   Ting Pek (64)   Armed Forces (59)   Soviet Union (58)

Malay Dominance (58)   Yong Teck (56)   Hong Kong (56)   Human Rights (56)   Syed Hamid (54)   Puteri UMNO (52)   Islam Hadhari (52)   Royal Commission (51)   Hussein Onn (51)   Rafidah Aziz (48)   Indian Congress (48)   Open House (44)   Vision Schools (44)   Shah Alam (44)   Malay Unity (42)   Chua Jui (42)   Abdul Taib (42)   Ampang Jaya (36)   Ras Adiba (36)

Osama Bin Laden (36)   Nik Aziz Nik (20)   Ling Liong Sik (18)   Lee Kuan Yew (18)

High Court Judge (14)   Wan Azizah Wan (9)   Lim Kit Siang (9)   Megat Junid Megat (8)

Mahathir (2960)

Anwar (2399)