12 July 2006

Azzam the American

My cab driver the other day was from Mumbai, or properly, a village about an hour a way. I asked him if he was Hindu, thinking that the great south of the subcontinent was mostly of that faith. He said, no, he was a Muslim.

He dropped me by the pool at Big Pink, where people were splashing in the golden late afternoon sunlight. I wished him the peace of Allah, without irony, as I left the cab, though I am not completely sure what that is anymore.

The terrorists planted several bombs on the Mumbai commuter trains, and they went off at three minute intervals, very much like the attack on Madrid. The cars on the train probably still read “Bombay,” the name of the city during the Raj, and the first fifty years of independence. I noted fact as I changed out of my suit and into my trunks.

Afternoon attacks. Two hundred dead so far. Concentration on the First Class cars. I glanced at the Sanscrit mantra that curls on the silver band around my wrist. I have worn it for good luck since my last official visit to India. It has worked for me, but not for the Hindus and Muslims on the trains.

They are cold-blooded, these killers, and I was about filled up with a rage that was just as chilly. Even as I plunged in the pool, the brief shock of the water against my skin did not make it go away. 

I went looking for trouble, and I found it with only four Google searches.

It had been eating at me all day. The World Update from London had mentioned the release of the newest jihadi videotape, this one showing the desecration of the two Screaming Eagle soldiers who were kidnapped a few weeks ago. There had been whispers about what had been done to them, before being wired up as a once-human booby trap for the kids looking for them.

I should know better. I have had to review enough video since DESERT STORM that could never make it to the TV news that I am supposed to be hardened to it. The consequences of modern warfare can be pretty extreme. But the jihadis have taken things to an entirely new place. When I found it, and internalized the unspeakable, my hands began to tremor.

It was funny, really, since the first time my fingers went to the keyboard I had just returned from a lecture and a Q&A session with Ambassador Kahlilzad at the Center for Strategic and International Studies over on K Street. It was mostly for the press, but I got a tip from his military assistant and managed to shoe-horn my way into the hall. I took extensive notes, and there was a complementary buffet.

The Ambassador is an interesting guy, well spoken, and not a career diplomat. He's an academician by training, and an Afghan by birth. I am both proud and nonplussed that the American Ambassador to Iraq is a Sunni Muslim.

He had a short set of prepared remarks, which did not address the issues that the press was interested in. They wanted to know when it would be safer for them to wander around the country, and what sort of heavy weapons might be eventually given to the Iraqi military.

I thought the Ambassador did pretty well, considering the pointed nature of the questions, and the fact that there are not a lot of easy answers. When asked about some of the disastrous decisions made by pro-consul Paul Bremmer, the Ambassador made a depreciating gesture and smiled humbly. He said he was not paid to look backwards. Only ahead.

No one asked about the videotape of the troops, or the apparent trend of the jihadis to play on the fear of the journalists to manipulate the news. The lack of security is increasing the use of stories from Iraqi stringers to the correspondents. Some of the reports are inflated, or completely fabricated. Back in the day, I worked a variety of white and black programs that sought to influence public perception, and the general assault on the military is clearly part of a larger campaign that magnifies the faults of one side and gives free pass to the carnage inflicted by the pure savages on the other.

Real crimes can be leveraged with imagined ones.

The material is of pretty good quality. One of the reasons it resonates so well is that an American is helping to produce them. Azzam al-Americani is actually a fellow named Adma Gadahn. He is from Los Angeles, or at least a communal farm not far south of there. He is father was a psychedelic musician. Azzam is a convert to Islam. He went to the training camps in Afghanistan around the time that John Walker Linde, the American Taliban went over.

Azzam specializes in production values. He takes raw footage of the al Qaeda leadership and makes them look slick, like rock videos. Naturally, his English is idiomatic American. He is pretty good. He contributes a lot to the production company called al-Sahab that puts out the jihadi messages. .

He is on the FBI's most wanted list, and he is the reason I went looking for the video clips. There was a nice profile of him on the radio as I drove downtown. He latest work is some admiring retrospectives on the London train bombers.

I think I would like to help hunt him down and send him to Gitmo. Of course, now that everyone is covered by the Geneva Convention, that would hardly be a major hardship. I would prefer to shoot him. I wonder if they would let me, as a contractor?

Probably not.

Azzam has helped orchestrate a slick and accomplished media campaign, well-nuanced in American English. I do not know if he helped orchestrate the video about the desecration of the American dead. I could give you the link, but that would not be right. If you want to find it, it is out there. If you do, it will give you a sense for why some of what is happening there is happening.

It is quite effective, though perhaps not in the way that Azzam thinks. I find that it hardens my heart, and increases my resolve to root out and the jihadis and atomize them.

I have significant reservations about which fight was the correct one to take, and how we managed to get enmeshed in precisely the situation that Colin Powell warned about when he formulated his Powell Doctrine. He was a remarkable man to work for. He said: "Whatever we do must meet some basic criteria. It must unambiguously be in the national interest, it must be supported by the American people, it should be accomplished with overwhelming force, and it should have a clearly defined exit strategy."

None of those things are present in the Iraq adventure, but I thought that Ambassador Khalilzad summed things up pretty succinctly this afternoon. What is the alternative to crafting the best solution of a bad lot in Iraq? Unilateral withdrawal? Collapse into chaos and ethnic cleansing? Victory for an al Qaida surrogate that was never there in the first place?

If you have a good answer, I would be interested in what it is. I could get word to the Ambassador.

Oh, the part about the jihadis slaughtering the American soldiers to avenge the Iraqi girl who was raped and murdered along with her family? That is another part of the agitprop. It had not been released when the kids were murdered. But that doesn't matter. It makes for great video.

Ask Azzam, if you can find him. I think we will, sooner or later.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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