Immortal Technique in Afghanistan
For the sake of logic and truth, and to put the recent events surrounding Osama Bin Laden in perspective, I have decided to address several points about America’s tumultuous relationship with him…
1. First Impressions. There are people in this country who, when they speak, give you the impression that we never negotiate with terrorists; that our mission is to overthrow dictatorships; that we help the people gain true freedom; and that we do not torture people… We have supported many more dictatorships than we could ever possibly overthrow because it was necessary for us to be able to have access to natural resources including their cheap labor. Why do you think a dictatorship like Mubarak’s or the King of Saudi Arabia’s never received the same vitriol and hatred as the democratically elected regime of Hugo Chavez? Because it is not Communism or Socialism or even radical Islam that this country is opposed to. It is any form of government, any regime or any person that stands between the United States and its interests that should be considered marked for death. Actually, we have always “negotiated with terrorists.” Iran Contra. “The Surge,” not in troop strength, but also the surge in money we paid armed militias and armed gangs to not fire at American troops. Etc… So it’s clear, we only care about one kind of terrorist. Our terrorist. When others use such tactics against us, it is evil, unkind and inhumane. Nothing damages the American pride more than to acknowledge that underneath the stars and stripes, we can be just wicked as everyone else in the world.
2. The Love Affair of the Past. In the case of Osama Bin Laden, there was a time when his violence against an enemy and his ability to raise money around sympathetic members of his circle was an asset to this nation’s agenda. When “Operation Cyclone” was put into effect in order to create a Vietnam-like atmosphere for Russia inside Afghanistan, Bin Laden was heralded as a freedom fighter. Only one thing mattered: killing and punishing the enemy. I often thought of that, especially when I was in Afghanistan. I glanced over mass graveyards full of green flags and wondered what these people were told they were fighting for. After the collapse of the Dr. Najibullah’s regime, the loss of countless Afghan lives and over 20,000 Russian soldiers, Usamah bin Muhammad bin Awad bin Ladin became another unpronounceable name that nobody here gave a fuck about in 1989.
3. Obama vs. Bush. I saw a sign held up by two very young people cheering in front of the white house saying, “Obama, you forgot to say thank you to President Bush.” I almost laughed out loud for a second but, rather than judging them, I thought about it critically. The capture of Bin Laden took place in Abbottabad, which is approximately 30 miles Northeast of Islamabad. The operation took place in a wealthy suburb populated by retired high-ranking Pakistani military officials. Wasn’t it Bush who diverted all of the attention from Bin Laden to topple Sadaam Hussein’s regime in Iraq?
4. Figures of Hate It’s easy to blame Hitler for killing 6 million Jews. He’s the figurehead. He was a megalomaniac, an iron fisted dictator and a wild anti-Semite. It’s harder to take a look, though, at the society in Germany that turned everyday human beings, like the people you see walking around in America, into raving nationalists capable of anything. However, it’s harder to pin point the person that is responsible for the African slave trade that cost hundreds of millions of lives. There is no one person responsible for covered up massacre of Armenians or the mass genocide of Native American Indigenous people on this side of the world. Bin Laden may be the face of radical Islam, but he was not its only leader. His death leaves a vacuum, a place for others that may wish to find fame and at the same time satisfy their supposedly pious Muslim ego in “accepting their duty” to engage in a Jihad against someone who is occupying their country. This person who wishes to be a singular entity must remember, only a few of those have ever held true power. Bin Laden was not a devil. He was a regular person who was created by his circumstance, and by his many supporters including this government. In the end, he chose his own fate, but I believe the radicalization of Islam, brought about by colonialism and harnessed by the Cold War was a factor.
5. What to Believe. It’s hard to believe anything these days. Why was he
A U.S. supported Bin Laden fighting Russians
found so easily in such plain sight? So he was just in there, getting room service, relaxing, fucking, checking his Internet, drinking tea and making disrespectful video blogs all day? Has he always been alive, waiting for the right time for us to kill him at a time when we needed the bolstering/distraction? Or has he always been dead and this announcement comes at similar time? Was he a coward for attacking the U.S. with suicide bombers? Or were his enemies the cowards for firing missiles from 1,000 miles away? Why buried at sea, and so quickly? Will being drowned and not having a body make him any less of a martyr? Can a shrine not be built anyway? No one has in their possession, to my knowledge, the physical body of Jesus Christ, does that stop him from having millions of followers, and thousands of places of worship dedicated to him and what he represents? Maybe they just cut his hands off and sent them to Langley like Che Guevara. The problem with asking these questions is that people brand you as a “conspiracy theorist.”
6. Conspiracy. There are companies that meet every day to decide which chemicals are the cheapest to put in their products and how to alter the law to make them sellable. That is a conspiracy. People lobby congress behind closed doors for tax breaks while we cut social services. That is a conspiracy. There are governments who will use men like Bin Laden all the time as a proxy against their opponents. That is also a conspiracy, and since we are one of those governments who used such a man, we are the conspiracy.
7. Justice. We captured the man responsible for 9/11. That’s how some people feel. But I don’t feel that way. Whatever happened to all of those people who were placing negative bets on the airline stock that plummeted that day and then never claimed their money? I’m sure they knew something. The people who murdered Shah Massoud, whom those in Afghanistan said were Pakistani ISI trained, killed the only person capable of being a real liaison between a post Taliban government and the world. But we didn’t want an independent thinking man. We needed a puppet like Karzai to rule once the Taliban, who offered Bin Laden without evidence, were turned down and it became apparent that they were on their way out.
8. The Question(s) of Occupation. What real justification do we have now to stay in Afghanistan? We were losing a war to Guerrillas and the people themselves who were simply fed up with the unwelcome presence of strangers. That being said, it was recently discovered that Afghanistan is so rich with a diverse amount of natural resources that leaving it after committing so many lives would look like a loss in itself. So do we cover a military failure with a brief victory in the death of Bin Laden and begin the silent conquest, that which is done with treaties heavily in our advantage and completely exploitative of their land? People cheered the Egyptian revolt in Tahrir Square. Yet, since the stepping down of its US and Israeli backed dictator, there is little mention of the new government or it’s process of development, no attention to detail paid to the inquest into the secret police, and into the truth seeking that should follow the overturning of such a system.
9. Searching for Closure. If my parents or my child or any close friend of mine were killed, I would want justice. But if I sat back and thought about it, and realized how my struggle for justice killed a hundred times as many innocent people who had nothing to do with it, I wouldn’t feel proud of my achievement. I would think about how I had just created a hundred thousand people around the world to feel like I did when my loved one was killed. We have spent over a trillion dollars and, according to several Human rights organizations, we have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, which we went into under the premise that Al-Quaeda was there pursuing nuclear and biological weapons. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who called for any means or method of attacking the Russians during the Afghan Jihad, was heavily criticized after the attacks of 9/11 for his callous looking down upon the issues that could arise from U.S. support for Islamic militants. But he left a quote that resonated with me, “Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” To quote Tupac, “this be the realest shit I ever wrote.” As America grows in the number of individuals of mixed ethnicity and stops being driven solely by White supremacy and the dominance of European immigrants, it can no longer rely singularly on its call for war to hold water. It must come up with terrible ways to demonize its opponents. The dominance of the U.S. must remain subtle as it grew to such a magnitude under the previous administration that Washington D.C. looked like Rome in 117 AD. Without the gentle reign over the world, the illusion of a coalition of the willing, the world would rise up, no one in the 3rd world wants to see themselves as a vassal even though, realistically speaking, that is exactly what they are. Colombia is our vassal, Korea is our vassal, Honduras is our vassal, Japan, Mexico, El Salvador, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, the whole of Africa, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, every Caribbean country except Cuba, The Philippines, I could go on, but you get the point. Never let the pride of where you come from ever let you forget that your neck was made in such a shape as to bend so low that your master may walk over you. The sad reality that befalls your homeland engulfs every aspect of supposed liberty. And though membership has its privileges, most of them will only be enjoyed by the upper 1% of the nation’s ruling elite that usually is closely affiliated with the colonial power that once existed. – Written by 
Immortal Technique (edited for length by RHHR). Read the full article at http://www.xxlmag.com/features/2011/05/the-legacy-of-bin-laden-by-immortal-technique/
Categories: International News, Military Industrial Complex, Political History
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