America's Relationships with Terrorists

Given recent events that have occurred in the United States, it seems that the country is unable to adopt a different method of dealing with its internal security and cannot separate its internal security from its external security. Anyone who knows America closely or from within knows how far the country goes in mobilizing its domestic security forces and knows how much power it has, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to imagine how its internal security could be penetrated. This is not just exemplified by the size of America’s criminal investigation apparatus, known as the FBI, and the extent of its spread across American cities and streets or by the security around their official and private institutions. It is also exemplified by the diligence shown by America’s official bodies in preventing the entry of any individual suspected, to any degree, of belonging to a terrorist group or organization. This applies to immigrants and to students striving to pursue an American education. It even applies to diplomats before they begin their official assignments in America or the United Nations.

On this specific topic, left-wing American analyst Tony Cartalucci wrote on April 17 that “our streets and public events are filled with militarized police and very literally soldiers wielding machine guns and riding around in armored vehicles … We have given up our liberty and our dignity in order to obtain a little temporary safety — and predictably we have neither liberty nor safety.”

No one can accuse America’s official security organizations of neglecting to monitor domestic or foreign security, especially the former. The United States carefully and attentively pursues the task of training the security forces of countries that are allied or friendly with it. This allows the U.S. intimate knowledge of these forces from the inside — of whom they are composed, their orientations and predispositions. The United States has complete files on anyone in these countries whose work relates to security, files filled with information that it thinks will help protect its own security. And if any of these countries steps out from under America’s umbrella due to a regime change after a revolution or coup, its authorities encounter great difficulty in replacing the highest levels of leadership, as well as those behind them, in order to move outside of or gain some distance from America’s influence.

Despite that, recent events have surprised the entire world by showing that the United States does not have the best internal security in the world. On the contrary, when comparing the United States to other countries that do not have its rich and powerful faculties and capabilities, penetrating its lines seems simple. Events like those that occurred recently only indicate that the United States either does not pay enough attention to the real dangers staring it down and threatening its security, or it intentionally leaves holes in its security wall through which terrorists can penetrate and direct painful blows to the American public. Afterward, America’s security organizations can demonstrate their superior ability to uncover those who penetrated their security and either kill them or arrest, try and convict them with the harshest maximum sentences.

This second possibility appears more likely: It seems more logical and more in harmony with America’s security policies, which do not vary with the changes in administrations or presidents, not to mention ministers and leaders of the security organizations.

[Regarding the Sept. 11 attacks, the previous U.S. administration, headed by] George W. Bush, knew much about the preparations for this criminal act of terrorism and particularly the timing of the incident.* But it chose to let the attack happen in order to have the power to arrest the plotters and bring them to American justice. There is still controversy over this issue in the United States. Some of this controversy still appears in the U.S. press, regardless of how much credibility it enjoys. At the moment, the important thing is that there are people in America who believe that the authorities knew about the explosions in Boston and Texas but did not want to intervene before they were carried out. Rather, they chose to delay their intervention until after the attacks were executed.

Yet the American authorities do not possess the power to control the state of domestic hysteria that has risen out of these events. In reality, the domestic hysteria in America surpasses anything imaginable. It surpasses anything that could accompany a similar incident if it occurred in any other country, even in Europe, the continent that is closest to North America in terms of culture and psychology. Nevertheless, this time those who harbor doubts about America’s official stance on these two latest explosions go further than just thinking that the government and security organizations had prior knowledge about the two events, their timing and the people perpetrating them. They see the cooperation that began a few years ago between the American authorities and terrorist organizations as reminiscent of the 1980s, the years of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, during which cooperation prevailed between the American authorities and al-Qaida.

This view stems from the nature of the United States’ current official position on events in Syria. America has made a definite decision to cooperate with al-Qaida to the point of equipping it with weapons and even training its units, not to mention helping, funding and arming terrorist organizations that cooperate with it to launch destructive attacks in Syria. At the moment, America’s cooperation with al-Qaida has even reached the point of providing American facilities for crossing the Syrian border and transporting materials into Syria, whether from Turkish or Jordanian territory. The role that it plays in coordination with countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in providing money to terrorist organizations that send hundreds, if not thousands, of personnel into Syria is no longer unknown. The coming days or weeks are expected to reveal new facts about the role that Israel plays, in coordination with the United States, in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights in order to enable terrorists to enter Syria with weapons and equipment.

This matter has reached the point of provoking American citizens’ anxiety about the relationships between their authorities and al-Qaida’s terrorists, relationships that are now making bold and provocative headlines in the U.S. press. Now that America cooperates with al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations, those citizens no longer believe that their government is playing a primary role in the fight against terror — a sentiment reinforced by the government’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule in Egypt. There is no doubt that the term “Muslim Brotherhood” leaves the same impression with American listeners as the term “terrorist organizations.”

Nobody in the United States, whether they work in the media or are readers of it, questions that America is behind events in the Arab region, including events in Egypt and Syria and, before that, Libya and Tunisia. But the question in some people’s minds is whether the American government and its executive apparatuses are behind certain incidents in American cities, the terrorist operations whose perpetrators they identify within mere hours of the events. So far, it is impossible to say for sure if American public opinion realizes that the United States government wants to direct their suspicions toward Iran. But it is possible to say that one side of American public opinion opposes this view [that Iran is responsible] and does not see Iran as having any role in these kinds of events. This side realizes that such an explanation for terrorist incidents only aims to serve Israel. But this side of American public opinion may itself believe that the government only resorts to this explanation to achieve one objective: distancing Israel from the idea of conducting military strikes on Iran. That is because the United States has become less convinced by the Israeli view that calls for “striking Iran,” whether that strike is launched by America, Israel or both of them together.

Cooperating with terrorists is a path that opens the gates of hell in U.S. policy in the Middle East, however convenient and reassuring it may seem to Israel. Thus, the question that remains is whether the United States can free itself from its Israeli shackles.

*Translator’s Note: A section of the author’s sentence appears to be missing here. The bracketed text represents the translator’s extrapolation.