A INOCÊNCIA DE MR. ROMNEY

Um agente imobiliário da Califónia, de ascendência judaica, convicto de que o Islão é "uma religião do ódio" dirigiu e produziu uma longa metragem - "Innocence of Muslims"- de má qualidade, segundo a generalidade dos críticos, e os trailer publicados no Youtube confirmam.

Na terça-feira passada, 11 de Setembro, os norte-americanos e o mundo relembravam o 11 de Setembro de há 11 anos atrás. Tudo parecia calmo, talvez calmo demais, num país a menos de um mês de eleições presidenciais, para quem se habitou a ouvir a chinfrineira política que assalta as ruas em ocasiões semelhantes, os outdoors a baterem-se em tamanho, impondo-nos as fronhas dos candidatos por todo o lado. Aqui, os raros cartazes fixados ao solo nas bermas das ruas não vão muito além de 40*30 cm, com os nomes dos candidatos. A propaganda política passa sobretudo pela televisão e pelos comícios dos candidatos. À segurança social (onde Romeny já se aproximou da política de Oabama)  e ao desemprego (onde nenhum dos candidatos quer arriscar uma aposta concreta) tinha-se juntado nos últmos dias a greve dos professores em Chicago como um dos tópicos mais fracturantes do eleitorado. Faltava a guerra do petróleo, onde os republicanos marcam mais pontos apoiados por uma massiva propaganda nos media (televisão e imprensa) favorável ao aproveitamento das reservas do Alasca promovida pelas corporações petrolíferas do país.

No dia 11, como é sempre esperável em cada 11 de Setembro que passa, da guerra do petróleo voltou a ouvir-se o sinal da Al-Qaeda. "A Inocência dos Muçulmanos" tinha sido recentemente descoberta e arvorada como símbolo maldito do inimigo de sempre, e conduzido a fúria fanática até à morte de quatro norte-americanos, incluindo o representante consular em Benghazi, a segunda maior cidade Líbia. Mr. Romney, mal teve conhecimento do ataque, e ainda sem conhecer nem quem nem quantas eram as vítimas, apressou-se a criticar a política de Obama para o Médio Oriente.

Há quase 33 anos, era presidente Jimmy Carter, foi assaltada a embaixada norte-americana em Teerão, e feitos 60 prisioneiros. Só seriam libertados 444 dias mais tarde, já Ronald Reagan tinha sucedido a Carter, que foi derrotado em larga medida pela afronta de Teerão e pela incapacidade em libertar os refens. É bem provável que Reagan, ainda candidato, tenha manobrado nos bastidores políticos externos pelo adiamento da libertação. 

Estaria Mr. Romney a calcular aproveitar uma situação idêntica para ganhar votos quando, inusitadamente, criticou a política de Obama?   Se essa era intenção, para já o tiro saiu-lhe pela culatra.

A PROPÓSITO DOS 10 ANOS DO 11 DE SETEMBRO

Publicidade gratuita ao terrorismo, não, obrigado.

Discordo que o não silêncio seja, neste caso, comparável com o mediatismo dado a crimes de outra natureza, geralmente perpretados por loucos à solta. Porque não se trata de promover mediticamente um crime mas de relembrar que os terroristas continuam, difarçadamentem, na sombra, a montar as acções com que pretendem dominar o mundo e impor as suas leis obscurantistas.

Nada justifica, no entanto, por exemplo, a deslocação de uma equipa da RTP a Nova Iorque para realizar a transmissão em directo do "Antena Aberta" da  manhã de hoje a partir de lá. É simplesmente ridículo, e oneroso para os contribuintes portugueses,  que uns pândegos embarquem de armas e bagagens para os EUA para ouvirem e retransmitirem pelo telefone aqueles que, em Portugal, ligam para o programa de uma estação de rádio portuguesa pública.  

Mas concordo que o espectáculo mediático montado à volta de actos criminosos é geralmente nauseabundo, coloca os criminosos no centro do palco e põe muitos tarados a salivar. Nestes casos, condeno todo o aproveitamento mediático e considero os media promotores de crimes futuros.

No caso do terrorismo levado a cabo por fundamentalistas que se dizem inspirados pela ortodoxia corânica, a situação é muito diferente.

Se é certo que este terrorismo pretende provocar destruição e pavor, pelo que o efeito mediático serve um dos seus principais propósitos, também não é menos certo que, após as acções terroristas, os seus mentores se escondem e se remetem ao maior silêncio.

Trata-se de uma estratégia de adormecimento da presa para preparar novos ataques e atacar quando e onde menos se espera.

Daí que seja fundamental manter viva a recordação que eles existem e se mantêm activos, e capazes de mas mais ignóbeis surpresas.

UM CHOQUE MÚLTIPLO

O tema de capa do Economist desta semana é o petróleo. Quando as economias ocidentais pareciam começar a recuperar da crise financeira de 2008 (nem todas, porque, no nosso caso, por exemplo, a crise é tripla) desabam as revoltas no Norte de África e as réplicas no Médio Oriente, onde o petróleo é a arma vital e o seu domínio o domínio do mundo desenvolvido ou em aceleradas vias disso.

Segundo o Economist, o choque petrolífero de 2011 representa uma ameaça maior para a economia mundial do que muitos investidores parecem pensar.

Eu, que não sou investidor, penso que, das duas uma, ou muda alguma coisa para ficar tudo na mesma, na infalível receita do Príncipe de Salina, ou uma mudança radical do poder no Médio Oriente dará, muito provavelmente o poder à al-Qaeda, um franshising do terror, que há muito tempo trabalha para isso mesmo: destruir a cultura ocidental.

O que está em causa, contrariamente aos piores prognósticos do Economist, não é apenas um choque petrolífero com reflexos profundos na economia mundial - alguns efeitos serão positivos, à semelhança do que aconteceu no rescaldo do choque de 1973 - mas uma ameaça à paz mundial.

Como é que se podem conter revoltas que arvoram as bandeiras generosas da democracia quando por detrás delas se acobertam os chacais* que, em nome de Alá, querem esmagar o Ocidente? Dialogando?

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* "Nós éramos os leopardos, os leões; esses que nos substituíram são os chacais, as hienas; e todos os leopardos, chacais e ovelhas continuarão a acreditar no sal da terra."- Il gattopardo  - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.
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Oil and the economy

The oil shock

More of a threat to the world economy than investors seem to think

THE price of oil has had an unnerving ability to blow up the world economy, and the Middle East has often provided the spark. The Arab oil embargo of 1973, the Iranian revolution in 1978-79 and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 are all painful reminders of how the region’s combustible mix of geopolitics and geology can wreak havoc. With protests cascading across Arabia, is the world in for another oil shock?

There are good reasons to worry. The Middle East and north Africa produce more than one-third of the world’s oil. Libya’s turmoil shows that a revolution can quickly disrupt oil supply. Even while Muammar Qaddafi hangs on with delusional determination and Western countries debate whether to enforce a no-fly zone (see article), Libya’s oil output has halved, as foreign workers flee and the country fragments. The spread of unrest across the region threatens wider disruption.

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POR DETRÁS DAS BANDEIRAS

A democracia, tal qual a concebeu a civilização europeia, tem sido desafiada ao longo dos tempos por demagogos e ditadores, mas também pela generosidade inocente de muitos que arvoram bandeiras de valores democráticos sem se darem conta que atrás deles se acobertam aqueles que os que os esmagarão na primeira esquina a partir da qual o campo é deles. 

No Norte de África e no Médio Oriente, as causas próximas das revoltas (pobreza, desemprego, aumento dos preços dos bens alimentares) animaram algumas elites a reclamar o fim de outras causa mais distantes  profundas (ausência do exercício direitos humanos enunciados pela ONU, e que só em democracia são garantidos) e mobilizaram os deserdados.

Por detrás destas mobilizações que clamam democracia infiltram-se os fanáticos da al-Qaeda à espera que os regimes caducos se desmoronem para ocuparem as ruínas e edificarem outras ditaduras que lhes permita o controlo da arma mais decisiva contra os regimes democráticos, o petróleo, o que lhes permitirá tornar o mundo dependente desses recursos manietado até onde lhes der na real gana. 

Que fazer? A democracia imposta nunca o será porque ela não garante só por si a multiplicação do pão que estes países necessitam. A vitória em dominó da al-Qaeda não assegurará o crescimento económico porque os seus desígnios são outros e lançará o mundo numa situação de caos inimaginável.

Os artigos que ligo a seguir, publicados hoje no Washington Post abordam este puzzle

que atormenta o mundo. A minha perspectiva não é totalmente coincidente com os artigos do WP mas, por isso mesmo, os registo aqui.

Why the Mideast revolts help al-Qaeda

The rush in the West to proclaim the advance of democracy in the Arab world has led to the propagation of an ill-conceived and dangerous corollary: that the revolts in the Middle East and North Africa also mark the irrelevance of al-Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups.

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Five myths about Muslim Brotherhood
Even before Hosni Mubarak gave in to the throngs in Tahrir Square and stepped down as Egypt's president on Feb. 11, officials in Western capitals were debating what role the Muslim Brotherhood would play in a new Egypt and a changing Middle East. Yet much of what we know - or think we know - about the group's ambitions, beliefs and history is clouded by misperceptions
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A OUTRA CRISE

A crise económica e financeira distraiu as atenções do mundo das outras frentes de batalha que a administração Obama herdou. No Iraque e no Afeganistão persistem cada vez mais os desencontros da opinião pública norte-americana quanto à estratégia a seguir. Desencontros esses que decorrem, como geralmente sucede, da diferença de posições entre os líderes políticos e militares.

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As decisões que Obama tomar quanto à continuação ou à retirada das tropas norte-americanas terão implicações sobre o rumo do mundo que excederão de forma incalculável as sequelas da crise económica por mais intensas que elas sejam.

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No Iraque e no Afeganistão jogam-se as pedras decisivas de um xadrez infernal, onde um dos contendores manobra atrás da cortina para, a partir daí, manter uma situação de permanente acção terrorista. Obama só tem duas alternativas: Ou continua a guerra, reforçando os meios que os chefes militares reclamam, ou retira e aceita a mudança de jogo. No primeiro caso, a vitória implicaria um prolongamento da guerra que só seria suportável pela opinião pública norte-americana se no combate se envolvessem todos quantos serão perdedores se os EUA se retirarem; no segundo caso, à retirada norte-americana seguir-se-á o avanço imparável dos terroristas talibans e da al-Qaeda, e, uma a seguir a outra, cairão as pedras do dominó petrolífero.

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A guerra continuará, então, em fronteiras mais recuadas ou reacender-se-á nas posições anteriores por imposição da opinião pública norte-americana, que sem petróleo não vive. E muitos outros também não.

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Was the Iraq war worth it?

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"We have lost a lot of great guys; we have lost so much potential," Whitehurst said. "But this country now has that potential. And there are people in this country that are alive today because of the sacrifices made by those soldiers. I do think it was worth it. I can look back, and I think all of us can hold our heads very high."

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The Afghan indecision

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Obama's prolonged deliberation would be understandable if he were choosing between escalating or ending the war, as Bush was. Yet he narrowed his options many weeks ago -- and still has been unable to come to closure. Last Thursday the president was presented with various reinforcement options; rather than decide, he reportedly asked for another study about when and how fighting could be turned over to the Afghan army.
Another week or two of thinking won't hurt. But the impression that gets created is of a president who knows what course he must take -- one of expanding American involvement in a difficult and increasingly unpopular war -- but can't bring himself to embrace it. It's an image that risks undermining any commitment Obama eventually makes. In the end, it's not enough for a president to be seen as having thought through a decision to send more troops to war. Enemies, allies and the country also need to be convinced that he believes in it.

ESPERADO

Obama Presents New Challenge for Al-Qaeda
Terrorist group struggles to mount propaganda war against the U.S. president who, in marked contrast to Bush, is well-liked in the Muslim world.
Joby Warrick

AL-QAEDA FRANCHISING

Al Qaeda at 20 Dead or Alive?
By Peter Bergen
Two decades after al-Qaeda was founded in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar by Osama bin Laden and a handful of veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the group is more famous and feared than ever. But its grand project -- to transform the Muslim world into a militant Islamist caliphate -- has been, by any measure, a resounding failure.
In large part, that's because Osama bin Laden's strategy for arriving at this Promised Land is a fantasy. Al-Qaeda's leader prides himself on being a big-think strategist, but for all his brains, leadership skills and charisma, he has fastened on an overall strategy that is self-defeating.
Bin Laden's main goal is to bring about regime change in the Middle East and to replace the governments in Cairo and Riyadh with Taliban-style theocracies. He believes that the way to accomplish this is to attack the "far enemy" (the United States), then watch as the supposedly impious, U.S.-backed Muslim regimes he calls the "near enemy" crumble.
This might have worked if the United States had turned out to be a paper tiger that could sustain only a few blows from al-Qaeda. But it didn't. Bin Laden's analysis showed no understanding of the vital interests -- oil, Israel and regional stability -- that undergird U.S. engagement in the Middle East, let alone the intensity of American outrage that would follow the first direct attack on the continental United States since the British burned the White House in 1814.
In fact, bin Laden's plan resulted in the direct opposite of a U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East. The United States now occupies Iraq, and NATO soldiers patrol the streets of Kandahar, the old de facto capital of bin Laden's Taliban allies. Relations between the United States and most authoritarian Arab regimes, meanwhile, are stronger than ever, based on their shared goal of defeating violent Islamists out for American blood and the regimes' power.
For most leaders, such a complete strategic failure would require a rethinking. Not for bin Laden. He could have formulated a new policy after U.S. forces toppled the Taliban in the winter of 2001, having al-Qaeda and its allies directly attack the sclerotic near-enemy regimes; he could have told his followers that, in strictly practical terms, provoking the world's only superpower would clearly interfere with al-Qaeda's goal of establishing Taliban-style rule from Indonesia to Morocco.
Instead, bin Laden continues to conceive of the United States as his main foe, as he has explained in audio- and videotapes that he has released since 2001. At the same time, al-Qaeda has fatally undermined its claim to be the true representative of all Muslims by killing thousands of them since Sept. 11, 2001. These two strategic blunders are the key reasons why bin Laden and his group will ultimately lose. But don't expect that defeat anytime soon. For now, al-Qaeda continues to gather strength, both as a terrorist/insurgent organization based along the Afghan-Pakistani border and as an ongoing model for violent Islamists around the globe.
So how strong -- or weak -- is al-Qaeda at 20? Earlier this year, a furious debate erupted in Washington between two influential counterterrorism analysts. On one side is a former CIA case officer, Marc Sageman, who says that the threat from al-Qaeda's core organization is largely over and warns that future attacks will come from the foot soldiers of a "leaderless jihad" -- self-starting, homegrown radicals with no formal connection to bin Laden's cadre. On the other side of the debate stands Georgetown University professor Bruce Hoffman, who warns that al-Qaeda is on the march, not on the run.
This debate is hardly academic. If the global jihad has in fact become a leaderless one, terrorism will cease to be a top-tier U.S. national security problem and become a manageable, second-order threat, as it was for most of the 20th century. Leaderless organizations can't mount spectacular operations such as 9/11, which required years of planning and training. On the other hand, if al-Qaeda Central is as strong as Hoffman thinks it is, the United States will have to organize its policies in the Middle East, South Asia and at home around that threat for decades.
Sageman's view of the jihadist threat as local and leaderless is largely shared by key counterterrorism officials in Europe, who told me that they can't find any evidence of al-Qaeda operations in their countries. Baltasar Garzon, a judge who has investigated terrorist groups in Spain for the past decade, says that while bin Laden remains "a fundamental reference point for the al-Qaeda movement," he doesn't see any of the organization's fingerprints in his recent inquiries.
But this view is not shared by top counterterrorism officials in the United Kingdom and the United States. A 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluded that al-Qaeda was growing more dangerous, not less.
Why the starkly differing views? Largely because U.S. and British officials are contending with an alarming new phenomenon, the deadly nexus developing between some militant British Muslims and al-Qaeda's new headquarters in Pakistan's lawless borderlands. The lesson of the July 2005 London subway bombings, the foiled 2006 scheme to bring down transatlantic jetliners and several other unnerving plots uncovered in the United Kingdom is that the bottom-up radicalization described by Sageman becomes really lethal only when the homegrown wannabes manage to make contact with the group that so worries Hoffman, al-Qaeda Central in Pakistan.

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FRANCHISING DO TERROR

The Evolution of Al Qaeda and the Intertwining Paths Leading to 9/11
Review by MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: August 1, 2006

“The Looming Tower,” the title of Lawrence Wright’s remarkable new book about Al Qaeda and 9/11, refers not only to the doomed towers of the World Trade Center, but also to a passage in the Koran, which Osama bin Laden quoted several times in a speech exhorting the 19 hijackers to become martyrs to their cause: “Wherever you are, death will find you/even in the looming tower.”
Mr. Wright’s book, based on more than 500 interviews — ranging from Mr. bin Laden’s best friend in college, Jamal Khalifa, to Yosri Fouda, a reporter for Al Jazeera, to Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief — gives the reader a searing view of the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, a view that is at once wrenchingly intimate and boldly sweeping in its historical perspective.
Though the broad outlines of his story have been recounted many, many times before, Mr. Wright fleshes out the narrative with myriad new details and a keen ability to situate the events he describes in a larger cultural and political context. And by focusing on the lives and careers of several key players on the “road to 9/11” — namely, Mr. bin Laden; his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri; the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal; and the F.B.I.’s former counterterrorism chief, John O’Neill — he has succeeded in writing a narrative history that possesses all the immediacy and emotional power of a novel, an account that indelibly illustrates how the political and the personal, the public and the private were often inextricably intertwined.
Mr. Wright’s book suggests that “the charisma and vision of a few individuals shaped the nature” of the contest between Islam and the West. While “the tectonic plates of history were certainly shifting,” promoting a period of conflict between those two cultures, he contends, the emergence of Al Qaeda “depended on a unique conjunction of personalities” — most notably, Mr. Zawahri, who promoted the apocalyptic notion that only violence could change history, and Mr. bin Laden, whose global vision and leadership “held together an organization that had been bankrupted and thrown into exile.”
The book also suggests that the events of Sept. 11 were not inevitable. Rather, bad luck, the confluence of particular decisions and chance encounters, dithering on the part of United States officials and a series of absurd turf wars between the C.I.A. and F.B.I. all contributed to Al Qaeda’s success in pulling off its nefarious plans that sunny September day.
Compared with the authors Peter L. Bergen (“Holy War: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden”) and Jonathan Randal (“Osama: the Making of a Terrorist”), Mr. Wright spends less time on the crucial role that the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan played in shaping the jihadist cause. Instead, he has drawn upon many documents in Arabic and a host of interviews with jihadis to provide an arresting chronicle of the many formative events that shaped Al Qaeda over the years and Mr. bin Laden’s long, winding road to war against America. His book provides an amazingly detailed look at daily life inside Al Qaeda, and the motivations, misgivings and political goals of individual members.
Mr. Wright begins his story with an account of the life of Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual father of the Islamist movement: he recounts how a sojourn in America in the late 1940’s radicalized the Egyptian educator, how he was later thrown in prison by the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser, and how his writings and eventual execution in 1966 made him a martyr and hero to a fledgling revolutionary movement. Mr. Wright then goes on to describe the radicalization of Mr. bin Laden, the heir to one of Saudi Arabia’s great fortunes, who grows from a shy boy who loved the American television series “Bonanza” into a solemn, religious adolescent influenced, some say, by a charismatic Syrian gym teacher who was a member of the Muslim Brothers organization.
Mr. Zawahri, an Egyptian doctor whom Mr. bin Laden got to know in Peshawar in the 1980’s, would have an even more formative impact. Indeed Mr. Zawahri emerges from this volume as an evil mentor, drawing ever “tighter the noose of influence he was casting around” the young Saudi by surrounding him with handpicked bodyguards and presiding over his medical treatment (possibly for Addison’s disease). Mr. Wright argues that before meeting Mr. Zawahri, Mr. bin Laden was “not much of a political thinker,” and he quotes the Saudi’s first biographer, Essam Deraz, saying he thought Mr. bin Laden had the potential to become “another Eisenhower,” turning the celebrity status he had achieved fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan into a peaceful political life. But that wasn’t Mr. Zawahri’s plan.
It was Mr. Zawahri, whose adamantine resolve was hardened by the torture he endured in Egyptian prisons as a young man, Mr. Wright notes, who introduced the use of suicide bombers. And it was Mr. Zawahri who was keen from the start on using biological and chemical weapons. As for Mr. bin Laden, it apparently took a long time, after his stint in Afghanistan, for him to settle on a subsequent plan of action.

During his exile from Saudi Arabia in the Sudan, Mr. Wright says, Mr. bin Laden “was wavering — the lure of peace being as strong as the battle cry of jihad.” Agriculture “captivated his imagination,” and he reportedly told various friends that he was thinking of quitting Al Qaeda and becoming a farmer.

Yet as Mr. Wright tells it, the continuing presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia (after the first gulf war) continued to gnaw at Mr. bin Laden, and the movement of American troops into Somalia in 1992 (on a humanitarian relief mission) made Al Qaeda feel increasingly encircled. In meetings held at the end of 1992, the group “turned from being the anti-communist Islamic army that bin Laden originally envisioned into a terrorist organization bent on attacking the United States.”
Mr. Wright not only traces how Al Qaeda evolved — from an opponent of two of America’s enemies (the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein) to America’s sworn foe — but he also gives the reader a visceral sense of day-to-day life at its training camps. His descriptions echo the observation made by other experts like the former C.I.A. officer Michael Scheuer that Mr. bin Laden is not opposed to the United States because of its culture or ideas but because of its political and military actions in the Islamic world. Mr. Wright observes that Mr. bin Laden allowed his younger sons to play Nintendo and that Al Qaeda’s trainees often watched Hollywood thrillers at night (Arnold Schwarzenegger movies were particular favorites) in an effort to gather tips. One of Mr. bin Laden’s wives favored “brand-name cosmetics and lingerie, preferring American products”; another held a doctorate in child psychology.
Intercut with the portraits of Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri are equally compelling ones of the flamboyant F.B.I. counterterrorism chief John O’Neill (who died on 9/11, having left the bureau to become chief of security for the World Trade Center) and a small band of C.I.A. and F.B.I. operatives, who for years had worried about Al Qaeda and who, in the months before Sept. 11, worked furiously, in the face of bureaucratic complacency and in-fighting, to head off a probable attack.
The failures of the C.I.A., F.B.I. and N.S.A. to share information — and their failure to stop the 9/11 hijackers — have been voluminously documented before, but Mr. Wright’s narrative is so lucid and unnerving that it drives home the stupidity, hubris and dereliction of duty that occurred within the United States government with unusual power and resonance.
Mr. Wright is equally scathing about the Bush and Clinton administrations. He notes that terrorism was a low priority for the Bush White House when it took over in January 2001. And like Mr. Bergen and Mr. Randal, he argues that the Clinton administration’s reaction to the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa — launching cruise missiles at an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in a failed effort to kill Mr. bin Laden — helped turn the terrorist into a global celebrity and enabled him to mythologize himself further.
Mr. bin Laden’s goal in striking the American embassies and bombing the American destroyer Cole in 2000, says Mr. Wright, was to “lure America into the same trap the Soviets had fallen into: Afghanistan”: “His strategy was to continually attack until the U.S. forces invaded; then the mujahideen would swarm upon them and bleed them until the entire American empire fell from its wounds. It had happened to Great Britain and to the Soviet Union. He was certain it would happen to America.” When neither the embassy bombings nor the Cole bombing was enough to “provoke a massive retaliation,” Mr. Wright suggests, Mr. bin Laden decided “he would have to create an irresistible outrage.”
That outrage, of course, was 9/11. Though American forces would not become bogged down in Afghanistan — at least not immediately in the fall of 2001 — another, longer war was on the horizon. On March 19, 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the start of the war against Iraq; more than three years and more than 2,500 American deaths later, the United States is still there, fighting just the sort of asymmetrical war Mr. bin Laden so fervently desired.