The Jihadist Plot, Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Al Qaeda

Diana West interviews John Rosenthal about his new book, whose premise is that the United States switched sides in the War on Terror in 2011:

DW: You explain in your book that in mid-2011, the US changed sides in the so-called war on terror, which was originally mounted as a war against Al Qaeda; and, moreover, that the US media missed this story. Could you state the case in brief?  

JR: The US changed sides in the "war on terror" during the 2011 Libya conflict and it did so in two senses. In the first place, it did so by virtue of forming an alliance with some of the very same Islamic extremist forces that it had been combating for the previous decade.  

As I show in the book, the military backbone of the rebellion against Muammar al-Qaddafi was formed by cadres of the so-called Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The LIFG was listed as an al-Qaeda-linked terror organization by both the US government and the UN Security Council. It was, in effect, the Libyan chapter of al-Qaeda and had a long shared history with the al-Qaeda "mothership" of Osama bin Laden.  

Several of the leaders of the rebellion had in fact been previously detained by US authorities, either during the invasion of Afghanistan or in subsequent covert counter-terror operations. In the Libyan war, the US and its NATO allies were providing air support to troops led by these very same people.  

The second sense in which the US changed sides in the "war on terror" concerns terror itself as a tactic. I know you are not a fan of the expression "war on terror" and I agree, of course, that it is very problematic. But, as I say in the book, the expression at least had the advantage of making clear that the US abhorred terror as a tactic, regardless of the ideological background of the groups employing this tactic. But from the very first weeks of the Libyan rebellion -- well before it was possible to know just who the rebels were -- there was already abundant evidence that the rebels were employing terrorist tactics.  

This evidence included videos documenting torture, the summary execution of detainees, and at least one beheading -- a beheading that was particularly horrific by virtue of the fact that it occurred in public in front of a cheering crowd. It would have previously been impossible to imagine the US making common cause with groups that decapitate their perceived enemies.  

In the meanwhile, in Syria, it has become the new normal, and apparently no one is shocked anymore to hear about Syrian rebel forces that behead Syrian soldiers or real or perceived supporters of Bashar al-Assad. During the Libyan war, however, the media -- including both old and new media -- for the most part simply ignored the evidence of rebel atrocities.  

What I heard at the time was that it was not possible to "verify" the videos. But the fact is that they made no effort to verify them. Moreover, media like CNN had no problem broadcasting "unverified" videos that allegedly documented atrocities committed by pro-Qaddafi forces. Those videos, by the way, almost surely showed atrocities that were likewise committed by the rebels.  

 Similarly, at least until the rebellion triumphed, the American media either ignored or hushed up the al-Qaeda connections of the rebel leadership. They did so even though one rebel commander, Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, was happily holding forth to European reporters about his jihadist past in Afghanistan and his support for al-Qaeda in Iraq.

In the next question, with regard to the Boston Bombing, we learn the consequences of switching sides mid-war:

DW: Would you like to address the Boston Marathon Massacre?  

JR: Gladly. According to the latest news reports, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has begun responding to interrogators and has told them that he and his brother were motivated by the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Needless to say, the sources for these reports are anonymous.  

One wonders if we will ever get to hear Tsarnaev speaking for himself. It makes about as much sense for him and his brother to have carried out a terrorist attack now because of the Iraq War as it would, say, for a supporter of the South to conduct an attack now because of the American Civil War. In fact, it makes less sense, because, as far as I know, the present American administration has not yet repudiated the Civil War.  

If, however, we look as Tsarnaev’s own “VK page” – the Russian-language equivalent of a Facebook page – we see not Iraq or Afghanistan, but something else: Syria. The page features a long pro-rebellion propaganda clip on Syria. 

Apart from its Islamic theological trappings, the clip presents the Syrian conflict in exactly the same simple, one-sided terms as the Obama administration: just a matter of the Syrian regime slaughtering innocents. The clip, moreover, was posted by Tsarnaev on April 9th, i.e. only days before the bombings. So, clearly this is something that has been on his mind recently.  

As you know, there are Chechen and/or Dagestani brigades that are taking part in the Syrian war on the side of the rebel forces. There is a horrifying video available of one such Russian-speaking brigade executing detainees, including by beheading, while waving a version of the al-Qaeda flag. If he had not carried out the Boston bombings with his brother, one could easily imagine the likes of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev joining the jihad against Bashar al-Assad in Syria.  

So, what does this mean?  

It means that in Boston, we were attacked not by people that American policy opposes, not by our officially designated enemies, but rather by our allies, by people whom we support. The attack was not carried out by, say, Syrian or Iranian supporters of Bashar al-Assad, but rather by people who support the Syrian rebellion against Assad, just like the U.S. does.