Bin Laden Bombs History

TV star and Islamist talking head, Osama bin Laden, has turned from political theology to history. He should have stuck with bombs.

In his new hit video, the stony faced sheik compares the US experience to date in Iraq with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. He continues to impute the same fate to the US as that experienced by the Soviet Union. He not only expects us to be fully and finally defeated in Iraq (and elsewhere) but to collapse as did the Soviets.

The Geek doesn't mind this noted humanitarian imploring the United States (and the West generally) to abjure capitalism, thus making a clever linkage between Islamist ideology and communism. He doesn't even mind the sheik's invitation for all Americans to convert to Islam. (Although to err on the side of accuracy, the Geek prefers to see the Geekess in something other than a burka.)

However, the Geek has to draw the line at Osama's rewriting of history. Arab fighters such as bin Laden did not, repeat, not defeat the Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

(True Osama was there. He did live in a cave part of the time. But, his combat record, like that of most of the outsiders in Afghanistan, was short on success, shorter on glory, and seems to have been excessive only in rhetoric and incompetence in battle.)

It is not completely accurate to attribute victory to the Afghan fighters. There is no doubt but that they were tough, hardy, and dedicated just as their forebearers had been fighting Russians and the British for over a century.

Unfortunately it takes more, much more, than mere toughness, hardiness, and dedication to win a long war against an opponent superior in resources and military technology. As the American experiences in our own War of Independence and the Vietnam War show, it takes the opponent making blunders and finally losing the political will to continue.

The Soviets were defeated in small part by the Afghan resistance. They were in even smaller part defeated by the profligate military assistance provided by the US to the resistance.

The major reason for the Soviet defeat was the Soviets themselves. Their military doctrine was wrong. Their tactics were wrong. Their training was wrong. Their equipment was not quite right.

There was something even more wrong.

The nature and character of the Soviet system itself. The senilocrats running the Kremlin and the Red Army had run out of ideas. They had run out of credibility. The communist ideology they represented had lost its mythic appeal to the Russian public and Communist Party apparatus alike.

There was no steam in the boiler. And, no coal in the fire.

For nearly three quarters of a century, the Marxist-Lenininst ideology had been the driving faith of the Communist Party, the Red Army, and the instruments of state power generally. The old men standing on top of Lenin's Tomb were actually emblematic of a system which had lost its faith. Lost its drive. Lost its will.

All the Afghans had to do was keep on fighting and dying long enough for the last vestiges of Russian will to evaporate like fading steam in the cold. That's what happened.

The Muslims didn't win. The Arabs didn't win. The Afghans didn't win.

Get a grip on reality, Osama! The Soviets lost. That's all.

The Soviet Union didn't collapse as a direct result of the loss in Afghanistan. That loss was, at best, a minor contributor. With the internal loss of faith in the Marxist-Leninist ideology, which was magnified by the reforms of Gorbachev, the Communist Party lost its reason for existence.

You have to believe you are really, really the Vanguard of the Proletariat to be it. Without that, there wasn't the will necessary to use the Red Army as it had been used twenty years earlier when the Warsaw Pact satellites filed for divorce.

When the Outer Empire fled, it was only expectable that the Inner Empire would as well. The collapse of an authoritarian assemblage of states can only be stopped with force. Even then, the force must be employed early and vigorously.

Nothing hard to understand about that, is there, Osama?

Of course, an accurate rendition of historical trajectories wouldn't be in your propaganda game plan, would it, O Sheik?

Now, let's get a grip on the other part of Osama's (un)historical equation.

First of all, despite bin Laden's expertise (to say nothing of that demonstrated by the editor of London base Al Quds news), the US has not lost in either Afghanistan or Iraq. In point of fact, it cannot be defeated in either country by the opposition. It can only defeat itself.

If Congress and We the People lose our political will, then and only then will we lose in either country. That is bin Laden's hope. It is the hope--the only hope--of those who think like bin Laden.

While Osama obviously doesn't see the difference, there is no comparison between the old Soviet system and that of the US. Without belaboring the self-evident, the US has not yet lost faith in its basic mythos. Nor is it likely to--at least not during our lifetimes, bin Laden.

Anytime Osama would like some historical education, the Geek is willing to provide it. For free even. This isn't altruism on the Geek's part.

Not at all. More than a few enemies of the United States have underestimated the American political will. They have done this because they are gripless about our history.

Perhaps if the sheik knows more about our past, he'll realise that our future doesn't include submitting to the Islamist ideology. Maybe then, he'll retire to Mecca and open a madrass.