Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: Mr. bin Laden, Meet Mr. Kennan--A New Containment Policy Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/mr_bin_laden_meet_mr_kennan_a_new_containment_policy#19540 Post contents: @Dan: Sorry for the snide remark; it was a bit of humor gone wrong, apparently. I agree with you when you write that "I’m just wary of these silly international Islamic conspiracy theories that the neocons use to intervene in every corner of the the globe . . . " The problem, though, in this case is that the Al Qaeda connection wasn't asserted by President Bush's CIA; it was asserted by President Clinton's--three years before September 11. And German intelligence and Albanian intelligence are not exactly neocon-controlled. As for Arab fighters playing much of a role in Kosovo, where did I claim that? The evidence put forward by the three intelligence agencies was that jihadists trained in Al Qaeda camps were brought in to Kosovo. Here in Rockford, Illinois, Albanian Muslims (brought to Rockford by Catholic Charities, sadly) were recruiting at the local mosque in the late 1990's. They were specifically trying to convince Caucasian converts to Islam to go fight in Kosovo. In at least three cases, they succeeded. (For more details, please see my column in the February 2008 issue of <i>Chronicles</i>). Those converts were sent to Afghanistan to train. And that seems to have been the pattern--the jihadists who came into Kosovo (as well as the jihadists who came into Chechnya) were largely non-Arab. That does not mean, however, that they were therefore not connected to Al Qaeda. Sent at: 2008 09 08