It's time to complete the thought for this week. Basically, what I hope to demonstrate over the next few weeks is that every war the USA has engaged was wrong and completely preventable.
What the monk in Vietnam went through was mediation due to spiritual distress. Spiritual distress occurs with profound brevity when human spiritual identity is in direct conflict with reality. The reality of opposing God, reliquishing ones destiny to a new reality based in government dogma intended to suppress any 'belief' except the 'perscribed' authority of the sovereign state places any human being in direct conflict with it's authority. Every human being regardless of the identity has a spirituality, even atheists.
With that reality consider when Osama bin Laden began his 'al Qaeda' and the contorted belief in creating a 'martyr race' of young islamic ideologues. The 'very' beginnings of 'the base' is a bit obscure to most Western leaders and scholars. They first became apparent as an organized assault force with the first World Trade Center bombings, February 26, 1993. A new president by the name of Clinton would first find the 'reality' of terrorist networks and would begin to piece together an aspect of CIA/FBI intelligence the USA never had any working knowledge. I find it interesting that a 'trauma bond' would develope between the Clintons and New York City. The Former President would find comfort in confronting the enemy head on by establishing an office in Harlem. The Former First Lady would go on to run for US Senate and place the people of New York high on her list of priorities seeking to protect them as well as serve them.
There would be more 'terrorist' attacks to educate President Clinton, in Mogadishu on October 3, 1993 which would prove to be the first exposure the USA military would have in direct attack on an organized force known as al Qaeda. Somalia would prove to be quite a training ground for the USA military when the realization was complete how unprepared our military was to intervene in what was characterized as a minor operation. The terrorist force exhibited overwhelming organized intent and handily killed most of the attack force of some of the USA's best. Al Qaeda was a complete surprise. Osama bin Laden began to become more than confident, he took his 'base' to Afghanistan where he would place 'The Taliban' at the forefront of his ambitions as a front of power to serve a 'greater ambition' by al Qaeda.
The growth of any terrorist network was never realized until the administration of the current president and vice president. This link will provide a 'history' as well as the obvious escalation to the beginnings and extent terrorist networks existed and their 'explosion' since the failed assault by Bush after September 11, 2001 which never defeated Osama bin Laden.
Significant Terrorist Incidents, 1961-2003: A Brief Chronology
Terror incidents began to be organized under the 'guise' of a NEW understanding of the teachings of Mohammad. That understanding would be spawned and nutured by an Islamic leader called Mullah Mohammad Omar, the spiritual advisor to Osama bin Laden.
The two would find strength and identity now being ostracized from mainstream Arab society when they served the purpose of the USA in opposing the Russian invasion of Afghanistan being members of the Mujahideen which was backed and financed by the USA under Secretary of State, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Osama bin Laden may have used his inheritance to organize al Qaeda in Somalia but grew to prominance with the financed operations in Afghanistan. Eventually, the Taliban would come to the USA as a representative government of the people there.
Mullah Omar and others espousing the 'Shism of Omar' were able to 'resolve' the conflict of spiritual distress to find empowerment over entities of Western Culture. No different than the Monk in Vietnam whom sought peace and unification, these men lead by their conflict with the culture of the West to a new empowerment of self-immolation. "The Terrorist" would become a form of self-immolation, no different than the Japanese Kamikaze, and a vehicle to penetrate societies of Western, Arab and Eastern culture to carry out attacks 'of infrastructure' against the one entity a sovereign country is plegded to protect, it's citizens. The Kamikaze as we have come to understand them never attacked civilians in the way terrorists have today.
The reasons over millenium of history for conflict between nations varies across the spectrum. But, never has the attack by 'the individual' been as profoundly impacting to any government as the terrorists spawned as a solution to resolving the cultural divide between Western dominance and the so called 'loss of religion' by the Muslims. Across the spectrum of Islamic culture a wide acceptance of 'the power' of the "Schism of Omar" would come to be appreciated. The most widely known of this 'spiritual schism' would be demonstrated in the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis. Even today, the distress of the 'ideologues' of Islam's warped reality carries with it the understanding that sovereignty can be achieved if only enough individuals die 'for the cause' that MUST be blessed by Mohammad and Allah.
In realizing Islam is not the enemy, I seek to point to the cultures of the Shi'ites and the fact they have been able to survive with very little military clout including suicide bombers/martyred individuals in the shadow of a madman called Saddam Hussein. Is there any wonder now that the security of the fundamentalist Islamists, the peace seekers to date, the Shi'ites would seek absolute security in nuclear proliferation by Iran? The 'Jihadist' as carved out of a schism would now take on the magnitude of a nation.
Where Western culture has been successful at war, it has been within it's own culture, the main example being WWII. Where it chronically fails is when it attempts dominance of other cultures to advocate a foreign concept called democracy. The most elaborate, expensive and stunning failures are in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The two places on Earth where 'spiritual distress' overrides any issue of the day.
Some would say Japan's surrender after WWII would be a clear illustration otherwise. No so. It took two extremely deadly nuclear weapons to destroy the Japanese will; only to have it not only surrender militarily but culturally as well.
