Lev Navrozov
Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2002

The word "war" is often used figuratively, as in the phrases "war on crime," "war on poverty," "war on illiteracy," etc.

In the same sense the Germans use the word "Kampf," which means literally "war," "fight," "battle," "combat." Darwin's expression "struggle for survival" is in German "Kampf ums Dasein," "war for existence."

Curiously, this homonymy gave Hitler the opportunity to declare that "struggle for existence" is war complete with "Kampfluggeuge" (bombers) on "Kampfplatz" (battlefield). The title of Hitler's book "Mein Kampf," translated into English as "My Struggle," actually connotes "My War/Fight/Battle/Combat," and not just "Struggle."

The English expression "war on crime" does not mean that bombers and other weapons are used on a battlefield against criminals such as murderers, rapists, robbers, thieves, etc. Despite the "war" on crime for many centuries, that is, the measures of protection against criminals and their apprehension before and after their crimes, the number of crimes (known to the police) in the United States is still about 12 million a year, though the number of men in prisons has increased per capita since 1960 about six times.

Terrorists are criminals, but while common criminals have private or personal purposes, terrorists are criminals who perceive their purposes as national, social, political or divine. They are certainly not easier to apprehend than common criminals, especially before their crimes. Even after his/their crime, the person(s) who sent out letters containing anthrax in the United States has/have not been apprehended for more than a year!

Especially elusive before their crimes are suicidal terrorists, because they have sentenced themselves to death and hence are beyond human weakness, temptations and fears. Their appearance depends on how many of those inclined to suicide (this number is more or less constant in every country, and for the Islamic world amounts to almost 300,000 men and 60,000 women) sublimate their genetic inclination to suicide into a terrorist suicide-murder for a cause (such as Islam or Palestine).

In my two-part column of April 30 and May 2, "American-Israeli Military Technology at War Against Genetics," I ridiculed Ariel Sharon's armored invasion of the West Bank as his "war on terrorism." The Israeli prime minister understood the phrase "war on terrorism" in the literal sense.

In a Russian 19th-century humorous story, the chief of the police instructs his subordinates to apprehend terrorists. But how do you find them? "Easily!" answers the chief. "They wear Greek hats!" The prime minister of Israel had surpassed the comical Russian police chief of the 19th century. His tanks were killing terrorists in the West Bank. How did they find them? Easily! Evidently, they were wearing Greek hats.

Of course, I said that Sharon's war (in the literal sense of the word) had no more to do with the war on terrorism (in the figurative sense) than with the war on crime, or with the war on poverty, or with the war on illiteracy. In the past month, after nine months of Sharon's "war on terrorism," the Palestinian terrorism in Israel was more intense than it had been before Sharon's invasion of the West Bank to shoot all terrorists, identifiable by their Greek hats.

One of the e-mail responses to my articles in April and May was in Russian and contained two letter-sized pages. The author, obviously an immigrant from Russia, explained that by his invasion of the West Bank, Sharon had destroyed the terrorism in Israel, and if I was against Sharon's victorious "war on terrorism," then I was for the extermination, following the example of Hitler, of the Jews in Israel and elsewhere.

The author sounded like a Soviet Communist of the early 1930s, when the head of Stalin's secret police was a Jew. Such immigrants to Israel from Soviet Russia have brought the blindness, ruthlessness and zeal of Soviet Jewish Communists to Israel and will not rest until Israel is destroyed owing to the "war on terrorism."

The Western invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the contemplated invasion of Iraq are even more absurd and remote from terrorism than Sharon's invasion of the West Bank last April.

The braggart bin Laden and his $1-a-day al-Qaeda riffraff had nothing to do with the terrorist attack of 9/11/01 (see my column of Feb. 4, "Who Is Osama bin Laden, and Does He Have Anything to Do With the Sept. 11 Attack?"). As I pointed out in my column, out of the 19 9/11 terrorists, 15 were Saudis and none of the remaining four was an Afghan.

The raison d'être of suicidal terrorism? Suicidal terrorists, not money that may come from thousands of sources. But even in terms of money there is no evidence that bin Laden ever contributed a cent to the 19 terrorists out of his hundreds of millions of dollars inherited from his father. On the other hand, members of the Saudi royal family secretly sympathize with the Saudi terrorist organizations aiming at the West, and the fact that 15 out of the 19 terrorists were Saudis was not an accidental coincidence.

The pattern of Islamic terrorism in Israel and that in the United States are different. In Israel it has been a frequent occurrence before and after Sharon's invasion of the West Bank. In the United States 9/11/01 was the only avowedly Islamic (Saudi) suicidal terrorist attack killing thousands of Americans in the 20 years since the resurgence of Islamic militancy began in the late 1970s.

Another such attack, killing dozens of thousands or millions of Americans, may occur in another 20 years – or tomorrow. The purpose of Palestinian terrorism in Israel has been local and specific: the State of Palestine. The purpose of Islamic terrorism in the United States is distant, global and infinitely more ambitious: the destruction of all Americans who will refuse to convert to Islam. Hence its pattern, different from that of the Palestinian terrorism in Israel.

Soviet Russia supported the wars of all movements and all countries against the West. Owing to this support, the Vietnam War ended in American defeat, with about 50,000 American casualties. But Soviet Russia fell in 1991, and the Western invasion of Iraq was a "brilliant victory." Ironically, no one connected Iraq with terrorism, and the word was hardly even mentioned by the media, let alone by any Western government.

The next "brilliant victory" was the victory of NATO in Yugoslavia. Again, no one connected President Milosevic with terrorism. Rather, it was the Albanian "Kosovo Liberation Army" that was terrorist and helped by Islamic terrorist organizations. The cause of NATO's war on Yugoslavia was based on a fabrication (see my two-part column of March 18 and 22, " Milosevic and the Impeachment of President Clinton").

These two wars were not advertised as wars on terrorism, but the war on Afghanistan in 2001 and the contemplated war on Iraq are. Yet they have no more to do with terrorism than the first invasion of Iraq and the war on Yugoslavia.

If Sharon and the heads of Western governments claim that they have been waging a successful war on terrorism, why can't they wage a successful war on common crime in their countries? Do they imply that it is impossible to eradicate common murderers, rapists, robbers, etc., but to eradicate (suicidal) terrorists it is enough to invade a sufficiently small and technologically backward territory, such as the West Bank or Iraq?

Incidentally, Iraq, just like other small and technologically backward countries, once acquired biological weapons. Before 1989, Iraq acquired war germs, with the connivance of the U.S. authorities, from a U.S. company (see my column of Dec. 3, "The Rationale of Post-Nuclear Superweapons").

What does this have to do with terrorism? You see, Iraq MAY supply terrorists with bacteriological weapons! Well, dozens of countries and illicit trade mafias may supply them with the same. Surely those terrorists who sent out anthrax in letters in the U.S. and have never been apprehended could well steal it from a U.S. lab. For example, from that same U.S. lab that had been selling war germs to Iraq before 1989.

Needless to say, those wars become national obsessions, occupying all public attention, while the development of post-nuclear weapons in China and its possible resumption on the pre-1991 scale in Russia, are totally and completely ignored by the mainstream media.

We can now see what the buzz-phrase "war on terrorism" means. It means invading small and technologically backward countries that have nothing to do with terrorism and provoking thereby hatred for the West, and especially the United States, in the Islamic world, China, Russia and India. A possible result is terrorism in the United States as intense as it is in Israel despite Prime Minister Sharon's "war on terrorism" before and ever since his invasion of the West Bank.

In short, the "war on terrorism" is a possible conversion of the West into Israel as far as the intensity of suicidal terrorism is concerned.

My NewsMax.com columns have been accompanied by my proposal to publishers to send them by slow-mail the 130-page beginning of my book, "Out of Moscow and Into New York: A Life in the Geostrategically Lobotomized West in the Age of Terrorism and Post-Nuclear Superweapons."

Though the proposal was addressed to publishers, hundreds of readers sent me e-mails expressing their appreciation of my columns and requesting that I send them my book, or at least the beginning of it. I have decided to meet their wishes by posting on my Web site my book in weekly installments.

Those interested, please let me know (navlev@cloud9.net) and you will be informed by e-mail as to the link to my Web site.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Al-Qaeda
Israel
Kosovo Yugoslavia
Middle East
War on Terrorism