The economic war

Osama Rising…

An economic war is underway and it has in opposition Osama Bin Laden versus the U.S. The latter may have a stronger hand in the military aspect of their war against Osama, the former Saudi millionaire (he is now disposed of his Saudi nationality and is not that a millionaire nowadays). Yet the U.S. seems vulnerable on the economic front and since its economy is based mostly on the strength of the U.S. dollar, it is getting difficult to predict the fate of this war.

Osama Bin Laden, the popular Islamic figure in the Muslim world has resurfaced. He sent a letter to the Taliban, mourning the death of Mullah Dadullah, the much feared Taliban warlord. The letter also praised the brother of Mullah Dadullah for his taking over the helm of the Taliban army in the fight against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

OBL as Osama is known has also resurfaced in a tape recording showed on Al-Jazeera Television. World Futures insisted in an earlier article on its website www.worldfutures.info that the Arab news channel based in Doha had a tape that was due to be released in April this year. The tape was eventually released last month in July amid an outcry that it was an old tape of Osama that was doctored by an American group to dirty the name of the Mujahideen leader.

Whatever the role of those who handed the tape to Al-Jazeera, it is to be understood that there are signs that Osama – if he is still alive like the Taliban recently claimed – is making that solemn comeback on the international scene. World Futures also wrote on its website that OBL is preparing his comeback and this could be a comeback with more than a bang. The issue of interest is not his comeback here but it is the battle that this man is leading (with his group in tail) against the U.S. empire world wide.

The war against America led by OBL is two pronged. It is a military war and an economic war. This has not been said enough by the international media for the simple reason that they could not lie about the fate of OBL while altogether claim that the man was strong enough to conduct a silent economic war against them. Nonetheless, this economic war being a protracted one since it does not primarily engage armies or materials. 

OBL believes the way to bring down a superpower is to weaken its economy and he believes in doing this by attacking the core of American capitalism that is by attacking the U.S. dollar. By doing so, the OBL group believe the American economy will be weakened and weakening a capitalist economy is indeed one of the ways to create trouble on the home front while it will also create trouble in such a war oriented economy of the U.S.

The theory put forward by the OBL group seems simple though it is more complicated in understanding. Nevertheless, this war is going on and is one of the two ways the group has found to attack the U.S. The war may not seem realistic to many observers or readers since it is a protracted war. One does not see the war being fought but events described below will show that this war is well on.

"We are continuing in the same policy to make America bleed profusely to the point of bankruptcy," said bin Laden in several of his interventions. His objective is to drain America's resources. By doing so, he believe this bring the empire to fail in preserving its resources, its military strength and its economic power.

To date, OBL has succeeded in draining the military power out of the U.S. by forcing it to put 300,000 American troops outside the country, placing them in Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan and some other Muslim nations. This is seen as a success by the OBL group since they can’t touch American soldiers within America’s soil but they can attack them in Iraq and Afghanistan!

This is a solid economic battle since it involves billions of U.S. dollars and a great hole in the budgetary performance of the country. The OBL group does not have to fight this battle with huge armies or sophisticated weaponry and they did not fight it with much cash too. They are waiting for the next move by the U.S. in Iraq to launch their plans to weaken the U.S. further in the Middle East.

A retreating U.S. army from Iraq will only make the Mujahideen stronger but do not forget that a U.S. army that insists to be in Iraq for years will also give more room to the Mujahideen army to kill and maim and psychologically frighten the Americans. Iraq is worst than Vietnam for the Americans but they are stuck in the Iraqi mud that is slowly turning into a quick sand.

The cost of the war in Iraq is significant of great losses for the Americans. The latter want to recover the losses with the total control of Iraqi oil but this will not be easy as we have seen so far.

Between 2001 and 2007 U.S. military spending grew by more than one fourth. America now spends an extra $100 to $200 billion per year on its military. Add to this the creation of a $30 billion-per-year Department of Homeland Security, and the billions directed to the State Department and other agencies aiding allies in the War on Terror and we discover a price tag of at least $150 billion annually to defend the U.S. against terrorism, wrote one website on the OBL war against America.

OBL’s economic warfare against the U.S. is to force the latter to invest unsustainable amounts of funding into its defense budget. It is also forcing the U.S. to abandon its own territory, which is today unguarded and is vulnerable to any possible massive attacks by its enemies, not essentially by the OBL group. The U.S. says the OBL group is much crippled in its capacity and would not be able to launch massive attacks against American soil. Yet the fact remains that the U.S. is now less secured internally that it was before 911.

The OBL group would wish the U.S. enters in a war against Iran as this will give it the opportunity to openly fight the U.S. and the West in Iraq while their armies are targeting Iranian objectives. A war against Iran will mean more expenditure for the U.S. and greater strain on its economy.

While the OBL group is fighting the U.S. the Muslim communities world wide are opening their eyes. There are strong movements to banish U.S. made products in many Muslim countries and communities’ world wide. Though it is still a long shot, the boycott of American products is also another form of warfare the group wishes to impose on Muslims world wide. It is slowly gaining momentum despite the fact that the group does not have direct influence on the boycott movement, which is more a reaction from Muslims who are not able to accept the American dominance in Iraq and elsewhere.

The U.S. intend to recover its looses by using Iraq’s oil for profit but the OBL group has its own strategy there. The anti-American forces in Iraq are targeting the oil pipelines and depots and this is part of the regular attacks in Iraq. Their aim is to cut the provision line (oil is seen as a western provision) and to get the Americans to be stuck in their efforts to make some money out of Iraq’s oil. They have so far succeeded in doing so despite claims by the U.S. that it has re-established the country’s pipelines and depots.

Continued war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the gross impossibility for the U.S. to end terror as it calls the actions of the Mujahideen forces has a direct consequence on America’s economy. The security around oil transportation and exploitation altogether is today guided by one principle called the ‘fear premium’ or the ‘insecurity premium’ and this means oil prices will boil and will not go down as expected.

This too means the OBL group is pushing the ante further in their economic war by making oil less cheap this causing an inflammation of prices in the U.S. and many other countries – minus the Middle East and other oil producing nations. The U.S. still imports 10 million barrels a day and any increase in oil prices means a loss of money for the U.S. This loss of money may be between dollars 25 to 50 over million for the U.S.

"We call our brothers in the battlefields to direct some of their great efforts towards the oil wells and pipelines," reads a jihadist website. "The killing of 10 American soldiers is nothing compared to the impact of the rise in oil prices on America and the disruption that it causes in the international economy."

Higher oil prices altogether mean a massive transfer of wealth from oil-consuming countries -- primarily the U.S. -- to the Muslim world, where three quarters of global oil reserves are concentrated while America’s huge defense funding has already created the highest deficit in the nation’s budget since World War II.

However, the OBL group is bent on attacking the U.S. dollar. The currency note of the U.S. is now available across the world in both fake and real notes. There is now growing mistrust regarding the U.S. dollars and in some border towns in Africa, Asia and parts of Europe, the U.S. dollar note is not exchangeable. The reason being that banks and money changers fear it is fake notes.

Yet the fight is not create mistrust alone. It is also one that consists of stripping the U.S. dollar of its value. It has been sometime since the U.S. dollar failed to gain on all other currencies. Recently, it was at one of its lowest rate but it picked up with the high rise in oil prices and the actions of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

The dollar is not backed by the Bretton Woods agreement, which is an agreement on how nations run their currencies. The dollar is not in this agreement, having been pulled out in the 1970’s during the reign of President Nixon. This is now playing against the dollar since it is under attack from all quarters. It does not have solid backing by banking institutions tough the banks are the ones that force the use of the U.S. currency notes on the world. The fact remains that the U.S. dollar is high valued legal tender anywhere on earth, even in Malaysia or Saudi Arabia.

Some reports in U.S. newspapers suggest the dollar is facing a crisis of international proportion. Russia, China and even Iran have shifted their oil purchases from the U.S. denomination to that of their own currencies or the Euro. The Americans may be damning the Europeans for competing with them with a stronger international currency but this will not solve the problems that the dollar is facing.

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