Did China Create bin Laden? Is China Using the Jihadist Movement for Its Own Purposes?

"It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious." -------Alfred North Whitehead

America foreign policy has been accused of creating the modern jihadist movement through intervention and imperialism directed against Islam. Jihad has existed since the beginning of Islam and was the main vehicle used to create an Arabized Muslim world that has engulfed and extinguished many cultures and even entire civilizations. In comparison, American "interventionism and imperialism" are recent phenomena. The same can not be said of another player that until now has been sitting on sidelines: China.

Few Americans are able to read either Arabic or Chinese. They have had to rely on "translations of a number of articles and books written by Chinese military analysts that have been wrestling with the problem of how to win a war against a seemingly invincible United States."

Al Kaltman has an interesting point of view:

...Only one of these has received attention by the mainstream American press. Chaoxian Zhan (Unrestricted War) proposed a total war approach to defeating the U.S. that was praised by China’s highest ranking officers. In their war fighting methodology, the authors (Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui) included the possible use of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons...

In Unrestricted War, Osama bin Laden is the prototype for the "new terrorist." He has acquired capital, technical expertise and access to weapons by taking advantage of the "loopholes in the free economies of the West." (Bin Laden has boasted that his followers understand Western financial systems as well as they know the backs of their hands.) The ease with which his organization has been able to raise funds coupled with his skillful use of religious organizations and the media to gain recruits to his cause has guaranteed a ready supply of men and weaponry to carry out his attacks.

According to Qiao and Wang, the new terrorists are not restrained by "international law, behavioral norms and ethical principles…Because they operate secretly, are well concealed, and cause widespread damage, their attacks …seem uncommonly cruel. All of which when it is broadcast in real time by the round the clock coverage of the modern media further strengthens the effects of their terrorist acts." Defeating the new terrorists is difficult because a nation "which follows certain rules and will only use limited force to achieve limited goals" is at a distinct disadvantage against organizations "which do not observe any rules and are unafraid to fight an unlimited war using unlimited means." Terrorist groups rely on the fact that even though they are fighting a technologically and numerically superior enemy, the nature of their attacks provides insufficient justification for the enemy to make full use of its superiority. The new terrorists are like rats with very sharp teeth and excellent survival skills. Like rats, they strike quickly and then duck back into their holes. However, whereas rat-infested habitats can be destroyed, terrorists conceal themselves among civilian populations and any massive military retaliation is certain to result in the loss of innocent lives. When you kill innocent civilians you are condemned by the media, human rights groups and the nations most closely allied to you.

China, an ancient civilization that has gone through cycles of highs and lows, is on the upswing. As do the jihadists, they have the same goal: world domination. Both realize that neither could win a war of direct conflict with the United States and have done what the sages of old from many cultures have advised for conquering your opponent: "Know your enemy."
Analysts around the world are doing just that: studying and learning everything there is to know in order to conquer and subdue America. The sad reality is that many Americans are helping them to do so. Some of them presently form a network that extends throughout our systems of learning from university, where they first learned their ideology, to secondary, elementary, and even pre-kindergarten programs.

Many of the people educating America’s children today came of age during the protests against the Vietnam War, and by and large believe that all war is wrong. The Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI), established in 1892, is the oldest professional association of its type in the United States. Its executive director considers the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq "profoundly sad and most unfortunate." ACEI takes the position that "a vital way to prevent war and bring about peace is to raise a generation of children who reject killing as uncivilized and as a barbaric, unproductive way to deal with human conflicts." While ACEI’s bold statement stands in sharp contrast to that of the other associations of American educators, which implicitly sanction antiwar teachings under the mantle of academic freedom of expression, the most widely held view is that "peace education" is the "natural role" for America’s teachers at every level from pre-kindergarten through graduate school.

And their disdain for the American way is having an effect on this nation's security:

And peace education seems to be working. The Army and the Marine Corps are failing to meet their recruiting goals. The head of the Army Recruiting Command, referring to enlistment projections as "not a bright picture," calls it "the toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-volunteer army." The Army is so desperate to sign up new recruits that it has begun offering 15-month active-duty enlistments. However, such a short enlistment will almost certainly mean reduced training time and lowered unit cohesiveness, which will inevitably result in greater numbers of U.S. casualties.

How did China, a civilization that once rejected all things Western, come to understand America's "peace movement?"

During the Korean War, Joseph Stalin told Zhou Enlai that the United States had "lost the capability to wage a large-scale war." Mao Zedong also believed that Americans "cannot stand wars." In his declaration of war against the United States, bin Laden cited Reagan’s withdrawal of the Marines from Beirut in 1983 after 241 were killed in a suicide bombing, and Clinton’s withdrawal from Somalia "when tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu" as examples of American "impotence and weakness." Qiao and Wang believe that "CNN’s broadcast of an American soldier’s exposed corpse on the streets of Mogadishu" was all that was needed to "shake American determination."

One day China may decide to "dance with the wolf" as they are rapidly building a formidable military system that includes a world-class navy.

Is China using the unwitting jihadists to distract and preoccupy the United States in the impossible-to-end "War on Terrorism" as it carves out an empire in Asia and world economic dominance? It's hard to imagine that the Islamists would collude with the Chinese, but necessity makes strange bedfellows.