GOING AFTER A DRY WELLSPRING OF ISLAMIC EXTREMISM

Djelloul Marbrook - CNN asked Denis McDonough, chief of staff of the President's National Security Council, a simple question. Is getting Osama bin Laden at the top of our priority list? His response was so tortured as to single-handedly discredit the President's policy.

Not only did he refuse to man up a straight answer, but in the course of a contortionary explanation he called Afghanistan the "wellspring" of Islamic extremism. And so, he concluded, sending more troops and spending money we don't have is imperative.

What is the man talking about? Even if you believe the government's official account of the 9/11 attacks on the United States you can't get around the fact that most of the attackers were Saudi Arabians.

The President himself made matters worst later in the day by referring to Afghanistan as the "epicenter" of Al Qaeda's projection of power throughout the world. Never mind all the other iterations of Al Qaeda in other parts of the world. . .

Islamic extremism is pervasive throughout the Muslim world. Its roots are many. The reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, whose teachings form the basis of the Saudi state, is a major influence. Salafi thinking-a strict interpretation of the origins and meaning of Islam-is an even more important influence on extremist thinking. Salafist groups are numerous on the Arabian peninsula, throughout North Africa, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.

But neither Abd al Wahhab nor Salafism can be said of themselves to be the cause of terrorism. Rather, it is the interpretation of such teachings by mullahs and imams and instructors in madrasahs that has inspired jihadist terrorism. It can't even be said that the concept of jihad by itself is the cause of terrorism. And in most cases the money behind these madrasahs is Saudi.

Poverty, hopelessness and social injustice in Muslim countries, coupled with imperialist policies in Israel and here, all have combined to incite terrorist responses. . .

If a man like McDonough can be so dead wrong, so blinkered, so waffling, how can this Bush Redux policy be trusted? If we truly believe that Islamic fundamentalism is rooted in Afghanistan, that Afghanistan is its wellspring, God help us. Salafists threaten every government in North Africa. Algeria is locked in a protracted civil war with its fundamentalists. Iran and Saudi Arabia are run by fundamentalists, and Pakistan has its own homegrown Taliban.

If McDonough believes what he told CNN, he's a dangerous man-to us, not to our enemies.

The Afghani picture is far more complicated than Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and President Obama have made out. It involves the long-running conflict between India and Pakistan, it involves their dispute over Kashmir, it involves the opium trade, tribalism, corruption, and Iranian connivance. . .

The real value of war is debt, and the real beneficiary of war is the holder of that debt, meaning banks. Is this a concept so subtle and elusive that an honest government should find itself unable to discuss it with its people? Either a government serves us or it serves the banks, and given our experience in the last 18 months it's no wonder the government doesn't want to discuss the real beneficiary of war.

Afghanistan is the playground of conspirators, each with his own agenda. And we're there to do what? To straighten everything out? To correct thousands of years of history? To resolve the Pakistani-Indian dispute, to settle the Kashmiri issue, to help Pakistan quell its own Taliban, to make a pot of tribes a modern state? What?

The concentrated efforts of Russia, China and the United States together couldn't do that, and we're going to try it alone? . . .