Al-Qaeda: America’s Unspoken Proxy?

If al-Qaeda was the enemy, why did the U.S. keep arming their cousins?

I was only 14 years old when the world changed forever on September 11, 2001. I remember the news bulletins, the towers, the panic, the grief. The world was told America is under attack by a barbaric ideology embodied in al-Qaeda, a terror group whose worldview was simply “too radical” and “too uncivilized” for civilization to tolerate.

That narrative launched wars, rewrote the world order, and set the stage for two decades of imperial bloodletting cloaked in democracy-speak. But as someone who staunchly rejects the Takfiri brand of Islamism peddled by groups like al-Qaeda, I must also reject the fairy tale that the U.S. has always opposed them. Because when you follow the trail of weapons, money, and political cover, when you really look past the slogans, you find a very different story.

The Birth of the Endless War Machine

The post-9/11 landscape saw the U.S. claim a mandate to invade Afghanistan. But that war became a gateway drug. Iraq followed, under false pretenses, and then Syria, each intervention supposedly aimed at rooting out evil or defending democracy. But in Syria, the narrative cracked open. We were told it was a democratic uprising against the Assad regime. Fair enough, Assad was no saint. But if it’s a revolution, who are the revolutionaries?

Here’s where the official story collapses under its own contradictions.

In 2012, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency warned that the driving force behind the Syrian insurgency was groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda affiliates. And what did Washington do with that information? Former President Obama greenlit a covert CIA operation—code-named Timber Sycamore—to arm and train these very groups. Not disclosed to Congress. Not disclosed to the public. It was secret because it had to be. The Pentagon ran a parallel program to support “moderate rebels,” but that, too, was mostly theater. The real force on the ground was Islamist radicals.

Jake Sullivan once emailed Hillary Clinton to say, “Al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria.” That line alone should’ve stopped the entire war effort in its tracks. But instead, it was quietly swept into the archives, labeled as an inconvenient footnote in the noble crusade for democracy.

The Utility of Extremists

Why support al-Qaeda? Because they fight. Because they hated Assad. Because they’ll die for a cause, as long as it offers “martyrdom”. Because in the cold calculus of power, ideological alignment matters far less than operational usefulness. The U.S. wasn’t exporting democracy; it was breaking regimes that no longer fit the strategic blueprint, especially regimes that resisted Israel’s regional hegemony in the region.

The U.S. and its allies needed shock troops. And where democracy couldn’t be manufactured, Takfiri militants were more than willing to fill the vacuum.

A decade ago, suggesting that the U.S. would back al-Qaeda would earn you the label “conspiracy theorist.” Fast forward to 2025, and that label is losing its sting. Today, an al-Qaeda-linked regime holds sway in Damascus, and the U.S. doesn’t seem to mind. Quite the opposite. If this group serves the strategic interests of Washington and Tel Aviv, the past is not only forgiven, it’s rebranded.

How else do you explain the U.S. lifting a $10 million bounty on the head of Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the leader of this group? Or why the same man is now being compared by a U.S. envoy, Tom Barrack, to “the George Washington of Syria”?

Think about that. A decade ago, we were supposedly hunting this man. Now he’s being compared to the founder of American democracy.

Israel’s Role in the Syrian Chessboard

None of this happens in a vacuum. A decade ago, when al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, took over border areas near the Golan Heights, Israeli forces didn’t strike them. They rescued them, offering treatment in Israeli field hospitals, delivering cash, and handing over light weapons. Netanyahu himself visited the wounded fighters.

So, we have to ask: Was this a humanitarian gesture? Or was it strategic assistance to fighters who were weakening Assad and countering Iranian influence?

If we follow the logic of power, the answer becomes painfully obvious.

Now, with Julani in power and reports of a normalization deal between this al-Qaeda-lite regime and Israel, the surreal has become the real. The same Israel that justifies its every act of aggression by invoking the specter of Islamist terror is now playing diplomatic footsie with an Islamist outfit when it suits its interests.

Rethinking the 9/11 Narrative

This is where the story bends back on itself in ways too uncomfortable for mainstream discourse.

From Afghanistan to Libya to Syria to Yemen, the pattern is clear: When convenient, the U.S. has consistently armed and supported jihadist groups to destabilize unfriendly regimes. In the Cold War, it was the Mujahideen versus the Soviets. In the post-9/11 era, it’s al-Qaeda proxies versus Iran’s allies.

So what does this say about the origins of al-Qaeda itself?

Professor Michael Hudson once remarked that al-Qaeda had effectively become a contract army for U.S. interests. He wasn’t being metaphorical. He was describing a longstanding strategy of instrumentalizing Islamist extremism for geopolitical gain. If that is true—and the evidence keeps piling up—then what does that say about 9/11?

Could the attacks have been enabled, infiltrated, or manipulated by intelligence networks? Could they have served as the Reichstag fire of the American century, the pretext needed to unleash imperial reordering across the globe?

I don’t pose these questions lightly. But they demand to be asked, especially as the U.S. increasingly appears comfortable with al-Qaeda affiliates taking over governments as long as they play by the empire’s rules.

The Price of Willful Amnesia

If you're still clinging to the old binary—good America vs. bad terrorists—you’re being played. The reality is far messier and far more dangerous.

Al-Qaeda is not just a rogue actor on the world stage. At times, it's been a subcontractor.

So the next time someone invokes Islamist terrorism to justify another war, another drone strike, another trillion dollars spent in the name of "freedom," ask them this: If al-Qaeda was the enemy, why did the U.S. keep arming their cousins?

Because maybe—just maybe—they were never the enemy to begin with.