No need to mythologize him. Most uber rich people I can recollect just now (Bill Gates, Paris Hilton and Jobs) don’t spend all their time banging their 18 wives. Bin Laden is just a man, and not a particular charismatic one at that – he looks goofy, has zero fashion sense, mumbles in his beard and apparently has a hard time making eye contact. By all reports he’s not very intelligent either, on top of the fact that all his terror actions have done nothing to further his causes, all the experts I’ve heard on the case all seem to say it’s his Egyptian lieutenant (Al-something-or-other) that is the mastermind behind the scenes. Bin Laden is just the goofy public face with the money. Think of him as the Zaphod of terror.
Now whether Bush has taken one too many on the head. Well dud! he gets an average daily dose of 200 million clubbings in here. Sp naturally he’s a bit groggy.
Anyway defeat isn’t even in the cards. It’s just a matter of how much horse whipping (make that camel) we’re going to take before finally ridding the earth of those scum bastards.
Beg pardon? I was not aware that ObL had actually gotten up off his ass to do anything. Every time I’ve ever seen him, he’s been sitting on his can in a tent, or wandering around the mountains, or making speeches.
He’s a power monger, for potato’s sake. And what better way to harness the hate of the middle east than by picking Western targets?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m told Attila wasn’t in it for the money, either. :rolleyes:
Crazy people, as a general rule, do not achieve positions of power. Hitler was certainly nuts by the end of the war, but it could be argued that he was sane when he started it. Obsessive, certainly, but sane.
Bush isn’t crazy. Smart? Not as smart as he thinks he is. Tough? I have no evidence or information on precisely how tough either Bush or ObL might be. Be kind of fun to put the gloves on and let them duke it out, though. Charismatic? Hm. You might well be right.
If nothing else, ObL understands his people a hell of a lot better than Bush understands his. Or ObL’s. Or Iraqis. Or anyone else.
On the other hand, I strongly suspect that neither of them regards any of his people as anything more than pawns, to be used and discarded in the pursuit of goals that are entirely worldly.
atg:And that would be, no doubt, the mothers and fathers who have made (I do not have a cite, but I believe it in my bones, don’t you?..) Osama the boys name that displaces Mohammed?
Sorry, but what you believe in your bones doesn’t count as evidence in GD. In any case, your bones appear to be wrong, as this 2004 press release on Arabic name disambiguation indicates:
I think bin Laden’s grasp of the realities of world politics and public opinion (outside the muslim world), is somewhat dubious… I read somewhere (no cite, though if some can find it, I’d be grateful), that, in one of his earlier messages, his stated aim was to cause such disgust in the US at their government’s support for Israel, the southern states would cede from the union…
Now I’ve no idea what it would take nowadays to cause the southern states to cede from the union, but I doubt anything to do with middle eastern foreign policy would do it…
And everyone’s missing the biggest mistake Bin Laden made already, which should call into question his judgement - he thought that attacking the U.S. at home would cause it to withdraw from the Middle East. Oops. For that matter, he was apparetly caught completely off-guard by the forceful response in Afghanistan. Oops.
In fact, ole’ Bin Laden’s war isn’t going all that well for him. Far from getting the U.S. out of the Middle East and rallying the radicals to his cause, he’s put huge pressure on extremists in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. He’s lost his refuge in Afganistan. Instead of getting the U.S. out of the Middle East, they’re all over it like a rash. He hasn’t managed to pull off another attack on U.S. soil, and his leadership cadre is in tatters - dead or in jail, most of them. Sucks to be him.
Of course, he’s still very dangerous, but all in all you’ve gotta say he hasn’t shown a whole lot of good judgement so far.
It WASN’T going all that well, in fact, before some dumb-arse decided to invade Iraq, he was having a 'mare. As you say leadership in tatters, lost his refuge in Afghanistan, etc. Since then he’s back in the game:
[ul]Massive swing of public opinion against the US[/ul]
[ul]Nice little terrorist breeding ground set up in Iraq (comparable to the russian occupation of Afghanistan where he learnt his trade)[/ul]
[ul]All the specalist US special forces units who had been Central Asia concentrating tearing him a new one, on the other side of the world finding Saddam.[/ul]
[ul]24/7 coverage on Arab TV of innocent muslims getting blown up by the big bad US[/ul]
OBL was always far more bothered by the presence of US troops in what he calls the “land of the holy places.” (i.e. Saudi Arabia), than by any other US foreign policy…
Which started as soon as the Afghanistan campaign started. But actually, public opinion in the middle east hit a new low just before the war, but has now returned to levels equal to 2002. And of course, one entire nation (Iraq) has turned from being completely hostile to being a friendly power. Don’t underestimate the importance of that.
It’s not at all clear that terrorists are being ‘bred’ in Iraq. It may be more accurate to say that people who were already terrorists are congregating there, and that ex-Baathists are using terror tactics against the occupation.
What is indisputably true is that terrorists are being killed in Iraq at a pretty fast pace. An awful lot of ‘foreign fighters’ have met their demise at the hand of the U.S. military.
That’s a gross exaggeration. The forces that are in Afghanistan are generally of the type that aren’t necessary in Iraq. 10th Mountain division, the 82nd Airborne, and a whole bunch of Special Forces like the Green Berets. That presence stayed in Afghanistan throughout the war. The actual number of resources diverted to Iraq just was only a small fraction of what was needed in Afghanistan.
And also Arab TV coverage of Americans standing their ground, not retreating, building schoolhouses, etc.
And also the Kurds in Syria seeing how their Iraqi brethren’s lives have improved, which is stirring both unrest and pro-US sentiment in that country.
Also Iranians coming to Iraq for Hajj and other religious events, and seeing fellow Shiites free to express themselves. This will become more and more important as economic conditions and security improve in Iraq.
Also Iraqis selling their story of freedom to other Arabs in the region.
It’s still very early in Iraq. Give it a couple of years to build a functioning government, establish security, and build a strong economy. That’s how you change public opinion.
Be that as it may the actually special forces directly responsible for looking for OBL are quite small in number were definitely heavily depleted by the deployment. In particular I recently read an article (I know no cite, I’ll find one on Monday if you want) on how several units with the nessacary training, language skills, etc, for operating in the Middle East/South Asia had actually been replaced with troops whose speciallty was Latin American operations.
Pleased as I am for the Kurds of Iraq (though the ethnic situation could still explode at anytime, particularly in areas like Kirkuk with large mixed ethnic populations which the Kurds lay claim to), I can hardly see that encouraging Kurdish uprisings is going to win us any friends in the Arab world.
I can’t claim to be a regular subscriber to Al Jazeera, et al. but I haven’t seen any footage like that on arab TV.
Indeed, but we’d be pretty hard pressed to kill as many as the Russians did in Afghanistan (after all they had the advantage of a huge opression apperatus, and very few scruples concerning things like torture and killing innocent civilans), and that is pretty much universally acknowleged as the main “breeding groud” (or spawning area if you’d rather) for Al Qieda.
The big difference being that the Russians WERE oppressive, and had the entire population united against them. In Afghanistan and Iraq, large percentages of the population approve of the U.S. invasions and the direction their countries are moving in. This is not (yet) a popular uprising. It is a small number of extremists and terrorists who are running roughshod over the population.
I think that is the next target for the islamic terrorists…Greece is a perfect country to operate in for them. With weak security and easy access, the Athens Olympics could become a disaster…all it would take is for a few satchel bombs to be placed in an olympic venue…then, thousands killed and maimed!
I wouldn’t go to the Olympics,no way!
