Saddam ran a secular regime in Iraq in the same way that Bush was secular…IOW, his actions were secular, but he paid lip service to religion when it suited his purposes.
Der is both correct and over stating things when he says that AQ and the Ba’athists hated each other. Both organizations are Sunni, and have, at their core, Sunni interests. Certainly the Ba’ath party was secular (in comparison to AQ), but they still tied into Islam when it suited their purposes. Both organizations also recognized that the West, and specifically the US, were their real enemy. Enemy of my enemy, and all that.
That isn’t to say that AQ shed any tears to see Saddam disposed of…in fact, I would have to agree with Der that this probably played into their hands, somewhat. I believe that ObL wants a unified, (Sunni) Islamic superstate, and that Iraq and it’s people and territory would certainly be a part of such a state. Anything that destabilized one of the regimes in the region (or deposed it, as we did with Saddam) would be viewed, strategically, as a Good Thing™. Unfortunately for ObL and AQ, they haven’t been able to capitalize on this, so, thus far, it’s been a wash, at least WRT the question asked in the OP. IMHO anyway, the goal wasn’t an endless war of attrition with the US, but instead a furtherance of AQ and ObL’s goal of blowing out the old regimes in the region and supplanting them with regimes that more fully coincide with his own philosophy…or, better yet, with him and his organization. Thus far we destabilized one regime that was fully on board with him (the Taliban), and one that was probably opposed (Saddam), but in neither case has it worked out the way he would have liked it to have.
Certainly. He and AQ would undoubtedly want, as their strategic goal, all of those regimes to go down in flames and be replaced either by regimes more favorable to his own philosophies (i.e. fundamentalist Sunni Islamic theocracies), or by him or his group directly.
Yes, he was secular in the same way, as in completely secular. Secularism does not mean areligious. That’s a common misuse of the term secular. It was secular in that the government was not run by a religious party.
And that sort of thing is what AQ hates more than anything. AQ is aggressively Islamic, they have gone on record as hating secular Islamic regimes more than anything. You are creating a situation that simply does not exist. AQ is not more aligned with a secular government just because it is made up primarily of Sunnis. The Enemy of my Enemy stuff shows a profound ignorance of Middle-Eastern politics as Muslims are more likely to fight one another with extreme violence than they are to fight outsiders.
A war of attrition is a war fought until one side gives up because it has lost the will to fight. When American loses the will to fight the Pashtun (Taliban) will remain the largest ethnic demographic in Afghanistan.
You ‘Believe’ that ObL wants a unified Sunni Islamic state? Why is it that people continue to say they ‘believe’ what he has said straight up and explicitly time and time again as though they came to that conclusion via careful analysis? I don’t BELIEVE that is what he wants, I KNOW that is what he wants, because he has been entirely consistent on that point from day one.
As for an endless war of attrition that’s entirely missing the point, a war of attrition is ALWAYS to the benefit of the smaller side in an asymmetrical war. We waste men and materiel while they hide in their caves. That’s the entire point. The longer we fight, and the more we spend the more it benefits Al Qaeda. As far as destabilizing the Taliban goes, they are still and will remain one of the strongest forces in Afghanistan because the Taliban are Pashtun nationalists and Pashtuns are the majority population in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai is Pashtun also and has almost no support outside of Kabul. Whether they comprise the government or not the Taliban are still the most potent political force in Afghanistan after the US Military. They will outlast us because they have nowhere else to go and show no signs of suddenly having a change of heart.
You do understand the difference between Salafist political Islam and merely being a Sunni member of a national government right?
Exactly, and fairly standard for religious fanatics. I suspect they’d prefer a Christian or Hindu or almost any other flavor of theocracy over the Ultimate Evil of secularism, in fact.
Everyone posits Osama Bin-Laden as the mastermind of this guerilla war. For my part, I’m suspicious that he has any great influence or even that he is alive.
I can’t think of any leader who has been able to hold sway over a large group of people for a long period of time without frequent rallies and inspirational speeches. To the best of my knowledge, it’s been more than five years since OBL has been seen by more than a handful of insiders and his video pep talks are few and far between. His audio tapes lack the vigor of FDR, Churchill or Hitler and seem unlikely to keep followers on message.
I just don’t think that he is the great bogeyman but just one in a vast loosely organized network of people who have a grudge against the US. I think his name is only kept out there so we have a name to attach our anger to.
My personal belief is that he is dead but that either Al-Qaeda or the US (or both) find it beneficial to conceal that fact.
Al Qaeda certainly. As far as the US goes; for Bush it would have made sense, he wanted a bogeyman. But Obama has no reason I can think of to keep Obama’s death secret. He hasn’t built his power base on panics over terrorism. If he’s dead ( I wouldn’t be surprised ), I don’t think the US really knows.
From my understanding Zawahiri is the tactical mastermind and Bin-Laden is the face.
Al Qaeda isn’t a large group of people. It’s a loosely affiliated cultural movement of malcontents, with a core group of Al Qaeda that consists of a couple dozen guys at most.
Yes, that is precisely what Al Qaeda is. This doesn’t dispute what anyone has said in the thread about Al Qaeda because I don’t think anyone sees Al Qaeda as being different from what you describe.
So who was that in the video he released a week or two ago?
IIRC that “video” was a still shot of OBL and some audio going on. I think there’s also some reluctance on the part of the intel community to accept whether or not that’s even a new video at all, but rather a rehashed one recorded in 2004.
The video is from 2007 anyway, not a few weeks ago.
So, why is there not more (any?) anti-Turkey and anti-Indonesia rhetoric begin thrown around by these guys if they’re so opposed to secular Islamic regimes? It seems much more focused on non-Islamic secular regimes, specifically ones that support Israel.
When was the last confirmed sighting of Bin Laden alive, either IRL or on video? I ask because I find it odd that in this age of cellphone video and easy access to all manner of technology, OBL continues to “appear” only in audio recordings (which are then authenticated by our own gov’t).
It looks like Sept. 6, 2007 by video. see herefor list of OBL messages. The last new audio message was in early June of this year when President Obama visited the Middle East.
I’m not sure what a lack of video means; (other than possibly giving clues to location; which they should be able to hide fairly well) it might be he does not want to show visual signs of possible sickness, weakness, ect.
If you’re worried about authentication (from the US), the messages are authenticated by other governments, as well.
I’ve been wondering that myself lately. I found this…
The Battle of Tora Bora was 12-17 December 2001 and the world hasn’t seen bin laden since.
The most wanted man on the planet hasn’t been seen in almost nine years. If he was still at Tora Bora when the US military came calling in December 2001 (and there’s no reason to think he wasn’t) then the most reasonable conclusion would be bin laden got what he deserved then and there.
I think OBL has ignited a culture war the Islamic world cannot win, ok sure, faith is a nice backdrop in everyday life, however the basis of it being the centre of one persons life, a muslims life, is becoming less and less, which is provoking a more extreme reaction from conservatives as they try to quash any attempts at liberalism.
I’ve read before about how people in Anbar province when AQI was at it’s height, pretty much hated Islam and anything to do with religion.
We’re focusing too much on this thread about ‘Western’ perspective, from a Muslim perspective, he’s been an embarrassment, a reminder of cultural inferiority, and not to mention the extreme violence which has lead large numbers of Muslims who has some support for his ‘aims’ to reject him and his ilk all together.
I think the US reaction is somewhat normal in these circumstances given the fact that nothing has ever happened like this on their soil, but this will die down in the years to come as the US becomes accustomed to fighting terrorism just like any other nation.
From what I’ve seen OBL didn’t expect the towers to fall, so in terms of the attack it was more than successful.
OBL isn’t interested in damage, the USA is so unguarded it’d be painfully easy to get 20 suicide bombers and put them in malls after Thanksgiving and do tons of damage. Bin Laden wants symbolic victories.
The Taliban wasn’t our enemy. They were just harboring Bin Laden. This gets lost. Bush said, “Give us Bin Laden and we’ll go away.”
The Taliban was hated by almost every other Muslim country. Iran especially didn’t like them.
If you ask did AQ accomplish their goals, well no, not their hardcore written down goals. But they did manage to create a situation where it was proved that the US was vulnerable. Just like Israel, the USA is now fighting wars on the enemy’s terms and you can’t win a war like that.
After WWII we didn’t go into Japan and say “Naughty, naughty, all you guys.” Or we didn’t say “OK you Nazis, now that you learned your lesson, stop that.” No we had de-nazi programs, we made the Emperor of Japan renounce his divinity and so forth.
The only thing is that AQ has not been able to mount an attack on the USA since. But we still don’t know if it’s for lack of trying or because they can’t. In otherwords can’t they do it? Or are they holding out to plan something bigger than 9-11?