Is Al-Qaeda biting off more than they can chew? The attack in Turkey

Great Debates
61

According to Stephen C. Pelletiere, writing in the New York Times, the Kurds were killed with a blood agent, which Iran had, but not Iraq:

Original editorial is here, but you need to pay to get a copy from their archives. A free copy can be found here, halfway down the page.

I’ve got my cites right up there; where are yours?

Because some of us feel that if the United States is going to risk the lives of its soldiers, piss off the international community, and drag us all into a quagmire of terrorism, that we need legitimate reasons to go in a’shootin’, and not just regurgitated Republican propaganda porn.

62

As for the AQ connection… seems that the terrorists were Turks:

CNN Link

Possibly AQ connections…

63

Just for the board from Clearguidance (A Pro Osama - Alqueda Supporter Board)
What thier thouugts on it are…
**A radical Turkish Islamist group, known as the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders’ Front, said it was responsible

“We were here today to celebrate … an anniversary. But we all got this very upsetting news,”

The car bombs exploded outside the synagogues at about 1000 (0700 GMT) as worshippers were holding Sabbath morning prayers.

“The blast went off in the middle of the prayer,” Turkish Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Haleva said of the explosion at Neve Shalom.**

64

I assume, randy054, that these guys are a bunch of crackpots. How representitive really are these bozos views in the ME? Sort of on par with the Flat Earth Society over here?

I especially found this both chilling AND extremely hipacritical:

That someone could say this with a straight face (and presumably with a clear consious) is beyond belief. Using this logic, I’d have to point out to this poster that the US then was totally justified in killing any number of muslims in Iraq…we " have a right to revoke any treaties and get to it…"

Hell, the whole war was justified in that light. After all, they attacked and killed our civilians in New York. Doesn’t matter that Iraq wasn’t involved at all…they were muslims. We’d be justified doing bombing strikes where ever there are muslims by this fucked up ‘logic’.

Definitely a bunch of nutballs…

-XT

65

You would be surprised how common this attitude is among ‘practicing muslims’ in the Middle East.
We in the west are tied up in our western politics and being correct but fail to look at what does the common muslim in the Middle East think?
Not what thier ‘representatives spokespersons’ tell us as that is about as valid as George Bush calling Islam a religion of peace to appease the masses both muslim and nonmuslim for political correctness. That is, unless you actually believe he believes that.
If you truly interested in what others in the middle east think, rather than debate western politics and how we are right or wrong, it may be prudent to enevelope onesself in the mindset prevalent in the middle east via several hundred arabic news sites, message boards etc. Or we can sit here tied up in our own little world and decide what they think based on how we think in our own culture.

66

Which is one of the reasons I really dislike Bush and his entourage. Both sides seem to think alike as far as “right and wrong” goes.

Bush and AQ in a sense are promoting this kind of reality.
67

True to an extent, but it wasnt Bush that started this mess. Islamic fanatics have been attacking countries all over the world for the past 50 years.
Thanks to the technology and communications in the western world, they now have the means to attack us more efficiently.
To say that these problems just all of a sudden cropped up and the west is all to blame is the height of IGNORANCE.

Im sure many western governments are quite aware of the problems that have been ongoing in the Middle East that we are not privy to due to our on ignorance.

The middle east with thier imams and mullahs wish for the death in their sermons daily of all nonmuslims, state sponsored no less.
The hate for the sake of allah against disbelievers is greater than you think. And with the maddrasses planted all over that emphasize violence as a means to solving problems, it should be no surprise the number of muslims killing muslims everyday for those that arent islamic enough or follow thier interpretation.

68

Well, I would tend to disagree that the main motives of Bush are equatable to AQ. I think Bush is basically REACTING and AQ is ACTING.

I agree with Sofa Kings statement “I think that the United States, politically inclined to think it had nothing but a hammer for a foreign policy tool, saw Iraq as the tallest nail in the Middle East.” Thats vastly different than the attitude that, no matter how innocent someone is (i.e. Jews in Turkey have very little connection to Israel) you have a free hunting license to kill them where ever they are, reguardless. Certainly the US issued its own hunting licenses in this post 9/11, and you can debate back and forth how right or wrong that was (myself…a little of both, with more right in Afghanistan, more wrong in Iraq). However, they were very LIMITED hunting licenses. We took pains NOT to kill anymore innocent civilians as we possibly could. Cold comfort to those that got killed, and I for one mourn them…its in my thoughts all the time. But it certainly COULD have been vastly worse…

Using their logic (well, the logic of the nutball that wrote that piece of trash we are argueing over anyway) the US could have basically done whatever it wanted and damn the casualties (after all, we HAVE the power to do so, atm)…in fact, maybe ENCOURAGE more casualties by that logic. Had we done that…it would have been a TRUE blood bath with hundreds of thousands, maybe MILLIONS dead.

For that matter, we had no need to actually invade Iraq at all…and no need to limit ourselves to only Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, there are muslims in Saudi, Syria, Jordan, Iran, etc etc…we could have basically bombed them indiscriminately…and thats not even counting nukes. I suppose a nuke dropped on each capital in the region would have gotten their attention…and our ‘revenge’, using that posters fucked up logic.

I know this won’t convince you RM that there are vast difference between Bush and AQ…to you they might just be degrees of evil. To me, there is a large gulf between them, and while I dislike Bush VERY much, I can still see that he’s a lot different than ObL. Maybe not because he WANTS to be…hell, turn him truely lose and he might just BE as much of a monster. No, not because he wants to be, but because our system DOES constrain him and limit how destructive he (or any other president) can be.

-XT

69

True to an extent, but it wasnt Bush that started this mess. Islamic fanatics have been attacking countries all over the world for the past 50 years.
Thanks to the technology and communications in the western world, they now have the means to attack us more efficiently.
To say that these problems just all of a sudden cropped up and the west is all to blame is the height of IGNORANCE.

Im sure many western governments are quite aware of the problems that have been ongoing in the Middle East that we are not privy to due to our on ignorance.

The middle east with thier imams and mullahs wish for the death in their sermons daily of all nonmuslims, state sponsored no less.
The hate for the sake of allah against disbelievers is greater than you think. And with the maddrasses planted all over that emphasize violence as a means to solving problems, it should be no surprise the number of muslims killing muslims everyday for those that arent islamic enough or follow thier interpretation.

70

Well, I would tend to disagree that the main motives of Bush are equatable to AQ. I think Bush is basically REACTING and AQ is ACTING.

I agree with Sofa Kings statement “I think that the United States, politically inclined to think it had nothing but a hammer for a foreign policy tool, saw Iraq as the tallest nail in the Middle East.” Thats vastly different than the attitude that, no matter how innocent someone is (i.e. Jews in Turkey have very little connection to Israel) you have a free hunting license to kill them where ever they are, reguardless. Certainly the US issued its own hunting licenses in this post 9/11, and you can debate back and forth how right or wrong that was (myself…a little of both, with more right in Afghanistan, more wrong in Iraq). However, they were very LIMITED hunting licenses. We took pains NOT to kill anymore innocent civilians as we possibly could. Cold comfort to those that got killed, and I for one mourn them…its in my thoughts all the time. But it certainly COULD have been vastly worse…

Using their logic (well, the logic of the nutball that wrote that piece of trash we are argueing over anyway) the US could have basically done whatever it wanted and damn the casualties (after all, we HAVE the power to do so, atm)…in fact, maybe ENCOURAGE more casualties by that logic. Had we done that…it would have been a TRUE blood bath with hundreds of thousands, maybe MILLIONS dead.

For that matter, we had no need to actually invade Iraq at all…and no need to limit ourselves to only Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, there are muslims in Saudi, Syria, Jordan, Iran, etc etc…we could have basically bombed them indiscriminately…and thats not even counting nukes. I suppose a nuke dropped on each capital in the region would have gotten their attention…and our ‘revenge’, using that posters fucked up logic.

I know this won’t convince you RM that there are vast difference between Bush and AQ…to you they might just be degrees of evil. To me, there is a large gulf between them, and while I dislike Bush VERY much, I can still see that he’s a lot different than ObL. Maybe not because he WANTS to be…hell, turn him truely lose and he might just BE as much of a monster. No, not because he wants to be, but because our system DOES constrain him and limit how destructive he (or any other president) can be.

-XT

71

True to an extent, but it wasnt Bush that started this mess. Islamic fanatics have been attacking countries all over the world for the past 50 years.
Thanks to the technology and communications in the western world, they now have the means to attack us more efficiently.
To say that these problems just all of a sudden cropped up and the west is all to blame is the height of IGNORANCE.

Im sure many western governments are quite aware of the problems that have been ongoing in the Middle East that we are not privy to due to our on ignorance.

The middle east with thier imams and mullahs wish for the death in their sermons daily of all nonmuslims, state sponsored no less.
The hate for the sake of allah against disbelievers is greater than you think. And with the maddrasses planted all over that emphasize violence as a means to solving problems, it should be no surprise the number of muslims killing muslims everyday for those that arent islamic enough or follow thier interpretation.
Tell me please, after reading all of Osama’s speeches including those not fed to us by the media, how would you solve the problems were facing? After I have reading many of the translations of his speeches, I seriously doubt anything we could say would appease him.

He has said that the western worlds have corrupted the earth and also all of the earth is Allahs land. Therefore, it is obligatory for all muslims that are able to defend Allahs land against this corruption.

How would you appease him and those that think like him so everything can be nice again?
There were about 7 attacks on the US within the past 20 years.
The last one killed 3000 people.
Should another missle just have been lobbed thier way and go back to sleep?
Then the next attack might and most eventualy be a nuke, dirty bomb etc, then should we act?
If you think removing the Taliban from Afghanistan was justified, do you then think going back home afterwards would have been enough?

72

If I’m not mistaken this all makes a lot of sense. If we were to consider what Usama Bin Laden has been saying all along, we’re now in his big war for the Holy Land (Saudi Arabia / greater “Islamia”?) Basically he wants to reunite all Muslims under strict Islamic goverment, with himself in charge of course.

Problem is, the US is trying to find a way out of the Holy Land as fast as it can. The US military presence is down to almost nothing in Saudi Arabia, I believe. Moreover, the US is trying to draw down it’s forces in Iraq as fast as it can also – without letting Saddam come back in and start the Iraqi killing fields all over. They don’t want us there. We don’t want to be there.

Al Qaeda, OTOH, needs us there. If we could escape we could disprove their whole sick philosophy, shared by many in the intellectual elite, that the US wants to take over the world.

[al Qaeda thinking cap]
The US consists of “Crusaders.” We want to spread Christian and Zionist cooties all over the Holy Land of Islam – mostly Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda wants to kill any American “civilian or military” anywhere, any time. Just read the 1998 fatwah. Any “allies” of the Americans are fair game also. Then you have the whole “destroy Israel and any of its allies” spin. [back to sanity]

Bombs in Saudi Arabia: al Qaeda, bombs in Turkey (secular, recognized Israel, offered troops to the coalition, allows Jews to live in peace): al Qaeda, bombs in Iraq: al Qaeda – of course. That’s where the action is right now. Usama dared us to attack Iraq. The only addition that you have in Iraq, of course, is that the war isn’t over. Ever since that damn statue came down, I’ve been sayin…

My guess of the forces the US is facing in Iraq would consist of: former Republican Guard, angry Baathists, angry anyone really (war casualties, bombing victims, whatever), Mukhabarat, Fedayeen, Syrian covert units, Iranian covert units, plus domestic and foreign fighters motivated by religion from all over the globe. Throw in Saddam behind the scenes with all the money that he robbed from the treasury. Didn’t he get dollars? Anyway, he’s out there. The war started when we stormed into Baghdad without fighting enough of the war. Lot’s of those that were supposed to fight obviously melted away back into the civilian population rather than face overwhelming firepower.

73

From randy054

Depends on what you mean by ‘enough’ I suppose. I think that the wise course for the US would have been to take out the Taliban completely in Afghanistan, but to have done it over a bit bigger. Basically to focus most of our attention there and to have an AQ hunt, as it seems clear to me that a lot of their command infrastructure was there. After wiping out the Taliban, we should have concentrated our efforts on building up Afghanistan, building up their infrastructure, education, medicine, etc…basically using our vast might to turn Afghanistan (eventually) into a true democratic power in the region…if such a thing is even possible. I think with enough money and effort, it WOULD have been, but its a debatable point.

I see no evidence that taking out SH and Iraq furthered us at all in our war with AQ. There is a chance that SH and ObL had an incidental relationship, but its tenuous at best. Going into Iraq basically committed the majority of our available combat strength, as well as our reserves, and to a scenerio that didn’t further our fight against AQ. We would have been better served by increasing our special forces capability, by building up our intellegence networks in the area, but forming tighter links with other countries, and taking the war directly to the terrorists…IMO at least. Certainly I’m not currently seeing the benifit of going off on a tangent into Iraq straight from Afghanistan.

-XT

74

It’s from the US government, but I like this summary – succinct. Frontline generally has a lot more interesting stuff.
Usama wants nukes
CIA factsheet One would hope it contains some facts.

The fatwah: here. From:

To: the Crusader Zionist Alliance

Everyone should unite under his banner to destroy Israel and the United States, and to give cough “union” to all the Arab states.

The big quote – emphasis theirs. But note, “all Muslims.”

He’s not a nice guy. Nor is this fight going to stop when he’s gone, I fear.

75

I agree with you there. This will not stop until a lot of bloodshed results much moreso than has happened.

I do not see any signs in the future of it abating and like the proverbial person that has to vomit to feel better, I fear that many will be killed before the world is at rest.

76

The world will never bet ‘at rest’ until humanity evolves. At this stage we’re just monkeys with machines, and the faster our technology evolves, I’m sorry to say, the slower we will evolve. This is best demonstrated by looking at an Arab soldier or terrorist with a machinegun. Totally and utterly impractical, yet there it is, doing stupid things because some Sheik confused the hell out of him.
I’m sure we would look no different to an extraterrestrial higher intelligence on our computers writing these posts. As far as I can see, the bloodshed will not stop until Homo Sapiens is replaced by something with a more rational head, and a less gullible disposition. We are -ALL- gullible.
I can look at a AQ member with a bomb strapped to his chest getting ready to sacrifice himself for Allah under the orders of some America-hating Sheik, and feel a great swell of pity and a greater swell of pride at the superiority of my paradigm. Yet, I can go to the supermarket and end up with a boatload of shit I don’t even need. Or hear a debate on the television, and think “Yes, that’s exactly what we need, higher taxes so the kids can learn better.” without even realizing that they’ve tried that a hundred and fifty thousand times before hand with less than pallatable results. And here I think I’m superior.
Noone is superior, we’re all just as unevolved as the AQ murderers we debate about. The only difference is in the way our media is directing our gullability, theirs is toward bloodshed and ‘liberation,’ and ours is toward homosexuality and Fast Food. No matter how you slice it… we’re a doomed race.