Thing is, TWAT would not have ended, but the Iraq war would have been less likely since then we would had captured or killed the true perpetrators of 9/11.
That is a bogus site. It is not part of, it is not authorized, it is not affiliated with any U.S. Government agency.
Any official government site will be blahblahblah.gov
Thats blahblahblah DOT gov
So, the Department of Justice would be probably www.usdoj.gov.
NOT dojgov.net
Trying to put up this other bogus site as a government site is deliberately false. It is purposeful misrepresentation. You should know better than that.
This is just spill-over from that other thread, about could/should Bin Laden have been captured at Tora Bora. My position was he should have been caught and could have been caught. Along with that, my position was that his “escape” was either a monstrous screw-up, or he was not supposed to be caught. Now then. If he had been caught, then there would be no way to claim a BinLaden/Iraq terro link. As we now know, there never was any such link - until we invaded Iraq and made it “terror central”. Anyway, I had many many cites of Bush/Republican flip flops as to OBL’s importance, and many many cites explaining how we blew the capture. I got no counter cites, just more questions and what-abouts and what-ifs. Very unsatisfying.
If the Republicans had a plan, and were stymied by Clinton’s lack of action, they had from January to September to have done something about it. This is not saying it would have been successful, but what action against ObL did we see? What response was there to intelligence about threats, like the famous August memo?
Plus, you remember of course the deadly attack on LAX at the Millennium. You don’t? That’s because Clinton actually took an interest in a threat, and showed doing something about it was important, and it actually got stopped - with no more good intelligence than we had about 9/11 at the beginning. But I guess he should have been clearing brush instead, if he was a real man.
Finally, you might remember the words Wag the Dog.
I saw Wag The Dog. When it came out I thought it applied to Clinton very well. Shortly after the BJ scandal the bombing started in Yugoslavia. Wag The Dog also started with a sex scandal, only the ‘war’ was fake.
I have Wag The Dog on DVD. Although Duhbya was not involved in a sex scandal, the film seems even more applicable to the actions of the current administration.
Wasn’t it the Pakistanis who trained Osama in the first place? US funding went to other mujhadeen groups. And I wouldn’t call the Afghan puppet state the Soviets set up “independent and stable”.
Over the last century, there have been any number of fringe groups out there trying to attack Americans or do other dastardly things. None of them actually ended up blowing up into a major threat to the country. Asking why Clinton didn’t do more is the same as asking why Nixon didn’t do more against the Black Panthers who might have spawned a terrorist revolution.
By the time his presidency was over, however, we were beginning to realize that Al Qaeda was a major threat on a new scale, and Clinton was distracted and slow to respond, mostly leaving things to the next administration instead of launching new iniatives to hand them. Unfortunately, we had just elected a bunch of militarily incompetant nincompoops who didn’t know the first thing about anything other than media control and took months to school up in the ongoing situation. By then it was too late.
Who was making the claim that dojgov.net was a US Government website? I don’t think anyone posting here nor the operator of the dojgov.net website is attempting to fool anyone.
First of all, the blame lies with Al Quaeda and its operatives, and no one else.
The problem, however, goes back at least to Carter, and maybe before. The fact is that American politicians were very slow to react to Middle Eastern events. Even in the Cold War it was considered a tertiary interest. It definitely came after Europe, the Far East, and probably Latin America. And that applies to both us and the Russians.
Carter and Reagan set a bad precedent, followed by both Bush (I) and Clinton. The policy was not to overtly interfere in the ME, not to retaliate against attacks, and not to demand justice. This… was a mistake. Each one did behind-the-scenes work, but failed to make a clear, forthright effort to change the way things were going.
Of course, this is understandable if not laudable. The Middle East seemed unimportant. It was a den of tyrants but they were usually too busy squabbling amongst themselves or fending off internal opponents to cause a major regional ruckuss. It was always cost-effective in the short run to cut and run. And up recently their societies were running reasonably well on oil money, which limited the appeal of terrorist groups.
The problem is that things got worse, not better. Socially speaking, the dictators slowly began driving their economies into the ground: witness Iraq and Saudi Arabia. People could have dealt with the poverty, but combined with widepsread political repression, meant that young people saw no future or hope. More to the point, what a blow it was to the pride of these young men to see their elders act so viciously and so greedily. What a blow it was to see the once-great cities of the ME fail.
Essentially, the people of the ME had nothing else to turn to except violence and fundamentalism. Everything else was forbidden; Islamicism is the only escape, the only path to power and pride. Few, relative to the population as a whole, took the path, but it was about the only alternative to despair.
Osama wasn’t supported by the U.S., and a lot of the Mujahadeen, while arch-Conservative by our standards, were and are not friendly to Al Quaeda and the Taliban. They’re tribal, not sociopathic.
The second line makes no sense at all. He never was fundedby us (not to a great degree, though I’ve no doubt he grabbed a few dollars here and there). And it wasn’t dominated by fundamentalists until after the Soviets withdrew and the cashflow stopped. That’s when the internal war began, and we didn’t really interfere there.
I’ll back off. I may have been reading an intent that was not there. I probably screwed up and jumped when I shouldn’t have.
George Bush started our mission in Somalia as well … although one could argue that Clinton could have, I guess, pulled out of both those placed, although who knows what people would have said about his leadership then! (Pull out too soon and be called a coward, don’t pull out soon enough and you’re an adventuring boy-king, even though you didn’t start the mission!)
Johnny,
I thank you for it. You’ve stated my opinion in a much more coherent manner than I. So many problems facing us today have roots in the past. I hope we’re not doomed to repeat history because we’re ignoring it again…
This is morally and logically untenable utterance. If a man rushes at a woman with a knife, your response as someone with a drawn gun is not morally neutral. If the woman is killed and the killer escapes, you cannot escape blame for events unfolding as they did. That’s because we can consider events from different stances, crediting each actor with responsibility for their chosen actions or inactions, but seeing the entire event as a combined product of chosen or unchosen possibilities by all actors.
Al Qaeda is responsible for choosing to attack the US. But those whos responsibility it is to protect us from such threats are also culpable for their actions, their successes and failures.
I suspect, as your following paragraphs pretty much demonstrate, that even you don’t actually believe the sentance above (since you go on to discuss the blame!) But since this trope “only the terrorists are to blame” is often used to attack the character of someone who is criticizing their politicians for failing to defend them, it’s definately worth slapping down wherever it crops up.
I don’t believe that this is correct. I’m looking for more info …
Pardon my French, and I mean no offense, but Bullhocky. (Yes, I mean the nastier word). They deserve blame, and they alone.
This doesn’t mean that others did not make errors, but I distinguish between kinds of failure. The terrorists are moral corrupt: evil. They deserve blame. They took it upon themselves. Heck, they wallow in it.
Our leaders, however, did not make the right choices. Theirs is an intellectual failing, or perhaps a failure of imagination. Perhaps some of them, like Carter, were simply not very good leaders. But it is not a moral failing, ths they do not deserve blame. More to the point, your example is flawed simply because the circumstances are not always obvious. Nor is the proper course of action obvious; they all surely thought they were doing the best thing. I believe they were mistaken, and that they should take responsibility for that mistake, but not that they should shoulder any blame for what happened.
If you like, call it splitting verbal hairs, but the English language doesn’t contain sufficient complexity in this area.
I’m pretty sure he’s right. An embassy is considered inviolate, and often has its own micro-police force. The laws of host country don’t apply, and its representatives can’t enter unless invited. Even the Soviets never attacked our Moscow Embassy, though they did use various spy devices against it. It’s also why refugees often try and get inside a friendly embassy:
This is not the same thing as being considered part of the territory of the sending country.
From the Vienna convention (note this is a treaty so no copyright restrictions apply here):
[quote]
Article 22
- The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
…
- The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.
[/quote[
The premises may not be entered or searched without permission. It doesn’t say the land occupied by the embassy is considered part of the territory of the state sending the mission.
Diplomatic communications may not be interfered with. The diplomatic bag, archives, records, and correspondence are inviolate. This says nothing about ceding sovereignty.
The host country can’t enter the grounds or search them or seize things without permission, but there’s no ceding of sovereignty over the territory. It doesn’t belong to the other country and it’s not considered part of the other country.
So there is personal immunity from criminal and civil jurisdiction, but there are exceptions.
Immunity may be waived. Sure, it’s the option of the sending state, but it’s not some permanent and unchangeable condition.
Diplomats are exempt from the social security system.
Diplomats are exempt from many taxes, but not all of them.
Diplomats aren’t required to perform national service. That’s not a ceding of sovereignty over the territory of the embassy.
Personal or official articles are to be exempted from import duties. That’s not a ceding of sovereignty. Diplomats are not immune from import laws or quarantine laws. So the local laws do apply.
Extends diplomatic privileges to the family of a diplomatic agent. Does not cede sovereignty over the territory of the embassy.
Immunity only applies to a diplomatic agent with respect to his official acts, not in general.
The local laws do apply.
Reagan, aphasic? Do you know what the word means?
And if any of our leaders had a crystal ball you’d be right. But they didn’t and they don’t, so you’re not. To place any of the blame for 9/11 on anyone other than Al Qaeda is morally reprehensible. No one is complicit in that horror, or has the blood of the victims on their hands, other than the terrorists who perpetrated the murders.
To use your analogy: should the woman be blamed because she looked like a easy victim? Should the person with the gun drawn be blamed for not killing the man before the he killed the woman.
Brilliant post, Johnny. Finally, someone takes off the partisan blinders. It’s short sighted and intellectually dishonest to blame just one political party for all ills.
I would add that OBL started out in Africa and the Somali incident was part of the al-Qaeda war against the US. 9/11 was far from the beginning of their attacks.