Then how does that explain the attacks by radicals before we began targeting them? World Trade Center '93, Khobar Towers '96, African Embassies '98, USS Cole '00, and, of course, 9/11/2001?
Were we not leaving the radicals alone then? Is political support of Israel considered “attacking” the radicals? Is keeping troops in Saudi Arabia - at the Saudis’ own request - considered “attacking” the radicals?
If their definition is so broad that this justifies their attacks on us, then that’s more than enough justification for us to be trying to wipe them out.
Remember, they are radicals. I’m personally saying that I don’t think we should be there at all, because the vast majority of what I see and hear says that most Middle Easterners don’t want us there.
Re: supporting Israel . . . that’s one hell of a tough call right there. Those people are fighting and dying for religious causes that don’t matter to the average American (I realize that the “average” America is part Christian, but how many of them care about the actual city of Bethlehem, etc?) I guess if we have to put our dog in that fight we should at least be more even-handed. The Palestinians have a legitimate claim to that area as well.
Re: Saudi Arabia: I wasn’t aware that the Saudi government requested us to be there. I was under the impression that they were the most geographically strategic country that was receptive of our military. In any case . . . I don’t see why we should co-operate with the House of Saud any more than any other murderous, oppresive regime.
This is an interesting question and one that I’ve never quite got my head around myself - the idea that all religious people worship the same God. Objectively there may be one being who is God but since all the religions contradict each other in their teachings (sometimes quite violently) can people be said to worship the same God?
In the past, there were pagans who believed they had to sacrifice humans in order to appease God. Today, most religions would class this as murder - the greatest sin possible. I don’t see how you can reconcile these two positions and say they worship the same God. The greatest sin possible (as far as modern religions are concerned) can also be the best way to please God (according to old religions).
Even among current religions this dichotomy occurs. In islam, dying a martyr guarantees you a place in Heaven, whereas in christianity, suicide is a great sin in all circumstances. In some interpretations of islam killing adulterers is the thing to do, whereas in other religions that would be murder.
Tamerlane said it depends on your POV, well I come at it from the POV of God. Assuming I am God, human sacrifice is either ok or it’s not. Lets say it’s not - that means that all those people who sacrificed humans were not, objectively, worshipping me. They were displeasing me.
So I suppose you could say that we may all be worshipping the same God but that some of us are doing it wrongly, which amounts to the same thing as worshipping the wrong God really.
As regards the OP. Yeah he’s pretty insane but how many countries does he run? None. How many countries will he ever run? None. Also he has weaknesses which are too detailed to go into here but basically:
before he starts destroying America and reconquering Spain he’s gonna need to take over the muslim world which is even more divided than the west is. He may hate infidels but he hates errant muslims even more
he’s trapped by his own rigid ideology. He believes that certain things will happen because they are so ordained by (his interpretation) of the quran. When these things don’t happen, radical muslims are genuinely puzzled - “But…but…God said it would happen” - an example is the belief that muslims will always win a war as long as they are half the strength of the opposition (God will take up the slack). Their thinking is so linear, it’s almost quaintly amusing. You can argue with them and you know what they are going to say half an hour before they say it.
the muslim world also happens to encompass most of the poorest regions of the world. The idea of these countries uniting together to form a world-conquering unit is laughable. Even if they did unite together, they could probably be beaten by, say, Belgium in a war.
islamic history is littered with jihadist uprisings and wars. It’s just something they do periodically. Generally speaking, either they win and nothing much happens or they lose and then forget all about it for a century or so. My own opinion is that these uprisings are inherently going to happen as a result of islamic ideology and it’s emphasis on jihad etc. I’m not saying that islam means there will be constant war, just that the quran’s constant praise of war and of warriors means that there will always be followers who get a bit carried away. OR, at least that those who wish to start trouble can easily find justification in the quran if they wish which means that islam will be dragged into any conflict involving muslims (even if unfairly).
there’s other weaknesses and I probably should have explained the above ones better but I’m bored of typing.
Most certainly, American troops in KSA at the request of the “illegal” and “immoral” regime is an attack on Islam. Support of Israel, a “crusader state” is another attack. So is the division of Islam in arbitrary states.
The list from OBL’s POV is endless.
It is wrong to argue that because the world’s 1 billion Muslims are poor they are not a threat. The 9/11 attack probably cost about a million dollars or less. A CBRN attack on the US or Europe would go for about the same. A billion poor people can cause a lot of trouble.
Even scarier; these books argue that (in theory) we could ‘surrender’ on a half-dozen points and OBL would leave us alone. But this is not correct as the surrender of the West would calm OBL down personally but would unleash a large number of new leaders who were not a party to the deal. Surrender would start a wave of civil wars throughout Islam, with horrible results both here and elsewhere.
So what to do? I don’t know. It looks like the XXI century will be a bloody twin to the XX.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, Paul, but looking at OBL’s psyche is only interesting to me in the sense of how do you track him down or predict what he’ll do next.
More important is the hearts and minds of his would-be supporters and footmen. The angry (but not yet radical and certainly not yet a terrorist) Muslim on the street. Find out how to keep them from becoming radicals, and we’ve stopped Islamic terrorism as a major threat.
To go back to the John Brown analogy, Brown himself didn’t do jack to stop slavery. However, the fact that Northern abolitionists treated him like a martyr rather than the murderous lunatic he was was a wedge between the north and the south, and an indirect cuase of the civil war. To prevent all-out war between the Muslim and Western world, we need to get the “abolitionists” on our side against dangerous terrorists, and to get the “southerners” to recognize that the Muslims aren’t all .
I read Imperial Hubris, same author, and I recognize the points made; he said basically the same things in this book as well.
From what I could see, his points were:
1 - We have to take OBL at his word when he says he’s at war with us, and I fully agree.
2 - We can’t underestimate him; as he showed on 9/11, he knows what he’s doing, and he plans far worse.
3 - We may think he’s a homicidal maniac, but to vast numbers of Muslims, he’s a hero. That means
4 - The only way to defeat him is - to defeat him. Him, and his people, and those allied to him, not some amorphous Afghans, or Iraqis, or whatever.
It may be better to be feared than loved, but we’re not even feared, because everyone knows we’re overstretched and vulnerable now, and on top of that everything we do is trumpeted on Al-Jazirah et al as unredeemably evil. The first few paragraphs of Imperial Hubris make this point bluntly:
This war is going to cost far more in blood and treasure than anyone in government is willing to admit in public.
Of course, I also agree with the main thrusts of all his arguments, which is that we should never have gotten ourselves so deeply involved in the Middle East in the first place, from supporting the Saudi regime to supporting the Israeli and Egyptian regimes.
Realistically, of course, we’re not going to pull the plug on Saudi, Egypt or Israel. That being given, we need to be prepared for what it’s going to take to bring OBL down, and we need to recognize that Muslims are going to hate it no matter what we do - which is I think what Paul is driving at when he says we could “surrender” on all their grievances and still not get anywhere. The only thing we can do, given a continued status quo in our Middle East policies, is to defeat OBL & Co, and to be utterly merciless about it, and to recognize that even if we do manage that, there will be plenty of others willing to take his place. The twenty-first century is indeed going to be blood-soaked.
It’s a stark choice, but it’s about time someone from the government laid out the realities for all to see.
Is not meddling with Middle East governments a “surrender” ? Is giving Israel less money and total freedom a “surrender” ? What if the West has in fact been treating Islam in less than a fair way ? This talk about “not surrendering on a dozen points” sounds awfully like “with us or against us” mentality.
Paul… I’ve read many of your threads and posts and usually you seem quite reasonable. I think this book is inciting towards more US warmongering and exagerates Bin Laden as some Hitler like monster. Pure propaganda and justification of “nothing should be held back” mentality.
What evidence is there that Bin Laden “wants to destroy America” ? If he wanted to destroy america would he start by knocking down 2 towers ? Seems a weak thesis. I think Bin Laden seems extremely content with the results until now… and the proof is that no serious attempt on the mainland US has happened since 2001. No nukes have been used… not WMD used… no real attempt to do so either.
So Paul slowly digest how much of the book is just making ObL into some mega threat that requires to feed the industrial military complex... and how much is a defacto good political analysis. I'd venture you got caught by the apocalyptical style of it....
I would suppose I get the idea he wants to destroy America (and Israel, and Saudi Arabia and lots of other countries) from the fact he ways he wants to do so.
Paul is absolutely correct. The first step in getting OBL is to respect him as an enemy, and that means to take him at his word when he says he’s at war with you. It’s not like he’s being shy about it. And he has the support, or at the least, the admiration, of quite a bit of the Muslim world.
These are serious things, and they have to be taken seriously.
I don’t think anyone ever said you shouldn’t take ObL seriously…
But if you think ObL is some kind of cartoonish “I want to take over the world” evil character … then your not taking him seriously. I think he is aiming for some very specific results in skrewing around western-muslim relations and upset the internal politics of the Middle East (especially Saudi Arabia).
Just throwing around labels like “at war with you” and “destroy america” doesn’t help counteract his limited but realistic objectives.
Naturally if you hand ObL the means to destroy the US or the west… he probably would do it… I just don’t see how. Wanting is not doing.
No, no.
I, at least, am not trying to reduce him to a cartoon. Neither is Scheuer, nor Paul, from what I can figure out.
I’m also quite certain OBL knows he can’t destroy the US.
None of which makes him any less serious an enemy.
As far as he is concerned, Spain is occupied territory. He wants to restore the old Islamic Empire. He’s quite serious about it. He realistically knows he won’t live to see any such thing, but that hardly means he won’t do everything in his power to make it so.
Which is what makes him so dangerous. Scheuer’s main point in Imperial Hubris, at least, is that there really isn’t any sign that the current US Admin understands just how zealous these guys are, nor is there any sign that the American public has been made to understand, down to the bone, just how badly these guys want to do us harm, how much support they have, and how well they communicate to their target audience, which is the Muslim world. If these things were known and understood, the US wouldn’t have allowed itself to be distracted by Iraq, to take one glaring example.
Their current aims may be limited, but don’t be fooled by that. Their thinking is global, their aims are global, and the danger they pose is, if the WTC/Spain/Bali attacks haven’t already forcefully made the point, global as well.
Where did this “old Islamic Empire” and ObL become attached ? I don’t remember anything in his speeches or public appearances on this. Suddenly ObL is full of these “grandiose” objectives. The one about financial bankrupting the US I read was more viable… but still fantasy for fanatics.
Still this smells of the same thing done in the past… increase the “threat” and spend more money mentality. After all the mighty US wouldn’t be going nuts over a bunch of powerless but fanatic towel heads lost in some caves would they ?
In the end no matter if you are right or I am right… the Bush administration is getting it wrong in both of our “versions” ! Incredible… The only point I agree is that they are underestimating the influence ObL has and where the “battleground” really is. It certainly is a global “conflict”… but much less about destruction.
While I don’t doubt that OBL is serious, and hopes to smash Western Civilization … I don’t necessarily believe he has the means.
Does he WANT to destroy us? Yes.
Does he have the MEANS to do more than just hurt us? Maybe not.
Radical Islam is real, and we are, by many of our policies and misplaced reactions to 9/11, fueling its growth. But OBL is a demagogue, and one not in good health. He could die any day. And his brand of radical Islam could be weakened to the point of not being a mortal threat.
While he is serious, and we should be on our guard against him (just as the white separatists in the US are serious about their agendas, and we should watch them … and the fundamental end-times-lovin’ Chrsitians that Bush has been courting are even more serious about theirs, and we should watch them), I just don’t think that taking him seriously leads to us getting embroiled in 50 wars in the middle east, which seems to be our current destination.
His brand of radical Islam is quite widespread, and not going away as a mortal threat, first of all.
Secondly, Scheuer claims he is not at all chronically ill. Independently, I have no way to confirm that one way or the other. It is interesting that this man, who was head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit until very recently, discounts all the stories about Osama being ill though.
Thirdly, taking Osama seriously is not an excuse to bitchslap Iraq. Far from it. Scheuer would tell you so in uncompromising language. It’s a waste of time and OBL’s foremost recruiting tool. Indeed, in Imperial Hubris, he has this funny section in which he imagines Osama having a dream about the US invading Iraq and handing him a place to train future fighters. But of course it’s just a dream.
In real life, unfortunately, it actually happens.
There are still times when I still can’t believe it happened either, it’s so stunningly stupid.
Although, there is the honeypot theory. I’m not saying I subscribe to it myself but it needs to be out there. It needs to be thrown into the mix.
The honeypot theory is the idea that America should invade a big middle eastern country and then just sit there. This will draw all the jihadists to them. The jihadists are compelled to come and fight America by their own ideology, even if it means near certain suicide. They have no choice - they have to defend their brothers.
There are only a certain number of people in the world, at any one time, willing to give their lives fighting for a political (or religious) cause. So you just set up a base in an area you know they have to attack and kill off a few thousand of them.
It’s better that they attack a full-scale military unit like the US army than wander around Manhattan looking for suitable targets. How many jihadists (from al-ansar and the like) have been killed over the last year? Probably thousands. If they weren’t getting killed in Iraq they would be in America and Europe getting killed in suicide missions.
So the honeypot theory would say that the more jihadists that attack the forces in Iraq the better. Because there will be less to come and attack civilian targets. The argument against the honeypot theory is that new jihadists will constantly be spawned so you will never kill off all the jihadists. This argument may be true of Palestine where people are directly involved in the conflict but al qaeda’s argument is more of an ideological one and is therefore possible to kill off if you kill enough people.
It’s a grim argument and I stress that I don’t necessarily hold to it myself but I can see the logic of it. And I think it needs to, at least, be considered as one more factor when thinking about the whole issue.
Killing OBL will do little good. Killing John Brown did not really help. He is only the lead man in a wide movement. Killing individual fighters in necessary, but is a retail method of solving a big wholesale problem.
BTW, did you pick up The Economist this week? An excellent first-person report of the activities of the US Marines. Brave lads, but I doubt they are winning this war for us.
Well, there’s the honeypot theory to be sure, but I like this one better (although this site is unreservedly antiwar period, a stupidly unrealistic stance. Still, this article is how I think, IMO, Iraq is turning out. Scheuer, evidently, agrees):
pantom… the comparison with germs is only lightly correct… last I knew terrorist weren’t reproducing by splitting in two. That is the quickest way to build up resistance to drugs.
In the end I think terrorism and terrorist are the symptoms of a disease… not the disease itself. Bush is just wasting time by killing them and creating new diseases.
