That OBL is becoming something of a romanticized rogue in the eyes of some Middle Eastern Muslims is not surprising to me. They endure never-ending hardships, and they have effectively been indoctrinated with the mindset that their problems are the U.S.'s fault (rather cleverly by their leaders, who then deflect criticism away from themselves for the local problems). They are looking for something to feel good about.
Bin Laden sticking it to the most powerful nation on the planet, the nation that (they perceive) is the source of all of their misery, an evil nation, and living to tell about it, gives them something to feel good about, however misguidedly.
What has been extremely disheartening for me, however, is the pervasiveness of this attitude of bin Laden as a kind of Guevara or Pancho Villa outside the Middle Eastern Muslim world, all over the planet.
I occasionally spend time in a few different foreign chat rooms. You are more likely to see pro-bin Laden sentiments expressed there and criticism of the USA and Bush than vice-versa. I’d like to think it’s just kids being shocking, but the level of condemnation of these kinds of sentiments by others there is sparse.
I’m beginning to think that if attacks mount and bin Laden continues to survive and speak out, this attitude of him as a rogue-hero will mount throughout at least the non-Western world.
Am I crazy? Is this happening? How can it be? And how much does it matter?
I had thought of the Pancho Villa comparison, mainly because Pancho staged what might be considered a terrorist raid into New Mexico, then dodged a punitive American military expedition into Mexico for a lengthy period.
If your hate is strong and irrational enough, people like bin Laden and the Ruby Ridge/Waco crowd start to look like heroes to rally around. Which is why the informational effort to inform people of his and the Taliban’s crimes may be almost as important as the military plan.
The comparisons with Che Guevara only go so far. Yes OBL is spreading a corrupted ideology, is an outsider, is well educated, and is clinically delusional–much like Che–but ultimately Che was essentially repudiated (or at least ignored) by the peasants he purported to want to help.
The happy ending is that the CIA shot Che and the US military will stomp the life our of bin Laden.
And I think it’s safe to assume that many of the people advocating this are blind to the historical facts of the situation. I’ve been aware of the Taliban’s treatment of women since 1998 because I had to write a research paper on it, but many, many people had no clue what I was talking about when I brought it up. People who do not see the truth in the Taliban’s injustices toward the Afghan people are either in possession of an inherently different concept of freedom or steeped in ignorance.
The people who think freedom involves publicly stoning women for riding in a car with a man outside of their families or imprisoning a man because his beard is trimmed are the people we are fighting and trying to remove from power.
The ones simply ignorant to the reality of what is happening in Afghanistan are inconsequential. I am not interested in making decisions of war and peace based on ignorance. As a freedom-loving person in any part of the world, you can either educate yourself to the evils of the Taliban’s totalitarian, terroristic regime and then argue, or you can shut up.
Never underestimate the visibility of the vocal minority. Even those of us who feel uneasy at inflicting more violence – myself included – pretty much know deep down that there isn’t much of an alternative and that bin Laden is no hero or freedom fighter.
I am of the opinion that the pro-bin Laden peopl in chatrooms and the like are either trying to stir up debate or are expressing their dissatisfaction with elements of US/Western foreign policy in a clumsy and tactless way.
Well then, if humans rights are our concerns then maybe we should topple Saudi Arabia while we are at it. Funny how we talk with one end of our mouth about how repressive Afghanistan is and then turn arround and covert with Saudi Arabia, where women face many of the same horrors that they face in Afghanistan.
Keep in mind that outside of North America and a few other countries, the internet is pretty much the domain of Middle and Upper class people. Even in much of continental Europe I believe hourly phone rates often apply. These people, if they are from foreign countries, are mostly Middle Class. I think to them Osama represents the same sort of adolescent urges that drive other kids to “neonazism”, “satanism”, and other such expressions that are meant to draw the dissaproval of society.
But speaking as a bit of an outsider, if I were to judge American society from what I see in general chat rooms, I would think the USA is an extremely racist and ignorant country. I don’t believe that for a second - but that’s what I would think after a couple of hours in a chatroom. Most of the rest of us have a life…or if we do chat…we go somewhere more supervised or with some standards of civility.
Why is it so hard for you people to recognize that the US isn’t this warm and fuzzy entity that should be loved and admired worldwide? I have seen almost as much Jingoism on this board as I have in real life. If this board is dedicated to fighting ignorance, why can’t it be accepted that while bin Laden is a Megalomaniac, he is NOT without a point. The US has done some really fucked up things in the middle east throughout recent history, accept it, or get fucked up by the bin Laden’s throughout history.
We are so desperate to villify bin Laden to make ourselves feel all warm and fuzzy about being rough tough Americans, but fuck it, that’s not the case. People need to accept that in order for us to truly win this thing.
I could give you a hundred easily. I had to write a research paper on the Taleban in 1998 and I found a ton of sources then, but here are just a few from reputable sources:
Also, on Oprah yesterday there was a report from an undercover journalist - she had, on film, a jail worker saying that men were imprisoned if they trimmed their beards.
In TIME magazine - I can’t find it on the TIME website, but there’s a related article on page 60 of this week’s time called “The Uneasy Ally: Inside Saudi Arabia.”
I consider myself a humanitarian first and foremost (I’m joining the Peace Corps after college). I don’t have the answers - I don’t know how to stop this sort of inhumane treatment, or even if we have the right to do so. But when the Taleban regime is toppled (and I’m sure it will be), hopefully it will serve as a gateway to ending injustices elsewhere such as these.
…And how does that make it okay to kill 6000 innocent people?
Bin Laden may have an agenda he is pushing, but he most definitely does not have a “point.” He has an opinion.
What exactly does anyone have to vilify? His actions speak for themselves. He vilified himself when he organized the deaths of 6000 Americans.
I didn’t want to be so bold as to say, “There’s even some edges of this lunacy expressed right here, on one of the most intelligent message boards on the Internet.”
Glad somebody took the effort to make that self-evident.
So you believe that the United States has a right (and obligation) to use military power to remove the governments of countries with human rights abuses, even those of our allies?
Wow. No wonder they don’t like us round those parts.
I’m pretty soft on toppling govt. performing ethnic cleansing or wholesale slaughter of people, but I don’t think we need to go in just because a SOVEREIGN nation is drastically different than my home.
My point is that the people in this thread are talking about bin Laden in the same way that the Romans would have spoken of the Vandals, or the British talk about the IRA, or Prince John would have spoken of Robin Hood (duh it’s a fictional character) Anyway, the point is Che Guevera and Pancho Villa were probably villified quite nicely in their time by their enemies and the people in this thread are willing to give them a grudging heroes respect, but they want to damn bin Laden. bin Laden is terrifying, but he is not an unthinking brute, he is not without support, he is not without a point in certain cases. We want to paint this as a black and white issue so that we don’t have to “gasp” think about it. This board is SUPPOSED to be fighting ignorance, but it propogates ignorance about as much as it fights it even though that is still a better ratio than other places it’s still pretty fucking depressing. I’ve found that many of the people here who put on a very good veneer of higher intelligence are jumping down anyone’s throat that offers an opinion that doesn’t jive with the jingoism of the day.
The truth is we aren’t popular in the middle east and there is a damn good fucking reason for that. Even leave Israel/Palestine completely out of the argument, they have a lot of reasons to hate us, just as they have many reasons not to hate us, but apparently the reasons to hate us are even greater over there and we need to address that.
Nope, I didn’t say that. I don’t know that we have the right to do that at all. I wish we did, but I don’t believe we can just walk into Saudi Arabia and implant a new, less restrictive regime. But if the Taleban goes (and I think it will), I will be extremely grateful that so fewer atrocities toward women will occur.
And I hope the US will be able to help the Afghan people set up a government that they can believe in, as opposed to the rogue rule of the Taleban. I would hate for the Afghan people to be devastated by an interfering country (again) and then replaced with a government that the people do not approve or support (again).
I also hope that humanitarian relief in some form will continue to flow to the Middle East regardless of the results of this. Those women deserve, at the very least, health care.
Again, I’m not sure the Taleban is innocent of “wholesale slaughter.” Their treatment of Afghan people has not been far removed from that accusation.
Hitler was terrifying, but he was not an unthinking brute, he was not without support. He was most definitely “without a point” however, as is bin Laden. I think it is a black and white issue. If bin Laden was angry with the US, there are a lot of ways he could have handled this that did not include the mass murder of 6000 innocent civilians. He did not have a right to kill those people, no matter how much of a “point” you think he has.
Admittedly, Hitler’s purpose was slightly different. He was trying to wipe out an ethnic group of people. Osama has grandly attacked America as a whole. But the end result - way too many innocent, unsuspecting people killed for religious reasons - is not so different.
Righto. “Go ahead and fire. You will be only killing a man.”
Which is another difference: Ernesto didn’t just sit in Cuba (where he was initially in charge of keeping the firing squads busy with “counterrevolutionaries” and then of ruining industrial production) or in a safe haven, preaching and plotting for others, but went and put his own butt on the (front)line. (Which did wonders for his posthumous career as revolutionary-chic glamour-icon. )