I just picked up the last part of a news broadcast, that U.S. troops are being pulled out of Saudi Arabia.
Perhaps my memory is faulty, but wasn’t that the main grievance that Bin-Laden had against the U.S., was the presence of U.S. troops on holy Saudi land? So, doesn’t this mean that Bin Laden has won his main issue?
Does this jive with the notion that we are FIGHTING terrorism? or will this be seen by Al-Quada and their ilk as a major victory?
I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole into topsy-turvey land. We go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq to fight terrorism, and we give in to Al-Quada’s demands.
The troops were put into Saudi after the first gulf war. The official reason being to protect Saudi from Saddam (the unofficial reason being to protect the Saudi royals from their own people). With Saddam gone, the troops no longer need to be there but they are only withdrawing to Qatar so they will still be nearby.
It’s not just the extremists who were bothered by the presence of US troops in Saudi, lots of people were bothered by it so it makes sense to remove that source of grievance.
When OBL issued his fatwa against the US he cited three “statements on which everyone can agree”:
that the US is hurting muslims by imposing sanctions on Iraq
that the US is hurting muslims by supporting Israel against the Palestinians
that the US is defiling muslims by stationing troops in the muslim holy land
It’s not just al Q who are bothered by these three issues, it’s also moderate muslims. However if you solve these three issues then al Q will have nothing left apart from bullshit religious mumbo jumbo about restoring the caliphate which most muslims take no notice of.
Removing the troops from Saudi is fighting terrorism because it removes one of their causus belli. Likewise the war in Iraq has now removed the need for sanctions so that will be another irritant gone and the new road map for Palestine will hopefully cause some movement on the third causus belli.
Thus al Q will be checkmated because they no longer have concrete things to complain about, just wishy washy stuff. Fighting terrorism doesn’t have to involve actual physical fighting, it can also include diplomatic and political moves too.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia began discussion regarding the witdrawal of U.S. troops in July or August, 2001. By attacking the WTC and Pentagon, bin Laden delayed that withdrawal by more than a year. (A point that I suspect our adminstration is not bright enough to emphasize when interviewed in the Arab press.)
We’re not pulling out of Saudi Arabia to give in to al Qaeda.
We’re pulling out of Saudi Arabia because we no longer need to commit ourselves there by propping up the Saud royal family – we’ve got our own supply of cheap oil now.
Now, you see rjung, that’s just not right. There are WMD in Iraq and, if not, it was about liberating those poor people from the man the US supported for 20 years.
The acquisition, sorry, liberation was never, ever about oil. Much.
Good answer, Jojo. We musn’t be so short-sighted in dealing with terrorism that we dismiss any legitimate political issues as only so many selfish demands on the part of the terrorists. The terrorists (both Al-Qaeda and Palestinian) are not engaged in extortion, but acting out on principle and engaged in tit-for-tat retaliation on behalf of a large population. They appear not to be directly making demands and linking them to specific threats but rather pursuing broader emnity. As Jojo suggested, addressing the legitimate grievences of Middle East Muslims can sap the terrorists’ support. Terrorists–in my estimation–get to the point where paradoxically they do not want their demands to be met because then they’d be out of a job. As we have seen in Israel, progress towards peace can result in terrorist attacks–because that’s not what they want. Because that’s not what they want. Should we continue to pursue peace in order to defy the terrorists? If that’s the way you want to look at it, sure.
We get it. No giving in to terrorism. But what to do when The Right Thing jibes (not “jives”, turkey) with terrorists demands? Do so in a context with as much distance as possible from them. Do it for the children. Get above the overall situation. Continue hunting the terrorists, but use a carrot along with the stick. How can we be appeasing OBL while simultaneously hunting him?
Even if the terrorists do insist on seeing a concilliatory move as “encouragement”, there’s nothing forcing us to make another one. Doing the right thing may or may not result in more terrorist attacks, but not doing so certainly will.
(I was going to go on about about Jesus Christ, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King, but those guys are pussies. :dubious:)
<< When OBL issued his fatwa against the US he cited three “statements on which everyone can agree”:
that the US is hurting muslims by imposing sanctions on Iraq
that the US is hurting muslims by supporting Israel against the Palestinians
that the US is defiling muslims by stationing troops in the muslim holy land >>
My recollection is that was much later; his initial statements were only the third point. He figured out that he would gain more support by adding the other two points, and so his later statements were broader as you describe.
My goodness, what a sense of deja vu I suddenly have…
I believe in another thread it was reported that those American troops were going to be relocated to Qatar, which is a peninsula jutting out from central eastern Saudi.
Among other things, that gives the United States troop placements at three widely separated points around SA: Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar. Strategically, this actually appears to represent a better situation for the United States if one, say, wanted to invade the country in order to restore the House of Saud.
Otherwise I totally agree with Jojo, it’s a wise move. In the future we’ll be moving out of Germany and South Korea for similar reasons - the cons of being there outweigh the pros.
you’re right that OBL (Ozzie, as I like to call him) never mentioned Israel for the first decade or so of his “mission”. He latched onto it when he realised it was a “vote-winner”. But nevertheless, the three things I mentioned are the things that appear in the fatwa. Check it out for yourself:
There’s a lot of religious white noise in there that you need to tune out but these three things are the concrete things and therefore the only things that we can actually do something about.
On an entirely unconnected subject, I was reading something about the last time the British were in Iraq after the fall of the Ottoman empire. Apparently they outstayed their welcome and the Iraqi’s launched a “holy war” to get rid of them.
Have muslims ever had a war that wasn’t a holy war? You know, just a common or garden war. Have they ever just had an ordinary, mundane war that wasn’t holy?
And anyway, what’s the difference between a holy war and an ordinary war? If someone kills me, I don’t much care whether my murderer is a holy warrior or an ordinary warrior, I’m dead just the same.
Leaders of all sorts tend to hijack religious language to justify wars. If you look at the time period when Christianity was the same age Islam is today, you’ll find much of the same stuff, I think.
Iran/Iraq wasn’t billed as a Sunni vs. Shi’ia war, although it did have those undertones. Asking if Muslims have had a mundane/unreligious war against none Muslims is like asking if America’s had a war that wasn’t nominally about freedom.
Oh yes he did. He even changed the Iraqi flag by adding a religious phrase to it so that it would look like the U.S./west was attacking an Islamic state, and therefore Islam itself.
True, but he did that to try and garner support from other countries (for the exact reason you mention). Iraq was still a secular state, not a theocracy like Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Actually, this is taking what Bin Laden wanted and turning it on it’s head.
Let’s try this analogy:
You’re holding a gun on a dangerous criminal.
Another dangerous criminal says, “Stop holding a gun on him!”
So…<BLAM> you shoot the first guy, and say, “Okay, I don’t have to hold a gun on him now.” <Holster Gun and Leave>
Would you say the second bad guy got what he wanted?