The reports of Osama bin Ladin’s latest videotaped diatribe against the U.S. got me thinking. OBL says that any nation that supports Israel and the Jews is an open target. Many Arab countries are peeved at the U.S. for our blanket support of Israel. So this may not be the place for hypotheticals, but I was curious to get other people’s opinions.
Say President Bush, tomorrow, announces that the U.S. will no longer support Israel, financially and militarily. Do bin Ladin and al Qaida all of a sudden go, “oh sh*t, now what do we do?” Do our enemies in the Arab world say, “yeah, them Americans are all right” and give up their fight?
Personally, I’d say no. It seems to me that these people hate us so much that they’d just find another cause to take up. However, I just don’t know enough of the facts to answer this question myself.
Talk amongst yourselves.
I don’t think it would change things much. They would still be mad at us because we are not attacking Israel. They would be mad at us because we still support the ‘crooked godless’ Saudi government (one of OBL’s big things). In short the moderates might be more on our side but from the looks of things the moderates don’t account for much these days. My $.02.
First, it’s no secret that bin Laden’s support for the Palestinians is little more than lip service – his real beef is with the Saudis, and he’s using the Israel/Palestinian mess just to add to his appeal.
Second, I have every confidence that the radicals who support bin Laden will merely come up with new excuses to attack the US, even if we were to immediately withdraw our support for Israel and pull all of our troops out of Saudi Arabia. My money is on something along the lines of “the United States must still be punished for its past crimes!”