I don’t think we really have an inkling as to whether or not al-Q was successful.
If, twenty years from now, we look back, find no American troops propping up a pliable Saudi Government, see that Israel is gone and notice a Palestinian state in its place, then perhaps we can begin to ask whether the attacks of 9/11 helped achieve those results.
If, on the other hand, we find virtually all of the Middle East run by governments based largely upon the Turkish model, with concessions to equal rights and freedom of religion, we may be able to conclude that al-Qaeda’s actions proved to be one of the last acts of old-school Islamic radicalism.
And if we find Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and Washington, DC to be radioactive wastes, we’ll know that everyone lost.
But most likely, we’ll find something far different and more absurd than any of the possible outcomes I just suggested.
Damn it to hell! Don’t you know that the winking smilie must be used for tongue-in-cheek humorous retorts? I am sick to death of this misuse of the emoticon. The level of ignorance on this message board is intolerable!
Well, fuck fuck fuck fuckety fucking fuck! I speak a fucking foreign language, and I live in a fucking foreign country, so I must be fucking smarter than you or any fucking body else here! How can you ignorant fucking people stand your ignorant fucking selves???
Of course, some people say I’m rude and not nearly as smart as I think I am, but that’s just silly.
I think that had Owl-K-duh left the WTC buildings alone, and instead focused on demolishing the entire Pentagon, the reaction of we Americans and the rest of the world would have been quite different. Our reaction would have been naked fear, the world’s would have been respect (the kind you have for a coiled snake). Had they succeeded in destroying the Pentagon and also included the White House and Capitol Hill, I think the world would have been in jaw-dropping awe of them. No matter where you lived in the U.S. , you would have been in the state of Pandemonium, at the capitol of Oh-Shitsville. The strikes could easily have been interpreted as a brilliant millitary maneuver, even by those still heaving from its wretchedness.
But they did not leave it as a simple military strike, they hit us in our pocketbooks and tore at our hearts. Nothing pisses Americans off more than those two things. They made it personal when they did that, and it was an invitation to their extinction.
Only the most barbaric would support the kind of unprovoked deliberate assault on innocent civilians that we saw on 9/11. Rather than stepping forward as revered generals in a fight against (their perceived) American oppression, they had to slither away and hide in holes like the snakes that their actions proved them to be.
Wars are not won without support. It’s a piss-poor planner who makes his first strike one that drives away the support of the world.
Owl-K-duh reminds me of a little punk who used to live down the street from me when I was a kid. He would throw rocks from a distance, then run and hide inside when you charged after him to kick his friggin ass. He was a coward, he struck first without warning and then refused to stand and deliver. One day he hit my friend in the head with a rock that knocked him unconscious, then bolted inside laughing hysterically. That night my friend’s brother slashed all of the tires on the kid’s mother’s car, knowing then his mother couldn’t drive him to school. He waited for him at the bus stop. At the age of eleven I saw somebody literally get the shit beat out of them. Well, I smelled it happen anyway.
Al-Cowarda will be smoked out.
Yeah, they fucked up big time.
I wish the government would hire me as an advisor. I’ve got some grapes that would make an exquisitely bitter wine.
As I said, it’s way to early to tell, but supporters of terrorism have already won a far more important strategic victory by somehow preventing Americans from conflating uu-Uuuuu terrorism with Palestinian terrorism.
It should have been painfully easy to paint the PA as the thugs they are, and to make a point of the destruction of the foremost terrorist nation in the world–Palestine.
How, exactly, this was done I don’t know, but Western toleration of the PA’s tactics and strategy has undermined this “war against terrorism except terrorists who murder Jews” far more than any battlefield reverse could have.
Well, go away for a few days and one gets body slammed. Quite rightly so, unfortunately I must confess. Well, I shouldn’t post after spending the day supporting Puerto Rico’s economy. Not that the substance was regrettable but the mode of expression was.
Now as to the substantive issue: Sofa man has got it 100% wrong. What has undermined the ‘battle’ as it were is (a) poor choice of wording (b) lack of recognition of substantive differences between religiously motivated culture-war terror and nationalist/nation founding motivated terror. The second has been disturbingly common in the past. The early Zionists used it, rather bloodily against the Brits, UN negotiators and Arab civilians, Jordanian territory or Palestinian territory – the Arab fighters, largely of ex-Pstine origin of course having felt free to initiate the same. Indeed the familiar tactic of arresting then releasing terror suspects when the heat cooled was used by Israel in the 1948 period. And the US has indeed in the past supported folks who used ‘terror’ tactics.
So, the calculus of gains and losses only will become clear when the result of current policy is seen.
This simply isn’t true. Since it’s off topic I won’t elaborate here but in short Japan attacking the US made a lot of sense from the Japanese perspective. Where the Japanese really screwed up wasn’t in the attack itself but in not pressing the attack and taking out the drydocks (and oil storage).
The Japanese government may have been tyrannical but they weren’t stupid on the whole. The attack was simply a calculated decision that didn’t work out as well as they had hoped in the long run.
Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, hell, he could be in the USA by now. I think that diabolical son of a bitch is capable of much more deviltry. He may be a bastard, but he’s demonstrated he is one smart bastard.
We still have Yog Sothoth only knows how many terrorists running around this country.
Worse yet, we are producing plenty of domestic idiots. I don’t know how many Dopers have seen this story because I don’t know how much national coverage it has gotten. About two weeks ago, the Animal Liberation Front successfully set off an incendiary device beneath a truck at a poultry plant in Bloomington, IN. The truck was destroyed although several other incendiary devices under other trucks failed to detonate. One of my biggest fears is that al-Qaeda is going to link up with some of our domestic loonies.
If the news reports I have read are correct, there are still plenty of al-Qaeda and Taliban members on the loose in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Regardless of what Gen. Franks says, I think they have some capacity to cause trouble.
The nitwits in the Bush Administration have made a boneheaded mistake stepping up our operations in Columbia while trying to deal with a Mid Eastern terrorist network. We have had marijuana and cocaine coming into this country for 80+ years, yet the republic still endures.
Total fucking muck. This gibberish is entirely incomprehensible. And this, mind you, comes from the very same individual who continually indulges himself in personal attacks on others for their supposed intellectual shortcomings.
Ah well, then you may feel free to point out those specific parts which you were unable to follow either by poor or overly convuluted expression on my part or otherwise by lack of native capacity. If you find it incomprehensible, as opposed to simply against your own analysis I am sure you shall be able to develop your ideas in full. Else, I am sure you can take advantage of the pit thread to discuss various failings of mine.
Ah well, then you may feel free to point out those specific parts which you were unable to follow either by poor or overly convuluted expression on my part or otherwise by lack of native capacity. If you find it incomprehensible, as opposed to simply against your own analysis I am sure you shall be able to develop your ideas in full. Else, I am sure you can take advantage of the pit thread to discuss various failings of mine. **[/QUOTE
