And he also oughta know better.............FRegards
Posted on 01/21/2004 10:54:34 PM PST by Utah Girl
"Seems to me that we were told that we wouldn't have had problems with the Middle East if we'd just pull out support of Israel."
Who's brainchild theory is this? If the dog wouldn't have stopped to crap he may have caught the rabbit!
Most analysts outside the United States long ago concluded that that was the principal motive for the 9-11 attack. They would add that by giving the Bush administration a reason to attack Afghanistan, and at least a flimsy pretext for invading Iraq, al-Qaida's attacks have paid off handsomely. U.S. troops are now the unwelcome military rulers of more than 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people there and elsewhere are turning to the Islamist radicals as the only force in the Muslim world that is willing and able to defy American power.
Actually her analisys was quite correct up to this point. But to think that the purpose of 9/11 was to goad us to come in and take their private nation state in Afghanistan and overthrow Saddam is absurd. After 8 years of Clinton, and 30 years of America's generally weak and incoherent response to Arab terrorism, I doubt in their wildest dreams they ever imagined we would do so. No, they believed they were safe to strike at us, and we were too effete and degenerate to wade in after them. They figured we would cut and run at the first US casualties, just like Lebanon and Somalia.
What she is attributing to them is the classic Marxist guerilla strategy where the insurgents strike at the government to provoke a harsh response against the people, which in turn drives the people towards the guerillas. But here statement that "U.S. troops are now the unwelcome military rulers of more than 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people there and elsewhere are turning to the Islamist radicals as the only force in the Muslim world that is willing and able to defy American power" is completely false. We are not rulers, nor are we unwelcome. We are liberators and protectors, and the vast majority of people in those countries are afraid we will leave, not anxious to drive us out. Her leftist roots are showing in her assumption that the locals must view us as oppressors.
And he also oughta know better.............FRegards
Al-Qaeda has brought abject humiliation to the region. The "Arab street" watches as the Taliban is annihilated and a non-Islamist regime takes over, the regions biggest and most powerful bully is summarily and publicly whipped, the families of martyrs see the senders of their sons scurry like rats to caves and spider holes, and the one who has been sending money to them, embarrassingly can't even martyr himself. The same Arab street seen ululating in celebration at the viewing of our dead and dying in NYC, once privately and now publicly caution restraint. They now find the Great Satan in their midst, this time with anger and a sense of resolve not seen before.
Humiliation.
Coming soon, capitulation.
I suspect it is not a coincidence that the Party's symbol is a jackass!
One need not guess what al-Qaeda has in mind, or, more importantly, project already-discredited leftist geopolitics onto their face. One need only listen to them, and although Dyer has quoted them he clearly believes they're after something else. Baffling. Their clear, stated intent behind WTC was twofold: (1) to destabilize Western governments ("bring them to their knees" is their locution, not Dyer's) and (2) unify and energize the Arab world under the command of Jihad, and not their current national governments. Neither has happened. What has happened is that the reins that internationalists such as Dyer perceived were controlling U.S. policy turned out to be imaginary, al-Qaeda has been delegitimized and militarily defeated, and the Arab world national governments have, each of them, formed a response to this ranging from Egyptian retrenchment to Saudi covert civil war to Libyan accommodation. Those who lagged, the Syrians and the Iranians, are in a state of hurried review at the moment.
What is truly jaw-dropping is Dyer's assertion that al-Qaeda approves of all of this and will take whatever actions it can to see that it continues. He is truly existing in an alternate reality here, one so divorced from the one we inhabit that I am not certain that meaningful communication between the two is possible. This weird little piece certainly isn't it.
Then, she also seems to be saying that AQ wants the US to expand its military takeovers to more Muslim countries so that they can defeat the West.
Sure, it all makes sense. About as much sense as: "She said: 'There is no reason And the truth is plain to see.' But I wandered through my playing cards And would not let her be One of sixteen vestal virgins Who were leaving for the coast And although my eyes were open They might just as well be closed And so it was that later As the miller told his tale That her face at first just ghostly Turned A Whiter Shade Of Pale."
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