[Utah Girl]

Words fail me. Except it must be the current dem or leftist theory or something. Mario Cuomo ranted and raved today about the Bushes being in bed with Al Quaida because they had investments in the same international company. Can the Dems get any more out of control???

[texasflower]

Can the Dems get any more out of control???

They seem to have an endless capacity for idiocy.

[11B3]

More alternate reality from the British left. Her "logic" is so screwed up that it defies explanation. The things she cites as being the misconception of Al Qaida's goals are in fact the real ones, not some reverse psychology experiment that she hs in mind. The Caliphate - worldwide - is the final goal of the Islamists, with everyone converted to Islam or dead. Period.

[weegee]

What demands could the Islamist terrorists of al-Qaida possibly make that the United States could conceivably grant?

They could demand the release of the convicted 1993 WTC bombers. They could demand the release of the Gitmo terrorists.

Such demands are made all the time for the release of spies and terrorists. Tourists are kidnapped and held for ransom when money gets tight.

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.

The attacks on civilians in Iraq and on our troops have been designed to get the U.S. to weaken resolve and pull out of Iraq.

Yeah. There's nothing that Al Qaida could demand. < /sarcasm >

[zarf]

No, this just the old sneering, eye rolling left.

9/11 never happened, stop the militarism...let's move on and hand out condoms.

[weegee]

Unfortunately, the post-9-11 intellectual climate in the United States has prevented any serious discussion of the terrorists' goals and their strategies for achieving them.

I guess after reading her hit piece that Al Qaida goaded us into war by destroying the World Trade Center, attacking the Pentagon, attempting an attack on another Washington, D.C. target, and killing over 3,000 people. We were tricked.

Bill Clinton had the right response all along. Do nothing. Yep. That tactic sure made us safe. What a big time clymer...

[MJY1288]

The liberals around the world are following Howard Dean's lead. The Texas State Legislature is a fine example of what happens after Bush has been in office for a while.

After Bush is reelected in a landslide and gains 5 more seats in the Senate this coming November, I look for the Senate democrats to flee to France when Bush nominates his first Supreme Court Justice next year.

The U.S. Senate Democrats will be reduced to the same level as those cowardly Texas State Legislators who fled the State of Texas in order to block the will of the majority. George W. Bush seems to have a way of driving the democrats over the cliff, I'm not sure how he does it, but the fact is, George W. Bush's path to the White House has been a costly journey for the Democrats, the 2002 mid term elections were costly for the democrats and the upcoming General elections seem to be following the same pattern.

The Democrats are on the brink of a total meltdown and this will be a beautiful thing to watch unfold.

[endthematrix]

Nothing like US policy being dictated by Al Qaida's Futurist Society! Those explosive devices in the streets causing civilian casualties sure don't help the terrorist recruiting campaign.

[Dallas59]

"Certainly another attack on the scale of 9-11 would risk producing that result, even if al-Qaida had the resources for it. But a simple truck bomb in some U.S. city center a few months before the election, killing just a couple of dozen Americans, could drive voters back into Bush's arms and turn a tight election around. Al-Qaida is clever enough for that."

I am lost for words. The coldness...the lack of concern other than for the concern of what Bush will do. Amazing. Another one infected with Bushaphobia...everything is connected to Bush.

[JLS]

Anyone who can simply skip by and assert that Al-Quaida's plan was to have the Taliban government removed will say anything.

[Free Vulcan]

Unfortunately Mz. Dyer, we have bin Laden and cronies own quotes as to what they want to do. After they kick the US out of the Mideast, unite the Muslims, and bring down the West, they want to conquer it and everything else for themselves. Their only goal is world Islamic domination, and they have made that clear. Anything else is nothing but your fantasies.

[Blue_Ridge_Mtn_Geek]

Biography of Gwynne Dyer
http://www.gwynnedyer.net/

Gwynne Dyer was born in Newfoundland in 1943. After studying at universities in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, he received his PhD in military and Middle Eastern history from the University of London.

Dyer served in the Canadian, American, and British navies. He taught military history and war studies for two years at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto and for four years at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst.

Since he left teaching in 1973, Dyer has worked as a freelance journalist, broadcaster and lecturer. His syndicated columns on international affairs appear in a dozen languages in nearly 200 newspapers published in more than 40 countries around the world.

In 1980, Gwynne Dyer and Tina Viljoen collaborated on a seven-part television series for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB): War first telecast in Canada in 1983. Eventually, War was shown in 45 countries and one episode, "The Profession of Arms," was nominated for an Academy Award. With Viljoen, Dyer wrote a book based on the series: War, published in 1985. For the NFB and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC),Dyer and Viljoen again collaborated on Defence of Canada, a three-part series aired in 1986. Their book The Defence of Canada: In the Arms of the Empire was published in 1990. In 1994 Dyer completed a four-part series, The Human Race, which looked at the roots, nature and future of human politics. In 1995, his three-part series on peacekeeping in Bosnia, Protection Force, first aired.

Dyer has also made several radio documentaries, including a seven-hour series, The Gorbachev Revolution, and a six-hour series entitled Millennium, which aired on the CBC in the spring of 1996.

Gwynne Dyer is frequent lecturer. His reflections on Globalization and the Nation-State were published in 1996 by the Canadian Institute of International Affairs in its series Behind the Headlines.

[McGavin999]

These are some sick, sick people.

[Hugin]

Terrorists generally rant about their goals but stay silent about their strategies, so now we have to do a little work for ourselves. If the real goal is still revolutions that bring Islamist radicals to power, then how does attacking the West help? Well, the U.S. in particular may be goaded into retaliating by bombing or even invading various Muslim countries -- and in doing so, may drive enough aggrieved Muslims into the arms of the Islamist radicals that their long-stalled revolutions against local regimes finally get off the ground.

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.

[wayoverontheright]

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.

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.

[Billthedrill]

Dyer is one of the most thoroughly silly strategic thinkers in publication at the current moment - this piece is so riddled with errors of logic and wild historical misrepresentations that one hardly knows where to begin.

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.

[savedbygrace]

As well as I can determine, what she is saying is that AQ will attack the US to make sure President Bush is re-elected, and that AQ will cease all attacks to make sure President Bush is re-elected. Therefore, whther AQ attacks or not, they will be trying to get President Bush re-elected.

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."

[mewzilla]

For more of Ms. Dyer's work, click here.

But watch your blood pressure.

I'm not kidding.

[hershey]

She's nuts. They'd rather see hundreds or thousands of Americans bombed and murdered in the US, than allow that we have a right to defend ourselves. Their problem is simple-- envy. They can't stand the fact that we're the strongest nation in the world, the happiest, the free-est, and that we don't care what the rest of the world does. Just leave us alone, please! They're like two year olds throwing temper tantrums because mommy and daddy aren't paying attention.