Posted on 08/23/2006 11:14:05 AM PDT by 2banana
Michael Scheurer is NOT an expert in this at all...he was wrong starting with the answer to the first question.
Thanks for the note.
But if we parse this situation too finely we'll never defeat these nuts.
(1)Al Queda,
I rarely have a kind word to say about the CIA, but to say that they didn't understand Bin Laden is simply false. They had Clinton to deal with, and he wasn't interested in doing anything that had a whiff of risk on it.
(2)its basis in radical Islamic fundamentalist philosophy - not reactions to U.S. policy -
At the core of al-Qa'ida, they couldn't care less about U.S. policy, because they're religious fanatics. But, the reason that the U.S. policy angle sells so well in the Middle East is that most people there live under the boot of U.S. backed dictatorships, like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, etc. They see their own governments as cowards and bullies who sell their people out to stay rich and live like kings, and arm themselves with U.S. firepower. Islam totally notwithstanding, that's a huge factor in AQ's attraction as a resistance movement.
and (3) just how deep the radical philosophy was penetrating Islamic societies and creating public push in those societies for changes in the policies of Islamic nations, to fulfill the goals of the radical philosophy - movement toward a world Islamic caliphate.
That's true, in the same way that global Communism appealed to many purely nationalistic movements. It was a source of power that helped them achieve a goal, even as it corrupted them along the way.
Jihadist backers are no different than Soviet ones. They have a seductive sounding offer that promises power, support, and a unifying ideal. It seeks to tap into genuine local problems, and to pervert them for other uses, though. Still, 8th century Islam wouldn't be persuasive at all in the absence of major injustice in the region. As Americans, we have a hard time understanding what repressed and powerless people will sell out to in order to be free, even if it means trading one devil for another.
I think that the USA could pull out of all Muslim countries...could build a fence and become totally isolationist..and it wouldn't change the "hearts and minds"...
And they would STILL attack us...
You need to read Robert Spencer's book that was recommended on this thread.
You mean this answer?
Publicly promoting democracy while supporting tyranny may be the most damaging thing we do. From the standpoint of democracy, Saudi Arabia looks much worse than Iran. We use the term “Islamofascism”—but we're supporting it in Saudi Arabia, with Mubarak in Egypt, and even Jordan is a police state. We don't have a strategy because we don't have a clue about what motivates our enemies.
I've got a lot of negative observations about Middle Eastern culture, but I will say one thing: they're not blind. Our actions are not in sync with our words, which is why they don't believe us when we talk about freedom and democracy.
Anyway, if you (and apparently a number of other FReepers) think his first answer is wrong, then we're in for a longer war than I thought.
NO...the part of the first answer that was wrong..was right at the start..and so the rest of the first answer didn't matter..
"In the long run we're not safer because we are operating on the assumption that we're hated because of our freedoms, when IN FACT, WE ARE HATED BECAUSE OF OUR ACTIONS IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD."
That part....we aren't hated for either of those reasons...because look at Madrid, London, Bali, THOSE countries aren't doing what America DOES...
The reason is because WE ARE NOT MUSLIMS....PERIOD.
Their culture, such as it is, is dying. Most Middle Easterners probably wouldn't miss it, except that was being replaced by a post-Islamic secular void marked only by repression, powerlessness and poverty.
Radical Islam starts to look pretty good at that point, as would any kooky cult with an escapist, self-empowering gradiose theme to it.
Arabs really do marvel at how we live, but they see us as trumpeting democracy while paying dictators to keep them repressed. That does damage any potential relationship we'd have with them.
They met at an IHOP?
I envision two men wearing dark suits speaking in low conspiratorial tones in the orange plastic confines of the booth.."uh, excuse me Mike..but I think you've got a bit of egg on your face..."
Given that he had the job under Clinton, what was he supposed to do when Clinton wouldn't give the green light, time and time again, to take UBL out? Clinton clearly had no interest in pursuing AQ beyond tossing an occasional $500,000 cruise missile at a empty $5 tent. That decade was a crucial incubation time for al-Qa'ida, and Clinton took practically no postive stepts to nip it in the bud.
Blaming the intelligence agencies or the military or anyone else who was ready to go get him, but lacked permission from the CinC, isn't exactly fair.
The whole palestinian thing is a total cannard. Its a fundraising tool. The jihadists and the arab media point to the poor abused palestinians all the freakin time while failing to point out that of the 4 countries who have been to war with the 'palestinians' in the last 40 years only one of them was Israel.
I really love the whole 'we are only antagonizing them by fighting them' approach. I guess the best thing we could do would just be build a big freaking wall around our coasts, hiring 200,000 union members to hand-sort the contents of every container, resign from the UN/NATO/WTO/CFR/UNICEF/ and, oh yeah, kill all of the Jews!!!! Yeah, that would really make them love us and forgot that they are a pathetically delinquent society 700 years behind the West with ugly women, uglier men, no freedom, no pursuit of happiness and no skills beyond beheadings foreigners or beating their wives.
I'm sure that the US trying to keep Iran from going nuclear is also going to really piss off the jihadist so we better stop doing that as well. And I'm sure that when we helped the muslims in Afghanistan in the 80s & in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Kuwait in the 90s that was also causing the 'arab street' to hate us for 'what we do'. Gosh, we really have a lot to make up for.
Maybe this genius has an idea why it is that the muslim world seems not to just hate the U.S. but every other country in the world??? They are at war with the Russians in Chechnya, India, Israel, Sudan, Sri Lanka, etc. etc. Are the Sudanese people somehow doing something wrong to antagonize these jihadists and get themselves beheaded? Very confusing to follow the logic.
A lot of people are missing the point on the Middle East. Before we can win the fight, we have to figure a few things out:
1. Islamic Ideology
2. State Nationalism
3. Trade(oil)
Which one of those 3 things has the MOST impact on our dealings with countries in the Middle East, from oour perception, and from THEIR perception, which is more important?
This is NOT an easy question to answer. Yet, somehow, if we want "peace", we have to figure out how to make the US national interests and interests of the people in the Middle East mesh together.
If the answer is #1 (Islamic Ideology), then we are in a war to the death. Islamic Ideology and Western Civilization/Judeo-Christian Ideals are NOT compatible at their most basic tenants.
If the Answer is #2, we have to figure out how to keep #1 from overpowering #2. Right now, we are working on the #2 supposition.
I believe #3 is the last one on the Middle Eastern person's list, but is actually probably #1 on the US list.
Those two countries are jihad magnets and recruiting tools that pull in more terrorists every day. His top leadership, when taken out one by one, is replacable, since we never get large numbers of them at any time. From the looks of the stage he sent his last video from, if it's a cave he's living in it's a roomy, high end model. Finally, given how long he's been attacking America, he's probably surprised to be alive at all in mid 2006.
OBL wanted wars in which muslims would be killing and conquering the infidels. What he has now (mostly) is muslims killing muslims in muslim lands.
What he wanted specifically was for all true Muslims to rise up and fight apostate Muslims and infidels. Since he considers all of the dying Muslims to be either apostates or martyrs, and that his global jihadist movement is growing every year, while we're bogged down in Iraq, things aren't going quite as bad for his whackjob sceme as you'd think.
Again, I hate being in the position of having to defend the CIA, who I generally loathe, but in the Clinton era they were basically blindfolded and handcuffed behind the back before being sent into the boxing ring. Our HUMINT collection was legally emascualted years ago, and our paramilitary CIA guys, while top notch, can't do anything without the green light from the guy in the Oval Office.
1. Islamic Ideology
Islamic extremists are a persistant and reoccurring problem, but by themselves they're not very popular. They have two things really going for them now that makes them a potent threat: widespread discontent, and vast financial resources. Without those two factors, they'd be a tiny fraction of their current threat.
2. State Nationalism
Beyond idenifying with a state, ethnic group, or tribe, the biggest cause of discontent in the region is the fact that they have appallingly bad government. In most cases, the ones holding the oil developed a stranglehold on the country and wound up running things, usually throwing cash at people to buy them off, including radical Imams. It's hard to overstate how deeply this discontent runs, or why radical Islam would be seen as an attractive alternative to repression, but that's how it is.
3. Trade(oil)
I think that oil would rank #1 or #2 with both them and us. Honestly, we'd spend no more focus on the Middle East than we do Tanzania if they had no oil, and everyone knows it. The Middle Easterners far more than us realise that. They openly resent our support of local dictatorships as a way to keep them in a perpetual banana republic stage of development, simply to keep the oil flowing and our economies running strong. Our policy appears to them to be "Do what's good for business, and the locals be damned."
To a great extent, they're right. That double standard makes our cries for 'freedom' and 'democracy' sound hollow and calculated.
They'd like to believe us and to believe in what we say we stand for, but they don't see our actions backing that up. Radical Islam, for whatever bad can be said about it, does believe what it says and acts accordingly, no matter how cuckoo it is.
Schuerer always demonstrates why his colleagues ignored him. He does claim, however, that they delivered bin Laden to Clinton 10X with sighters on the ground and eash time Clinton passed.
You have a wrong premise - that Muslims want to be free in the sense of freedom as understood by Western civilization.
The only "freedom" a Muslim wants is to repress people in the name of religion. Ask any Muslim woman, for starters.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.