Re: "It's a matter of policy. Is it wise? Do such attacks increase the possibility of retaliation at home and abroad on the American political and military leadership?"
Well, let's not confuse the cause with the effect here... Presently, the US --as well as the world at large-- is confronted with Judeofascist terrorism, not Islamic terrorism. As I've said repeatedly, all hell has broken loose all along the "squall line" between Judeo-Christianity and Islam: from Afghanistan (Russia vs Pakistan) to Israel/Iraq/Iran to Chechnya to Turkey (cf. the EU's snub at the Copenhagen summit) to Morocco (cf. the diplomatic brawl over the persil island [*])... Since neither Russia nor Israel could handle an all-out war against their Muslim neighbors WITHOUT ending up using their non-conventional weaponry (nukes and/or bio), they decided that their best bet was to force the American 800-pound gorilla into the action. Hence the Russian/Israeli/French 911 machination: it successfully brought the US in Afghanistan and spared the latter a Chechnya-like carpet-bombing (by Russia). Likewise, Israel has "slip-streamed" Russia in the wake of 911 and blackmailed the US into yet another intervention against Iraq... Expectedly, a war against Iraq would surely wreck the Afghan regime (President Karzai would likely be "terminated with extreme prejudice"). At that point, Putin will seize the opportunity to gate-crash Afghanistan, offering the US to "help" it stabilize the Afghan regime while the Pentagon has its hands full with Iraq... Then, in turn, Pakistan will be brought to boiling point --again.
Only in such a hawkish scenario is it sensible to talk about Arab retaliation against US interests at home and abroad --I guess that's tantamount to going from Charybdis to Scylla, that is, from the current Judeofascist blackmail (against the US) to demonize Islam and the Arab world to the retaliatory "terrorism" by the latter...
Gus
[*] washtimes.com |
