RE: "Where's the "common ground" with Al Qaeda?"
For propaganda reasons, this isn't printed in the USA. The USA media tends to eliminate this part when they print anything on bin Laden. I don't believe American media serves Americans well on this issue.
Overseas, they focus on the common ground solution (which is good). But they also avoid printing the murderous threats (which is not good to hide this part). The good thing though, is unlike the USA, they repeatedly print the common solution message so many times that the solution is very clear for folks overseas (which sort of makes Americans look less-than-informed because it gives us the appearance of being unable to "get it.")
In a nutshell, the message (that is also the common solution) is the removal of the military out of SA and religious areas in ME. This has been bin Laden's very consistent message. This message was consistent throughout the 90s and thru today. If we were independent from oil, it's actually something this country could have easily have done, and bin Laden would have been history. But since we're not independent of oil, the US feels it necessary to keep troops overseas and thus bin Laden continues to be a threat.
I think it would have been more beneficial to our economy if we had spent $400B per year on alternative sources of energy (including Fowler's idea of promoting the use of alternative sources of energy), to get off of our dependency of oil, rather than dig ourselves further into a rut without any way out. I personally don't like the idea of us being sitting ducks for bin Laden to attack, because we haven't proactively gotten off our dependency on oil.
RE: "Saddam"
Iraq was not a threat to the USA. He was the US govt's buddy during the 80s. I really don't understand why Iraq was attacked for 9/11, when they had nothing to do with 9/11. History will say Bush attacked a country without cause, and he eventually will go down as a very illegal president. I suspect a judgment of war crimes will be made against him - for attacking a country without any cause.
Regards,
Amy J |
