Tthat was a nice comprehensive post.
Now, some of my commments.
What Bin Laden says:
>After WWII, the Americans became more aggressive and oppressive, especially in the Muslim world.
>Your situation with Muslims in Palestine is shameful, if there is any shame left in America. In the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, a cooperation between Zionist and Christian forces, houses were demolished over the heads of children.Also, by testimony of relief workers in Iraq, the American led sanctions resulted in the death of over 1 million Iraqi children.
Unfortunately, what he says above is true. To the ones who will waste bandwidth calling me names, back off!<g>
>As it's shaping up, Pakistan is likely to provide intelligence and logistical support. It comes with a price and a risk:
Yes, BIG price and big risk, I agree. Let's hope Musharraf can contain the risk, I think he can, I mean, just look at him<g>
>Likely, they believe they can do the same to the US, if they can lure them into a similar mountain war.
I think they can, if not, they will take thousands of our soldiers with them and make BBQ of them just like they did to the Russians. I hope logic prevails and Musharraf can deliver.
>To an extent, however, the anti-US rant is propaganda driven by various folks for various reasons.
Of course it is. But the perception remains among the people there that we have been screwing them in expense of our interests and our support of the Israelis. Until we start correcting that imbalance to start favoring them a bit (maybe support democracies in those countries for a change instead of fat kings/sheiks/dictators), we are kidding ourselves we will win this war.
>In recent years, we've pressured Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians and brokered deals that have won ground for the Palestinians, which has allowed them to set up a government and civil authority structure.
I am sorry I couldn't help chuckle about this statement. We may have helped to set up a PA civil authority structure but all the deals offered to the Palestinians have not given them a VIABLE state! VIABLE means they don't have to stop in each roadblock and spend a day on the road to go through their own country, sorry got a meeting soon, I could go on and on and on.
>Led by the US, NATO sent its troops to Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, where they fought on the side of the Muslims against the Christians, and we also aided the Muslim resistance in its battle to maintain independence from Russia's control over Chechnya.
Of course it serves our interests to control the situation on the ground and go after the oil and gas fields laying east of there. Milosevic would not go along doing what we ordered, the Albanians will, they owe us for the country we are getting ready to set up for them, you watch...
>I think it's time we get more vocal about all we've done in support of Islamic peoples, which also includes liberating Kuwait.
Libearating the oil fields you mean, liberating Kuwait was the "reason" they fed the masses (and it sure sounded good). Try to find out what happened to the US Ambassador in Iraq and her conversations right before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Sadam was bluffed into going there so we will have a great excuse to establish the facts on the ground and protect our interests (oil) over there...we are still there "patrolling" and our bases will remain there for ever. MIssion accomplished<g>
>George is crazy, no doubt, but the more I learn, the less nuts he sounds
I have no doubt that I am crazy myself<g>
>(I recommend not letting him come close to your laundry):
Excellent advice!<g>
>Based on this, it seems clear that Bin Laden and the Taliban must be brought to justice. At least 3 or 4 of the other better organized terrorist organizations should also be crippled.
If they are directly responsible, yes, they must be brought to justice. I just hope that in order to do that we do not inflame millions of other Muslims in the region (they don't have a high esteem of us already, what am I saying, they hate our guts), don't kill scores of innocent Afgans (for every one we kill we get 10 more potential suicide bombers) and we don't lose many of our soldiers in a ground invasion (which we will, I am certain of that, a look at past history of Afganistan and its terrain shows that). The start is by (slowly, hey we don't want to let the bastards they won) slowly gradually changing our foreign policy objectives so the people who do this sh*t don't feel so desperate and full of hate to actually go through it, instead of taking it out on us they 'll take it out on some embassy or some of our flags (as always)...then we get an international coalition together and get the intelligence agencies to cooperate on getting to these terrorist networks and hopefully get some Mossad guys to infiltrate these cells (if MOssad can't do it, do not have any illusions any other agency can!). But the best hope out of the jam we are blindly driving into is Musharraf, if he can deliver, we accomplish our long term objectives (presence in the region and oil and gas in the Caspian fields, hey we may become friends with the Iranians who hate the Taliban and work out some deals in the oil business and stop having the Europeans having them all to themselves!)
>"Do not attack innocent citizens or make the error of lumping all Muslims together or you will ignite a holy war that will defeat you."
In response, I'd say:
We won't make that error. How could we possibly mistake many communities and nations of devout religious
practitioners with gangs of sociopathic murderers and sewer rats?
I pray that you are right. But it is inevitable, look at our conduct in the Gulf War (and especially since then) and the Kosovo war (four to five times more civilians died than soldiers, a whole country's infrastructure reduced to rubble, I mean, bridges, hospitals, water and electricity plants, factories, schools, TV stations, embassies --Chinese one, a "mistake", no apologies given for the rest of course---Milosevic, the peacemaker of Dayton, got the evil virus suddenly and became monster and we had to stop him, LOL, stories for little children dude!). If we do in fact make that error (which we will if we unleash a heavy military response) the potential consequences of the Muslim world backlash could be severe. If we can win by some commando raids (without ISI' s help they are dead meat of course). Osama and the Taliban leaders are probably holed up in some caves in one of the thousands of mountains there waiting to come out to go to work, they thrive on this guerilla warfare (and they are damn good at it). So, let's hope Musharraf can deliver. |
