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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (58806)	9/18/2002 7:20:43 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"I think the part about Mecca and Medina is irrational for the simple fact that our forces are not and have not been there." Actually OBL objected to the US military being allowed to have forces on Saudi soil which was and still is the case. Lots of Saudis feel that we unfairly pressured them into allowing us to keep our foreign forces in place after the Gulf war and harbor resentment over it.

To: TimF who wrote (58806)	9/18/2002 7:47:12 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

You're right. Any leader who is willing to go to war against another group will have grievances which to them are serious. Sometimes they are imagined, sometimes not. It's not bin Laden's imagination that US forces are camped in significant numbers in Saudia Arabia, nor that we have meddled in the politics of Middle East since the days when oil was discovered there, and still do so. I don't consider those grievences to be valid or legitimate. Why doesn't that surprise me? <g> You said you disagree with bin Laden and I believe you when you say this Thank you for that. Not everybody can be so responsible as to recognize that people can try to understand positions without agreeing with them. I'm glad you can. While I recognize the overlap I don't think guerilla tactics or guerilla warfare is the same as terrorism. Hmmm. I think you're making a distinction without a difference. Assume you were bin Laden, and had his passion to drive the US out of Muslim lands forever. How would YOU go about it?? Do you have a better, more effective strategy than bin Laden, keeping in mind that he has to keep his forces motivated through decades of struggle? Preview Use Fixed Font Responding to Message #58806 from twfowler at Sep 18, 2002 7:11 PM The forces bin Laden commands have grievances against the United States which they believe are legitimate and serious, and are based on evil decisions by the US. The forces President Bush commands have grievances against Iraq which they believe are legitimate and serious, and are based on evil decisions by the US. If we are going to go by people's beliefs then Hitler had grievances against the Jews which he thought where legitimate and serious, Stalin apparently had grievances against the kulaks and so on. I might want to know what the imagined grievances of someone like Stalin, Hitler, and bin Laden are, but only as either a matter of intellectual curiosity or to better figure out how these people should be dealt with. I don't consider those grievences to be valid or legitimate. Each side has people who agree with their position, and people who think their position is totally wrong. That is true about almost any side in almost any controversy. At the risk of igniting the whole moral realism/absolutism vs moral skepticism/relativism argument I don't think the fact that their is a diversity of opinions means we have to consider other opinions to be correct or valid. Whether or not you agree with bin Laden, it's worth knowing what his position is. Agreed but only for the reasons I lay out above. Also please don't take my response to the following points to indicate that I think you support the following ideas. You said you disagree with bin Laden and I believe you when you say this, but if you are going to bring up the points I am still going to address them. One of his parameters is that Mecca and Medina are holy places for Muslims and that a Western military presence in them is absolute evil and must be resisted at all costs. These grievance might interest me a little more if there where actual any US or other Western military forces in Mecca or Medina. Another is that when fighting a military machine as powerful as the US, you need to oppose it by guerrilla type tactics, which makes a lot of sense. While I recognize the overlap I don't think guerilla tactics or guerilla warfare is the same as terrorism. Another parameter is based on the premise that the US is trying to destroy the centuries--no, millenia--old traditions and history of the Middle East and replace it with a decadent, money-grubbing, immoral culture. (Which, in fact, we are pretty much trying to do.) This at least has some grounding in reality, but really its not as much that we are trying to displace their culture as a policy but that our example helps lead many away from some of the aspects of their culture. Also my statement about this objection to the west as having "some grounding in reality" only applies to the fact that the west is an example that can lead people away from traditional Arab or Islamic culture. I do not share the opinion that western culture is immoral, and it is in many ways far less decadent then the culture that bin Laden is pushing. Furthermore this attack would only cause us to exercise more interference in the Middle East and surrounding areas not less. Its "defended" traditional Islamic and Arab culture only slightly better then Pearl Harbor defended the ruling regime of Japan. Another parameter is based on our Vietnam history, that the US population has no long term vision or staying power but is focussed purely on the short term (which is in many ways true), and that the US population has no stomach for a long and complicated war, and if hit enough times will just withdraw entirely and get out of the Middle East. This is possible, although its more likely that it will just enrage us. I think -- and I hope -- you're right. This, I think, is a major miscalculation on bin Laden's part. Apparently he simply didn't believe that we would or could overthrow the Taliban. Oops! I think that America still has the will and the backbone to stay the course, when we believe the course is right. So I think he has erred on this assumption, though it's a natural mistake for somebody who knows America only by its history and not by living here to make. I think the part about Mecca and Medina is irrational Well, our government is sensitive to it. asia.cnn.com I'm glad to have a chance to discuss this responsibly, because these are, IMO, important issues for shaping a responsible foreign policy and gathering the political support for the actions our government may choose to make.