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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (152029)	11/19/2004 11:11:29 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

We don't have to rely on pure speculation for Osama's motives, you know. We have a tape of him in the fall of 2001 talking about the attacks, his motives and the expected response. Certainly the part about attacking America to still up a civilizational war is true enough - though it's pretty clear that Osama believed as he often said, that America was soft, and if you hit them hard, they would run. In short, he expected another burst of cruise missile and angry rhetoric. That's not what he got. The crucial Osama remark that you are forgetting is "When people see a weak horse and a strong horse, they will prefer the strong horse". Osama's idea was to set himself up as the strong horse with a strong blow that was ineffectually answered, as the previous attacks had been. That is not what happened. The Taliban fell inside a month. If you are Osama, you like conflict, but you do want to be able to present your conflict as a winning struggle. Otherwise you stand in danger of being the weak horse.