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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (187687)	5/30/2006 7:00:08 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 281500

Shoot him. OBL can be had later. Zawahiri is the operational mastermind behind Al Qai'da.. OBL is the figurehead. Not unreasonable. Though I am surprised that you think Zawahiri is that brilliant. Behind every Islamo-fascist there's another Islamo-fascist ready to take his place. Maybe better, maybe worse. In the larger scheme, you cause a short disruption, while AQ looks for a replacment. And that disruption won't be noticeable. AQ is a distributed organization, with cells largely operating on their own. The only thing you'll get is a notch on your belt. AQ's "success" isn't a function or one or two men, it's a function of their ability to recruit fodder. They have a "cause" that allows them to recruit. They can point to the historical US support of the Shah or Saddam. They can point to oil. They can point to Abu Ghraib. They can point to Hamas being democratically elected and rejected by the west to illustrate the west doesn't really believe in democracy and now they'll be pointing to Haditha as a validation of their cause. They will get more fodder. Bush can discount, ignore or reject any of their rationale for the cause, but he doesn't make any difference to AQ. AQ's recruiting films don't give Bush's side of the story. A reasonable metric of who is winning the propaganda war is the number of global acts of terrorism. Are they going up, or are they going down? That tells you who is winning. I don't really care if Zawahiri gets blown away. That's fine. Someone will get a notch on their belt. That's ok too. But if Zawahiri is not in that vehicle, i.e., it's all civilians, you'll be giving AQ another video segment for their recruiting film and getting them more fodder. But I don't think you care about that. I think you're more interested in killing someone, anyone. You would have been great at Haditha. jttmab