Terror

[poliphilo]

We've been sold a lie.

There is no Al Quaida.

I mean, if there was a big, scary, SPECTRE-like, terrorist organisation lurking in the shadows waiting to get us, it would have managed another hit against the US mainland in the years since 9/11.

There are terrorists, sure- but they're not centrally organised or well-armed or particularly smart. They're capable of one-off attacks on soft targets- as in Madrid and London.

Consider that last- aborted- attack on the London underground. One of the guys- the one the Italians are holding- has said the bombs were never meant to go off. I don't know whether he's lying or telling the truth, but either way his gang were a Mickey Mouse outfit.

I don't want to down-play the danger. There have been bombs and there will be more bombs, but this isn't World War III. We're not up against a Big Enemy, we're up against a scattered bunch of stupid, idealistic young men, all fired up by the same stupid, fascistic ideology.

It's one for the police, not the military.

But the lie about Al Quaida, complicated by further lies about WMDs and the politics of the Middle East, has landed us in an illegal and unwinnable war that is simply stengthening the stupid, fascistic ideology that inspires the stupid, idealistic young men.

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether military action could have stopped 9/11. Those guys were based in Germany- right?

Only in the sense that for some years prior to 9/11, Osama bin Laden et al were openly saying that the U.S. was a pantywaist who would never hit back.

It's always a mistake to generalize from one experience to another without remembering that they're rarely identical. But I've had a lot of experience with thugs and bullies over a lifetime of living in marginal neighborhoods. My experience has always been that significant pushback, in terms the bullies understand, encourages them to pick a less pugnacious target. (We have the reputation among the neighborhood thugs of being "crazy," which in their idiom means dangerous, unpredictable, and quite possibly armed.) I'm reluctant to write about our specific pushback techniques, but will simply say that we're friendly and cordial to the ones who don't mess with us, but our response to intimidation includes a nicely calibrated combination of force, noise, and dramatics calculated to attract attention while embarrassing the heck out of them.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I like your style. :)

The problem with an enemy like Al Quaida is knowing exactly where to hit back. The war is Afghanistan certainly hit some of the right targets (though it missed Osama himself) but Saddam Hussein (however unpleasant in his own right) was our enemy's enemy.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Are you sure? I understand his regime gave aid and comfort to a number of Al Quaeda operatives. There are reports of Iraqi intelligence liaison with Mohammed Atta that have not yet been credibly refuted.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't have chapter and verse, (I read all this stuff and then forget the details) but I believe the truth is that Atta's Iraqi contacts were with groups hostile to Saddam Hussein (or something like that.)

I believe Al Quaida had a bounty out on Saddam's life. They certainly made him the target of a lot of their moon-batty rhetoric.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Ditto for foggy source memory, but I'm pretty sure it was an Iraqi intelligence agent.

I also recall that Hussein and Al-Queda kissed and made up after 9/11.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They kissed and made up?

I can't remember reading anything about that.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Okay, the scoop is that Hussein publicly congratulated Al Queda for 9/11. (The enemy of his enemy is his friend, I guess...)That caused a bit of a thaw in their relations.

It also put Hussein in our cross-hairs to a higher degree than he had been. Folks who go around congratulating people who blow up our tall buildings go on the enemy list.