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Al-Qaida will do whatever it takes to assure Bush is re-elected

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reprehensor Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-22-04 10:29 AM
Original message
Al-Qaida will do whatever it takes to assure Bush is re-elected
By Gwynne Dyer

http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jan/01212004/commenta/131003.asp

"In the post-9-11 chill, even conceding that the terrorist leaders are intelligent people with rational goals seemed somehow disloyal to America's dead. Instead, it was assumed that their fanaticism made them too blind or stupid for purposeful action at the strategic level. Even terrorist groups as marginal and self-deluded as the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Weathermen had a more or less coherent analysis, political goals and some notion of how their attacks moved them toward those goals, but the public debate in the U.S. grants none of that to al-Qaida.
Yet the Islamist radicals have always been completely open about their goals. They want to take power in the Muslim countries (phase one of the project), and then unite the entire Muslim world in a final struggle to overthrow the power of the West (phase two). They are still stuck in phase one, with little to show for it despite 30 years of trying, so in the early 1990s Osama bin Laden and his colleagues switched from head-on assaults on the regimes in Muslim countries to direct attacks on Western targets. Yet their first-phase goal remains seizing power in the Muslim world, not some fantasy about "bringing the West to its knees."
Terrorists generally rant about their goals but stay silent about their strategies, so now we have to do a little work for ourselves. If the real goal is still revolutions that bring Islamist radicals to power, then how does attacking the West help? Well, the U.S. in particular may be goaded into retaliating by bombing or even invading various Muslim countries -- and in doing so, may drive enough aggrieved Muslims into the arms of the Islamist radicals that their long-stalled revolutions against local regimes finally get off the ground.
Most analysts outside the United States long ago concluded that that was the principal motive for the 9-11 attack. They would add that by giving the Bush administration a reason to attack Afghanistan, and at least a flimsy pretext for invading Iraq, al-Qaida's attacks have paid off handsomely. U.S. troops are now the unwelcome military rulers of more than 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people there and elsewhere are turning to the Islamist radicals as the only force in the Muslim world that is willing and able to defy American power."
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sinkingfeeling Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-22-04 10:35 AM
Response to Original message
1. I absolutely believe what she says.....
Good article, but it won't get much 'press'.
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Donating Member ( posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-22-04 10:46 AM
Response to Reply #1
3. Maybe it will
Notice it's printed in the Salt Lake City Tribune. That's Mormon country. Not exactly a liberal bastion.
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Hand Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-22-04 12:10 PM
Response to Reply #1
6. She's a he...
Gwynne's a guy--he's from Newfoundland originally, BTW. His background is Welsh, and Gwynne is a Welsh man's name. Just wanted to mention...

You may have seen the very cogent "War" series on PBS quite afew years ago. Gwynne Dyer wrote and hosted it.

Minor matter, really.

:hi:
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LoneStarLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-22-04 10:38 AM
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2. In A Moment of Deepest Cynicism...
In a moment of deepest cynicism early last year I asked myself "how does al-Qaeda feel about this election?"

The answer I and my cynical worldview arrived at is the same one seemingly popular with several flavors of conspiracy theorists: Al-Qaeda wants another Bush Presidency. Why? When the Bush administration rooted them from Afghanistan and summarily invaded Iraq and his detaining and assasinating al-Qaeda leaders and foot soldiers and those of related organizations weekly around the globe, why would al-Qaeda want another four years of bombs, arrests, invasions, and assasinations?

Because these actions are the only thing that will perpetuate al-Qaeda beyond the current decimated generation of leaders and foot soliders.

While we bomb away, invade away, and arrest and assasinate away, we do nothing substantive about the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the one issue that united all Muslims from Trinidad to Morocco to Indonesia. Language divides the Islamic world as does culture and geography and economic opportunity. But the one thing that unites the Islamic world is what is going on in the Levant.

The longer an aggressive administration is in power in the White House that has a vested electoral interest in sitting silently by and doing nothing in the Levant (because of the powerful and turbulent role that politically-active conservative Christians play in the Republican Party), the more we divide ourselves from the Islamic world.

The longer we do that, the more we perpetuate the sentiment that will fuel al-Qaeda.
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zbdent Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-22-04 11:41 AM
Response to Original message
4. So Bush did Osama/Al-Qaeda's dirty work by taking out Saddam?
I remember a lot of notes that Osama hated Saddam.

I can see it now:

Osama (through his family that was later whisked out of the country on the first flight allowed): You promise to get rid of Saddam, and I will not fight you in your grab for Iraq's oil.

Bush: Sure thing!

Bush (thinking to himself): Right, you towel-headed dumbfuck! As soon as I can, I'll take you out so that you can't reveal this!

Later that year;

Osama: What the feck! Why am I now being bombed!

Bush (Envisioning himself riding the atomic bomb out of the bomber a la Dr. Strangelove): Take that, you gullible little freak!

Osama: Okay, you wanted war, . . .

Nah, that's even too strange for a freeper fantasy.
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Beetwasher Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-22-04 11:58 AM
Response to Original message
5. Al Qaeda Needs Bush and Bush Needs Al Quaeda
They LOVE eachother. Each feeds off the other. If Bush had the opportunity to press a button and completely eliminate Al Quaeda in one fell swoop, he wouldn't do it and ditto for Bin Laden ridding the world of Bush.
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