Re: Osama bin Laden Declared Dead
I'd like to agree but AQ still has their best 2 weapons: a sensationalist media to keep the fear on full boil and the ability of our demogogues to grasp power in the wake of tragedy, overreact, and grant them another global pledge class of recruits.
The longer we keep it on the D/L, the better. Let them exhaust themselves in internecine fights. "Just play it cool, boy. Real cool."
Its good to know you get some joy about the rise of intolerant Islam Fundamentalism... its also good to know that no matter what we do, it'll give rise to "a global pledge class of recruits"... they are emboldened by our weakness, emboldened by our strength... gosh, they seem like the perfect enemy... or should I say bogeyman for your own belief set.
edit: what did AQ thrive on... the notional idea of the threat of the sinful west, some amounts of "life would be better under the caliphate", a good deal of the belief that dying in the name of Islam in warfare against the other (impure muslims, christians, jews) leads to heaven, etc. Frankly, these guys could generate "us vs. the world" on so many fronts... that's why these *******s took afghanistan in the first place... they didn't need an American or Russian excuse... they saw impure muslims, atheists, and other sinners they needed to convert in some craggy rocky region and dammit they had the guns to do so. Yeah, that has a lot to do with us, doesn't it.... oh, "back in the 80s we did this and that"... funny, we gave guns to a lot of people... but from the mid-80s through early-2000 there wasn't a lot of us there to cause problems... no, they needed to roughshod over women in the name if Islam and conquer an entire society in the name of Islam. Sure, they have larger goals... getting the sinful west out the Mid East... sure you'll put on the cloak of poverty and other social-class based constructs... but by and large its been about sin and the influence of sin. Fact of the matter is that the US is hardly the sole source for these guys... the only difference is we're the only one with the desire to take it to them... and for the most part we've kept them highly neutralized. Oh, and I should remind you that most of the terrorists over the last decade have come from relatively comfortable backgrounds and/or societies... how many engineers and doctors make up the terrorist roster sheet? too many.
On the other hand, western enablers have helped prop up likemind groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. But, please, keep on your line that "we're creating more of the enemy"... guess what... our mere presence in their world gives them grief... and the whole idea that it isn't Islam Islam Uber Alles gives them their call... that things would be better under a pure religious state gives them cause... just like Communism and the west, the Middle East will always have those who pine for Islam as a pure state because both dictates tell them all the great things they can have so long as they force everybody under its banner. Maybe its far more complicated than that?
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Oh, if factions of Islam start to go with each other do you know what will happen? We're going to involve ourselves because we can allow for their to be a massacre on our watch... no more Rwandas... etc. That's what we did in Libya.
But of course, if only we didn't act so meanly... yeah... that's it... but let's ignore all the rest.
