Posted on 09/09/2006 10:20:39 PM PDT by John Carey
The beat-up video camera was delivered to Afghanistan in a box, and picked up by two clean-shaven Arabs posing as journalists. They met with Osama bin Laden before leaving on their mission — to kill mujahedeen hero Ahmad Shah Massood.
Five years after the Taliban opponent was slain by a bomb hidden in the camera, a former Taliban official on Saturday described how al-Qaida staged the killing — two days before the Sept. 11 attack on America — hoping to strike a fatal blow to the pro-U.S. Northern Alliance.
Waheed Mozhdah, director of the then-Taliban Foreign Ministry's Middle East and Africa department, also showed The Associated Press a copy of what he said was a signed letter dated Sept. 13, 2001, from bin Laden to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, urging him to launch an offensive against the alliance.
In the letter, written in Arabic, bin Laden said that if America failed to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks, it would decline as a superpower. But if the U.S. started fighting, he added, its economy would suffer a major blow and it would face the same destiny as the Soviet Union — whose ill-fated 1980s occupation of Afghanistan heralded its disintegration.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Cavemen shouldn’t play at economics.
Hell, even todays' journalists are only posing as journalists.
Kinda hard to tell either apart.
Free markets are *far* more flexible than the Soviet economy could ever even dream of being.
The financial drain of Afghanistan injured their economy; Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program spent them under the table and crushed their empire. It would have been cheap at twice the price.
"mujahedeen hero Ahmad Shah Massood"
I often wonder how different things would be had he lived.
I would love to hear opinions from people that have a view to, if he was just someone that could help us at that stage, or would he still be an asset at this stage of things if he had lived, ( and would this stage of things be different)?
Not much makes the press about Massood, but he was a hero to both the U.S. as well as Afghanistan.
His 2,000 tribesmen defeated 6 different Soviet Offensives headon on the battlefield, and per CCCP sources Massood's tiny band of tribesmen shot down 350 Soviet jet fighters and bombers.
You hear the endless claptrap of how Afghanistan is another Vietnam or how the U.S. will fall into the same trap in Afghanistan as did the CCCP, but that's all worthless, uneducated agitprop.
The remnants of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, along with whatever is left of the Taliban, are less capable today of shooting down U.S. fighter jets than back when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and actually had air defenses, for instance. And as a sidenote: the same thing holds true in Iraq. Unlike the resistance in Vietnam and in Afghanistan against the Soviets, the insurgents left in Iraq and Afghanistan are wholly incapable of shooting down U.S. jet fighters and bombers.
This simple fact (and there are thousands of other such facts) should make it clear that the U.S. is better than the forces who tried such things in those places in the past.
I.E. something is different.
Which means that Iraq and Afghanistan today aren't like Vietnam and Afghanistan of the past.
Massood himself was entirely capable of defeating the Taliban. He was bleeding the Taliban, convincing them to go on offensives into his mountain stronghold.
Just as he defeated the Soviets, so too was he eventually going to defeat the Taliban. U.S. airpower and specops, of course, sped up that process by years, perhaps even decades, but the Northern Alliance was going to win again regardless.
And Massood never forgot who armed him against the Soviets: the U.S.
Likewise, Afghans have never forgotten that Massood liberated Afghanistan from the Soviets.
Nor will the Northern Alliance forget who aided them in defeating the Taliban and Arab Al Qaeda.
His efforts against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan went a LONG way to helping us win the Cold War.
He had some capability to fight the Taliban - but not enough to resources to defeat them. I posted several articles about Massood in the months and years prior to 9/11, and frankly, he was on his last leg.
Prior to his death, Massood went on a speaking tour across Europe, warning about the dangers of the Taliban and seeking military and financial assistance. He was warmly received in the European capitals - but he received no help. He was deeply disappointed at the lack of response. Only when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan did the international community begin to sense the evils of Talibanism.
A few weeks before his assassination, the Taliban launched a major offensive against the Northern Alliance. Massood was losing ground daily, and it was just a matter of time until his positions were lost.
If al-Qaeda had not attacked the U.S., the Taliban would have achieved total hegemony over Afghanistan by the Winter of 2001. But since bin Laden made the tactical error of assassinating Massood just a couple of days before 9/11, the Northern Alliance still had a small pocket of territory and enough fighters to effectively help the U.S. when our troops arrived in the following weeks. They were good allies.
I think his old groups are well represented in Afghan government. There is no way Talibans/Al-Qaeda can overrun the country again, unless U.S. totally abandons it.
His faction, made up of ethnic Tajiks, is the dread enemy of Talibans, who are mostly Pashtuns.
With all of the phony 'men' in the world today, this guy truly was a LION.
Got a point there.
That said, I have to wonder if he thinks (or thought) that all "free" economies are as fragile as the Saudi one that he's familiar with. If something took out the Saudi financial center, they would be dead in the water - but he effectively took out the US's fianancial center (albeit temporarily), and all he got for his trouble was a lot of angry Americans chasing him from cave to cave and a decimated organization.
Made Especially for the Fifth Anniversary of 9-11.
5 Minute Video
Warning: Graphic Content
Masood was one of the few figures that was admired in all parts of the country. While Karzai is respected I don't think he is particularly admired.
I think the post-Taliban era would have been a greater success had he lived. He could have swayed the populace simply by voicing his opinion, like Washington or DeGaulle were able to do.
Good post. Let me extend your point further, to action on the ground. In the first two instances the opposition forces were able to engage in stand-up fights against the superpower forces. The Vietnamese and the Muj were able to actually beat the opposing armies from time to time.
Today on the otherhand the insurgents can merely lay boobytraps. They have zero capibilty to successfully engage in an actual battle and only a slight ability to even lay an effective ambush.
Neither opponent today approaches anything like an army or even an irregular army. The Mahdi Militia probably came closest. They quickly discovered that that level of "organization" will not cut it against US forces.
So his death didn't have an effect on the part of history I am interested in.
That is good news, although as an individual he sounds like like an interesting leader that we would have liked to see fulfill his promise.
"I think the post-Taliban era would have been a greater success had he lived. He could have swayed the populace simply by voicing his opinion, like Washington or DeGaulle were able to do."
As far as I know the most focused, effective, assassination of an individual by the slams since their successes in the 70s or 80s is Masood.
This is why there are no moderate muslims. All moderate muslims have been murdered.
Masood was a hero and he would have been at our side every step of the way. In a strange way, he WAS with us. If you look at the Afgans as they were about to enter Kabul, pictures of Masood adorned every tank, the Afghans made SURE Masood was a part of it.
In any case, they had the wife of one of the Arab murderers of Masood. She was very proud of her husband and his "martyrdom" for jihad. She received a payment directly from "Sheikh" Osama. Muslims go out and murder other muslims in the most brutal way, kill themselves in the process and this is celebrated as muslim "martyrdom".
Where are the "moderate" Muslims decrying the terror killings of Muslims by Muslims? Harmless Mohammed cartoons have set off countless terror attacks due to the "humiliation" of Muslims. Brutal murder of innocent Muslims by Muslims is completely overlooked.
9/11 hijacker/mass murderers, in their own words, say they were inspired to attack America, because of the brutalization of Muslims in Chechnya and Bosnia. Ah, what does Chechnya have to do with America and America helped Bosnian Muslims.
good info ping
Thanks for the ping. :-)
Very god! I caught the "please visit freerepublic.com"
Our biggest enemy is our own press and democratic party.
They fight a daily propaganda war on behalf on Al Qaeda. They undermined us in and following Vietnam. They hamstring our military today. We desperately need to take out Iran and Syria: Until we do we will be locked in a war of attrition with their terrorist proxies.
Iran is making that case for us, but it remains to be seen if Europe is so blind they will ignore a nuclear Iran.
If we decide to demonstrate leftist self-righteousness to the world, it will be our undoing. The only reason the rest of the world can maintain their position of asinine non-inervention is that our military has protected them for sixty years. We even had to clean up the Bosinian mess in their own backyard - something that had very little effect on us directly and was of huge importance for them.
If we are going to wait for their permission to act we might as well write up our surrender now.
GREAT VID!!!
Ex-Taliban Chief Details Massood Slaying
AP ^ | 9/10/06 | MATTHEW PENNINGTON
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1698858/posts
Posted on 09/10/2006 10:38:04 AM CDT by Valin
:-)
I most certainly understand your position, and clearly my sentiments are the same. Perhaps the day will come when Syria and or Iran find themselves beyond the point where they wished to play.
"But if the U.S. started fighting, he added, its economy would suffer a major blow and it would face the same destiny as the Soviet Union"
Bet we surprised you, Osama. Look who's hiding in a cave while the USA rolls on. Scott Beamer would be proud.
LOVE and FEAR, the basic emotions. I think the fear is more basic: The fear he and all the Mullahs have is that Moslem WOMEN will gain the slightest bit of power, and that Moslem men will irretrievably lose their control of Moslem WOMEN.
"Snakes as you fully understand tend to slither through the grass to avoid being killed."
To carry your analogy out a bit, I'd claim that the best way to clear out the viper nest in the garden (or ME, in this case) is to set a mongoose or two to the task.
As the Hezzys/Syria just finished painfully learning (again), the number one mongoose in the ME is the IDF, as they have been for the last fifty years.
What Syria, Iran and the rest of the Islamofascists have to fear most right now is any continued involvement at all by the US in Iraq, hence their and their allies' continuing propaganda campaign to get us out.
First, the forces we have on the scene have shown themselves to be more than a match for any one of them or all of their combined military or paramilitary. As far as they are concerned, we have turned Iraq into one giant killing field, and have very thoroughly established ourselves as the Mother of All Mongooses in their snakey little world.
Far worse for them in the long term is the reconstruction of Iraq, especially after the role the Islamofascists have played in support of Saddam and the continued terror campaign against the Iraqi people since he was overthrown. The reconstituted Iraqi Army is still only in the mongoose kit stage, but isn't far from going out on the hunt and has absolutely no reason to love any of their murderous neighbors.
...Not to mention the daily problems that Iranian and Syrian "leaders" must encounter in merely keeping the lid on their own internal political opposition. With all the media fluff about their religious fatalism, all of 'em really, really like all those perks they've got and don't have any interest at all in becoming anything as permanent and stupid as dead.
Thanks for the ping!
The radical loser (Long Read)
Der Spiegel ^ | 1/12/05 | Hans Magnus Enzensberger
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1694568/posts
Posted on 09/02/2006 5:55:01 PM CDT by Valin
(snip)
Contrary to what the West appears to believe, the destructive energy of Islamist actions is directed mainly against Muslims. This is not a tactical error, not a case of "collateral damage". In Algeria alone, Islamist terror has cost the lives of at least 50,000 fellow Algerians. Other sources speak of as many as 150,000 murders, although the military and the secret services were also involved. In Iraq and Afghanistan, too, the number of Muslim victims far outstrips the death toll among foreigners. Furthermore, terrorism has been highly detrimental not only to the image of Islam but also to the living conditions of Muslims around the world.
The Islamists are as unconcerned about this as the Nazis were about the downfall of Germany. As the avant-garde of death, they have no regard for the lives of their fellow believers. In the eyes of the Islamists, the fact that most Muslims have no desire to blow themselves and others sky high only goes to show that they deserve no better than to be liquidated themselves. After all, the aim of the radical loser is to make as many other people into losers as possible. As the Islamists see it, the fact that they are in the minority can only be because they are the chosen few.
Experts around the world are not the only ones wondering how the Islamist movement has been able to recruit so many activists with its promises, far outdoing its secular rivals. No clear answer is in sight. All that is clear is that there must be explanations in the history of the Arab civilization that brought forth the world religion of Islam. This civilization reached its apogee at the time of the Caliphate. At this time, it was far superior to Europe in military, economic and cultural terms. The Arab world views this period with misty-eyed nostalgia; even today, 800 years later, it plays a central role in the consciousness of the region.
(snip)
Not only did they misunderestimate Bush,
they misunderestimated the good ole USA.
Thanks, bitt!
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