Posted on 08/23/2006 11:14:05 AM PDT by 2banana
There are a couple of very big red flags in your article. I hope you can follow them up with Michael Scheuer:
"In the long run, we're not safer because we're still operating on the assumption that we're hated because of our freedoms, when in fact we're hated because of our actions in the Islamic world."
No - We are hated because we are infidels and are not muslims. To a significant portion of the Islamic world, infidels are worthy of rape, slavery and slaughter. Even in the most "progressive" muslim countries in the world, non-muslims citizens are third class citizens. According to the Koran, it is right and good (and a way to heaven) to attack non-muslims and non-muslim lands. And once non-muslim land is conquered, it is forever muslim land (that is why Israeli really drives them nuts).
"If you're bin Laden living in a cave, all those things are part of the war and those things are going your way."
Somehow I do not think the invasion and conquering of two muslim countries by America, the death of nearly all his top leadership and himself living in cave worried that even one wrong cell phone call may invite Special Forces to pay him a visit was in his original plans. OBL wanted wars in which muslims would be killing and conquering the infidels. What he has now (mostly) is muslims killing muslims in muslim lands.
"It has said it couldn't get involved with large numbers in the Balkans war because it had no safe haven in the region."
This I do not understand. Thousands upon thousands of muslim fighters flocked to Bosnia and Kosovo from all across the middle east to fight the Serbs. They have a safe haven in Bosnia and Kosovo and are looking to expand them.
"We paid a great price for demonizing the Taliban. We saw them as evil because they didn't let women work, but that's largely irrelevant in Afghanistan."
The Taliban banned girls from school, executed women for adultery (from rape) as half time shows at soccer games, massacred untold tens of thousands (I have seen the mass graves), bombed cities to rubble, killed at will, destroyed anything non-islamic enough (including other mosques), wipe-out entire villages if one person converted from Islam, banned music, kite flying, certain haircuts, movies, etc. They were monsters. Yes, they kept order - so did the Nazis in the Jewish ghettos.
Regards,
2banana
A bigger load of shit I have yet to read.
to paraphase ushad manji, "don't let them talk you into believing that it is the policies of the u.s. and britain that makes them behave this way."
iow, it is their policies, not ours, that are the problem.
This guy could be a faculty member at Harvard for Heaven's sake.
The US is wrong, and the Arabs and Muslims are only fighting back 'cause we're over there kicking down their front doors.
Baloney.
What about Kobar Towers? What about the embassy attacks? What about the attack on the Cole? What about September 11th?
The radical Muslim world declared war on us, and we didn't take it seriously until George Bush became president.
Mr. Clinton did nothing - and they still hit us over and over again.
It's too bad you feel that way, because he's entirely right.
Is he going for a Pulitzer? This guy must have bought into the entire Muzzie propoganda load over the years. His main source smells suspiciously like DU. The WAPO. The NY SLIMES.
What do expect from Scheuer other than feces?
That, plus the fact that we stand in the way of their ambitions.
If my name was Cindy Sheehan, I'd agree with every word.
That's true to a point, but it's not that simple.
We support a lot of tyrants in the name of stability, and that motivates people into nationalistic goals that are co-opted by Islam, the same way that many of the independence movements of the 20th century were co-opted by Communism. The hard core Islamic fundamentalists wouldn't have a fraction of the power they do now, if they weren't fed from one hand on hatred of their tyrant, and on the other from oil dollars.
Islamic whackjobs have always been a problem, but the reason that the 'global jihad' has legs has a lot more to do with local politics than theological intolerance.
Another ankle biting flea on the president's ankles.
OTOH, it has been suggested that they hate us because they know they are losing the global culture battle to the West. This is a desperate last-ditch effort to save a dying 7th century culture.
I think so. It'll be a tough one though, the competetion is stiff. The WaPosts fake torture site piece, Newsweeks fake Kran flushing piece, Time's fake Haditha piece, The NY Times fake civil war peices......an endless list.
Michael Scheuer was let out of the CIA by Portor Goss's predeccessor so that he could go blow smoke across the CIA failures of the 1990s,
and so he could go falsely blame our foreign policy instead of admitting just how little they, the CIA actually knew and understood about:
(1)Al Queda,
(2)its basis in radical Islamic fundamentalist philosophy - not reactions to U.S. policy -
and
(3) just how deep the radical philosophy was penetrating Islamic societies and creating public push in those societies for changes in the policies of Islamic nations, to fulfill the goals of the radical philosophy - movement toward a world Islamic caliphate.
The CIA failed in the 1990s and continues to fail because it is more ignorant about the philosophical movement - and the depth and breadth of that movement - that underpins the terrorists than most western high school kids were about communism in the 1960s.
We lost nothing when people like Schuerer were let out of the CIA so they could author misinformation that blames the policians for the CIAs failures.
It's not that simple. They're repressed by tyrannical governments that in large part we support, like Saudi Arabia. They see attacking us as a way to have a fighting chance to damage their own government.
What about Kobar Towers? What about the embassy attacks? What about the attack on the Cole? What about September 11th?
All four operations done by less than 100 fanatics total. Those types of extremist will always need to be dealt with using lethal force, and Clinton is to blame for letting a little problem spiral into a colossal one. But the reason that there's more AQ now than before 9/11 has to do more than people 'hating our freedoms'.
The global jihad is a complex social phenomenon, and dismissing it all as unintelligible madness, we'll miss opportunities on how to combat it effectively.
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