And, I might add, that George W doesn't want to be called a wimp like his father, and nothing pumps up a flagging presidency like a war. The key for him to keep it going long enough so he can ride the popularity wave into the next election.
Call me cynical, but the administration, when the dust settles, will want to milk this for all its worth.
I'm not speaking for myself, but even if they hand over bin Laden, we'll still bomb the hell out of one or more countries. If we don't, our own people will claim that we are 'weak'. Make no mistake. People want blood, and they won't stop at anything less.
I agree in general, but the problem is that turning the other cheek will only enrage and encourage them, while enraging and discouraging the American public.
Ummm... Well, airstrikes and cruise missiles haven't exactly done a whole lot to quell their anger, either. It seems strange to me to assume that a non-violent approach can't work, since we've never actually tried to implement one.
The sorry fact is, that we can bomb and bomb and bomb until there aren't any 'suspected terrorists' left, and the nations who 'harbor terrorists' are totally destroyed, but there will always be a bin Laden to take the place of the one we just killed.
The only way to stamp out terrorism is to address the root causes. This would require a level of introspection and questioning of the status quo that, in all honesty, I have no expectations whatsoever that we as a society and as a nation will do anything to address.
The long and the short of it is this: we will get our revenge, many more will die, and nothing will be accomplished, and sadly, most people are probably OK with this. It's obvious that most US people have no interest in peace, they just want blood, and plenty of it.
No, I think you're wrong. I haven't seen anyone try to justify the attack. There are, however, explanations beyond "They're insane and want us all to die." The attack is not justified, but there are reasons why the attack occurred, and it has everything to do with our foreign policy decisions.
Interesting article about bin Laden and how he got to be what he is... I culled this from Z Net
"Terror Attacks: New to us, not to Afghans"
by James Ingalls
Like a subliminal "Wanted" poster, TV newscasts flash images of the destroyed Twin Towers, followed at longer intervals by the face of Osama bin Laden. The disclaimer that we still have no idea who is responsible for the brutal attacks in Manhattan, Washington, and Pittsburgh seems weak in comparison with this visual "evidence". Unlikely to be accorded anything approaching due process, the suspect of the decade will probably find his interests under violent attack by the US and NATO within the next few days. It is too much to hope for no civilian casualties, as GW Bush fulfils his promise to "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbored them," implying that the people of Afghanistan will soon be subjected to aerial bombardment. The US will likely "validate...the logic of terrorism" (Human Rights Watch), following the dictum that violence and terror are the proper responses to violence and terror.
Michael Sheehan, the State Department's Counterterrorism Coordinator, has made a big deal about a "geographic shift" in terrorist activity from the Middle East to South Asia. Sheehan attributes the shift to the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s: "This war destroyed the government and civil society of Afghanistan, at the same time bringing arms, fighters from around the world, and narcotics traffickers to the region." Sheehan eliminates any trace of human involvement--"this war" brought arms, fighters, and narco-traffickers to Afghanistan, destroying civil society. What Washington tends to conveniently ignore is that bin Laden and the rest of the extremist terrorists empowered to fight in Afghanistan were taught "the logic of terrorism" by our own Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA assembled a terror network that remains a cause of misery worldwide. CIA Director William Casey called it "the kind of thing we should be doing." According to standard sources, aid to extremist groups in Afghanistan was a response to the Soviet invasion. The truth is that President Carter gave the green light for covert support to the Mujaheddin six months _before_ the December 1979 invasion. In the words of then National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, a major architect of Carter's policy, they were "drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap." The US supported seven fundamentalist extremist groups throughout the 1980s and into the early 90s with cash, sophisticated weapons, and training to the tune of $5 billion--according to official figures. The secret Black Budget of the CIA reportedly quadrupled to $36 billion per year when Reagan became president in 1980, and some of this money went to support secret operations in Afghanistan. Some of the earliest training exercises took place inside the US, including rifle shooting at the High Rock gun club in Naugtuck, Connecticut. More technical training took place at the CIA's Camp Peary, nicknamed "The Farm," northeast of Williamsburg, Virginia. Among the topics covered by training sessions were surveillance and countersurveillance, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and paramilitary operations.
Around the same time, a source of private funding was sought for the war. Osama bin Laden, a man with "impeccable Saudi credentials" (his father's construction company had just been awarded a contract to rebuild and restore the holy sites in Mecca and Medina) was given "free rein in Afghanistan" by the CIA. Using his share of his family's business empire, he built training camps and airplane landing strips, and carved underground bunkers in the mountains of Afghanistan, all with Washington's approval. Just across the border, bin Laden's base in Pakistan was the Binoori mosque in Karachi. The prayer leader at this mosque was one Mullah Mohammed Omar, now "supreme leader" of the Taliban.
After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the Mujaheddin groups began turning their US-supplied weapons on each other, and on the civilian population of Afghanistan. In 1990, the CIA began supplying the Mujaheddin directly, rather than using Pakistan's ISI intelligence service as a conduit. According to then chief of ISI's Afghanistan branch, Mohammad Youssaf, the CIA's aim was to "play on differences between the various factions and their commanders," in an effort to "curb the power" of the factions and make way for an unknown "Transition Regime," perhaps the Taliban.
The CIA's propping up of the fundamentalist terrorists in Afghanistan began to show its consequences during this period. The first victims were the people of Afghanistan. The group getting the most US aid, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, began rocket shelling Kabul. A close friend of bin Laden, Hekmatyar was understood by his benefactors to be "a nut, an extremist, and a very violent man" (US ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Neumann). In the 1970s he gained notoriety for throwing acid on the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. Journalist Michael Griffin writes of Kabul under Hekmatyar's onslaught: "no city since the end of the Second World War - except Sarajevo - had suffered the same ferocity of jugular violence as Kabul from 1992 to 1996. Sarajevo was almost a side-show by comparison and, at least, it wasn't forgotten." From 1990-1994 45,000 civilians were killed, 300,000 had fled to Pakistan, and Kabul was "turned into a rubble resembling Dresden after the fire-bombing." Most Afghans are now without livelihood, reduced to begging from international aid agencies. They currently live under the fascistic Taliban, who keep bin Laden safe.
Terrorists trained and armed by the CIA to fight in Afghanistan have since been implicated in attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, and in US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed hundreds of people. These efforts pale in comparison to the recent destruction in Manhattan, Washington, and Pittsburgh. If proven guilty in fair trial, bin Laden should certainly be held accountable. But the Afghan people, no strangers to the terrorism of bin Laden and his friends, should not be made to pay further for the consequences of our actions. It was our officials who originally unleashed these forces of destruction on Afghanistan. Perhaps the faces of Zbigniew Brzezinski, William Casey, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan should be on the TV screen too, next to Osama bin Laden's and the empty holes in the ground where twin towers stood.
The author is on the Board of Directors of the Afghan Women's Mission, and is a Staff Scientist at the California Institute of Technology.
Right on the money. I have always thought that the best way to get nations like Cuba and North Korea to play ball was the opposite of economic sanctions. Flood them with Coca-Cola, video games and all the other goodies that western nations get to have. They'll dump their archaic system sooner rather than later. Imposing economic hardship on them only makes their siege mentality and resistance stronger.
After all, You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar
Re:there's an argument to be made....
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I don't claim any justification. I just was merely pointing out that because of these kinds of activities, there are people who take an adversarial stance to us.
Perhaps they were gathered there in order to reassure each other and provide support for one another. Maybe they met there because they were afraid of boneheads like you who assume the worst about a group a of much-maligned Americans who want nothing more than get on with their lives instead of having to worry about idiots assaulting them and theirs because of their religion.
I walked by a church last night, and I heard music playing and singing. I heard cheering, I thought they were watching old "Diff'rent Strokes" re-runs on Nick at Nite, but it turns out that the pastor was giving a rousing sermon about how we should stick together and not give in to terrorist attempts to demoralize us.
Tell me, who are you to say what they were doing?
Idiot.
Re:there's an argument to be made....
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While gorillas and guerillas can be found in similar climates, and may at times share habitats, gorillas are becoming fewer and fewer as time goes by. With guerillas, it's the opposite. I, for one, wish it was the other way around.
Not the full support of the entire population. I, for one, would not support an operation of this nature, and I don't think it would be a good use of our military to try and do so.
Tell me, how many Afghanis would have to die in order for us to feel better? How many to serve justice for the attack? How many Afghanis who have no idea who Osama Bin Laden is would have to die so we can satisfy our craving for revenge? The minute Bin Laden gets word that we're invading, he'll be out of there through a remote mountain pass. I guess then we'll have to invade Kazakhstan or Pakistan as well.
Invading Afghanistan makes no sense, politically or militarily.
You might want to re-think that Raytheon buy. Their GM was aboard one of the planes... Although it might make sense in a twisted way, if the government decides to award a few contracts to them out of sympathy...
The hard-earned money of those who died should NOT go to those who celebrated their deaths.
This would be funny if it weren't such an idiotic thing to say. The governments of Egypt and Jordan and others have offered their sincere condolences to us, they decry the acts, and renounce the ones that did it. It's not as if Hosni Mubarak (the president of Egypt, I'm sure I have to clarify this since you probably don't know who he is) got on Egyptian TV and gloated over it. Even Arafat has denounced the act. We're talking about the opinions of a vocal minority, here, not official statements from countries that, by the way, have very cozy relationships with us, and have helped us in our counter-terrorist activities over the years.
Re:Ground War in Afghanistan
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Obviously we are going to have to seal off Afghanistan, invade it with ground troops, section it up and dismantle the sections.
That's not at all 'obvious'. Even if Bin Laden is directly responsible, it is conceivable that the Taliban had no knowledge of his activities. This remains to be seen, but it is a possibility.
Bin Laden runs a very strange operation. It seems that he and his people run a series of training and support organizations throughout the world. Indeed, what if the entire plot was hatched and planned from within Canada or the US?
If you'll think back about 20 years, you may recall the Soviet Union tried to occupy Afghanistan. Despite superior firepower and manpower, it proved to be their 'Vietnam'.
Also, if Pakistan doesn't cooperate, then we could be facing tactical nuclear weapons. If that happens, India and China could get dragged in, not to mention the Russians.
Occupying Afghanistan would only punish the people of Afghanistan, who probably would like not to be bombed into the stone age because their government, which took over by force, allowed Bin Laden to live in their country.
I think these considerations make it considerably less 'obvious'.
Well, if you fly over DC, the White House is pretty small in comparison to the Pentagon or the Capitol Building. Hell, the Smithsonian or the Watergate Hotel is probably easier to hit with an airliner at 400 knots. My guess is that they were gunning for the White House, but couldn't get on target, so rather than risk looping around for another pass, they continued on to the next target of opportunity.
Re:there's an argument to be made....
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We as a nation need to stop instigating fights if we want to stay out of them. It's that simple.
Or, at the very least, put some forethought into how we conduct ourselves abroad. Internationally, people pay attention to the fact that in the recent past, the US has actively toppled democratically elected governments that we don't like, created insurgencies, and have chosen to ally ourselves with nations that commit injustices both inside their borders and in the territory of their neighbors.
Our "blank-check and blind-loyalty" policy towards Israel, for instance, is probably one of the main reasons why the attack occurred. We could play a much more constructive role there, I believe. We should condition our military support of Israel on their continued and genuine pursuit of a settlement with the Palestinians. We support the archaic and medieval monarchies of the Persian Gulf, and continuously oppose democratic reform in that area. This is what makes us such a tantalizing target. Some of these 'terrorists' cut their teeth in wars of national liberation, in which we stood on the 'wrong' side.
That being said, terrorism is a long, slow, painful way to wage a war. Ask any resident of Belfast, Gaza or San Salvador. However, it flourishes wherever people feel systematically victimized and oppressed, and there is no interest in addressing their concerns.
Religion and/or political ideology are used to short circuit the logic sector of the brain. How else do you get people to steer airliners into buildings? It is not inherent in Islam to condone violence, no more than it is in Christianity, just as the desire for national identity or sovreignty does not require violence. It does give charismatic people the ability to influence others just enough to disengage their rational thought processes. Combine someone like this with groups of people who are traumatized by the misdeeds of a particular country, and violence of the most explosive nature is right around the corner.
Back to my original point... Perhaps, during the quest for justice that has ensued from these events, it might be in our interest to not just focus on the planners of the attack, but on the larger issues of justice that give rise to these attacks in the first place. It cannot adequately be argued that these people are just simply irrational and they hate us and want us all to die. People don't commit acts like this without what they perceive to be provocation.
I have heard a lot of people around me say "Why? Why did this happen?" For pete's sake, wake up. The reasons are many. I hate that this happened, and I feel genuine sadness for all those who lost friends and family in the attack. My hope is that down the road, people will take a good hard look at what we, as a nation, do outside our borders. I have read various columnists talk about how we need a national mission in response to these awful atrocities. I have a suggestion: we as a nation, should commit ourselves to re-assessing our activities abroad, confronting hypocrisy in our activities in the global community, and re-committing ourselves to being a nation that fosters justice everywhere, no matter what combination of politically expedient forces are out there.
It has to be the Northern Alliance (the Taliban's opposition). There was a skirmish on Sunday, and so it has to be them.
If it was us, we have to have launched planes from the Indian Ocean several hours ago. It would be jumping the gun to say the least for us to attack the Afghanistani capital, considering that Bin Laden may operate from inside Afghanistan, it is unlikely that he's in Kabul.
The wife of the Solicitor General, Barbara Olson, was aboard one of the planes, and she made two phone calls to the Justice Department. Reports claim that she said the terrorists carried knives and boxcutters, and herded the passengers and crew into the rear of the plane. Apparently, the pilots were killed/disabled, and the terrorists took over control of the plane.
Considering that the Attorney General reports directly to the President, any move by the AG is by and large, a move by the administration. The AG wouldn't make a public statement regarding this if the administration wasn't behind it.
I'm not in the slightest bit surprised by this move, as I expect this administration to be very lenient with most major corporations.
I've heard a lot of people trying to defend the administration by saying "Well, they're just not going to pursue the break-up option, they're going to see what they need to do in light of possible shifts in the industry." I think, by now, considering the administration's position on global warming, the UN meeting in Durban, and other things, the "wait and see" attitude is code for "We're going to sit on this and do nothing."
Slashdot Mirror
Call me cynical, but the administration, when the dust settles, will want to milk this for all its worth.
I'm not speaking for myself, but even if they hand over bin Laden, we'll still bomb the hell out of one or more countries. If we don't, our own people will claim that we are 'weak'. Make no mistake. People want blood, and they won't stop at anything less.
Not counting, of course, the untold number of people who died because the only pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was destroyed.
Ummm... Well, airstrikes and cruise missiles haven't exactly done a whole lot to quell their anger, either. It seems strange to me to assume that a non-violent approach can't work, since we've never actually tried to implement one.
The sorry fact is, that we can bomb and bomb and bomb until there aren't any 'suspected terrorists' left, and the nations who 'harbor terrorists' are totally destroyed, but there will always be a bin Laden to take the place of the one we just killed.
The only way to stamp out terrorism is to address the root causes. This would require a level of introspection and questioning of the status quo that, in all honesty, I have no expectations whatsoever that we as a society and as a nation will do anything to address.
The long and the short of it is this: we will get our revenge, many more will die, and nothing will be accomplished, and sadly, most people are probably OK with this. It's obvious that most US people have no interest in peace, they just want blood, and plenty of it.
No, I think you're wrong. I haven't seen anyone try to justify the attack. There are, however, explanations beyond "They're insane and want us all to die." The attack is not justified, but there are reasons why the attack occurred, and it has everything to do with our foreign policy decisions.
"Terror Attacks: New to us, not to Afghans"
by James Ingalls
Like a subliminal "Wanted" poster, TV newscasts flash images of the destroyed Twin Towers, followed at longer intervals by the face of Osama bin Laden. The disclaimer that we still have no idea who is responsible for the brutal attacks in Manhattan, Washington, and Pittsburgh seems weak in comparison with this visual "evidence". Unlikely to be accorded anything approaching due process, the suspect of the decade will probably find his interests under violent attack by the US and NATO within the next few days. It is too much to hope for no civilian casualties, as GW Bush fulfils his promise to "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbored them," implying that the people of Afghanistan will soon be subjected to aerial bombardment. The US will likely "validate...the logic of terrorism" (Human Rights Watch), following the dictum that violence and terror are the proper responses to violence and terror.
Michael Sheehan, the State Department's Counterterrorism Coordinator, has made a big deal about a "geographic shift" in terrorist activity from the Middle East to South Asia. Sheehan attributes the shift to the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s: "This war destroyed the government and civil society of Afghanistan, at the same time bringing arms, fighters from around the world, and narcotics traffickers to the region." Sheehan eliminates any trace of human involvement--"this war" brought arms, fighters, and narco-traffickers to Afghanistan, destroying civil society. What Washington tends to conveniently ignore is that bin Laden and the rest of the extremist terrorists empowered to fight in Afghanistan were taught "the logic of terrorism" by our own Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA assembled a terror network that remains a cause of misery worldwide. CIA Director William Casey called it "the kind of thing we should be doing." According to standard sources, aid to extremist groups in Afghanistan was a response to the Soviet invasion. The truth is that President Carter gave the green light for covert support to the Mujaheddin six months _before_ the December 1979 invasion. In the words of then National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, a major architect of Carter's policy, they were "drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap." The US supported seven fundamentalist extremist groups throughout the 1980s and into the early 90s with cash, sophisticated weapons, and training to the tune of $5 billion--according to official figures. The secret Black Budget of the CIA reportedly quadrupled to $36 billion per year when Reagan became president in 1980, and some of this money went to support secret operations in Afghanistan. Some of the earliest training exercises took place inside the US, including rifle shooting at the High Rock gun club in Naugtuck, Connecticut. More technical training took place at the CIA's Camp Peary, nicknamed "The Farm," northeast of Williamsburg, Virginia. Among the topics covered by training sessions were surveillance and countersurveillance, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and paramilitary operations.
Around the same time, a source of private funding was sought for the war. Osama bin Laden, a man with "impeccable Saudi credentials" (his father's construction company had just been awarded a contract to rebuild and restore the holy sites in Mecca and Medina) was given "free rein in Afghanistan" by the CIA. Using his share of his family's business empire, he built training camps and airplane landing strips, and carved underground bunkers in the mountains of Afghanistan, all with Washington's approval. Just across the border, bin Laden's base in Pakistan was the Binoori mosque in Karachi. The prayer leader at this mosque was one Mullah Mohammed Omar, now "supreme leader" of the Taliban.
After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the Mujaheddin groups began turning their US-supplied weapons on each other, and on the civilian population of Afghanistan. In 1990, the CIA began supplying the Mujaheddin directly, rather than using Pakistan's ISI intelligence service as a conduit. According to then chief of ISI's Afghanistan branch, Mohammad Youssaf, the CIA's aim was to "play on differences between the various factions and their commanders," in an effort to "curb the power" of the factions and make way for an unknown "Transition Regime," perhaps the Taliban.
The CIA's propping up of the fundamentalist terrorists in Afghanistan began to show its consequences during this period. The first victims were the people of Afghanistan. The group getting the most US aid, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, began rocket shelling Kabul. A close friend of bin Laden, Hekmatyar was understood by his benefactors to be "a nut, an extremist, and a very violent man" (US ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Neumann). In the 1970s he gained notoriety for throwing acid on the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. Journalist Michael Griffin writes of Kabul under Hekmatyar's onslaught: "no city since the end of the Second World War - except Sarajevo - had suffered the same ferocity of jugular violence as Kabul from 1992 to 1996. Sarajevo was almost a side-show by comparison and, at least, it wasn't forgotten." From 1990-1994 45,000 civilians were killed, 300,000 had fled to Pakistan, and Kabul was "turned into a rubble resembling Dresden after the fire-bombing." Most Afghans are now without livelihood, reduced to begging from international aid agencies. They currently live under the fascistic Taliban, who keep bin Laden safe.
Terrorists trained and armed by the CIA to fight in Afghanistan have since been implicated in attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, and in US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed hundreds of people. These efforts pale in comparison to the recent destruction in Manhattan, Washington, and Pittsburgh. If proven guilty in fair trial, bin Laden should certainly be held accountable. But the Afghan people, no strangers to the terrorism of bin Laden and his friends, should not be made to pay further for the consequences of our actions. It was our officials who originally unleashed these forces of destruction on Afghanistan. Perhaps the faces of Zbigniew Brzezinski, William Casey, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan should be on the TV screen too, next to Osama bin Laden's and the empty holes in the ground where twin towers stood.
The author is on the Board of Directors of the Afghan Women's Mission, and is a Staff Scientist at the California Institute of Technology.
After all, You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar
I don't claim any justification. I just was merely pointing out that because of these kinds of activities, there are people who take an adversarial stance to us.
I walked by a church last night, and I heard music playing and singing. I heard cheering, I thought they were watching old "Diff'rent Strokes" re-runs on Nick at Nite, but it turns out that the pastor was giving a rousing sermon about how we should stick together and not give in to terrorist attempts to demoralize us.
Tell me, who are you to say what they were doing?
Idiot.
Chile
El Salvador
Panama
Grenada
The list goes on.
Take a few pot brownies with you on the plane. You may still be twiddling your thumbs, but at least it will be amusing...
Let's remember folks:
gorilla: peaceful, vegetarian african ape
guerilla: irregular soldier, revolutionary, insurgent
While gorillas and guerillas can be found in similar climates, and may at times share habitats, gorillas are becoming fewer and fewer as time goes by. With guerillas, it's the opposite. I, for one, wish it was the other way around.
I know for damn sure I'd volunteer to go over and land on their shore(and yes, I am fucking dead serious about that, I can even bring my own guns).
Only someone who has never been a member of the military would display such a bloodthirsty attitude.
Tell me, how many Afghanis would have to die in order for us to feel better? How many to serve justice for the attack? How many Afghanis who have no idea who Osama Bin Laden is would have to die so we can satisfy our craving for revenge? The minute Bin Laden gets word that we're invading, he'll be out of there through a remote mountain pass. I guess then we'll have to invade Kazakhstan or Pakistan as well.
Invading Afghanistan makes no sense, politically or militarily.
You might want to re-think that Raytheon buy. Their GM was aboard one of the planes... Although it might make sense in a twisted way, if the government decides to award a few contracts to them out of sympathy...
This would be funny if it weren't such an idiotic thing to say. The governments of Egypt and Jordan and others have offered their sincere condolences to us, they decry the acts, and renounce the ones that did it. It's not as if Hosni Mubarak (the president of Egypt, I'm sure I have to clarify this since you probably don't know who he is) got on Egyptian TV and gloated over it. Even Arafat has denounced the act. We're talking about the opinions of a vocal minority, here, not official statements from countries that, by the way, have very cozy relationships with us, and have helped us in our counter-terrorist activities over the years.
That's not at all 'obvious'. Even if Bin Laden is directly responsible, it is conceivable that the Taliban had no knowledge of his activities. This remains to be seen, but it is a possibility.
Bin Laden runs a very strange operation. It seems that he and his people run a series of training and support organizations throughout the world. Indeed, what if the entire plot was hatched and planned from within Canada or the US?
If you'll think back about 20 years, you may recall the Soviet Union tried to occupy Afghanistan. Despite superior firepower and manpower, it proved to be their 'Vietnam'.
Also, if Pakistan doesn't cooperate, then we could be facing tactical nuclear weapons. If that happens, India and China could get dragged in, not to mention the Russians.
Occupying Afghanistan would only punish the people of Afghanistan, who probably would like not to be bombed into the stone age because their government, which took over by force, allowed Bin Laden to live in their country.
I think these considerations make it considerably less 'obvious'.
Well, if you fly over DC, the White House is pretty small in comparison to the Pentagon or the Capitol Building. Hell, the Smithsonian or the Watergate Hotel is probably easier to hit with an airliner at 400 knots. My guess is that they were gunning for the White House, but couldn't get on target, so rather than risk looping around for another pass, they continued on to the next target of opportunity.
Or, at the very least, put some forethought into how we conduct ourselves abroad. Internationally, people pay attention to the fact that in the recent past, the US has actively toppled democratically elected governments that we don't like, created insurgencies, and have chosen to ally ourselves with nations that commit injustices both inside their borders and in the territory of their neighbors.
Our "blank-check and blind-loyalty" policy towards Israel, for instance, is probably one of the main reasons why the attack occurred. We could play a much more constructive role there, I believe. We should condition our military support of Israel on their continued and genuine pursuit of a settlement with the Palestinians. We support the archaic and medieval monarchies of the Persian Gulf, and continuously oppose democratic reform in that area. This is what makes us such a tantalizing target. Some of these 'terrorists' cut their teeth in wars of national liberation, in which we stood on the 'wrong' side.
That being said, terrorism is a long, slow, painful way to wage a war. Ask any resident of Belfast, Gaza or San Salvador. However, it flourishes wherever people feel systematically victimized and oppressed, and there is no interest in addressing their concerns.
Religion and/or political ideology are used to short circuit the logic sector of the brain. How else do you get people to steer airliners into buildings? It is not inherent in Islam to condone violence, no more than it is in Christianity, just as the desire for national identity or sovreignty does not require violence. It does give charismatic people the ability to influence others just enough to disengage their rational thought processes. Combine someone like this with groups of people who are traumatized by the misdeeds of a particular country, and violence of the most explosive nature is right around the corner.
Back to my original point... Perhaps, during the quest for justice that has ensued from these events, it might be in our interest to not just focus on the planners of the attack, but on the larger issues of justice that give rise to these attacks in the first place. It cannot adequately be argued that these people are just simply irrational and they hate us and want us all to die. People don't commit acts like this without what they perceive to be provocation.
I have heard a lot of people around me say "Why? Why did this happen?" For pete's sake, wake up. The reasons are many. I hate that this happened, and I feel genuine sadness for all those who lost friends and family in the attack. My hope is that down the road, people will take a good hard look at what we, as a nation, do outside our borders. I have read various columnists talk about how we need a national mission in response to these awful atrocities. I have a suggestion: we as a nation, should commit ourselves to re-assessing our activities abroad, confronting hypocrisy in our activities in the global community, and re-committing ourselves to being a nation that fosters justice everywhere, no matter what combination of politically expedient forces are out there.
If it was us, we have to have launched planes from the Indian Ocean several hours ago. It would be jumping the gun to say the least for us to attack the Afghanistani capital, considering that Bin Laden may operate from inside Afghanistan, it is unlikely that he's in Kabul.
I'm hoping that this is a conincedence... The alternative is too scary to think about.
The wife of the Solicitor General, Barbara Olson, was aboard one of the planes, and she made two phone calls to the Justice Department. Reports claim that she said the terrorists carried knives and boxcutters, and herded the passengers and crew into the rear of the plane. Apparently, the pilots were killed/disabled, and the terrorists took over control of the plane.
BBC reports this to be false; the leaders of that group have formally denied any involvement...
I'm not in the slightest bit surprised by this move, as I expect this administration to be very lenient with most major corporations.
I've heard a lot of people trying to defend the administration by saying "Well, they're just not going to pursue the break-up option, they're going to see what they need to do in light of possible shifts in the industry." I think, by now, considering the administration's position on global warming, the UN meeting in Durban, and other things, the "wait and see" attitude is code for "We're going to sit on this and do nothing."
Ghod, the term Chi-com is so 1950's. Get over it. Cold war over.