andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2003-09-11 07:17 pm
andrewducker) wrote2003-09-11 07:17 pm
Osama Bin Theory
Here's a theory for you:
1) If a massive terrorist strike occurs on terrorist soil, the US will take action against the source of that strike.
2) The US will, at a minimum, remove the government of the country that gave refuge to the terrorists.
3) It will almost certainly also continue to (at a minimum) take out Iraq, if not Iran and Syria too.
4) Due to modern liberal pressure from both US and other first-world citizens it will be forced to install democracies in those countries it takes over.
5) This will force surrounding countries to allow more freedoms or risk loss of their citizens to the countries that allow them.
6) This will cause the fall of the dictatorships across the Middle East.
7) The House of Saad, rulers of Saudi-Arabia will lose control of their country.
8) This is what Osama Bin-Laden's original stated aim was.
Now, admittedly, there are a fair number of risks involved here. But it looks like a possible plan to me. Look what Osama was doing today - taunting the US, telling them that he could continue to hide, that terrorists were being hidden amongst all of the remaining countries of the Middle East. He wants further instability in the region, further political pressure. He ends up with both a weakened United States (politically isolated from it's former allies who disapprove of its imperial ways and financially destroyed by the cost of peacekeeping in Iraq) and a homeland (Saudi Arabia) that's no longer under the yoke of the royal family he despises.
Like I said, just a theory.
1) If a massive terrorist strike occurs on terrorist soil, the US will take action against the source of that strike.
2) The US will, at a minimum, remove the government of the country that gave refuge to the terrorists.
3) It will almost certainly also continue to (at a minimum) take out Iraq, if not Iran and Syria too.
4) Due to modern liberal pressure from both US and other first-world citizens it will be forced to install democracies in those countries it takes over.
5) This will force surrounding countries to allow more freedoms or risk loss of their citizens to the countries that allow them.
6) This will cause the fall of the dictatorships across the Middle East.
7) The House of Saad, rulers of Saudi-Arabia will lose control of their country.
8) This is what Osama Bin-Laden's original stated aim was.
Now, admittedly, there are a fair number of risks involved here. But it looks like a possible plan to me. Look what Osama was doing today - taunting the US, telling them that he could continue to hide, that terrorists were being hidden amongst all of the remaining countries of the Middle East. He wants further instability in the region, further political pressure. He ends up with both a weakened United States (politically isolated from it's former allies who disapprove of its imperial ways and financially destroyed by the cost of peacekeeping in Iraq) and a homeland (Saudi Arabia) that's no longer under the yoke of the royal family he despises.
Like I said, just a theory.
no subject
yeah
In any case, Bin Laden didn't want the corrupt gov'ts of Saudi et. al removed for democracies, he wanted them replaced by Sharia.
Solution
Why not find a way to conduct a strike on American targets, from American soil, and shelter behind the government in some way.
Then laugh as the American government destroys itself, and instead installs a democracy?
:o
Adam
no subject
4 is even more unlikely, everything I've been reading indicates an upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq, I'm almost certain it will be yet another rigid theocracy within 5 years.
One alternate theory is that Bin Laden forsaw the attack on Iraq and knew that it would most likely replace a dictator he hated with another Islamic fundamentalist state. I hope he is not that clever, but fear that he might have been.
no subject
2. Maybe. But it hasn't happened yet.
3. Well, the New American Century has been available on the Internet since 1998, so anyone with access could have known since Bush stole the 2000 election and put the neocons in charge that any excuse to attack Iraq would be grabbed with both hands. (And was.)
4. Maybe. The US has no particularly good track record of supporting democracy if the people are voting for a government the US doesn't like. For example, if the people of Iraq voted for a left-wing socialist government running on a platform to nationalise major Iraqi industries, the US would probably opt for a dictatorship or a radical Islamist government - providing either were willing to leave Halliburton in power. "Modern liberal pressure" in the 1980s did nothing to stop Reagan supporting the contra terrorists in Nicaragua or Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
5. This is dependent on 4, and 4 is dependent on the US supporting democracy in the Middle East, and that's just a hopeful guess without foundation.
6. Not necessarily. Dictatorships throughout the Middle East might well decide that the solution is to oppress their people more than ever but make sure the US knows they'll do what they're told. The US has consistently supported US-positive dictators over nasty messy potentially anti-US democracy. (I think we're going to see this played out with Pakistan and India in the near future.)
7. Not so long as they have the support of the US. And if they didn't lose the support of the US over September 11, what on earth could they ever do to lose it?
8. I have no idea what Osama bin Laden's long term goals were, but assuming that he was aware of the neocon plan for the American century, it's only a little too far-fetched to suppose that he guessed launching a spectacular strike in New York and Washington would be the spark the US wanted to attack Iraq and overthrow the Middle East's only secular dictator. The US is now tied down in Iraq for years and billions of dollars to come, and assuming that Bush and Rumsfeld remain in power, nothing is likely to get better.
no subject
no subject
Certainly.
And that therefore Bush had struck at the source of them?
No. So far, Bush has struck at Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither of them are the source of al-Qaida.
no subject
That's a tricky one. Because he did strike at the people harbouring the actual training camps and terrorists themselves. And Saudi Arabia wasn't provably behind anything at the time. Whether they are now is still obfuscated, due to the censorship of the recent report.
no subject
The source of al-Qaida, as with all terrorism, is having large numbers of desperate people in a bad situation where they have no legal means whatsoever to change it. Bush has done nothing at all to strike at that, nor does it appear that he ever has or had any intention of doing so. (This matches with point 4.)
Most people are not inherently violent. But it's a social truism that people tend to respond to violence with violence: when people live in a violent society, they are more likely to become violent themselves. The US has increased the levels of violence in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and appears to wish to do nothing at all about the level of violence in the Occupied Territories. So while the source of terrorism is injustice, the wellspring is violence. In attacking Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush's forces have killed upwards of 12 000 civilians (I haven't checked the figures for Afghanistan recently: last time I looked it was around 4000, and may well be higher by now). Each one of those civilians has left behind family and friends. Each civilian death by US attack increases the flow from the wellspring of terrorism.