[lit-ideas] Re: Radical Islam: The Primer
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:44:29 -0800
I just finished reading The Looming Tower, Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by
Lawrence Wright, 2006. Wright would not agree with what you've written
about the wars. Osama bin Laden wanted to perpetrate such an outrage that
the U.S. would go into Afghanistan after him. He was sure he and his troops
could defeat the U.S. there in the same way he believed he had defeated the
Russians. He had a certain impression of the U.S. and didn't think it could
stand up to his Arabs who weren't afraid to die. He was shocked at how
easily the U.S. defeated him in the Afghan War.
Also, the Iraq war was another quick victory. The War was won but the
Nation Building effort has been a disaster. I'll grant you that plenty of
people are calling what is going on now a "war," but it certainly isn't in
the sense that we warred against Osama's army and defeated it. We are
attempting to help the Iraqi government get established and get control over
the disruptive Islamist Radicals. Are there more Islamist Radicals in Iraq
than in other Middle Eastern nations? Perhaps at the moment, but other
nations have experienced more of that sort of disruption than Iraq is at
present - Algeria for one, but Egypt for another. None of the
Middle-Eastern nations is free of disruption."
I'm not willing to take responsibility for Bush's poor description of what
is going on. We are in the aftermath of the war in Iraq. We are in the
nation-building phase. Yes, there are insurgents trying to thwart the
efforts of the Iraqi government to get well-established, but that ought to
have been expected. It is what the Islamic Fundamentalists do.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Andreas Ramos
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 10:10 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Radical Islam: The Primer
From: "Brian" <cabrian@xxxxxxxxx>
> Viewing terrorism as a law-enforcement issue has been a
> disaster in my opinion while the military option has captured or
> killed thousands of terrorists and during that time there have been
> no domestic attacks.
A strategy of law enforcement against al-Qaeda hasn't been a disaster
because it hasn't been
tried.
Instead, the US tried the military solution. Charge in, guns a'blazin',
yelling "Bring 'em
on!"
Did this work? Watch the 60 Minute interview and hear Bush say this didn't
work.
Brian, that's three lost wars in a row: Afghanistan (it's a mess); Iraq
(what a disaster);
and the Israeli attack on Hezbollah, which was a US-led proxy war, and it
too was failure.
The only way to solve this problem is political: get the various sides to
stop fighting.
The "thousands of terrorist killed" is useless. The situation in Iraq has
nothing to do with
al-Qaeda or terrorists. It's sectarian militias who are fighting over
control of Iraq. For
the last three years, we were told it was al-Qaeda. Certainly, there is a
small Iraqi group
that is aligned with al-Qaeda, but they are on the margins. The big-boy
battles are between
the Sunni and Shiite sects' militias.
Really, read the Iraq Study Group Report. It was written by James Baker and
Lee Hamilton,
with interviews and comments from scores of US generals and officers in
Iraq, plus CIA, etc.
It lays out the
situation in Iraq fairly clearly.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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