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Monsters are not born. They are made

William Rivers Pitt is, of course, partisan. But sometimes he simply nails a message flat on the head. To me, this one was no exception. An interesting perspective on our involvement with bin Laden and the Middle East as a whole:



When the Rabbits Get a Gun

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 15 September 2004



Dead and injured Iraqi civilians on Haifa Street, Baghdad, after a U.S. helicopter attack.
(Photo: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad / Getty Images)

This is the comforting fiction: Osama bin Laden is a monster who sprang whole from the fetid mire. He had no childhood, no influences, no education, no experiences to form his view of the world. He did not exist, and then he did, a vessel into which the universe poured the essence of evil. It is a simple, straightforward story of a man who hates freedom and kills for the pure joy of feeling innocent blood drip from his fingers.

This is the fairy tale by which children are put to bed at night. As frightening and terrifying as bin Laden may be, it is a comfort to imagine him as having been chiseled from the dust. The fiction of his existence, absent of detail, makes him unique, a singular entity not to be replicated. Osama bin Laden becomes truly scary only when the actual context of his life is made clear, where he is from, what he has seen, and why those things motivated him to do what he does.

Osama bin Laden becomes truly scary when the realization comes that he is not unique, not singular, not an invention of the universe. He becomes truly scary when the realization comes that there are millions of people who have seen what he has seen, who feel what he feels, and why. He becomes truly scary when the realization comes that he is a creation of the last fifty years of American foreign and economic policy, and that he has an army behind him created by the same influences. Simply, Osama bin Laden becomes truly scary when the realization comes that he can be, and has been, and continues to be, replicated.

Osama bin Laden, after being educated at Oxford University, learned how to kill effectively while working as an agent of American Cold War policy in Afghanistan. He was a helpful American ally throughout the 1980s as a ruthless and wealthy warrior against the Soviet Union. It was the desire of the American government to deliver to the Soviets their own Vietnam, to arrange a hopeless military situation which would demoralize the Soviet military and bleed that nation dry.

Osama bin Laden played the part of the Viet Cong, and he was good at it. With the help of the American government, he was able to create an army of true believers in Afghanistan. Our government believed that if one bin Laden was good, a hundred would be better, and a thousand better again, in the fight against the Soviets. So strong was this group America helped to create that it became known as 'The Base.' Translated into the local dialect, 'The Base' is known as al Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden learned something else besides the art of killing while he was working as an ally of the United States. He learned that given enough time, enough money, enough violence, enough perseverance, and enough fellow warriors, a superpower can be brought to its knees and erased from the book of history.

Bin Laden was at the center of one of the most important events of the 20th century: The fall of the Soviet Union. Political pundits like to credit Reagan and the senior Bush for the collapse of that regime, but out in front of them, in the mountains of Afghanistan, was Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, the sharp end of our sword, who did their job very well. Today, the United States faces this group and its leader, armed with their well-learned and America-taught lessons: How to kill massively and how to annihilate a superpower.

Osama bin Laden learned a few other things before he became the monster under our collective bed. When Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein began to make his move against Kuwait, bin Laden was outraged. Hussein was a despised name on the lips of bin Laden and his followers; here was an unbelieving heretic who spoke the words of Allah, a self-styled Socialist who pretended piety, a ruthless dictator who killed every Islamic fundamentalist he could get his hands on.

Osama bin Laden went to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, home of the holiest sites of Islam. The royal family was not to be found anywhere on bin Laden's list of friends at the time. A shrewd observer of local politics, bin Laden knew that the Saudi government enjoyed having the Palestinians living in squalor, bereft of homeland and hope, because it distracted the fundamentalists within Saudi Arabia from focusing on the inequities within their own country. With the crooking of a single oil-rich finger, the Saudi royals could solve the Palestinian problem. Their refusal to do so fed bin Laden's rage, for in his mind, they were aiding and abetting what he saw as an intolerable Israeli apartheid.

Bin Laden asked Fahd to help him resurrect the army that fought with him against the Soviets so that he could fight Saddam Hussein. Here again is an irony of the times: As in the 1980s, Osama bin Laden was spoiling for a fight against an enemy of the United States - for his own purposes, to be sure, but it is difficult to avoid a shake of the head when considering all of the recent rhetoric about a Saddam/Osama alliance.

Fahd turned bin Laden down, and allowed the American military to set up bases in Saudi Arabia for use in what became known as Operation Desert Storm. According to the version of Islam practiced by bin Laden, it is rank heresy to allow soldiers from an infidel army to occupy the land of Mecca and Medina. Bin Laden learned from this that regimes in the Middle East which claim fealty to Islam, but which in fact act at the behest of the Unites States, were not to be trusted. The royal family of Saudi Arabia joined the list of bin Laden's enemies, along with the United States, Saddam Hussein, and Israel.

It was Israel, proxy of the Unites States, which taught Osama bin Laden what could be considered the final, irrevocable lesson of his life. In April of 1996, Israel began a military action against Beirut and southern Lebanon called Operation Grapes of Wrath. "It is quite obvious," wrote Israeli writer Israel Shahak at the time, "that the first and most important Israeli aim to be established in the 'Grapes of Wrath' is to establish its sovereignty over Lebanon - to be exercised in a comparable manner to its control over the Gaza Strip."

On April 13, an ambulance driver named Abbas Jiha was rushing patients to a hospital in Sidon. Civilians caught in the crossfire of 'Grapes of Wrath' begged him to take them to Sidon, and so he squeezed his wife, his four children and ten others into his ambulance. An Israeli helicopter targeted his ambulance and fired two missiles. The ambulance was blasted sixty feet into the air, and Jiha was thrown clear. When he made it back to the remains of his rig, he found his nine year old daughter, his wife, and four others dead within the flaming wreckage.

On April 18, the small village of Qana was flooded with some 800 refugees from the fighting who were seeking protection from UN forces there. At about two in the afternoon, the village came under bombardment by Israeli 'proximity shells' - antipersonnel weapons which explode several meters above the ground and shower anyone below with razor-sharp shrapnel. The result was a massacre, a blood-drenched scene of shredded humanity.

Robert Fisk, the most decorated and reputable journalist in Britain, was there. "It was a massacre," he wrote. "Israel's slaughter of civilians in this 10-day offensive - 206 by last night - has been so cavalier, so ferocious, that not a Lebanese will forgive this massacre. There had been the ambulance attacked on Saturday, the sisters killed in Yohmor the day before, the 2-year-old girl decapitated by an Israeli missile four days ago. And earlier yesterday, the Israelis had slaughtered a family of 12 - the youngest was a four-day-old baby - when Israeli helicopter pilots fired missiles into their home."

These stories barely made a dent in the American press in 1996, but were widely reported at length by both European and Middle Eastern media outlets. Photographs of headless babies and slaughtered civilians reached far and wide, inflaming a region already filled with rage against Israel and America. From this time on, Osama bin Laden used Qana as a rallying cry against what he called the Israeli-United States alliance. The rest, as they say, is history.

Osama bin Laden is a damned murderer of innocents, with thousands of notches in his belt. His actions are indefensible by any measure. Yet to dismiss him as something other than the creation of his experiences, to categorize him as some unique freak whose motivations are beyond comprehension, is to deny the most important dilemma that faces our world. Monsters are not born. They are made.

On Sunday, September 12, 2004, a large crowd of Iraqi civilians came under fire from U.S. attack helicopters on Haifa Street in Baghdad. An American Bradley Fighting Vehicle had been attacked and destroyed by 'insurgents' fighting the ongoing occupation of their country, and the civilians - after more than a year of deprivation and violence which came on the heels of a decade of deprivation and violence - were dancing on top of and beside the vehicle. 13 of them were killed and dozens more wounded. A reporter from the UK Guardian named Ghaith Abdul-Ahad was there, and was wounded in the attack.

"One of the three men piled together," wrote Abdul-Ahad, "raised his head and looked around the empty streets with a look of astonishment on his face. He then looked at the boy in front of him, turned to the back and looked at the horizon again. Then he slowly started moving his head to the ground, rested his head on his arms and stretched his hands towards something that he could see. It was the guy who had been beating his chest earlier, trying to help his brother. He wanted help but no one helped. He was just there dying in front of me. Time didn't exist. The streets were empty and silent and the men lay there dying together. He slid down to the ground, and after five minutes was flat on the street."

The survivors of this attack, like the survivors of Qana, were probably not terrorists before the fire came raining down. It is a safe bet they are now, after seeing what they have seen, willing to trade their lives to see Americans die. They have seen the massacre of civilians, and so believe that civilians are fair game in this dirtiest of wars. They are monsters now, not born, but made.

The story of the 20th century Middle East is one of American action. We created Saddam Hussein, and then twice attacked him, leaving nearly two million civilians dead in the process. We created the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and bent our policies towards defending that house of cards and its precious oil. We created the Shah of Iran, then lost him, and propped up Hussein to checkmate our failure. We created Israel, a nation that has become our front line against the hostilities we manufactured in the region through our relentless military and economic meddling, and supported them militarily and financially as they committed acts of barbarism. We have paid great lip service to the plight of the Palestinians, but have always deferred to Israel.

More recently, we invaded Iraq on the pretext of destroying weapons of mass destruction which, according to recent comments by Secretary of State Powell, do not actually exist. We accused Saddam Hussein of collaborating with bin Laden, and of being involved in 9/11, despite the fact that bin Laden has wanted Hussein dead for years. We killed over 10,000 Iraqi civilians. We raped and tortured Iraqi men, women and children in the dungeons of Abu Ghraib. All of our poor history in the region has been distilled into that one nation, a place that now manufactures bin Laden allies by the truckload.

We created Osama bin Laden. We taught him to kill, we showed him how to destroy a superpower, and we gave him a face-first lesson in American interventionism in his back yard. Whatever predispositions towards violence and murder existed in him when he was born became honed, refined and perfected as he watched our government storm the policies, rulers and innocent people of the Middle East like so many rabbits. We have created millions more like him.

We are learning now that the game isn't much fun when the rabbits get a gun.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091504A.shtml

i dont think this one ^^^ was made.

>JM<

quote:

Originally posted by JM i dont think this one ^^^ was made. >JM<

can we please dispense of the one-line mindless tripe for at least one post?

Opus,
great post, this is the type of wide eye viewpoint that i wish average americans could comprehend. right now we're so stuck in this "terrorism bad, bush good" neanderthalistic perspective that disallows our ability to understand the basics like cause and effect. That article essentially spells out the cause. and we all know the effects. of course, we cannot justify the ways and means of this conflict unless we only speak of our tactics.

it's amazing that we can sleep at night knowing our leadership is responsible for 10,000 civilian deaths all to remove one man from power (who had no wmds and wasn't responsible for our loss of 3,000 civilians during 9/11). that's one hell of a propaganda machine you have there, georgie boy.

quote:

Originally posted by JM i dont think this one ^^^ was made. >JM<

Is that the infamously insensitive neo-con beast of Croatia?

quote:

Originally posted by ResonantDrag can we please dispense of the one-line mindless tripe for at least one post?

Unfortunatley, that's all that some of the minds on here are capable of dispensing.

Apartment 314 must be a haven for idiocy.

Re: Monsters are not born. They are made

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 William Rivers Pitt is, of course, partisan. But sometimes he simply nails a message flat on the head. To me, this one was no exception. An interesting perspective on our involvement with bin Laden and the Middle East as a whole: When the Rabbits Get a Gun By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Perspective Wednesday 15 September 2004 Dead and injured Iraqi civilians on Haifa Street, Baghdad, after a U.S. helicopter attack. (Photo: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad / Getty Images) This is the comforting fiction: Osama bin Laden is a monster who sprang whole from the fetid mire. He had no childhood, no influences, no education, no experiences to form his view of the world. He did not exist, and then he did, a vessel into which the universe poured the essence of evil. It is a simple, straightforward story of a man who hates freedom and kills for the pure joy of feeling innocent blood drip from his fingers. This is the fairy tale by which children are put to bed at night. As frightening and terrifying as bin Laden may be, it is a comfort to imagine him as having been chiseled from the dust. The fiction of his existence, absent of detail, makes him unique, a singular entity not to be replicated. Osama bin Laden becomes truly scary only when the actual context of his life is made clear, where he is from, what he has seen, and why those things motivated him to do what he does. Osama bin Laden becomes truly scary when the realization comes that he is not unique, not singular, not an invention of the universe. He becomes truly scary when the realization comes that there are millions of people who have seen what he has seen, who feel what he feels, and why. He becomes truly scary when the realization comes that he is a creation of the last fifty years of American foreign and economic policy, and that he has an army behind him created by the same influences. Simply, Osama bin Laden becomes truly scary when the realization comes that he can be, and has been, and continues to be, replicated. Osama bin Laden, after being educated at Oxford University, learned how to kill effectively while working as an agent of American Cold War policy in Afghanistan. He was a helpful American ally throughout the 1980s as a ruthless and wealthy warrior against the Soviet Union. It was the desire of the American government to deliver to the Soviets their own Vietnam, to arrange a hopeless military situation which would demoralize the Soviet military and bleed that nation dry. Osama bin Laden played the part of the Viet Cong, and he was good at it. With the help of the American government, he was able to create an army of true believers in Afghanistan. Our government believed that if one bin Laden was good, a hundred would be better, and a thousand better again, in the fight against the Soviets. So strong was this group America helped to create that it became known as 'The Base.' Translated into the local dialect, 'The Base' is known as al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden learned something else besides the art of killing while he was working as an ally of the United States. He learned that given enough time, enough money, enough violence, enough perseverance, and enough fellow warriors, a superpower can be brought to its knees and erased from the book of history. Bin Laden was at the center of one of the most important events of the 20th century: The fall of the Soviet Union. Political pundits like to credit Reagan and the senior Bush for the collapse of that regime, but out in front of them, in the mountains of Afghanistan, was Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, the sharp end of our sword, who did their job very well. Today, the United States faces this group and its leader, armed with their well-learned and America-taught lessons: How to kill massively and how to annihilate a superpower. Osama bin Laden learned a few other things before he became the monster under our collective bed. When Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein began to make his move against Kuwait, bin Laden was outraged. Hussein was a despised name on the lips of bin Laden and his followers; here was an unbelieving heretic who spoke the words of Allah, a self-styled Socialist who pretended piety, a ruthless dictator who killed every Islamic fundamentalist he could get his hands on. Osama bin Laden went to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, home of the holiest sites of Islam. The royal family was not to be found anywhere on bin Laden's list of friends at the time. A shrewd observer of local politics, bin Laden knew that the Saudi government enjoyed having the Palestinians living in squalor, bereft of homeland and hope, because it distracted the fundamentalists within Saudi Arabia from focusing on the inequities within their own country. With the crooking of a single oil-rich finger, the Saudi royals could solve the Palestinian problem. Their refusal to do so fed bin Laden's rage, for in his mind, they were aiding and abetting what he saw as an intolerable Israeli apartheid. Bin Laden asked Fahd to help him resurrect the army that fought with him against the Soviets so that he could fight Saddam Hussein. Here again is an irony of the times: As in the 1980s, Osama bin Laden was spoiling for a fight against an enemy of the United States - for his own purposes, to be sure, but it is difficult to avoid a shake of the head when considering all of the recent rhetoric about a Saddam/Osama alliance. Fahd turned bin Laden down, and allowed the American military to set up bases in Saudi Arabia for use in what became known as Operation Desert Storm. According to the version of Islam practiced by bin Laden, it is rank heresy to allow soldiers from an infidel army to occupy the land of Mecca and Medina. Bin Laden learned from this that regimes in the Middle East which claim fealty to Islam, but which in fact act at the behest of the Unites States, were not to be trusted. The royal family of Saudi Arabia joined the list of bin Laden's enemies, along with the United States, Saddam Hussein, and Israel. It was Israel, proxy of the Unites States, which taught Osama bin Laden what could be considered the final, irrevocable lesson of his life. In April of 1996, Israel began a military action against Beirut and southern Lebanon called Operation Grapes of Wrath. "It is quite obvious," wrote Israeli writer Israel Shahak at the time, "that the first and most important Israeli aim to be established in the 'Grapes of Wrath' is to establish its sovereignty over Lebanon - to be exercised in a comparable manner to its control over the Gaza Strip." On April 13, an ambulance driver named Abbas Jiha was rushing patients to a hospital in Sidon. Civilians caught in the crossfire of 'Grapes of Wrath' begged him to take them to Sidon, and so he squeezed his wife, his four children and ten others into his ambulance. An Israeli helicopter targeted his ambulance and fired two missiles. The ambulance was blasted sixty feet into the air, and Jiha was thrown clear. When he made it back to the remains of his rig, he found his nine year old daughter, his wife, and four others dead within the flaming wreckage. On April 18, the small village of Qana was flooded with some 800 refugees from the fighting who were seeking protection from UN forces there. At about two in the afternoon, the village came under bombardment by Israeli 'proximity shells' - antipersonnel weapons which explode several meters above the ground and shower anyone below with razor-sharp shrapnel. The result was a massacre, a blood-drenched scene of shredded humanity. Robert Fisk, the most decorated and reputable journalist in Britain, was there. "It was a massacre," he wrote. "Israel's slaughter of civilians in this 10-day offensive - 206 by last night - has been so cavalier, so ferocious, that not a Lebanese will forgive this massacre. There had been the ambulance attacked on Saturday, the sisters killed in Yohmor the day before, the 2-year-old girl decapitated by an Israeli missile four days ago. And earlier yesterday, the Israelis had slaughtered a family of 12 - the youngest was a four-day-old baby - when Israeli helicopter pilots fired missiles into their home." These stories barely made a dent in the American press in 1996, but were widely reported at length by both European and Middle Eastern media outlets. Photographs of headless babies and slaughtered civilians reached far and wide, inflaming a region already filled with rage against Israel and America. From this time on, Osama bin Laden used Qana as a rallying cry against what he called the Israeli-United States alliance. The rest, as they say, is history. Osama bin Laden is a damned murderer of innocents, with thousands of notches in his belt. His actions are indefensible by any measure. Yet to dismiss him as something other than the creation of his experiences, to categorize him as some unique freak whose motivations are beyond comprehension, is to deny the most important dilemma that faces our world. Monsters are not born. They are made. On Sunday, September 12, 2004, a large crowd of Iraqi civilians came under fire from U.S. attack helicopters on Haifa Street in Baghdad. An American Bradley Fighting Vehicle had been attacked and destroyed by 'insurgents' fighting the ongoing occupation of their country, and the civilians - after more than a year of deprivation and violence which came on the heels of a decade of deprivation and violence - were dancing on top of and beside the vehicle. 13 of them were killed and dozens more wounded. A reporter from the UK Guardian named Ghaith Abdul-Ahad was there, and was wounded in the attack. "One of the three men piled together," wrote Abdul-Ahad, "raised his head and looked around the empty streets with a look of astonishment on his face. He then looked at the boy in front of him, turned to the back and looked at the horizon again. Then he slowly started moving his head to the ground, rested his head on his arms and stretched his hands towards something that he could see. It was the guy who had been beating his chest earlier, trying to help his brother. He wanted help but no one helped. He was just there dying in front of me. Time didn't exist. The streets were empty and silent and the men lay there dying together. He slid down to the ground, and after five minutes was flat on the street." The survivors of this attack, like the survivors of Qana, were probably not terrorists before the fire came raining down. It is a safe bet they are now, after seeing what they have seen, willing to trade their lives to see Americans die. They have seen the massacre of civilians, and so believe that civilians are fair game in this dirtiest of wars. They are monsters now, not born, but made. The story of the 20th century Middle East is one of American action. We created Saddam Hussein, and then twice attacked him, leaving nearly two million civilians dead in the process. We created the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and bent our policies towards defending that house of cards and its precious oil. We created the Shah of Iran, then lost him, and propped up Hussein to checkmate our failure. We created Israel, a nation that has become our front line against the hostilities we manufactured in the region through our relentless military and economic meddling, and supported them militarily and financially as they committed acts of barbarism. We have paid great lip service to the plight of the Palestinians, but have always deferred to Israel. More recently, we invaded Iraq on the pretext of destroying weapons of mass destruction which, according to recent comments by Secretary of State Powell, do not actually exist. We accused Saddam Hussein of collaborating with bin Laden, and of being involved in 9/11, despite the fact that bin Laden has wanted Hussein dead for years. We killed over 10,000 Iraqi civilians. We raped and tortured Iraqi men, women and children in the dungeons of Abu Ghraib. All of our poor history in the region has been distilled into that one nation, a place that now manufactures bin Laden allies by the truckload. We created Osama bin Laden. We taught him to kill, we showed him how to destroy a superpower, and we gave him a face-first lesson in American interventionism in his back yard. Whatever predispositions towards violence and murder existed in him when he was born became honed, refined and perfected as he watched our government storm the policies, rulers and innocent people of the Middle East like so many rabbits. We have created millions more like him. We are learning now that the game isn't much fun when the rabbits get a gun. http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091504A.shtml

Excellent post, btw! It's basically what I've been saying all along.

We are all products of our environment.

quote:

Islamic Fascism is really a modern phenomenon. (*) It is basically a 20th century totalitarian movement - like fascism and communism. Islam existed before Islamic Fascism, and will exist after it. Islamic Fascism is designed - like fascism and communism - to appeal to idealistic young people with a utopian future where the world will be "cleansed". It really started with the Iranian revolution in 1979, and used to be called "Islamic fundamentalism". Other names for it are: "Islamofascism", "Islamism", "radical Islam" or "militant Islam". I think "Islamic Fascism" is the clearest, most descriptive name, showing that this is simply the same kind of thing that the democracies spent the 20th century fighting. And - like fascism and communism - the only solution is the total and utter destruction of this philosophy. This will take a long Cold War, lasting for perhaps the next two or three decades, punctuated by perhaps one or two more Hot Wars. But Islamic Fascism will lose. Democracy will win. I don't mean to imply that Islam in general respects human rights or human freedom. That is clearly not true. I am only saying that the Islamist movement we are up against - idealistic, utopian (full of young people), expansionist (let's attack the west), suicide-bombing, fantasy-based (let's conquer the whole world) - is really quite a new movement, which did not really exist before the 1960s-70s. The origins of modern Islamism: Fantasy Islamism really dates from the Iranian revolution in 1979, which was inspired and encouraged by the marxist left in France in the 1970s. At most, we could date it back to the origin of international Palestinian terror in 1968, which again was very much inspired by the marxist terrorism sweeping the world at that time. For example, the marxist ETA's campaign also started in 1968 and the marxist IRA's campaign started in 1969. Marxist revolution was in the air then. In either case, fantasy Islamism is not an ancient phenomenon. It is a 20th century phenomenon, part of the same wave of reaction to the modern world that brought us fascism, communism and anti-globalisation. In a real sense, the marxist left - not ancient Islam -is the origin of Islamist terror.

we didn't invent Abu Nidal. we ignored them.
we didn't invent Yasser Arrafat. we gave him the benefit of the doubt.
we didn't invent the Ayahtollah. we appeased him.
we didn't invent Wahabiism. we didn't understand it.

we didn't teach Bin Laden how to kill massively. thats a lie.

Bin Laden was pissed at the Saudis for the American bases AND wanted Saddam dead for making a move in Kuwait? thats called a conflict of interest. which is his F**king problem.

Bin Laden has a beef with the world. as evidenced in his Al Queda doctrine and Fatwa's. Americas is his easiest and most trophied prize in that beef.

Guess what Opus! Articles that sensationalize Osama are not gonna get Kerry elected. your motives are flawed just like your party

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo we didn't invent Abu Nidal. we ignored them. we didn't invent Yasser Arrafat. we gave him the benefit of the doubt. we didn't invent the Ayahtollah. we appeased him. we didn't invent Wahabiism. we didn't understand it. we didn't teach Bin Laden how to kill massively. thats a lie. Bin Laden was pissed at the Saudis for the American bases AND wanted Saddam dead for making a move in Kuwait? thats called a conflict of interest. which is his F**king problem. Bin Laden has a beef with the world. as evidenced in his Al Queda doctrine and Fatwa's. Americas is his easiest and most trophied prize in that beef. Guess what Opus! Articles that sensationalize Osama are not gonna get Kerry elected. your motives are flawed just like your party

Has bin Laden bin Forgotten?

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo Guess what Opus! Articles that sensationalize Osama are not gonna get Kerry elected. your motives are flawed just like your party

Instead of playing your much beloved game of partisan politics, he was trying to show you one reasonable explanation of why there are so many out there who hate or have other adverse feelings towards our country.

Is that so hard for you to understand, or does your programming not allow you to know what "reason" is??

quote:

Originally posted by Trancer-X Has bin Laden bin Forgotten?

"the goal was never to get Bin Laden"
"a far more important aim - to capture, kill and scatter mid-level operatives"
"i truly am not that concerned about him"
"one of Americas STRATEGIC objectives - to get Bid Laden"
"deep in my heart i know he is on the run, if he is alive at all"
"Al Queda operatives in Paktia right now"
"Bin Laden remains a serious threat"
"Bin Laden is said to be here"
"Bin laden is said to be there"
"I've seen nothing to suggest where he is"
"but be assured, U.S. forces are still in hot pursuit"

of all people, you should be able to read between the lines of all of those quotes in the article.
if you isolate them all from the article, you might realize that there is a lot of dis-information going on and counter-information going on given on behalf of the Pentagon, the Adminstration and Senate Inteligence officials. there is also just some random confusion too.
its easy to spin that all together with an effective editorial to just say "they don't care about the war on terrorism"
there is one truth in that article i believe and that is "no one knows"

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo "the goal was never to get Bin Laden" "a far more important aim - to capture, kill and scatter mid-level operatives"

quote:

"I want justice," said Bush. "There's an old poster out West that said: 'Wanted, dead or alive.' "

quote:

With the U.S. drive for worldwide support against bin Ladin's terrorism network gaining ground, Powell said, "All roads lead to the leader of that organization ... and his location is Afghanistan."

quote:

U.S. officials threatened to unleash America's weaponry if bin Laden is not turned over.

Bush Wants Bin Laden, Dead or Alive

Wanted: Dead or Alive

Bush pledges to get bin Laden, dead or alive

U.S. intensifies bin Laden hunt


Your ignorance is astounding.

quote:

Originally posted by Trancer-X Bush Wants Bin Laden, Dead or Alive Wanted: Dead or Alive Bush pledges to get bin Laden, dead or alive U.S. intensifies bin Laden hunt Your ignorance is astounding.

you didn't let me finish. i accidentaly hit submit.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo you didn't let me finish. i accidentaly hit submit.

Considering the fact that there was no double post I almost believe you.

whatever

quote:

Originally posted by Trancer-X Unfortunatley, that's all that some of the minds on here are capable of dispensing. Apartment 314 must be a haven for idiocy.

oh cmon now... i was just trying to make light of the horrible story up above...

btw, thanks for looking me up i'm happy to see i've sparked someone's interest from a far away, someone i've never even met.

>JM<

quote:

Originally posted by JM oh cmon now... i was just trying to make light of the horrible story up above... btw, thanks for looking me up i'm happy to see i've sparked someone's interest from a far away, someone i've never even met. >JM<

What do you find "horrible" about the article other than the insights that go against your bigoted way of thinking?

Yeah, well... I wanted to be sure the people that I've been quarrelling with on here are who they say they are. I guess that's the conspiracy theorist in me coming out.

I don't take anything at face value.

quote:

Originally posted by Trancer-X Yeah, well... I wanted to be sure the people that I've been quarrelling with on here are who they say they are. I guess that's the conspiracy theorist in me coming out.

that's me alright. just 1 person posting, living in a small little apt next to UW in NE Seattle....(hopefully for not too much longer)

have you checked out the King and the Hardcore Trancer yet?

they must at least be friends, if not brothers, or better yet - the same person.

>JM<

quote:

Originally posted by JM that's me alright. just 1 person posting, living in a small little apt next to UW in NE Seattle....(hopefully for not too much longer) have you checked out the King and the Hardcore Trancer yet? they must at least be friends, if not brothers, or better yet - the same person. >JM<

(206) 3xx-3xxx

Now tell me that I don't do my homework.

You're harmless, I know.

/subject

Negative.

You are responsible for the effect that your "experiences" have on you. If Osama bin Laden became a terrorist as a result of his experiences, then he also became a terrorist as a result of the way he chose to interpret, interact with, and respond to his experiences.

The diffusion of personal responsibility onto factors which may have contributed to them choosing to make a harmful decision simply has no merit.

Certainly, no matter what his environment he still could have chosen that he didn't think terrorism was a good idea. He didn't. You can argue that his experiences made him more likely or more inclined to choose the path of terrorism, but if you do then you better back it up with some valid empirical evidence. Otherwise, this article and the argument contained therein are nothing more than unsubstantiated, unsupported hot air.

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Originally posted by Q5echo we didn't invent Abu Nidal. we ignored them. we didn't invent Yasser Arrafat. we gave him the benefit of the doubt. we didn't invent the Ayahtollah. we appeased him. we didn't invent Wahabiism. we didn't understand it.

Your point?

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we didn't teach Bin Laden how to kill massively. thats a lie.

Quite untrue. We DID teach bin Laden and his men HOW to fight with much greater efficiency. How he chose to utilize that knowledge, however, is not our fault. Nevertheless, we gave him the knowledge and the tools.

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Bin Laden was pissed at the Saudis for the American bases AND wanted Saddam dead for making a move in Kuwait? thats called a conflict of interest. which is his F**king problem.

How? Explain. The passage in question:

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Osama bin Laden learned a few other things before he became the monster under our collective bed. When Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein began to make his move against Kuwait, bin Laden was outraged. Hussein was a despised name on the lips of bin Laden and his followers; here was an unbelieving heretic who spoke the words of Allah, a self-styled Socialist who pretended piety, a ruthless dictator who killed every Islamic fundamentalist he could get his hands on. Osama bin Laden went to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, home of the holiest sites of Islam. The royal family was not to be found anywhere on bin Laden's list of friends at the time. A shrewd observer of local politics, bin Laden knew that the Saudi government enjoyed having the Palestinians living in squalor, bereft of homeland and hope, because it distracted the fundamentalists within Saudi Arabia from focusing on the inequities within their own country. With the crooking of a single oil-rich finger, the Saudi royals could solve the Palestinian problem. Their refusal to do so fed bin Laden's rage, for in his mind, they were aiding and abetting what he saw as an intolerable Israeli apartheid. Bin Laden asked Fahd to help him resurrect the army that fought with him against the Soviets so that he could fight Saddam Hussein. Here again is an irony of the times: As in the 1980s, Osama bin Laden was spoiling for a fight against an enemy of the United States - for his own purposes, to be sure, but it is difficult to avoid a shake of the head when considering all of the recent rhetoric about a Saddam/Osama alliance. Fahd turned bin Laden down, and allowed the American military to set up bases in Saudi Arabia for use in what became known as Operation Desert Storm. According to the version of Islam practiced by bin Laden, it is rank heresy to allow soldiers from an infidel army to occupy the land of Mecca and Medina. Bin Laden learned from this that regimes in the Middle East which claim fealty to Islam, but which in fact act at the behest of the Unites States, were not to be trusted. The royal family of Saudi Arabia joined the list of bin Laden's enemies, along with the United States, Saddam Hussein, and Israel.

is not some revisionist history. Even the most ardent Conservative neocons agree with this outline of events. This particular aspect is not a partisan historical bias, it is more or less pretty accurate.

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Bin Laden has a beef with the world. as evidenced in his Al Queda doctrine and Fatwa's. Americas is his easiest and most trophied prize in that beef.

There is a great deal more going on here with bin Laden, Q5. This simplistic explanation of our enemy will get us nowhere in our fight against him and world terrorism. My reasoning behind posting such an article was to demonstrate a little better understanding of our enemy, and a greater detail as to why he hates us the way he does.

I'd love nothing more than to accept the simplistic Conservative talking point explanation as to why bin Laden wants to destroy us: simply because he hates our freedom and democracy. My God I wish it was that simple. But it gets us nowhere to dumb down the rationale to these oversimplistic talking points when there is a much greater urgency to understand exactly why bin Laden and his terrorist allies are spreading so easily and quickly throughout the world.

Remember one of the primary maxim's of the Art of War: Know Thy Enemy.

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Guess what Opus! Articles that sensationalize Osama are not gonna get Kerry elected. your motives are flawed just like your party

Not everything I post is a means to the end of getting Kerry elected. In fact, I seriously hope you don't believe that is my motive for posting here all these years. I do partake in constructive events that hopefully help contribute to his election: give donations to his and the DNC campaign, attend his campaign meetings with my local chapter, and so forth. Posting messages in a tranceaddict forum in hopes to getting someone elected is, well, jesus don't you think that would be kinda silly?

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Your point?

refering to the crux of the entire article. which states

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He becomes truly scary when the realization comes that he is a creation of the last fifty years of American foreign and economic policy,

its as misleading as saying Israel's 6 day war was a product of 50 years of American foriegn policy. sure, there are minor connections but absurd to claim he is a product of. i take serious offence to a statement like that.

what is Araffat a product of?
where does Wahabiism come from?

address those questions and don't sit there and glorify someone who wants to kill my family because we had a airbase in Saudi Arabia.

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Quite untrue. We DID teach bin Laden and his men HOW to fight with much greater efficiency. How he chose to utilize that knowledge, however, is not our fault. Nevertheless, we gave him the knowledge and the tools.

dude, the article cleary states

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we taught Bin Laden how to kill massively

we gave him battle field tacticts against Russian armor and stinger missles. we did not teach that man to how to blow up embassies. that article bcame unreadable after that.


Maybe its just me, but i don't need an atricle like this to define for me Bin Laden's justification. i'm reasonably familiar with his motivations and means. but maybe others do.
Bin Laden waging war with the Saudi Royals is beside the point for me.
Bin Laden pissed we set up camp on the Arabian penninsula to stage against Saddam. i agree its not revisionist. but it is history and it pisses me off that thousands have paid with their lives for his psychotic reasoning. this article only enforces that reasoning. it should piss others off as well as educate.

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Originally posted by Q5echo refering to the crux of the entire article. which states its as misleading as saying Israel's 6 day war was a product of 50 years of American foriegn policy.

A false comparison.

My history of Israel may be a little shoddy, but I highly doubt we had any direct involvement, at least as much involvement with their country prior to the 6 day war, in comparison to our DIRECT involvement as a result of our Cold War foreign policy with countries like Iran, Iraq, old Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia, etc.

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sure, there are minor connections but absurd to claim he is a product of.

"Minor connections"?!?

You have any understanding of our historical involvement with Iran and Iraq? Are you seriously trying to dumb down our involvement and foreign policy with these countries?

It's irrelevant whether you want to acknowledge our involvement with these countries in the old Cold War days. Our involvement is there nonetheless.

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i take serious offence to a statement like that.

Try not to so goddamn often, will you? Not everything is meant to be a partisan attack towards you.

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what is Araffat a product of? where does Wahabiism come from? address those questions and don't sit there and glorify someone who wants to kill my family because we had a airbase in Saudi Arabia.

What I am attempting to demonstrate is that our presence in Saudi Arabia is merely a part of the problem these terrorists, as well as the majority of the Middle East sentiment, are AGAINST us.

I think you're really misunderstanding my point here. In no way am I attempting to justify terrorism. You must be absolutely foolish and narrow-minded to even begin to have such a thought. But if, by chance, you do seem to hold that thought, let me break some news to you:

Democrats want to fucking eradicate terrorism too.

In fact, one could easily make the argument that a Democratic President may want to be more forceful in eradicating bin Laden and world terrorism in general. Considering our Republican President chose to DIVERT our forces and intelligence from hunting down bin Laden in order to fight a war in Iraq THAT WAS NOT CONNECTED to 9/11 in any manner, I think one may make that argument worthwhile, but I digress.

But since you think I'm "glorifying" our enemy, I want you to be specific with your argument as to exactly how I am "glorifying" our enemy, in my sole purpose to define and understand our enemy better in hopes to fully eradicate not just him, but to reverse the thought processes being engrained in his followers worldwide. Please explain how this is "glorification".

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dude, the article cleary states we gave him battle field tacticts against Russian armor and stinger missles. we did not teach that man to how to blow up embassies.

Wait, let's take a little closer look at what I stated.

First:

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We DID teach bin Laden and his men HOW to fight with much greater efficiency

and let's compare what you stated first:

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we gave him battle field tacticts against Russian armor and stinger missles.

Essentially the same thought, right. So good so far. Next I stated:

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How he chose to utilize that knowledge, however, is not our fault. Nevertheless, we gave him the knowledge and the tools.

Meaning, what he CHOSE to do with that knowledge, i.e. resort to terrorist activity (like blowing up embassies), is not our doing. That was his choice to do so, and we had nothing to do with that aspect here.

Now, doesn't that kinda resemble what you stated here next?:

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we did not teach that man to how to blow up embassies.

So believe it or not, Q5, I'm agreeing with you. This was not a point of argument, and I believe you are once again misconstruing what I stated. You have a propensity to do this from time to time. I think you have a tendency to think that everything I or another progressive writes about here is an automatic point of disagreement with your views. Sometimes, that is simply not the case. So relax, will you?

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that article bcame unreadable after that.

What, you want less words and more pictures?

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Maybe its just me, but i don't need an atricle like this to define for me Bin Laden's justification. i'm reasonably familiar with his motivations and means. but maybe others do. Bin Laden waging war with the Saudi Royals is beside the point for me. Bin Laden pissed we set up camp on the Arabian penninsula to stage against Saddam. i agree its not revisionist. but it is history and it pisses me off that thousands have paid with their lives for his psychotic reasoning. this article only enforces that reasoning. it should piss others off as well as educate.

Again, I think you miss the point here, and I think you're attempting to reconstruct Pitt's argument (as well as my own). No one, not even the most hardcore liberals, believes that there is justification for killing thousands of innocent Americans. In fact, well gee, didn't Pitt state that?:

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Osama bin Laden is a damned murderer of innocents, with thousands of notches in his belt. His actions are indefensible by any measure.

By God he did! But then his point, and my own, follows:

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Yet to dismiss him as something other than the creation of his experiences, to categorize him as some unique freak whose motivations are beyond comprehension, is to deny the most important dilemma that faces our world. Monsters are not born. They are made.

IOW, that simple-minded thinking about our enemy will not eradicate the REAL underlying problem of terrorism spreading rapidly across the world with tens of thousands of new recruits joining every year.

If you truly believe that simply eliminating or jailing up terrorists one by one is going to eventually solve the world terrorism problem, then I contend you are being extrememly shortsighted. As I've stated before, correctly KNOWING how our enemy thinks is a viable and useful tool to defeating them.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 A false comparison.

its just meant to be a comparison of two misleading statements, not a referendum of Israeli history.

i'm not saying that, you personally, are glorifying the enemy. the aricle, as harmless as it may seem, justifies Bin ladens psychosis through misleading statements like.

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He becomes truly scary when the realization comes that he is a creation of the last fifty years of American foreign and economic policy, Today, the United States faces this group and its leader, armed with their well-learned and America-taught lessons: How to kill massively and how to annihilate a superpower. We created Osama bin Laden. We taught him to kill, we showed him how to destroy a superpower, and we gave him a face-first lesson in American interventionism in his back yard. Whatever predispositions towards violence and murder existed in him when he was born became honed, refined and perfected as he watched our government storm the policies, rulers and innocent people of the Middle East like so many rabbits. We have created millions more like him

^^ to me the first two paragraphs are almost lies. they are that misleading. followed by the rest of the article which is more/less a history lesson. concluding with the third paragraph summarizing by saying that we created Osama.

i mean, you said it yourself, "its not that simple". of course its never that simple. but the ARTICLE, which i have continually refered to, not you, wants to make you believe it is that simple.

[/QUOTE]

quote:

Originally posted by Arbiter Negative. You are responsible for the effect that your "experiences" have on you. If Osama bin Laden became a terrorist as a result of his experiences, then he also became a terrorist as a result of the way he chose to interpret, interact with, and respond to his experiences. The diffusion of personal responsibility onto factors which may have contributed to them choosing to make a harmful decision simply has no merit. Certainly, no matter what his environment he still could have chosen that he didn't think terrorism was a good idea. He didn't. You can argue that his experiences made him more likely or more inclined to choose the path of terrorism, but if you do then you better back it up with some valid empirical evidence. Otherwise, this article and the argument contained therein are nothing more than unsubstantiated, unsupported hot air.

I forgot that most people don't know the history behind bin Laden and his many years of service for the CIA, who more likely than not tried to perform some wet work on his ass when they realized that he was building a force of Jihaders.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1

I wish more people would take an interest in these matters instead of simply drowning themselves in a fantasy world of mindless entertainment.

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