On terrorists

Told by girlfriend to watch TV
in another room, he rips off
her bra and pours chili on her.

On that terrible day (9/11), 19 highjackers, mostly Saudis, armed only with box cutters, hijacked four passenger jet planes, crashed two of them into the twin towers, one into the Pentagon, and the other crashed in Pennsylvania. All this is well known. It is also well known that the U.S., in retaliation, immediately attacked Afghanistan, because presumably that is where the attackers planned their horrendous deeds. We are still fighting a “war” in Afghanistan, the new purpose of which is to destroy al Qaida, the group that sponsored the terrorism. Al Qaida is believed to have its headquarters, not in Afghanistan, but it neighboring Pakistan. This new plan is said, to deny them a base for planning further attacks against us. What I cannot help but wonder about is why al Qaida needs a nation (or two) to plan further attacks. I know we are shown pictures of Arabs training on monkey bars and with automatic weapons and in general going through what I suppose we might think of as terrorist boot camp. But what, if anything, might this have had to do with the planning and execution of 9/11? First of all, all Qaida is supposedly an international terrorist organization. They are known to have operated in Somalia, Germany, perhaps in Kurdistan, and I guess elsewhere as well. Their attacks are always carried out by a very small number of people, often fewer than the 19 involved in 9/11.

My main question is, why does such a group need an entire nation or two to plan and carry out terrorism? It would seem to me that most of their attacks could have been planned in hotel rooms anywhere in the world, at virtually any time at all. Surely they didn’t need the cover of Afghanistan to get their hands on some box cutters, nor did they have to necessarily undergo rigorous physical training to do what they did. In the case of 9/11 they didn’t even need to find explosives. All they needed was money and passports they could have obtained without either Afghanistan or Pakistan even necessarily being involved. So why are we spending billions in Afghanistan and Pakistan to deny them a base of operations when they could be operating out of virtually any place? And what if they are training in Afghanistan or Pakistan? Are they training an army that we need to fear because they are going to attack us en masse? I should think that as long as they are kept in place they do not really constitute much of a threat to anyone except the Afghans or the Pakistanis, and I doubt that either nation is going to allow themselves to be taken over by al Qaida. So what if the Taliban are giving them protection? As much as we might not like the Taliban they are not really our enemies and, again, not all the Taliban are extremists, and it is not likely they can completely take over either country. And, as they are not our enemies, what would it matter if they did? The only real potential danger to us would be if they got their hands on a nuclear weapon of some kind. We should certainly see to it that does not happen, but beyond that we should let them fight their own battles and work out their own problems, but with our help in the form of goods and services to try to overcome their unfortunate recent violent histories at the hands of unwanted and uninvited invaders.

As far as Osama bin Laden goes, if we have not found him by now I doubt we are going to find him. I have my doubts that Bush/Cheney even wanted to find him. In the meantime killing more and more innocent people with our robot drones is probably counterproductive. I also wonder about Obama’s sending additional troops to train an Afghan army. On the one hand this does seem like a good thing to do, but on the other hand, why train an army for a government known to be entirely corrupt? If our goal is no longer to “spread democracy,” and if we acknowledge that a military solution is not possible, it seems to me we should just “butt out” entirely, but be open and willing to aid whatever government arises out of the present mess, as long as it is in our interest to do so. The only troops allowed should be those required to protect those working to reconstruct the country. Even with Obama’s apparent good intentions, and his change in our goals, I fear Afghanistan/Pakistan may still become his Vietnam.

LKBIQ:
Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
Cree Indian Prophecy

TILT:
The game we know as Contract Bridge was developed from Whist. The word bridge came from the British pronunciation of Biritch, also known as Russian whist.