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Swift-Boated by bin Laden
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 8:53 pm Post subject: Swift-Boated by bin Laden

Quote:

ugust 26, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Swift-Boated by bin Laden
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Doha, Qatar

One thing that has always baffled me about the Bush team�s war effort in Iraq and against Al Qaeda is this: How could an administration that was so good at Swift-boating its political opponents at home be so inept at Swift-boating its geopolitical opponents abroad?

How could the Bush team Swift-boat John Kerry and Max Cleland � authentic Vietnam war heroes, whom the White House turned into surrendering pacifists in the war on terror � but never manage to Swift-boat Osama bin Laden, a genocidal monster, who today is still regarded in many quarters as the vanguard of anti-American �resistance.�

Dive into a conversation about America in the Arab world today, or even in Europe and Africa, and it won�t take 30 seconds before the words �Abu Ghraib� and �Guant�namo Bay� are thrown at you. Yes, both are shameful, but Abu Ghraib was a day at the beach compared to what Al Qaeda and its Sunni jihadist supporters have been doing in Iraq, yet none of their acts have become one-punch global insults like Abu Ghraib and Guant�namo.

Consider what happened on Aug. 14. Four jihadist suicide-bombers blew themselves up in two Iraqi villages, killing more than 500 Kurdish civilians � men, women and babies � who belonged to a tiny pre-Islamic sect known as the Yazidis.

And what was the Bush team�s response to this outrage? Virtual silence. After much Googling, the best I could find was: � �We�re looking at Al Qaeda as the prime suspect,� said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman.� Wow.

Excuse me, but what exactly are we fighting for in Iraq, or in this wider war against Islamist extremism, if the murder of 500 civilians can be shrugged off? Even if we don�t know the exact perpetrators, we know who is inspiring this sort of genocide � Al Qaeda and bin Laden � and we need to say that every day.

Ask yourself this: If Osama bin Laden were running against George Bush for president, how would Karl Rove and Karen Hughes have handled the Yazidi murders? Within an hour, they�d have had a press release out saying: �This genocide of Iraqi civilians was inspired by bin Laden. We accuse bin Laden of the mass murder of 500 women and children. Bin Laden has killed more Iraqis and Muslims than any person alive. Support bin Laden and you support genocide against Muslims.� And they would have repeated that point on every network, every day.

Why should we care? Because bin Laden and his sidekick Ayman al-Zawahiri care! Read their statements. They care about their image. They do not want to be labeled as �genocide perpetrators.� They want to be known as the �resistance,� because it affects their street appeal and therefore their ability to recruit and operate.

Sure, some Sunni tribes in Iraq, who are directly threatened by Al Qaeda, have turned against it, but in the wider Arab-Muslim world bin Laden has out-maneuvered Mr. Bush. The man who Swift-boated John Kerry and Max Cleland has been Swift-boated by bin Laden. Mr. Bush is losing a P.R. war to a mass murderer. Yes, it is not easy breaking through the innate, anti-American tilt of the Arab media, but we have barely tried.

I spent Friday hanging around the newsroom of Al Jazeera here in Doha, on the Persian Gulf. I asked Arab reporters here what would be the results of a popularity poll in the region between Mr. Bush and bin Laden. Mr. Bush wouldn�t stand a chance, they said. One big difference between them, though, added one journalist, �is that Bush�s term is about to come to an end and bin Laden is staying in office.� An Egyptian analyst here added that liberals in the Arab world who supported the U.S. democratization effort in Iraq are now dismissed in the Arabic press as �intellectual marines.� U.S. marine is now a term of insult.

Bin Laden has created a situation in which the U.S. occupation in Iraq is viewed as entirely �illegitimate� and therefore any violence there by Sunni jihadists against Americans or Iraqi civilians is considered entirely legitimate �resistance.�

As The Economist magazine just noted, �This is profoundly mistaken.� Yes, military attacks against foreign soldiers who have come uninvited into your country can be called �resistance.� �But the mass murder of Iraqi civilians can make no such dignified claim. Under all established norms and laws of war (and by most accounts under Islamic law, too), the deliberate targeting of civilians for no direct military purposes is just a crime.�

So why don�t we say that? If you can�t win a P.R. war against bin Laden, you have no business fighting a real war anymore in Iraq.

Butterfly

Joined: 02 Mar 2003
Location: Kuwait

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 9:29 pm Post subject: Re: Swift-Boated by bin Laden

Quote:

Consider what happened on Aug. 14. Four jihadist suicide-bombers blew themselves up in two Iraqi villages, killing more than 500 Kurdish civilians � men, women and babies � who belonged to a tiny pre-Islamic sect known as the Yazidis.

It think this is up there as one of the foulest and most savage atrocities in human history.

jaganath69

Joined: 17 Jul 2003

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 10:02 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Dive into a conversation about America in the Arab world today, or even in Europe and Africa, and it won�t take 30 seconds before the words �Abu Ghraib� and �Guant�namo Bay� are thrown at you. Yes, both are shameful, but Abu Ghraib was a day at the beach compared to what Al Qaeda and its Sunni jihadist supporters have been doing in Iraq, yet none of their acts have become one-punch global insults like Abu Ghraib and Guant�namo.

Probably due to the fact that those who support AQ and the like don't really give two knobs of billy goat poop about them committing atrocities. Gitmo and AG stung the US because democracies are meant to uphold the rule of law.

yawarakaijin

Joined: 08 Aug 2006

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 10:05 pm Post subject:

Good article. It really does make you wonder what the hell this administration is trying to acheive. It's simple mind boggling to try and wrap one's head around... A Being in a struggle against a most fearsome and gruesome enemy. and B We are not really trying so hard to win but thats ok cause we love Bush.

cbclark4

Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 3:19 am Post subject:

Let the AQ and OBL have their day. Let them get together and form governments. Then they will be a much easier target to hit.

Butterfly

Joined: 02 Mar 2003
Location: Kuwait

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:03 am Post subject:

yawarakaijin wrote:

Good article. It really does make you wonder what the hell this administration is trying to acheive. It's simple mind boggling to try and wrap one's head around...

A Being in a struggle against a most fearsome and gruesome enemy.

Yeah, it is a good article in how it highlights how many do lose all rational judgement when this topic, the war on terror, comes up. To some you can't say anything about the murderous brutaity of islamic extremists without them piping up about how the Bush administration is somehow worse, which is silly and really not helpful. It's down to the western world to find a solution to this dire problem, and the endless bickering, whining and name-calling is not going to help aleviate it one bit.

Quote:

B We are not really trying so hard to win but thats ok cause we love Bush.

I'm not sure what you mean here. But it was a diabolical mistake, invading Iraq, and I can't help but feel bitter towards those who supported Bush in the first place, and who are now favouring a complete withdrawl which would leave those Iraqis who supported the new government and the American intervention at the absolute mercy, such as we saw last week, of these savages.

Some say that President Bush's recent speech comparing Iraq to Vietnam is him simply trying to push this mess on to the next administration and save himself from history's bad books, which may be true in part, but I do think we can't pull out until a tangible solution is found. And history, nonetheless, will not be kind to President Bush.

Butterfly

Joined: 02 Mar 2003
Location: Kuwait

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:24 am Post subject: Re: Swift-Boated by bin Laden

Butterfly wrote:

Quote:

It think this is up there as one of the foulest and most savage atrocities in human history.

To which I add, that a good starting point for combating and make some good of this horror, is for the world to learn more about the Yazidi faith, hence fighting the very thing that these extremists want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidi

yawarakaijin

Joined: 08 Aug 2006

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 6:11 am Post subject:

Quote:

B We are not really trying so hard to win but thats ok cause we love Bush.

Quote:

I meant that, for many, it seems like suppourting Bush is more important than winning this thing. Serioulsy. If America was truly terrified of mushroom clouds/a caliphate/installation of sharia/the destruction of our way of life Rolling Eyes

Bush should have been shown the door long ago.

Last edited by yawarakaijin on Sun Aug 26, 2007 12:05 pm; edited 1 time in total

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 6:27 am Post subject:

Quote:

Well it's important to remember that, since the war began, there has really only been one opportunity for the electorate to show Bush the door, the 2004 election. And at that point, it was probably still POSSIBLE to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, and imagine that he was getting a handle on national security, that things were slowly getting better in Iraq, etc. Admittedly, I think that even then it required a bit of wishful thinking to hold such an optimistic view, but it was still within the realm of the not entirely hallucinatory.

Nowadays, of course, anyone who isn't a blindly loyal Republican can see that Bush's foreign policy is nothing less than a complete disaster. But he's not running in any presidential elections. There's still the impeachment option, of course, but that wouldn't likely result in any policy changes.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 6:38 am Post subject:

Quote:

Nowadays, of course, anyone who isn't a blindly loyal Republican can see that Bush's foreign policy is nothing less than a complete disaster.

1. I voted for Gore in 2000, and Clinton before that.

2. What were the good options that Bush had? Let Saddam go free ? Saddam could not be contained forever. Saddam was a genocial mass killer on par with Idi Amin . For one thing after 9-11 the Saudis in response to US pressure about Al Qaeda told the US to get out of Saudi Arabia. The UN was on Saddam's payroll. And countries were begining to ignore ignore the sanctions on Iraq.Plus after 9-11 there were many in that part of the world that they had found and equalizer to US miltary power with terror bombings. The Al Qaeda phenomanon had built up for many years and now was a real problem. The previous administration left Bush with a lot of national security problems to deal with . Al Qaeda murders Kurds , well that there is at least one thing they have in common with Saddam.

JAZZYJJJ

Joined: 18 Jul 2006

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 3:28 pm Post subject:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

Quote:

Nowadays, of course, anyone who isn't a blindly loyal Republican can see that Bush's foreign policy is nothing less than a complete disaster.

Why couldn't they let Saddam go free??? And where was Saddam going to 'expand' to, thus needing containment???

For me, this is THE real mistake of the Bush administration. Going into Iraq and neglecting Iran.

I know hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I feel this is undoubtedly the most myopic foreign policy blunder in living memory.

J.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:45 pm Post subject:

Free of the sancitons Saddam would rearm., kill off the Kurds once and for all , re arm , reinvest in WMDs and reinvade Kuwait. It is certainly easy to predict. Saddam was a psychopath as bad as Idi Amin. If ever got nuclear weapons Iraq would be more dangerous and powerful than North Korea with nuclear weapons. Remember that at the time of the first gulf war Iraq's nuclear program was more advanced than North Korea's nuclear program. I agree that Iran was a more dangerous enemy but still that does not delegitimatize the overthrow of one of the greatest killers in the history of the world. To give you some perspective Pinochet killed maybe 20,000. Saddam Hussein killed 300,000 . That does not inclued war with Iran or Kuwait or his support of suicide bombings in Israel . He would have of course killed many more than that if he were not contained. His sons were coming up next.

mack4289

Joined: 06 Dec 2006

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 7:40 pm Post subject:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

Free of the sancitons Saddam would rearm., kill off the Kurds once and for all , re arm , reinvest in WMDs and reinvade Kuwait.

It is certainly easy to predict.

Saddam was a psychopath as bad as Idi Amin.

If ever got nuclear weapons Iraq would be more dangerous and powerful than North Korea with nuclear weapons.

Remember that at the time of the first gulf war Iraq's nuclear program was more advanced than North Korea's nuclear program.

I agree that Iran was a more dangerous enemy but still that does not delegitimatize the overthrow of one of the greatest killers in the history of the world.

To give you some perspective Pinochet killed maybe 20,000.

Saddam Hussein killed 300,000 . That does not inclued war with Iran or Kuwait or his support of suicide bombings in Israel . He would have of course killed many more than that if he were not contained. His sons were coming up next.

All true, but whether or not Saddam's actions justified the invasion is beside the point. The invasion was impractical- send a slimmed-down military that was unsupported by most of the world to contain a country whose sectarian tensions had only been in held in check by decades of brutal repression. Surely some of the people in the government could've seen very bad results coming from this.

Why not tell America that what we need is about three times as many troops, not for the invasion but for the occupation? Either Bush didn't consider it a realistic possibility or just didn't think he could sell the war to us if he told us the truth. Both possibilities are disturbing.

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 8:23 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Why not tell America that what we need is about three times as many troops, not for the invasion but for the occupation? Either Bush didn't consider it a realistic possibility or just didn't think he could sell the war to us if he told us the truth.

I think the evidence suggests that Bush just didn't think there would be any need for a large contingent of troops.

Quote:

The Rev. Pat Robertson said President Bush dismissed his warning that the United States would suffer heavy casualties in Iraq and told the television evangelist just before the beginning of the war that "we're not going to have any casualties."

Robertson related the conversation during an interview with CNN late Tuesday. He said he spoke to Bush before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and urged him to prepare the nation for heavy casualties. While Bush's response was a mistake, Robertson said, God has blessed the president anyhow.

Remember, Robertson is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, who likely wouldn't fabricate stuff just to make Bush look bad.

http://tinyurl.com/cr7no

Butterfly

Joined: 02 Mar 2003
Location: Kuwait

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 7:08 pm Post subject:

mack4289 wrote:

The invasion was impractical- send a slimmed-down military that was unsupported by most of the world to contain a country whose sectarian tensions had only been in held in check by decades of brutal repression. Surely some of the people in the government could've seen very bad results coming from this.

Interesting point - one might also argue that a pretty tough dictator is the only way such sectarian rivalries might be kept at bay, in all this unravelling, do we begin to see some of the things that Saddam achieved? In a TV recent debate in the UK among british iraqis, including some who had asylum from Saddam, the consensus seemed to be that another dictator was the only way to bring Iraq back together. And if that's the case, then jeez, what a waste of money, so much for democracy and freedom. I'm mildly bemused by the now argument that 'okay, saddam didn't have wmd's - but he WOULD have if he could!' Because that's not a premise for anything - if that's the case, then we ought to be lining up Tehran, Mugabe, and Khartoum next, among others.

Quote:

Quite.

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