Usama Bin Ladin goes to bat for John Kerry. Why?

This Is definitely going to hurt Bush...

The context of my statements were in direct relation to OCCOM BILL's opening statement in his thread title:



Which suggests (keeping within the context of this thread) that Usama Bin Ladin is supporting Kerry and his campaign, just as Clinton and Springsteen are currently doing on the campaign stump.

I can't imagine anything more idiotic and disengenuous than OCCOM BILL's opening statement.

For OCCOM BILL to state that my statement is NOT within the context of what HE initially started in this thread is ludicrous.

In other words, he asked for it.

Guliani and Arnold Schwarzenneger are actively going to "bat" for George Bush in these final days of the campaign.

It is what I have been pointing out all along.

If OCCOM BILL wishes to be more sincere regarding a thread, as well as intice people into actively engaging in a more substantive debate, than perhaps he needs to rethink the premise of his posts. I am not just jumping in on this thread and throwing out random statements.

If OCCOM BILL wishes to offer us an alternative thread to question whether bin Laden's statements help either Bush or Kerry, than THAT would be a more intelligent approach to such a sensitive subject at such a time when the nation is more polarized than ever with just two days before the election.

Otherwise, expect an eye for an eye.

PoeticMisterE:

AWESOME avator!!

Yes. If a country is invaded by another country. Or if a genocide is taking place, a whole people in the course of being murdered or deported collectively.

In 1988, when Saddam went as far as gassing Kurdish communities, there was a case for military intervention. In 1991, when he invaded Kuwait, there was a case for military intervention. But by 2003, he was straitjacketed into relative impotency to such an extent that he had become just another petty, cruel dictator - a nasty bit of work, but no more so than a number of other dictators around the world.

He didn't attack any other countries; he hadnt made any WMD since 1991 (as we now know for sure, though back in 2003 already most of us here were highly doubtful about whether he was indeed developing any new ones like the Americans claimed, but couldnt prove); he had lost control over his country's skies; the Kurds, once victim to his genocidal practices, were safely ensconsed in their own autonomous area. He posed no immediate threat to the outside world, and though he was a tyrant to his own people, he was less effectively so than ever before.

Well, you know the argument.

Anyway, two things came up in the argument here, that mixed things up.

First, the question of whether it was better now than when Saddam was still in power originally concerned the danger posed by Osama and Al Qaeda.

This, to me, is an easy one. The current situation in Iraq is much more favourable to Al Qaeda than the Saddam-era state of affairs was. There is chaos and lawlessness. There is violence and thuggishness. There is mass unemployment among a generation of bored, angry youths, and resentment at Western occupiers who themselves, partly out of self-protection, behave ever more like occupiers from outer space.

(A recent article I read about the Dutch units in Iraq told of the culture gap vis-a-vis the Americans -- the American soldiers would blaze through the city's narrow streets in their big trucks without allowing themselves to ever brake or stop (b/c of security issues), indiscriminately hitting and crushing pedestrians and local cars -- and the Dutch officer complained that his unit then got to face the backlash).

Sorry, digressing. Anyway - the current state of affairs in Iraq is definitely advantageous to Al Qaeda. A promising recruiting ground, and an arena for the kind of conflict where they can set themselves up as the central anti-imperialist resistance force of sorts, or something.

Now, your argument on this has mostly been that once Iraq does become a democracy, that will constitute a worst-case scenario for AQ. Once a "native", self-ruling Arab/Kurdish democracy is successfully installed in Iraq, it will undermine Al Qaeda's pretensions and rhetorics more than any Arab dictatorship or foreign power can.

On the principle here, I agree with you. It would.

Problem is, I don't estimate chances of Iraq becoming such a model democracy anytime in the next five years higher than, say, 25%. At best. I can think of any number of scenarios that are more likely to play out. Civil war is one of them, especially when the Kurdish issue eventually erupts and the Arab backlash in turn gets fragmented into Sunni-Shiite strife. Resurgent authoritarianism is at least as likely an alternative. The closer spontaneous developments veer the country towards disintegration, the more likely some faction or other is to take over control and forcibly pacify the country into another dictatorship - perhaps even with the Americans' blessing.

At the moment, we dont know what will happen - which of the scenarios will materialise. That says to me that we cant simply argue that the current situation is an improvement on the past because of what it will become. Because we dont know what it will become.

That means there are two ways to measure whether it is "better" now, thanks to the invasion. We can look only at the situation of this very day, and compare that to Saddam-era reality. Or we can calculate in future development, and compare Saddam-era reality with what the country will end up at once the dust settles down - but in that case we have to be realistic enough to include all possible future developments, and not go purely on the rhetorics of the future model democratic state Bush is speechifying about.

If we are still talking about Al Qaeda here, I would say that just looking at the current situation, AQ is better off with what Iraq is now than with what it was under Saddam. And if we calculate in future development, then I wouldnt know. Democracy would marginalise AQ. Civil war would boost it. Renewed dictatorship could mean anything, dependent on what colour it would be of. All in all a shaky basis to base any claim on that the ouster of Saddam has helped the fight against AQ. It hasn't helped yet. It might help in the future. It might well not.

Finally, the second thing that's been confusing the discussion. Every time I say, Saddam's ouster has not made things better when it comes to AQ, someone else says, what, you don't think the Iraqis aren't glad Saddam is gone? But that's two different things.

There's an indirect link, of course - the gladder they are about Saddam's removal, the more likely they are to constructively build democracy, the more likely AQ is to end up marginalised. But there's a lot of "if"s in there. And in the meantime, the question of what has been good in terms of helping Iraqis and what has been the effect on fighting AQ is not identical. For example, I believe the current state of affairs is a shitty situation for most Iraqis - but still better than it was under Saddam. But when it comes to fighting AQ, current-day Iraq (as opposed to some speculative future Iraq) is definitely more of a liability than Saddam-era Iraq was.

In conclusion:

When it comes to WMD, the war against Iraq was unnecessary, and thus a bloody, expensive mistake.

When it comes to helping victims of state terror, the war was a good thing - it freed a people from a dictatorship. But the current-day anarchy does pose problems and suffering all of its own in its place, and though life is better than under Saddam, the anarchy has meant that "better" is relative, indeed. And a further qualification is that the dictatorship the Iraqis were now freed from had become less of a brutal beast by the time of the invasion than it had been pretty much at any time before. So the immediacy of this motive is unclear, keeping it definitely a "war of choice".

Finally, when it comes to fighting Osama and Al Qaeda, I believe the war against Iraq has thus far been highly detrimental, boosting the AQ battle and recruitment ground. Perhaps you are right that the future will bring a further turn of events that will have made the liberation of Iraq the downfall of AQ after all - but that this will be so is anything but self-evident. Other scenarios that would be continuedly favourable to AQ are just as likely.

Now last year, when the decision to go to war was made, almost all of the above was already foreseen. The argument then already was that the threat posed by Saddam at that point in time was limited, and that although his removal would be a boon to the Iraqi population, the problems that would appear in his place would be of such an extent that the overall improvement would be highly relative - relative to such an extent that one could wonder if it was worth the damage the war brought in terms of human lives, costs and international order.


<phew>.

If it hadnt been for you, Lash, I would never have typed all this out, I swear ;-).

But I think I now finally fleshed my position out sufficiently clearly, no?

You are probably right.

But then there's still that other quote, the one I did find back:


What words did I put in his mouth? I merely quoted the White House website. This, after all, is from the White House site, as linked in above:


Again, does that really sound like someone who is determined "to go after him, catch him, kill him if necessary", who "is doing everything in his power to hunt him down"?

nimh:

As usual, very well put. May I add, that the Arab world in the Middle East has NEVER forgotten the endless Western occupation of their lands over hundreds of years. A grudge in the Middle East lives on forever and is never forgotten. When Bush used the term "crusade" in the fight against terrorism, it basically clumped ALL of Islam into one terrorist perspective in the minds of those in this country who cannot think for themselves. The "good against evil" mantra that Bush drove home has only cemented the hatred from a portion in this country who are hellbent on killing EVERY Islam on the planet, and we can thank the idiocy of Ann Coulter and Michael Savage for permating the airwaves with their ill-informed vitriol and hatred.

Not everybody in Iraq is a "terrorist." There are MANY who are sincerely attacking and killing our soldiers because WE are the occupiers trying to steal the oil from their country, and who have killed roughly 100,000 innocent Iraqi citizens, 40% of them being WOMEN AND CHILDREN. Plain and simple. Then there are the arab foreigners who are pouring into the country and infusing their terrorist ideology into the mix. And the ONLY reason this is happening NOW is because BUSH decided to invade Iraq.

This is utter mayhem and a display of supreme stupidity by this administration.

We NEVER liberated the Iraqi people. We mearly replaced Saddam's brutality with a now deadly mixture of these elements.

Nimh, the statements were idiotic. So is your defense of them. You cannot substitute your own, well thought positions, for spur of the moment demonstrably incoherent nonsense. The fact that some of that nonsense happens to parallel some real thoughts of your own is irrelevant. You're picking apart fragments of examples of the pattern I presented. I'm satisfied that the pattern remains obvious despite your gallant defense attempts. :wink:

Moving on,
If you don't want to answer the question, just say so. You haven't been clear. Despite strongly disagreeing with your explanation of why you think Bin Ladin would like Bush, I understand it just fine. That doesn't tell me what specifically you think Kerry would do differently.

No I don't. What is that supposed to tell me? Is George Bush such a shining example of perfection for Bin Ladin, in your opinion, that any departure from his leadership style will be detrimental to Bin Ladin's master plan?

No, I don't. Is John Kerry "Bush Light"? What specifically do you think John Kerry will do differently? I'm not asking you to paraphrase anything repeatedly. I'm asking a simple question that could be answered in 3 or 4 lines in broad strokes. NOT BUSH isn't very clear. Again, if you don't want to answer the question, just say so.

There are video clips online specifically showing Bush saying this. You are obviously not googling enough to find this.

Please provide such links if they exist.

Yeah, if its a question of "Googling enough" help us out here Dookie. I've browsed through four of the five Google pages of results I got searching for the entire quote between quotation marks, and it was all either forum posts or blog items or reader comments to an article - etc.

This is an obvious lie, Dookie. Am I to believe that your use of the terms "worst nightmare" and "democracy" right after another poster were pure coincidence? I would have given you a pass if I thought you were incapable of better. I may have to rethink that.

He used the identical criticisms of Bush, Dookie. Which part of that don't you understand?

Now you're really selling yourself short. More often than not; you imagine more idiotic and disingenuous things. (That BS excuse for your idiotic statements, just above, for instance.)

Other than you, and people talking about you (that part's my fault, I realize), this thread has been all of that.

Again, this thread has been filled with interesting conversation about that. Your inability to either accept or understand the obvious is the problem.

You've accused me of idiocy and are now admitting to trying to match it. Well, you suceeded. :wink:

Not in the sense that his remarks made perfect sense to me. "Perfect sense" "incoherent nonsense". Thats all the ground I need to defend 'em.


I did. I told you, I'm not going to repeat myself time and again just because you disagree with my points so much that they seem to you to not be "clear". I know how incredulous you can get at opinions that differ from yours starkly, so I dont see how explaining them again will help.


Departure from Bush's leadership style will seriously help make the global fight against terror more effective, yes. Diversifying it, partnering it, using the umbrella of the UN more for it - all that will make it harder for the Osamas of the Muslim world to rally the Muslims against "the evil American enemy".


Argh.

Bill, you should know exactly by now what I consider to be the weaknesses of Bush's approach to the War on Terror. The us versus them rhetorics. The messianistic speechifying. The hapless use of Christian imagery when communicating to a Muslim world. The alienation of even close allies, let alone neutral countries in the Muslim world. The unwillingness to admit any mistakes or apologise for any. The ambiguous orders to the troops that leave much unforbidden while implying that the normal rules dont count anymore, which indirectly led to the Abu G. disaster. The seeming ignorance of the sensitivities in the Muslim world or the unwillingness to take them into account. The insistence on kidnapping suspects to a base on Cuba and imprison them in isolation for years on end without ever starting a judicial process to see if they're actually guilty. I dunno. The whole f***ing lot that we've been talking about here for two years now. Yes, I believe that on every of the counts above, a President Kerry will make a difference. Will show a different face. Talk in a different way. Impose different policies. Recover some of the unparallelled PR disaster that the Bush government has been in the Arab and Muslim world, not to mention other parts of the world. And yes, I think having a more reasonable, more measured US President will rob Osama of that which he needs most: a proper enemy image to rally against.

And now I want to go to BED, thank you very much.

You were right, Nimh; I do know, in detail, your problems with Bush. That wasn't my question, though. I asked about Kerry, not Bush. Your answer is ABB on all counts, got it. Anything Kerry does, has to be better… Got it.

Have a good night.

No, not necessarily anything Kerry does has to be better, but on those specific counts that nihm brings up, Kerry will do differently, or forgo completly, and do better, IMO.

He never has before. But who knows? Just about anybody can get it right with enough practice.

I think Nihm's reasoning is excellent...and I think his conclusions are reasonable.

Bush has been an abject failure...arguably he has helped terrorists and terrorism more than hurt them.

Kerry has at least a chance to turn things around. He at least sees there is a problem.

Bush has no chance whatsoever. He does not even recognize there is a problem.

Except, apparently, George Bush. He has been consistent in his efforts and consistently wrong. If I hire a person to do a job and, despite real efforts to succeed, I see him on a consistently wrong tack and seemingly unable and unwilling to admit to error and make adjustments, I fire him.

John Kerry has shown himself to a person who, while cognisant of his nation's needs, is aware of the world. I think that's evident in his speechs. I think that was evident in the debates. The United States of America needs a leader who can bring the world's nations together in this fight against terrorism, a real uniter not divider. Someone who has something other than distain and arrogance to drive him, someone who has an understanding of the Arab world and the vast differences between cultures. Someone who is not afraid of people who are different. John Kerry already has those qualities and will make a huge difference from the first day of his Presidency.

Joe

Bill,

I'm sorry, but for this one time ever, you're just being lame - or rather, deliberately obtuse. That eager to make your point, I guess. No, they're NOT purely ABB points. Infra's got it spot on. If I say that Bush is doing A, B and C wrong and I expect Kerry to do better, is that an ABB argument? Aint I saying I expect Kerry to do better? Isn't that about Kerry as much as about Bush?

I wouldnt expect DeLay to do better. Or Nader, for that matter. But I do expect Kerry to do better.

As I said, I expect Kerry to show a different face. He's shown - even just in the debates - how much more expertise he has, and how much more of an ear he has for international politics. I expect him to talk in a different way. You can reject that as irrelevant - just more talking! - but diplomacy is about talking. The effect your presence has on other people's attitude towards you is about how you come across and how you relate to people as much as about actual policies. But I also expect Kerry to impose different policies. He has detailed lots, and they've been recounted here. I expect him not to push even allied countries away from him by regularly offending them ("Old Europe") and trying to blackmail them into falling into line "or else" with that "if you're not with us, you're against us" nonsense. I expect him, in short, to treat allies and neutral parties alike as adults.

In so doing, I expect him to recover some of the unparallelled PR disaster Bush has wrecked for the US in the ME. I expect him not to haplessly compromise the US and its soldiers by putting their mission in Christian-inspired terms - no crusade bull. I expect him to be less allergic to any kind of criticism, less averse to ever acknowledging a mistake, more realistic about estimating and describing the sitiuation. That, in turn, will make for sounder policy decisions on the ground, which will make US soldiers safer, and for less exasperation among possible allies both in Iraq itself and the international arena. I expect him to have American soldiers put out there under more of a UN umbrella (which Bush would absolutely refuse), partnered up with troops from more other countries (yes, I think in the long term thats feasible, once the damage Bush did as been massaged away enough), and presented and defended not as some messianistic mission of civilisation, but as troops of support, meant merely to stabilise a place so the people there can get on with their own elections.

By dropping the insistence on having US bases in Iraq for at least a decade, by showing that big business contracts are as likely to be given to Arab or European or Asian companies as to Halliburton and its like, I think he will show the ME that it's not about creating a long-term imposition of narrow US interest. That again will impact attitudes towards the US and its troops in the long run, and thus increase the chances of success of the Iraq mission and the safety of the US soldiers. Not to mention the effectivity of the war against Al Qaeda, which depends entirely on the complete co-operation of governments and intelligence agencies around the world. Bush has tried to bully everyone into falling into line. Some have, but many others have turned away in disgust or distrust. Kerry will do better.

Now, is this an ABB argument? I dont bloody well think so. Did I just say anything that I didnt already imply in my previous post? Nope. Every single one of these points here were already up in the posts before. It's just that you discounted them. So, what? Will you still repeat the chatter about me (and those like me) just being against Bush and that being all to it? Probably. But the difference Kerry would make is not about sending 257 more troops to the crossroads 7 miles NE of Basra. It is about slightly more abstract, more general, harder to narrowly pinpoint issues.

Very well put, Nimh, and here is my friend Tom with another way of looking at it.


The Apparent Heir
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: October 31, 2004

Columnists for this newspaper are not allowed to endorse presidential candidates. But I think this election is so important, I am going to break the rules. I hope I don't get fired. But here goes: I am endorsing George Bush for president. No, no - not George W. Bush. I am endorsing his father - George Herbert Walker Bush.

The more I look back on the elder Bush - Bush 41 - the more I find things to admire and the more I see attributes we need in our next president.

Let's start with domestic policy. The elder George Bush was the real uniter, not divider, the real believer in a kinder, gentler political dialogue. Yes, he had a Democratic Congress to deal with, so he had to be more conciliatory, but it came naturally to him. In 1990, the elder Bush sided with Congressional Democrats to raise taxes, because he knew it was the right thing for the economy, despite his famous "Read my lips" pledge not to raise new taxes. While that 1990 tax increase contributed to his re-election defeat, it laid the foundation for the Clinton tax increases, which, together with Mr. Bush's, helped to hold down interest rates and spur our tremendous growth in the 1990's and the buildup of a huge surplus.

On foreign policy, the elder Bush maintained a healthy balance between realism and idealism, unilateralism and multilateralism, American strength and American diplomacy. He believed that international institutions like the U.N. could be force multipliers of U.S. power. Rather than rubbing Mikhail Gorbachev's nose in the dirt, the elder Bush treated him with respect, and in doing so helped to orchestrate the collapse of the Soviet Union, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany without the firing of a single shot. The nonviolent unraveling of the Soviet Empire ushered in a decade of prosperity and an era of unprecedented American power and popularity.

The alliance that Mr. Bush, Brent Scowcroft and James A. Baker III built to drive Saddam out of Kuwait had so many allies it virtually turned a profit for America. Mr. Bush chose not to invade Baghdad in 1991. Right or wrong, he felt that had he tried, he would have lost the coalition he had built up to evict Saddam from Kuwait. He obviously believed that the U.S. should never invade an Arab capital without a coalition that contained countries whose support mattered in that part of the world, such as France, Egypt, Syria or Saudi Arabia.

The elder Bush rightly understood that it was not in Israel's interest, or that of the U.S., for Israel to be expanding settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The Madrid peace conference convened by the elder Bush paved the way for both the Oslo peace process and the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, which ended Israel's diplomatic isolation with countries like India and China. It was also the elder Bush who laid the groundwork for the Nafta free-trade accord, completed by President Bill Clinton.

In short, the elder Bush understood the importance of acting in the world - but acting wisely, with competence and preparation. His great weakness was his public diplomacy. He wrongly antagonized American Jews by challenging their right to lobby on behalf of Israel. He could have given more voice to the amazing liberation of humanity that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented and to the American anger over the Tiananmen Square massacre. Although, in his muted response to Tiananmen, the elder Bush kept China-U.S. relations from going totally off the rails, which kept China on a track to economic reform. Although he raised taxes, he never really explained himself. So his instincts were good, his mechanics were often flawless, but his words and music left you frustrated. Still, the legacy is a substantial one. Over time, historians will treat the elder Bush with respect.

So as we approach this critical election of 2004, my advice, dear readers, is this: Vote for the candidate who embodies the ethos of George H. W. Bush - the old guy. Vote for the man who you think would have the same gut feel for nurturing allies and restoring bipartisanship to foreign policy as him. Vote for the man you think understands the importance of facing up to our fiscal responsibilities for the sake of our children. And vote for the man who has the best instincts for balancing realism and idealism and the man who understands the necessity of using energetic U.S. diplomacy to make Israel more secure - by helping to bring it peace with its Arab neighbors, not just more tours from American Christian fundamentalists.

Yes, next Tuesday, vote for the real political heir to George H. W. Bush. I'm sure you know who that is.

======

Thank you, Tom, I couldn't have said it better myself.

Joe