Reply #12: Symbiotic extremism is the real danger

[krkaufman]

Busted Bamboozability: Bush Has Lost The War On Terrorism

The article's author is amazingly on-point in many ways considering he's off on his main point.

bin Laden, al Qaeda, et al do not just want to instill fear in Americans and affect our internal relationships and discourse. Our fear and devolving political discourse are of no use to bin Laden if they do not contribute to his greater goals.

Roosevelt knew from which he spoke when he said,

"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Fear, itself, is just an emotion, but allowing our fear to consume us and override rational thought and reason can be our undoing, personally and nationally. bin Laden's end goal is not to simply make us frightened, but to affect our policy through our succumbing to fear.

bin Laden's simple goal is to bankrupt the United States, just as the mujahideen in Afghganistan helped hasten the downfall of the Soviet Union in the late 80s, and his well-known objective to this end was to provoke the United States into an extended war in a Middle Eastern country -- destabilizing the region, and turning Arabic, Islamic and international opinion against the US.

Most sadly, the world was with the US in its attempts to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan, and "9/11" was widely agreed-upon as a major blunder by al Qaeda. al Qaeda was diminished in clout, recruiting and support shortly after 9/11, in early 2002. However, the Bush Administration and its neo-con policymakers used fear to subdue the American people into allowing an invasion of Iraq and have continued to leverage citizens' fear of terrorism to maintain power and to continue the occupation of Iraq. bin Laden has no need for further direct attacks in the United States, at present, due to Bush's continued policy of "stay the (bin Laden) course" in Iraq -- and the Bush Administration's own robust maintenance of the fear factor for their political gain.

Fear is simply the tool; the goal is bankrupting the United States. (And, yes, this last sentence applies equally to the symbiotic extremists on both sides of this "fight.")