Reply #232: Well, Mr. Seat....

[The Magistrate]

At least here you have made some attempt to engage the points presented. It is too early to conclude from this that there is any hope for you, of course: as they say, even a blind chicken pecks up a little corn, and mere random chance would offer you some opportunity, amongst so many tries, for performing a proper action. Your rosy view of matters in what the current regime dubs "the war on terror" is somewhat of a surprise, certainly.

You seem to verge on regurgitating the standard rightist conflation of Hussein with Bin Laden in counting the situation in Iraq today as a set-back for al'Queda. The Ba'athists and Hussein have nothing to do with al'Queda, and the two things epitomize opposite and hostile trends within the Islamic world. The Ba'athist movement is a body of thought loosely based on the Phalangist fascist model, that sought a forced-draft modernization of Islamic society and identified traditional religiousity as one of the most powerful stumbling blocks to this goal. It is true that in his final years Hussein, under great pressure, postured unconvincingly as a champion of Islam, but it changed nothing; Stalin, under the impetus of Nazi invasion, made some real overtures to the Orthodox Church, but this hardly altered the fundamental atheism of the Communist Party, or of Soviet society. To the devout fundamentalists of al'Queda, secularists like the Ba'athists and Hussein are apostates of the worst sort, "confessing Islam with their lips while denying it in their hearts," and such loom as large as enemies, in their world view, as the open un-believers of the West; indeed, they are viewed as agents of the West seeking to subvert Islam from within, rather in the same way an old Birchite viewed liberals and leftists in our country as agents of Soviet conquest from within. The destruction of the Ba'athist rule in Iraq is something an al'Queda militant would be inclined to view as a very good thing.

The idea that the United States "owns" Afghanistan and Iraq today is something that will doubtless bemuse many members of this forum's larger community. Not for nothing is our Afghan puppet Karzai refered to as Mayor of Kabul. All reports from the countryside in that place indicate that Taliban fighters operate freely, controlling great swathes of territory and enjoying the support of the mass of the populace. The hold of the United States on Iraq is not much more secure, and may be less so. Resistance to U.S. occupation grows stronger there every day, and U.S. miltary power is strained near the breaking point to cope with it. The much vaunted "elections" this weekend are likely, in the view of many, to amount to the signal gun for a civil war under the aegis of the U.S. occupation, and in such an imbroglio, militants of all sides will find their most effective bids for popular support against their domestic rivals will be attacks on U.S. targets. No competent observer without an ideological commitment to the endeavor takes a very sanguine view of the prospects there.

In Saudi Arabia, the former U.S. garrison is mostly gone, though of course there is still a great U.S. presence there, and the removal of that garrison was a leading al'Queda demand. Saudi Arabia is clearly in the early stages of revolution, spear-headed by al'Queda militants: this effort may well fail, of course, but it is something that was not a part of the scene there several years ago.

Why you imagine holy warriors would be any more scrupulous about who they kill than plutocrats escapes me. In the case of killing fellow Moslems in actions against Crusaders and Zionists, the theology of these fellows holds that, as such Moslems would have fallen, wittingly or no, in battle to uphold the faith against un-believers seeking to harm it, they will be translated immediately as martyrs into Paradise, and that is hardly a thing to weep over, but rather a triumph, and ordained by the diety they worship anyway. The strikes you reference were strokes against symbols of U.S. power in Moslem regions, embassies and a war-ship, and are the sort of "propagandas of the deed" referenced above. They had some effect along the desired lines sketched in my comments, but lacked the scope of the September attacks, and of course were far below the threshold needed to hope for real effect on the mind of the people of the United States itself.

Similarly, why you should view killing actual members of the leading circles of a U.S. or Israeli administration as some necessary or signifigant thing in this matter is beyond me. Killing members of a government is certainly one way to inflict shock on a populace, but is hardly the only one, and it is certainly not a nessessary one. Wars are frequently conducted without any leading member of the opposing government being killed in them. You would seem here to be afflicted with a sort of video-gamer's view of the business of warfare, under the illusion success in it is a matter of keeping score. It is not. The United States killed tremendously more North Vietnamese than the number of U.S. personnel, and even South Vietnamese personnel, the North Vietnamese managed to kill, and yet it is quite clear who won that war.

"Children make the best opponents at Scrabble, as they are both easy to beat and fun to cheat."