Four Decades of Imperial Hubris

[MSgt213]

In most of the wars we’ve fought, our leaders have understood our enemies and how to take them down. But in the current shootout – a continuation of the revolutionary fervor first ignited in Algeria in the 1960s, then fanned by the Iranian Revolution, a huge Jihad victory against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Israel’s humiliating withdrawal from Lebanon and its interminable fight in Palestine culminating in 9/11 and our retaliatory invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – America’s leaders from both major parties and our military and intelligence establishments remain in deep denial and blindly continue to believe that because we’ve got the power, we shall overcome.


Ditto a large chunk of the American public that has sent me gigabytes of e-mail about how we should do a Goldwater on the bad guys and “bomb them back to the Stone Age” – when that's where most of our 1.3 billion potential Islamic opponents already are. If ignorance is bliss, America might have cornered the market on happiness.

<snip>

“Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us,” writes “Anonymous,” the author of Imperial Hubris, a critically important book that defines Osama and what’s driving his bombers. And the reasons don’t “have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but have everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world.”

<snip>

"Our Islamic enemy might not have the capability for a Stalingrad or Saigon, but according to the terrorist beheader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, our soldiers in Iraq are “easy and mouthwatering targets.”


http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target%20Homepage.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=90&rnd=36.947906634909266

[candy]

1. Just got the book today,after a very long wait at my public library

Will start it this evening

[bemildred]

2. RE bin Laden ....

Someone asked what to watch out for. In the 9/11 attack, the targets
were chosen carefully, centers of the US political and economic power
structure. If he chooses to attack in-country again, I would expect
the same, rather than somewhere in Podunk. Podunk is not the
message OBL wants to send, he wants to hit something big.