At 14:50 17/09/01, you wrote:
Yeah Charlie i completely agree when i heard the speech i literally did a
double take, when i heard the word "crusade". I was so amazed, i spent the next
ten minutes going through some self checks wondering if i'd hallucinated
the word
"crusade2 somehow.
Lets face it no one thought Busy was an expert at diplomacy, or had a brain
bigger
than a walnut. Before he was elected. I am amazed at the size of this
somatic gaff
though.
Zeb
>[ Apologies in advance for not very extropian content ]
>
>Or should that be, "Idiot-in-Chief"?
>
>I don't like Dubya, but up until today I've had the impression that he
>was handling this crisis reasonably well -- not brilliantly, but
>competently. (Which is all we can ask for of any president, really.)
>
>Then he had to go and use the C-word in a public speech: "crusade".
>
>I'm speechless. Really, I am.
>
>Hasn't he been paying *ANY* attention to what's going on? And why didn't
>his minders stop him from using that fatal word? All you have to do is
>read Osama bin Laden's original declaration of war on the west (which
>you can find at http://www.emergency.com/bladen98.htm) to realise that
>ObL's political position is that the west is waging a Crusade -- in the
>historical sense of the word -- against Islam.
>
>In that fatwa, Osama bin Laden wrote "The Arabian Peninsula has never --
>since God made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas --
>been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like
>locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations." Then he went
>on to say, "all these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a
>clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims."
>
>It's there, clear as day: Osama bin Laden's whole program is to accuse
>the Americans of waging a Crusade -- a holy war against Islam, and to
>call on moslems to rally round in a jihad against the crusaders. Now
>Dubya has just stood up in front of a billion moslems and in effect
>told them that Osama bin Laden is right; that this *is* a holy war
>being waged by the christian nations against islam.
>
>I have difficulty imagining a way he could have phrased it that would
>have been more inflammatory or offensive to the islamic countries --
>Pakistan, for example, but also all the Arab countries -- who he's trying
>to drag into this coalition. Here's a metaphor: imagine the response if
>he'd announced his intention of sending troops to Somalia in terms like:
>"we're jes' goin' to pacify the niggers". _That_ is what pinning the
>word "crusade" on America's response means to the islamic world.
>
>That's right, Dubya, you go on trying to build that coalition with Islamic
>states as members. Don't you worry, they'll get the message. You've
>probably just given bin Laden the first ray of hope since the 11th
>of September.
>
>
>-- Charlie
"FURIOUS GREEN DREAMS, LAY SLEEPING IN STATE,
BUT SOON THE GREAT JELLY SHALL RISE FROM THE
DEPTHS,
AND ALL THOSE WHO MOCKED SHALL KNOW THEIR FATE
IS SEALED"
Guru Zeb,
Hacienda,
Manchester, 1989
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