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> The US has formally notified
> the U.N. that her targets may go beyond Afghanistan and raised this
> issue in the Security Council this morning - which implies that it may
> well happen soon - which is exactly the case I understood previously.
> Refer http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,36006,00.html accessed
> 2001-10-08
>
> The immediate result is very similar (dead people, no
> justice), and the consequences for the US and the world are, in my
> opinion, likely to be worse than 9-11. How much worse I don't yet
> know, but I have previously suggested that I consider bin Laden to be
> far more fiendish than anyone I have heard discussing this has
> figured, I see no reason to change this analysis, and I suspect that
> the US is doing exactly as he anticipated and hoped for (although I
> don't think that even he has a handle on the magnitude of the disaster
> which is coming). As I read it, his little needles are designed to
> ensure that the US follows the path he desires (sometimes not knowing
> what your enemy is saying is to be preferred).
>
> There is a pestilential butterfly stirring, only it is in
> Afghanistan rather than Mongolia, and I fear that the storm will be
> more loathsome than anyone expects.
>
> Not unrelated, last night we dropped 37,000 meals (and no
> medicines) or putting it in perspective, assuming all of those meals
> are delivered to people who need them, we provided meals for one day
> to 1/2% of the people who desperately need them. If we use all of the
> aircraft committed to date, and all of the flight crews, exclusively
> to deliver food during daylight hours, we will be able to feed at most
> 3% of the starving population of Afghanistan - which will probably
> mean that in February the Hajj will open to the news of 6 million plus
> dead Afghans. And it will be portrayed and believed to be largely the
> fault of the US.
>
> May I suggest that the US should hope that the Muslim is as
> unfeeling as he has recently been portrayed here, else the
> consequences are going to be catastrophic throughout the Islamic world
> - and I suspect that the US and the world is in any case going to be
> thrown into a condition of chaos from which it will not emerge in
> anywhere near the same condition as now - and that this is bin Laden's
> deep desire as he believed that the West can only go down while
> thinking that Islamic nations, being less reliant on sophisticated
> economies, will avoid the worst effects of the brewing storm. ==== re:
> virus: 'I believe the terrorists wanted a nuclear attack on Baghdad'
> (Filed: 07/10/2001) <brutal snip>
>
> Right idea, wrong target.
>
> As previously observed, the US is perceived by a vast majority of
> Muslims as being something reprehensible. The reason for this is
> primarily because of our ongoing support for Israel, despite her
> ongoing illegal occupation of the West Bank and brutal oppression of
> civilians. Secondly due to our involvement in 3rd world countries,
> usually to put down "democratic" movements in the hope of promoting
> "stability" or against "socialist" movements in the "war against
> communism." What this has meant is that the US is generally perceived
> to have been taking the part of dictators and kings, against the
> unenfranchised and those discriminated against. This applies even in
> Kuwait (where we are seen as having thrown out a dictator whom we
> created, in order to preserve a more pliant king). Thirdly, we are
> seen to abandon our allies as soon as we achieve our immediate goals,
> leaving them to absorb the brunt of any retribution.
>
> So we are indubitably seen as the worlds greatest oppressors and
> hypocrites. The truth of this is largely irrelevant. It is the
> perception which matters.
>
> Let us assume that bin Laden is one pissed off dude, who really
> believes, fervently and frothingly that Allah wants to bring America
> down - and that he is the "chosen instrument of the almighty". Despite
> this belief, he also happens to be smart - he is a qualified civil
> engineer (one of the "difficult" engineering areas) - with over two
> decades of training in guerilla warfare, and by all accounts,
> extensive logistical and business experience. Given his success in all
> of these areas, the man is nobody's fool. As we have seen, he is also
> charismatic and articulate, and preaching to people who believe as he
> does, which always makes the job of creating converts easier.
>
> The question he had to answer, and has had ten years to work on, is
> how to do this? He will have analyzed his actions, particularly in the
> light of US military tactics and responses to his actions over the
> last decade. I strongly suspect that he believes that the US will
> underestimate him, and he is fully aware that they know very little of
> the history, the geography, the people or the politics of the region.
> Being no fool, he knows that no matter how wealthy he is, no matter
> how effective the ratio of expenditure, he cannot hope to cost enough
> in lives or money for the US to give up on the Middle-East and go
> home. He has to achieve one or both of two things. One is to massively
> multiply his forces - in effect, to turn the entire Middle-East into
> his army. Secondly he has to create forces within the United States
> which have the power to rip her apart.
>
> He cannot do this with the Taliban. They are a small group, able to
> operate effectively only within the context of Afghanistan. He could
> possibly lure the US into that death bowl, and achieve some small
> satisfaction in knowing that this has the potential to harm them. But
> the US Army is no longer an army of conscripts, and they don't fight
> wars in a way which exposes them overmuch to danger. Which means that
> they will not accomplish terribly much in that environment - but it
> also means that they will not have much to lose. He has to know this.
> Just as he has to know that America will eventually win this
> particular war.
>
> He also has to know that he is not going to achieve much in the
> Palestine. They are not equipped to defeat Israel. While he might have
> hoped that his actions would cause the US to reconsider her support,
> he is, I think, too competent to believe that the Palestinians could
> hope to win and too aware that Israel could easily defeat any
> believable Arab coalition.
>
> Yet he has obviously worked assiduously in ensuring that this war
> occurs, even though, rationally, it will almost certainly cost him -
> and most of his personal supporters - their lives, and his allies
> their immediate political power. So we should assume that he intends
> this outcome, and I very much doubt that he intends this as a simple
> gesture. I think that he intends to win the greater war. So, placing
> ourselves in his shoes, we ask how he can make that happen.
>
> I believe that the simplest answer is to peek over the border in the
> direction of Pakistan, which bin Laden knows intimately well - and
> knows that the US has long historical involvement with her. There are
> more Pashtan in Pakistan than there are in Afghanistan. While the base
> of like-believers in Pakistan is unlikely to greatly exceed 10% in the
> general population. Now let us learn a little lesson from other
> insurgencies - for example that instigated in Afghanistan by the
> Americans. A similar ratio within the population sufficed, once
> adequately agitated, to draw the USSR into the fray, as unless they
> had entered it, their puppet government would have fallen. A decade
> latter, after massive oppression of the population, and continuing
> agitprop, and the Russians withdrew in dismay leaving Afghanistan to
> the not very tender mercies of that original 10%. And the US went
> home.
>
> Could this happen in Pakistan? I would argue that it already is.
> Repression of "popular demonstrations" are already occurring, with a
> consequent perception in the populace that the secular government is
> siding with the "evil" US against the "good" Muslims - and drawing
> every Muslim that wishes to be "good" into the fray, increasing the
> tempo and seriousness of riots. Rumors of disloyalty, disseminated in
> the command structure are causing the rapid purging of key staff,
> generating a hard-core opposition to General Musharraf.
>
> Two key differences between Afghanistan and Pakistan exist. Once we
> examine Pakistan's forces, we know that the number of Islamic
> fundamentalists in Pakistan's forces exceeds 30% of the total muster.
> And we know that Pakistan has an arsenal of possibly 30 nuclear
> weapons. There are a number of possible outcomes, to this battle.
>
> One might be that the fundamentalists succeed in taking over the
> country - and her nuclear arsenal. Which might lead to any number of
> interesting outcomes.
>
> Somebody (Israel, India, U.S., C.I.S., R.O.C.) might preemptively nuke
> Pakistan - which will trigger uprisings throughout the Arab world.
> Another is that the nukes could be deployed against Israel, the US or
> India.
>
> Any of these possibilities carries a far greater threat to the US than
> to the Middle-East, largely because we and our historical opponents
> still have vast arrays of nuclear weapons arrayed against one another
> - and one detonation may well lead to another.
>
> Another scenario has the US marching in to assist the Government of
> Pakistan - and that would absolutely require committing troops to
> ground involvement (air warfare, no matter how precise, is ineffective
> against insurgents unless you simply intend to "kill them all").
>
> The above could well lead to a war of attrition that would destabilize
> the US and probably cause her to withdraw from global interaction -
> particularly as this would also cause a ripple effect of insurrectionn
> amongst other Arab states. And in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the US would
> almost certainly be forced to intervene or abandon the Gulf.
>
> Meanwhile, the fear of terrorism, and sufficient successes to keep the
> US off balance, angry and repressing her own populace will guarantee a
> large group calling for a cessation of hostilities and the "politics
> of hunger" will provide the material required to ensure the
> effectiveness of cassette tapes, announcing the death toll "due to
> America's War on Islam" which will take effect early next year. If I
> am correct in even a fraction of this, every existing Middle Eastern
> government, from Aden to Yemen, should be trembling.
>
> If the US deploys against other countries, the destabilizing effect
> will be multiplied. If Israel, isolated and driven into a corner
> should come under attack, and use her nukes - as she almost certainly
> would if she were subjected to an NBC attack, the Middle East will
> explode. The probability of this will increase as Hamas and other
> incite more and more vociferous protests, designed to reduce common
> sense, already absent in her PM, completely out of the window. The
> tragedy is that I don't see a way, under the current leadership, to
> prevent this scenario from unfolding. Meanwhile, the global economies
> are already unraveling, the cost of oil set to soar, and the
> likelihood is that the climate will continue to cool, fuelling demands
> for energy at exactly the time when it can least be met.
>
> Possible? Likely? If anything, I suspect that this scenario is
> optimistic. I haven't been thinking about it for the last ten years.
> And I am not fuelled by a passionate hatred of the West.
>
> Kind Regards
>
> Hermit
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