Sunday, October 02, 2005



New Fisk

Face to face with the world’s most wanted man (An extract from The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East)

Posted by Idiot/Savant at 10/02/2005 01:01:00 AM

4 comments:

Removed spam. Have I mentioned how much I hate them?

 Posted by Idiot/Savant : 10/02/2005 12:11:00 PM

Makes one want to wipe out/flood the sites they advertise... not that that system would not me also misused also.

 Posted by Genius : 10/02/2005 06:13:00 PM

Interesting article on Osama. Best to keep these reporters reporting on the extremist enemy of their enemy.

 Posted by Genius : 10/02/2005 06:40:00 PM

This is a bit unfair to Clinton -

'"We think that our struggle against America will be much simpler than that against the Soviet Union," Bin Laden said. "I will tell you something for the first time. Some of our mujahedin who fought in Afghanistan participated in operations against the Americans in Somalia and they were surprised at the collapse in American military morale. We regard America as a paper tiger." This was a strategic error of some scale. The American retreat from its state-building mission in Somalia under President Clinton was not going to be repeated if a Republican president came to power, especially if the United States was under attack.'

Had 9/11 occured when Clinton was president he would have routed the Taliban as surely as Bush. It's true that after Somalia the US public was in no mood to have US troops die in overseas wars to promote democracy. And that isolationist sentiment constrained Clinton resulting in non-intervention in Afghanistan and Rwanda. Much to the discredit of the US.

9/11 forced Bush to abanbdon the Republican isolationist stance and gave public support for military action against the Taliban.

Fisk skips over a little context and detail in the "Did we care?" paragraph. The Clinton administration was divided over how to deal with the Taliban - to engage or isolate. Eventually Hillary Clinton, prompted by concern amongst US feminists, spoke out against the Taliban and from then on the US was explicitly opposed to them.

And of course the US and NATO eventually overthrew the Taliban so in fact "we" did care. Although by then Fisk had decided that overthrowing the Taliban wasn't a good idea so perhaps he had stopped caring.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/02/2005 10:53:00 PM

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