He's Baaaack
Just when many people were relegating Osama bin Laden to the 'vanished, presumed dead' dustbin of history he has reappeared on videotape just in time for our presidential election. Many people see his reappearance as a cause for fear, others anger. for me, it's more about vindication. Not in his actual reappearance, but in what he had to say. It's creepy, really creepy (fitting for this Halloween night entry) but the texts I have seen of this latest video suggest that my analysis of the meaning behind the 9/11 attacks is correct. Almost immediately after the attacks our so-called president denounced the acts as the work of crazed killers who hate freedom, and has never wavered from that stance. I have long contended that this simple-minded interpretation was both wrong and dangerous. My reasoning was that the reason for these attacks was not to destroy America, but to send us a message. More importantly, our refusal to accept these attacks as a message would be interpreted as a sign that something bigger must be done to get our attention.
This isn't to suggest that we should give al Qaeda a free pass and not do what we can to neutralize them, but it is to suggest that we are kidding ourselves if we think that removing the one known threat without addressing the underlying world situation which bred that threat was going to ensure our long-term safety. There has been essentially no discussion at all about the very serious question 'why do they hate America?' In fact, every time I have raised that sort of question I get accused of being an apologist for the terrorists. It is time that we get past our thinking about the problem of terrorism as a law enforcement and military issue, and start thinking of it as a geo-political and economic problem.
Clearly those who are succumbing to knee-jerk patriotism in this time of real danger would serve themselves and the country well to take the time to read Sun Tzu. Understanding one's enemy is a necessary first step to defeating that enemy. We never understood the North Vietnamese, we didn't really understand Saddam and could have avoided the current quagmire if we had (as an aside, my pre-war analysis of Saddam has also been fairly well borne out by what we have learned post-invasion), and we are scornful of the very idea of understanding al Qaeda. Until we get past jingoism and rage, and give some serious consideration to the possibility that our current geo-political stance is unsustainable, we will continue to face terrorist threats.