----- Original Message ----- From: "Bradford DeLong" <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu>
> But isn't such a sustained campaign of terrorism exactly what the
> overthrow of the Taliban (and probable future campaigns in Somalia
> and Sudan) is supposed to prevent? Isn't the point of it all to put
> governments of nation-states on notice that it is too dangerous for
> them to allow wholesale terrorist groups to use your country as a
> base?
>
>
> Brad DeLong
==============
Doesn't Saudi Arabia count as a base given the acknowledgement by SA officials that Al Qaida has a not insignificant presence there while still pathetically denying that 15 of the 19 suicide bomber came from that country? Would we have bombed SA if it exported broccoli instead of oil?
What happens if, in 2016 a bunch of disgruntled Russian scientists operating out of someplace other than, or even from within, that country yet are not representatives of that State in any official capacity and who suffer from megalomaniacal tendencies pull off something even more insidious than 9-11 in, say Germany, or the US. Should we bomb the Russians into oblivion or would the weapons parity make us think twice or thrice? If so, what's the justification for bombing Afghanistan given that it has done nothing to alter the probabilities of future terrorist attacks of 9-11's magnitude?
Ian