"Drawing the Enemy in Deep" A Speculation

[Carrol Cox]

>From almost the beginning I have been reluctant to believe that
Washington could be so stupid as to involve themselves in a lengthy war
anyplace in Asia. Nor could I believe that direct political/military
control of a pipeline route could be a rational motive for such an
involvement. They (U.S. & oil industry strategists) must know, I
thought, as well as many of their critics that the oil of the region was
available for sale to the "west" regardless of the military or political
context in which it was produced.

But Washington _does_ seem to moving toward such a quagmire -- radically
different from Vietnam but a quagmire nevertheless. It is, that is,
allowing itself to drawn in deep. (This was Mao's phrase for the
fundamental strategy of guerilla warfare.) And thus 9/11 promises to
become the most successful terrorist act in human history: it has
already achieved what (hypothetically) was its main or sole objective --
involving the U.S. in a war with the Islamic world.

Carrol