> Any rationally thinking
>person could easily see that the attack on the WTC would result in a net
>political loss for the Arab/Islamic world - so no rational calculus can
>explain that act.
I now write:
Wojtek, despite the fact that you are a soul brother on the relatively trivial SUV question, I'll have to depart from you on this one. Supposing that some cell or groupuscles of cells loosely affiliated with Bin Laden were responsible for Sept 11 (and it seems that we're going to have to take the CIA and FBI's word for it), from their point of view this was not a counter-productive act at all. All of the tactics being pondered by the U.S. national security state -- hot-button retaliatory strikes, grabbing and trying Bin Laden and El Qaeda members, building an international coalition with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, etc. -- will strengthen the resolve of the committed as well as winning over those formerly agnostic toward "Muslim fundamentalism." Short of "helping" Musharraf's dictatorship purge the Pakistani military, intelligence services, and secret police of jihadists (which itself would be very messy), I have a hard time seeing how any of the U.S.' "policy options" will not result in civil war in Pakistan, for example. Just what Bin Laden and crew ordered. And that's "blowback" for ya.
John Gulick