2nd-wave attax "Max B. Sawicky" <sawicky at bellatlantic.net>
I don't think OBL gives a brass patootie for Palestine or Iraq. If he did, he wouldn't have been a U.S. collaborator in the past. He wants to install clerical fascist (or, if you want to get technical, rightist) regimes in SA and elsewhere. What did he say, if anything, when Iraq invaded Kuwait?
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CB: Whatever OBL does care about, U.S. military and imperialist role in Iraq, Palestine and even SA are the cause of OBL and the others organizing Sept. 11. Assuming arguendo that OBL himself doesn't care about Palestine or Iraq, his movement would get nowhere without the mass anger at U.S. military and imperialist role in the whole region. As you say " he draws general popular support from anti-us feeling, " . I would add that he could get nowhere without that general popular support.
The point here is not a moral one but an objective factual and causal one. The cause of Sept. 11 was U.S. actions in that region. The people who did it were thinking that they were retaltiating, whether they had overall evil, rightwing, fascist motives or not. Therefore, the rode to avoiding future Sept. 11's is to withdraw from the region, stop blockading Iraq , etc. The attack on Afghanistan increases rather than decreases the objective likelihood of future Sept. 11's. Whether people like it or not, that's a fact. Cheney's announcement of a second wave of attacks is strong evidence that the attack on Afghanistan failed in stopping future attacks, and probably will cause the second wave of attacks.
The radical left proposal is not to do nothing, but for the U.S. to do something: End the blockade of Iraq and all the other stuff that has pissed those people off so much that they have come all the way around to the other side of the world in desparate , suicide bombings. That is a pragmatic proposal.
But for the U.S. attacks and blockade on Iraq and Israeli attacks on Palestine, no Sept. 11.
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The history of Arab elites is one of selling out the Palestinians. OBL is no different. Assuming he was even thinking in this direction, what is a logical hypothesis as to the position of Palestine after a WTC attack, with Ariel Sharon heading the Israeli govt?
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CB: Few if any have said it was smart for OBL to retaliate. One might say it backfired. But it is an astonishing denial to ignore the connection between the recent history of U.S. action in that region as a cause of Sept. 11. Why didn't they bomb Germany or Mexico ? What characteristic of the U.S. made it the choice ? The answer is obvious.
We can all denounce OBL and his group, and denounce the U.S. at the same time. Our assignment , if we choose to take it ( with Mr. Phelps) , is to prevent the U.S. people from hiding their heads in the sand from the truth and _consequences_ of their establishing a global empire, disabuse them of their claim to innocence abroad and promotion of democracy and peace. We must resurrect the Viet Nam syndrome. Americans need to get real about the role of their government in the world, and stop claiming they haven't done anything that would result in a Sept. 11. I repeat. It did not just fall out of the sky.
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All the negative features of U.S. foreign policy are irrelevant to OBL's thinking, except insofar as he draws general popular support from anti-us feeling, the latter of which is well founded to some extent for the reasons you note.
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CB: Yes, probably, though I don't know with much certainty what OBL thinks. I'm thinking more that Sept. 11 has social and political causes rather than individual psychological ones. OBL reflects a social/political situation,and no doubt the reflection is distorted.
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mbs
CB: Do you really deny that Sept. 11 was a retaliation for U.S. mass murder against Iraq and Israeli mass murder against the Palestinians ? Do you really deny that the U.S. has a fascistic foreign policy ? Even the attacks on Iraq were in defense of Saudi Arabia with its retrograde fascist worldview.