1. OBL is not much of a thinker. His politics are sort of child-like. His business head is much more substantial. Zawahiri is the ideological guy.
2. Zawahiri was sort of stuck w/OBL because the latter had the money, or access to money. Z was originally obsessed with overthrowing the Egyptian regime. He got pulled off-mission by his need to suck up to OBL.
3. AQ and the Taliban do not and never had much in common. The Taliban needed OBL for money. More generally, the fundamentalists are profoundly anarchic in character, every element focused on their own parochial concerns. It's really only the dough that keeps them marginally tied together.
4. The Clinton Administration, and especially Sandy Berger, deserve more than a little opprobrium for not connecting some dots and being more aggressive in re: OBL. They had several opportunities to shut down the 9-11 operation, not by invading Afghanistan but by using intelligence available to roll up AQ operatives in the U.S. and elsewhere. Same goes for the Bushies before Sept 2001.
On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 11:01 PM, Bhaskar Sunkara
<bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com> wrote:
> My full comments on the article here: http://theactivist.org
>
> And it's not a question of degree--- it's a question of whether it has
> happened or not.
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