I finished Ghost Wars by Stephen Coll. It's about the wars in Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. My initial reaction to the book is here.
One thing that struck me as I got near the end. The CIA's anti-terrorism team had a Bin Laden Unit that became obsessesed with Al Qaeda and pushed and pushed the Clinton administration to let them "take-out" bin Laden, on some occasions, even if it meant killing innocent bystanders in the process. (Hmmm. There's a word for that isn't there?)
But what's never mentioned, and which only occurred to me that this was going on during the Clinton presidenct over ONE MILLION Iraqis, including 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, were dying of starvation and disease brought about by United Nations sanctions against Iraq, that were maintained and enforced primarily by the United States and the United Kingdom. Two UN coordinators resigned in protest at the inhumanity of the US and UK. One cause of Osama bin Laden's murderous hatred of the US was its responsibility for these deaths. He even said so in his statement after the 9-11 bombings. This anger over the 500,000 childrens' deaths was ignored then, and it is ignored again in Coll's book.* As I said in my initial post on the book, that's the sort of background information that would make things even more explicable.
So, I'll say the book is very, very, good at describing the geo-politics and power struggles of the times, but due to the author's blind-spots, it fails to provide an entirely accurate picture of the subject and the times.
*To be accurate, bin Laden's anger about the 500,000 Iraqi children killed by UN/US/UK sanctions wasn't entirely ignored. It was occasionally mentioned and then dismissed, in favour of the highly improbable, highly stupid, highly ridiculous, highly disgusting, highly incoherent argument that the terrorists "hate us for our freedoms."
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8 comments:
Great review.
I don't think they hate us for our freedoms, they hate because of their religion.
It is all religious period. Ralph Peters says it well.
Ralph Peters "The utter failure of Islamic civilization between Morocco and Pakistan. The Islamic world's values, traditions, structures and practices are thoroughly uncompetitive in the 21st century (and already were in the last century). All that they hold dear holds them back. Islamists and their sympathizers are humiliated by their self-wrought failures, angry at our success, sick with jealousy, and desperately in need of a hot date. The greater Middle East is one vast psycho-ward. And no, I'm not being flippant or exaggerating--the region's Muslim societies are mentally and morally diseased.
Hatred is satisfying. Revenge (even against the innocent) is gratifying. And death is a release from the miseries of a failed existence. As a result--as I've remarked over the years--we face ruthless killers who regard death as a promotion. But, of course, our leaders assure us that religion has nothing to do with any of this."
So, just to be clear, you don't think the 500,000 dead children, Israel's brutal theft of Palestinian lands (and US support for same), the propping-up of corrupt, brutal regimes, have anything to do with it?
I think you belong in a psycho-ward Wayne.
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... wait for it ...
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If that statement hurt you, imagine what it's like to be an entire people denigrated the way you and others denigrate Muslims and Arabs.
I know myself.
Osama does not care about dead children, Jews have lived in Palestine for thousands of years, so nothing was stolen, and the propping-up of corrupt, brutal regimes ....Wait .... was wrong and did make this religious hate strong.
Muslims and Arabs denigrate themselves, they don't require me to do it.
It is not Muslims and Arabs as people, that denigrate them, it is the foolish things they strongly believe and do.
Teaching and raising children to hate is sick. Religion and ideology is child abuse.
Belief, faith and ideology are dangerous and a human flaw, a throw back to primitive times when we were afraid of our shadows, and could not explain the world around us factually.
Christian religious fanatics are just as bad. The late Jerry Falwell, who after 911 said:
"And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen."
How stupid.
Like Frank Zappa sang "you can't run a country by a book of religion".
The stuff religious people genuinely accept is stupid.
Religion and ideology are behind most stupid, horrible stuff.
If we agree on anything, it is on the destructive influence of religion.
But your argument about Osama bin Laden and the dead Iraqi children is identical in every way, shape, and form, to what I described earlier.
Not only do you dismiss out of hand the possibility that as an Arab, a man, and a human being, that he could be genuinely angry at the US and UK causing 500,000 children to die, ... you, yourself dismiss it as important. "Next!!"
The same way it was idiotically dismissed after 9-11.
Killing half-a-million children is a big deal and WE (the West) DID IT.
Your comments about Israel are in complete disagreement with historical reality. Yes, there were small numbers of Jews in Palestine. Just as there were Christians. But there were more of both in Baghdad, and even there they were a tiny minority.
The idea that "the Jews" had always been there, and there was no theft of land is unworthy of response.
urgh. I meant "you dismiss it as UNimportant."
Osama bin Laden cares more about the US being on sacred land, than he does about dead children. It is not unimportant to me or to most Arabs just Osama and his pals.
I readily agree with you that the West in part caused the death of those children, but we are not 100% at fault, as always there is more to it.
It clearly makes me sick to think of one child dying let alone half a million, such a waste.
I must be psycho because I still am here reading your stuff, and some but not all of what you post I agree with, and I actually learn something each time.
On Palestine, here is a link to the history of the area that I have found helpful.
http://www.terrorismawareness.org/what-really-happened/
PS I have just bought Ghost Wars and will see what I think of it.
Thanks for the post on it.
1. Your statement that you know the motivations of Osama bin Laden and all the members or Al Qaeda is groundless.
Yes, bin Laden wanted the "infidels" off of his "sacred land" of Saudi Arabia. Yes, he's a religious moron.
But you have now way of proving that he or the members of his organization are not motivated by genuine grievances against Western interference in the region, including the murderous UN sanctions.
2. I spoke directly with Hans Von Sponeck about the possibility that Saddam Hussein's regime was responsible for some of those 1 million-plus deaths.
He said no.
The Kurdish area suffered less because it was more self-sufficient to begin with, and the higher elevation made the area less hospitable to bacteria, germs etc.
The same went for the outer-desert areas: Smaller population, cleaner surroundings, therefore less deaths.
According to Von Sponeck, Saddam's government tried it's utmost to deliver the limited amounts of food and medicine that it had available, to the people of Iraq.
3. Even taking your statement as being grounded in reality, there's still the fact that we (the West) would be complicit in crimes against humanity.
Yet we never suffer any penalities, and we can even dismiss these atrocities as being a source of terrorist actions against us.
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