There is some really good news providing people become capable again of mixing good news with bad.
The US decided it wasn’t the US’s job to stop piracy after al Qaeda threatened to send suicide bombers into Somalia if the US went in. This was several years back and for a while pirates grow bolder and bolder. Suddenly, surprise, surprise other countries especially Italy decided to fight piracy instead of just paying off the ever larger ransoms.
Another piece of good news is that India and Pakistan are not lobbying nukes at each other even though extremists in both countries are angry and pushing for war.
If the US withdrew into Isolationism after a dollar collapse and/or, for instance, a vast number of Americans started believing that al Qaeda is just the CIA playing games, other countries would step up to the plate.
Some things looked like good news but may turn out to be anything but! George Bush behaved differently during his last days in office preventing both massive bank bankruptcies, and a collapse of the auto companies under his watch. Unfortunately this means people will blame Obama is we have a severe depression. Just in the news, Stanford International Bank is a Ponzi-scheme or somewhat similar fraud, messing up the financial scene around the world in a new way, something Obama’s stimulus plan hadn’t expected, and even Venezuela under Chavez is guaranteeing bank depositors who deposited from within the Venezuela branch their money. All over the world money is poured toward the rich instead of the poor. This on top of the race to the bottom as governments around the world cut salaries and working conditions so their country can compete better. The US is still boycotting Cuba which hurts the US economy as well and wasting vast funds on military expenditure and military connected foreign aid.
Ominously If al Qaeda had no plans for an immediate strike on the US as long as both Bush and bin Laden preferred to fight in Iraq, the US was messing up its intelligence capabilities by chasing after and hallucinating what wasn’t there. Bin Laden; knowing that if he attacked the US, under Bush, the US might get worked up enough to mass troops in Pakistan. But what do they have to lose if they attack the US under Obama who is already fixating US policy on the al Qaeda threat, instead of slowing bungling into, or toward, fighting with the entire Muslim world which has been bin Laden’s hope.
If desperate domestic US circumstances and/or the UN chose Saudi Arabia to go after al Qaeda to try their leaders in a Muslim court under Saudi law, with anyone who wants to help being deputized under Saudi command, their past lapses in security and the Sunni-Shia divide would present problems. Iran hates al Qaeda but again the Sunni-Shia divide would be a problem. Also, putting Iran in charge of stopping al Qaeda and at the same time demanding no Iranian nuclear weapons program wouldn’t work. Russian and China, if they became in charge of stopping al Qaeda, they might accidentally succeed at making more of the Muslim World mad then the US did.
All the blog talk about what the US should not be doing in Afghanistan, leaves out what should be done. Notice the above comments mulling over the suggestion that the Saudis and/or Chinese deal with al Qaeda, instead of the US, wouldn’t be an improvement.
I have an idea perhaps Spain would be the best country for the UN or circumstance to assign to be in charge of bringing al Qaeda to justice. Muslim clerics in Spain declared al Qaeda a traitor to Islam on the anniversary of the Madrid bombing. Spanish troops are in Afghanistan while refusing to send them to Iraq, and has in the past very vocally challenging self-defeating anti-Qaeda policies under Bush.
It could be priorily agreed by the UN that Spanish marshals go into Pakistan to arrest al Qaeda leaders and if they keep getting executed, and if then troops from various countries under Spanish command have similar problems and/or if there is again a massive al Qaeda attack in Spain, the US would by prior agreement instantly send the marines into Pakistan. That way the US wouldn’t suddenly act like a chicken with its head cut off, Americans knowing full well when we are in danger of being attacked.
The New Yorker Magazine had a comprehensive article on Spain and al Qaeda that is best to read last paragraph first that I hope everyone reads,
https://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/08/02/040802fa_fact?currentPage=all
The links that follow are of Muslims who condemn al Qaeda both from in Spain and from out,
https://www.juancole.com/2005/07/friedman-wrong-about-muslims-again-and.html
https://www.int-review.org/terr42a.html
That an al Qaeda attack is possible and actually more and more likely to the extent Obama makes peace with some Muslims, see the following link now recently updated,
https://capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/15268
Also the more Americans who are willing to believe that al Qaeda is all a CIA or Mossad plot the more they are encouraging al Qaeda to attack again. The best link that I think proves that al Qaeda even if Bush, Cheney and/or the CIA has dirty fingers, is not US orchestrated see,
www.opednews.com/articles/genera_michael__071030_questioning_9_2f11_and.htm
One needs to scawl down after clicking on Oped News
Other background material see,
https://capitolhillblue.com/cont/blog/2419
https://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3961
To approach things from a totally different angle since bin Laden’s dream is of a Muslim nation united in war, perhaps steps toward a common Muslim currency similar to the Euro, and an all Muslim parliament similar to the European Parliament would lessen al Qaeda’s appeal.
I’m not actually sure that any of the above is possible, but I am sure about one thing that unless others join me in mixing criticism and hope in the same article or blog comments, hope for the future will keep diminishing. And join me in making alternative suggestions if one thinks it won’t be productive for the US to send more troops to Afghanistan.
RichardKanePA@aol.com,
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