February 08, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

PLAYING INTO BIN LADEN'S HANDS

Osama bin Laden couldn't have asked for a better administration than that of George W. Bush to help bin Laden achieve his objectives. Bin Laden's planned attack on 9/11 was designed to provoke the United States into an irrational and costly response. Instead of treating the attacks as a criminal matter and enlisting the help of law enforcement agencies around the world, Bush decided to make it a war. Even worse, he used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to attack Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11. The war in Iraq has cost the United States credibility around the world. Iraq has been a perfect recruiting ground for al-Qaeda. And the war is sucking the United States dry. This article by Adam Elkus is at www.alternet.org:

According to Atwan's analysis of al-Qaida's "20-year plan," the organization aimed to bring about the fall of the American empire by first provoking -- with the September 11 attacks -- Washington into irrationally invading Muslim lands in pursuit of revenge. Al-Qaida's grand strategists calculated that the invasion would propel the umma, the Muslim community, into joining the jihad. Following the fall of the secular socialist Hussein regime, Iraq has indeed become a training ground for limitless waves of foreign jihadis.

In this context, George W. Bush was a great boon to their efforts. Not only did he invade Iraq, which did not have a thing to do with 9/11, but he did almost everything possible to isolate America from its allies. This policy gave bin Laden ample room to target unpopular pro-American regimes from Madrid to Riyadh. Compared to the Southwest Asian battleground of Afghanistan, Iraq is a more congenial base for al-Qaida, since the language, culture, and terrain are more familiar to most Arabs. The jihadis' strategy is to get America to throw all of its resources into fighting a losing battle against Iraq's lethal patchwork of warring factions.