Did Osama Bin Laden Win?

Hilarious. No one with a brain would consider me Dayton or MAGA. Which, of course, is why your broken brain can't process anything other than 'if he disagrees he is the absolute worst human being ever.'

And I thought you could barely feed or clothe yourself in other threads? That was you, wasn't it?

If you work for aid, good for you. I'm a caregiver for others in my family and have highly compensated technical skills, and give generously to charity.

I'm fine with my morals, and I guarantee you my charitable giving dwarfs yours. After all, I have the resources to do so.

But people like you are why your own causes fail so constantly.

You don't persuade, you moralize, and always attack anyone who you think isn't as pure as you are.

You are why people like Trump win. The constant and unrelenting bullshit tarnishes everyone that opposes those cretins.

Yes, we know you in your massive ignorance and naivete think that the US is the only bad actor in the world. We know that you think that responding to an attack on our shores was morally wrong. We know that you have no understanding of what happens overseas, no knowledge of the enemy that we are facing, and have bought in entirely to the conceit that it is only the US that is at fault, when Islamic fundamentalism makes even our own Christofascists look merciful.

I'm not going to bother repudiating the rest. I can read it on the World Socialist Website any time I want.

The hilarious thing is you think you are an independent thinker, when in reality you are just spouting someone else's dogma because they too want to wield power to force their worldview on as many as possible. You are just another shill, and there isn't an iota of independent thought in that head of yours that isn't regurgitating someone else's dogma.

The reality is that the US brought more people out of Afghanistan to live in these shores when we realized that their own government would never protect them from the Taliban than were ever killed. The reality is that the only peace and securty the women of Afhganistan have had in the last 20 years was due to the West in general and America in particular. The reality is the war will continue over there without our presence, just like it did before we were involved. The reality is that 16 million Afghani women will become enslaved because we AREN'T there.

And things over here will go on as they ever have. So we should try to put smart people with good goals into governance and tackle problems that impact our people directly, which includes the rise of the Christofascists, a broken legal system, and overt oligarchy.

But I don't hate all soldiers any more than I think all cops are bad. I give the US credit for keeping major countries like South Korea and Japan free from outside aggression, supporting the Ukraine, and yes, fighting the worst aspects of Muslim fundamentlism. The term 'World Police' started in the 50s when the US fought its 'Police Action' to protect the people of South Korea from a particularly virulent and repugnant form of communist dictatorship.

Quite frankly, Muslim fundamentalists would put you to death. Instead of laugh at your ridiculous screeds.

But feel free to go do charity work in Afghanistan now. I'm sure your sense of self-righteousness will protect you.

After all, they need the help the most, per your worldview, don't they? Not the affluent West, the poor victims of Western imperialism.

No? Right.

And here I thought Korea was the UN? Better not tell the Princess Pats!!!!

Hasn't that already been debunked countless times?

No. We did.

I've got about 20 clones in the tanks right now.

I'm not planning anything horrific - I have an idea to harvest their beards for 9/11 commemorative merkins to sell to 'Merkins.

Amaris will never let reality interfere with her dogma.

So how does it work that america was not involved with creating a terrorist who is famous for his hatred of america?

I really thought we were involved in that somehow, and all the history says we were, but why don't you explain how this guy hated america so much without america doing anything to him.

If you're going with that "logic," then the Jews and gypsies and homosexuals created Hitler.

This is completely misleading.
There were no Islamic terrorist attacks on US soil for years before 9/11. There continued to be infrequent attacks afterwards, most recently in Florida in 2016.
And there clearly has been a huge uptick globally, reflecting the increasing numbers adhering to radical Islamism.

But Bin Laden has not "won". Short of the emergence of an Islamic Caliphate controlling much of the world, that isn't going to happen.

How godwin of you. However that is apples and oranges and you know it.

Bin Laden thought we were okay back when we were helping the mujaheddin kick the Russians out of Afghanistan. Had we remained engaged after that, things might have worked out better. But we ignored the aftermath, and we continue to support Israel, and haters gonna hate. Demiurge has been getting it right in this thread.
Islam has never had a reformation like Christianty has. That faith still sees church and state as the same entity. The more extreme wings of it still believe in conversion by the sword, the treatment of women as chattel property, and a variety of other things that would make the Spanish Inquisition blush. But, if they stuck to their own historical areas, no-one would care. Sadly, the modern industrial world is powered by oil, and there's lots of it in the ME, and there you are. Having said that, as the world moves away from the fossil fuel standard, expect things to calm down in that area. At least until we start fighting wars over water, which is next on the hit parade.

Good thing we got more water than them.

If you vote Dem, it might even not be full of lead or other pollutants.

Here's the thing and I do mean to be constructive here.

You and @Amaris debate with almost completely opposing styles. Having crossed swords with you both at various points it's actually quite interesting how the dynamic plays out and how you both react to each other's mentality.

You're far better with specifics and facts, whereas she is more inclined to discuss the meanings behind them. Yes she does habitually swing to extremes but there is value in more abstract (even subjective) positions, positions which can be undermined in the specific but nonetheless hold in the meta.

Sometimes she does go too far into those abstracts and ignores the concrete evidence, but in all truth you tend to fall into the opposite trap in that you occasionally focus on the leaves and miss the forest so to speak.

One example would be our own recent exchange, whereby I was attempting to articulate a broad concept about why the Afghanistan mission was, IMHO, destined to fail and result in greater long term harm regardless of the intent. Amaris would, I think, understand my reasoning readily but we got bogged down in minutiae of what technically constitutes the Middle East, or which empire invaded and which one brought indirect harm via exploitation of trade routes. We couldn't see eye to eye because we were looking at the question at different levels of abstraction (entirely aside from our biases and emotional responses)

We're all ridiculous. Wasting our adult lives having debates with virtual strangers about things we cannot influence is patently ridiculous.

It's also one of the most valuable things we can do, no matter who is "right".

I changed it only insofar as you presentation of that capability seemed to be self justifying. Your case seemed to be that by removing various dictators you had proven your strength and that was a valuable goal in and of itself. Maybe I misinterpreted but the post didn't really seem to lend itself to any other scenario.

No one doubts the US's potency, I think. Many doubt it's collective wisdom.

Very probably, but that is an argument used by the inhabitants of all empires, that their imposed peace is evidence of their necessity.

Nonetheless those empires do all fall and crucially some go more quietly than others. Those which try to use their power as a means to sustain themselves are no more successful than any other, they merely run the risk of dying as tyrannies as they cling ever tighter to that which they once held easily.

I would hope that lesson is one you are not ignorant of.

At the end of the day it was a huge L for Bin Laden . He barely met any of his goals - Israel is still around, the US has not gone bankrupt, the complete restoration of Sharia law has not happened, gays are still humping, music is still playing, people are still gambling - and spent the latter part of his life barely living a life, being continually on the run and under lockdown. Guy was basically the 0-16 Lions

No. While he existed before we came along, it was the US who nurtured a relationship with him, built him up, funded him, and then fucked him over when it came time to pay up.


https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3340101
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/s...chapter/the-united-states-and-the-mujahideen/
https://publicintegrity.org/accountability/osama-bin-laden-how-the-u-s-helped-midwife-a-terrorist/
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/06/how-reagan-made-a-terrorist-kingpin-of-osama.html

Yeah, those links aren't backing up the claim you're making. Everyone knows America and OBL had a common enemy in the 80's, and that they might have both worked on the same larger projects or participated in the same battles, but that's still a long ways from showing the US "nurtured a relationship with him, built him up, funded him, and then fucked him over when it came time to pay up."


You might as well say Wakanda created the Scarlet Witch because they both fought against Thanos.

None of this matters, it doesn't excuse OBL from planning the execution of 3,000 civilians.

No, it does not.

I'm looking for where you said that. I'm not even sure Amaris said that...

Not many people are brave enough to say it directly, but the "you brought this on yourselves" dog whistle is loud and clear.

Oh, I'm sorry, that's my fault. We helped Bin Laden, but it was Saddam Hussein we fucked over. I screwed that up and got them mixed up. That's my fault. I retract that.

Oh my, no. I get upset with the US and I agree with Malcolm X's notion of the chickens coming home to roost (that the US would one day experience the backlash from our foreign policy), but there's no way in hell I'd ever sympathize with Osama bin Laden. That fucker can rot in hell. I mean, if it existed.

*citation still needed

By not letting him have his way with Kuwait?

It's true that the U.S. helped Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, but I can't really rank that among our worst foreign policy sins. Iran probably was the bigger threat on the world stage. It's not comparable to all the times we supported brutal dictators overthrowing democratically elected governments just because the democratically elected governments were too socialist and/or insufficiently accommodating to U.S. business interests.

Also hard to see a problem with turning on Saddam later. He was a piece of shit.

We helped Bin Laden when we helped the Mujahadeen, of which he was a part. We helped his family.

Hell, the Bush family had a long relationship with the Bin Laden family: https://www.bollyn.com/the-family-ties-between-bush-and-bin-laden-2/
We helped them escape the country when 9/11 happened: https://www.salon.com/2004/03/11/unger_1/

Yes and no. We promised Saddam that if we would defeat the leading powers in Iran, we'd back his regime. As you know, the US backing anyone brings with it US presence, US power, and US military might, and that's what we did. We clandestinely urged him to start a war with Iran, and supported his attack by funneling weapons and money: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq61.pdf

Remember those weapons of mass destruction Bush claimed existed? That was thanks to us, and Germany, who supplied Saddam with the weapons he would use to gas the Kurds. So when we went into Iraq later, with the worry of weapons we never found, that's why. He didn't have any, but he had at some point because we gave them to him: https://theweek.com/articles/441993...y-sold-chemical-weapons-components-syria-iraq

The Reagan administration provided classified intel to Saddam, (https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/2...rove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/) and even attacked Iran directly at one point in an effort to turn the tide of the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis

We were also selling weapons to the contras, which is old news: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/reagan-iran/

When it was all said and done, the US didn't officially back Saddam. That was enough to make things turn a bit sour (the general complaint was that Saddam wasn't the one who turned the tide, so he didn't get the reward). Still, Saddam was interested in taking Kuwait. The Bush administration told him while they had no desire to see war, they had no vested interest in Kuwait: https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...ly-1990/ff97c773-ea84-41ec-8c7c-f811ea61d2e5/

Of course, once Saddam began attacking Kuwait, that changed, and so Saddam had been betrayed by the US by not only not backing him, but directly attacking him as a result of attacking Kuwait and calling it an act of war.

You provided weapons and money to his poorer comrades, while bin Laden himself had his own weapons and money.

This isn't the smoking gun you want it to be anymore than Shuri and Wanda both protecting Peter when he had that Infinity Gauntlet.

We also provided a lot of business to his family, of which he was a part until he went off on his own to find exciting new people to kill.

I have no idea what the hell that is.

@Amaris you have to remember 14th still believes america was over in the middle east trying to spread freedom and goodwill. America was the great white knight coming to save the dirty sand monkeys from themselves according to his mindset. He thinks we should be occupying them and helping them come out of their primitive ways because white makes right.

But do keep trying to fight the good fight with intellectually dishonest actors like him and demiurge.

Okay? Do you think this was some sort of five dimensional chess where America intentionally did business with a family so one member would have the funds to become a terrorist?