Did Osama Bin Laden Win?

True, but bin Laden's family doesn't actually like him. Disowned him, in fact.

Not necessarily. It's rarely anything like 5 dimensional chess. It's more like regular chess, except it's for oligarchs.

Yeah, they disowned him in the mid 1990s. The Bush family connections go back to the 1970s:

https://listverse.com/2018/01/06/10-bush-bin-laden-connections-that-raised-a-few-eyebrows/

There are a half million victims who disagree.

Just to put that in perspective, that's equivalent to 9/11 everyday for four months.

Who is interfering with and funding attacks on innocent people exactly?

Well, there was 9/11, which is still the largest terrorist attack in history, and of course predates and was the cause of our response, so I kinda think that one counts, don't you?

And the fact that it's been 5 years since a terrorist attack in the US is the point.

Yes, Muslim terrorist organizations are waging war across wide swathes of Africa (Boko Haram), the Middle East (ISIL, al Qaeda) and Central Asia (the Taliban). Between these 4 organizations 75% of all terrorist attacks originate. 3 of the 4 existed before the US response to the 9/11 attacks, ISIL being the only major terrorist group forming since that time.

If you want to blame the US response for the rise of ISIL, there's truth to that. The world in general is not safer than before 9/11, though it's hard to know what would have happened with a lack of response as well. Certainly al-Qaeda and the Taliban would have been emboldened, and Boko Haram has spread largely independent of any major US response.

America and the West however are safer now, as we've seen attacks dwindle and almost all cases in the last 8 years have been individually inspired fanatics without serious backing or planning by foreign cells.

Globalists will scream that this means we value the lives of our citizens more than anyone else.

And my response to that is yes, that's true, each government is ultimately responsible to its own citizens. To the American government, a US life is worth more than one in Yemen or Nigeria.

Why? Because the citizens that constitute that government want it to be.

And that's true in pretty much every nation on Earth throughout all of recorded history.

At this point, at least, it appears that most of the US security goals have been achieved, because the bombs aren't going off over here anymore.

And the fundamentalist nutjobs are busy fighting each other.

Well on that at least we concur.

See Amaris' response. She believes that the US funded and trained OBL. This is not true, and her own sources say so.

As to your statement that America didn't do anything to OBL? Different issue. Muslim fundamentalist terrorism is largely justified by their religion by the various violent passage in the Qu'ran that explicitly state that response to any non-believer that does things that the religion itself says is absolutely fine to do to them. The Hadith goes further and states that no area that ever holds a Mosque should allowed to be conquered by an enemy - despite the fact that so many of those areas held churches and temples before the Muslims themselves conquered them.

OBL himself? No, America did nothing to him. He was the child of luxury and could have helped run the family business and have babies with his 20 wives and even more mistresses (IIRC he has ~40 kids).

His first screeds were against the govt of Saudi Arabia for being a 'colony of America' and vows to punish them both for allowing US troops in 'the place of the two holies' (Mecca and Medina).

OBL's manifesto on the reasoning behind the attack on 9/11 was the various perfidies of the West, such as the Iraq war and sanctions. This including backing the Jews in Palestine, because the people of Palestine weren't originally Jews but Arabs, per his rant. That we stopped the establishment of Shariah law in places where we had influence in favor of secular justice. He openly calls for the overthrow of most Arab states in favor of religious rule. Then blames us as we won't submit to Islam, and therefore degrade the world with our acts of fornication, gambling, intoxication, and homosexuality. He specifically calls out the fact that we believe in secular governance, and allow usury, and therefore let the Jews run the world. And that we 'degrade' our women by letting them work in entertainment industries.

There's a little bit of truth in it mixed with copious amounts of bullshit. But clearly, yes, OBL did hate us for our freedoms, as he spent just as much time ranting about those in his justification for attacking America as he did in calling out America's actions in the Middle East.

Spot, I certainly understand your 'broad concept', it's a common refrain from the left. I just happen to disagree with it.

And to me, mastery of a subject does involve knowledge of details. Certainly authority based on understanding and knowledge is null and void if you can't get the basic terms right.

To me, your 'broad concept' was indeed a high level abstraction. But that's what makes it justified in debating.

I certainly think of things in terms of national interest and real politik. Why? Because that's how the nations act. All of them. Every single one.

I was an international relations major in college, and while my career ended up in a different field yes it still informs how I perceive these actions.

LOL. Guess I once again see things differently. If it is one of the most valuable things we can do (and yes, I'd say gaining different perspectives ranks up there), then it follows that it isn't ridiculous.

If I misunderstood that, fair enough. The term feet of clay contextually means something about to fall due to a lack of a foundation. I took it to mean that.

Wisdom? That depends entirely on perspective.

LOL, oh, that's not true at all, and history very much teaches that. Yes, all empires fall, but the ones who wield power adroitly do last longer. Look at the UK.

The best historical example to the US is Athens. It was a limited democracy that looked down on its friends, waged ruthless foreign wars for its own benefit, and created amazing culture.

The US at least has tried to bring democracy to nations that have lacked that. Without a doubt it was successful in Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Less so in other places. We certainly helped several nations from the Soviet Union. We'll see what happens in Iraq. The Arab Spring wasn't explicit to the US, but certainly was inspired and aided by it, and while they chose Islamic Republics, they at least got to choose, overthrowing dictators in Libya and Egypt.

And of course there are numerous cases where the US looked to only it's own interests regardless of ideology, and the body counts in the Cold War were enormous, and US policy in Latin America and intervention in Iran morally repugnant.

Both of these things are true at the same time.

If I were to lay odds, I'd say it winds up an Iranian client state. Or at least most of it does. It may yet fracture.

We're not even in the top 10 of longest lasting Empires.... unless you think we're still such? I wouldn't call us an Empire past the loss of India. The Commonwealth just means they put the Queen on their money and we get to use their athletes.

Right now, we're being told to expect empty shelves in supermarkets and that we can't guarantee some items will be available AT ALL.

If that's an Empire, it's just had the Battle of Jakku.

Since the Renaissance, the British Empire is absolutely the largest, longest-lasting, and most important empire on Earth. It is definitely the most impactful empire to the current political clime of the world. Modern maps and political institutions are defined by the Crown across huge swaths of the world, and it still has lasting cultural legacy.

Sure, there are tons of Empires in history, but the world we live in now was created by the British.

I certainly acknowledge that empire faded in the post-war period, but that doesn't change the fact that for a small island in the Atlantic the British were extraordinarily successful, especially in a time period where communication and transportation has meant that other powers rose and fell with singular regularity.

Does Christianity not still see it's place as wielding political authority?

Some sects do. But hard-baked into most liberal western democracies these days is the basic separation of church and state.

This thread is proof that he won.

fucked up if true

Your top leaders regularly attend The National Prayer Breakfast, explicitly run by a Family of religious kooks who want to shape policy.

No-one is fucking buying that "separation" bullshit.

Really, this country is a borderline theocracy. Bush was a fucking evangelist. Trump was a breath of fresh air.

THAT is one of the few things Trump did well, though I'm entirely certain it wasn't on purpose. He pulled back the curtain on the very deep rooted system of theocracy in our government, and the naked power grab that was the real reason behind these so-called Christian organizations. I mean *we* know it, but I'd wager most people though they were just harmless church groups and religious politicians, but it goes so much deeper than that. We watched in real-time as the US government manipulated people's faith to push an agenda that would result in 700,000+ people dead, and counting.

It hasn't gone away, it's just being tucked back behind the curtains again, but for a little while, we saw it.

I said it when I first became "militant atheist" but every religion's goal is the whole ball of wax.
Secular society wants the religions to get along with other religions, and non-religion, but the religious want none of it.
They wanna devour the whole shlameel, and they just think they're entitled to.

I was laughed off as a kook for saying that shit.
Who's laughing now?

Exactly, we have precautions against it, but nonetheless religiosity and appeals to higher moral authority are central to political campaigns anyway.

Not really. If we were serious about the "separation of church and state", political donations from religious organizations would be a criminal offence (including donations to bullshit like PACs in the USA) and any priest/pastor/reverend/choir boy who opened their mouth about any political candidate would immediately cause their church to lose their tax-exempt status.

It's time to get serious about these religious assholes.

I can't decide if Trump accelerated the process of the Christian Right gleefully rejecting every single thing Jesus ever said, or if it had already happened and he just made them get louder about it.

He just made them louder about it.

Por que no los dos?

Personally I see him having rode that particular train into the WH.

He did, but he tore back the curtain on conservatives and christians.

Yes.