Another important post from Consortium News explains again the significance of Osama Bin Laden's back handed endorsement of George Bush in late October 2004, which may have been crucial in securing Bush's "re-election":
Today, bin-Laden’s strategy makes even more sense. Bush’s violent policies for reshaping the Middle East are spreading popular rage as the death toll mounts in Lebanon from Israeli air strikes against Hezbollah guerrilla strongholds and as Palestinians continue to die from Israel’s crackdown in Gaza, following raids that captured three Israeli soldiers.
Just as Bush and his advisers see the carnage as “birth pangs of a new Middle East” – in the words of Condoleezza Rice – so bin-Laden perceives the same violence as crucial for his own vision of a “new Middle East,” by isolating the dwindling number of pro-Bush leaders in the Arab world from the “Arab street.”
Compounding this Arab political problem, the Bush administration has even boasted of the anti-Hezbollah positions taken by the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan – exposing those autocratic leaders to furious criticism from their citizens.
This dilemma appears to have contributed to a surprising development on July 23 after Bush invited some of his more reliable friends from the Saudi monarchy to a strategy session at the White House.
However, instead of simply endorsing Bush’s hard-line support for Israel’s Lebanese offensive, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal delivered a letter from Saudi King Abdullah beseeching Bush to pressure Israel to stop its attack inside Lebanon that have killed nearly 400 people, mostly civilians.
“We requested a cease-fire to allow for a cessation of hostilities,” the Saudi foreign minister told reporters after the meeting. “I have brought a letter from the Saudi king to stop the bleeding in Lebanon.”
White House officials said Bush rebuffed the king’s appeal and remained adamantly opposed to the idea of pressuring Israel into a cease-fire. Though the Saudis and other Sunni governments see a threat from the rising influence of Shiite-ruled Iran, which backs Hezbollah, they also are worried about being viewed by their own populations as Bush’s puppets.
As I've said before, Bush is a gift from Allah as far as Bin Laden is concerned. No other American president has so stupidly and coldly made more enemies in the Middle East than Bush. There are so many ways the Middle East and south Asia could get worse that such a situation would tax the ability of even the most skilled administration. Tragically, those who seized power in the U.S. in the bloodless coup of 2000 are the blindest, most incompetent, most corrupt, most dishonest managers of U.S. foreign policy in our country's history. Think for a moment of the gruesome possibilities that are shaping up:
- Iraq becomes even more savage and violent, as civil war sweeps over the entire country, endangering the U.S. forces caught in the middle of it.
- The Kurds try to secede from Iraq, creating an independent Kurdistan. Turkey immediately invades to crush this new nation.
- The U.S. attacks Iran, triggering a shocking rise in the price of oil, inflicting hundreds of thousands of casualties, and setting off a general war of Islam versus the United States.
- Pakistan vastly expands its nuclear arsenal, prompting a worried India to launch a terrible pre-emptive strike.
- Israel gets bogged down again in a brutal guerrilla war in Lebanon and Syria is dragged into it.
- The Saudi royal family is overthrown and replaced by a ferociously anti-American Islamist government.
- Afghanistan descends into anarchy as a revived Taliban attempts a comeback.
And then imagine George W. Bush having to deal with any--or possibly all--of these possibilities. If that doesn't put the fear of God into you, I really don't know what in the hell would.
Yes, Bin Laden knew exactly what he was doing. His favorite American is pushing the world to the brink of catastrophe--just as he hoped.
No comments:
Post a Comment