Osama misunderstands us. We are opposed to the irrelevant war in Iraq and continuing to mess around with Afghanistan, but the reason, in part, is because we see it as a waste of time and energy that should be being put into blowing him off the face of the earth. Bush and Cheney were so lost in their P.N.A.C., A.E.I., Mylroie, Saddam, fantasies that they diverted the war with Bin Laden to Iraq. That may be their biggest crime…
I’m not too keen on a truce with Osama Bin Laden, myself.
9:00 PM To amplify on this point. During the Clinton Administration, it became clear that the epicenter for the terrorists attacks was not any of the Arab States. It was an alliance of loose cannon Islamic fundamentalists, and the principle one was Osama Bin Laden. Recall the failed bombing attempt we made during the Clinton watch. In the lead up to Bush’s election, the neoconservative groups saw this change in focus as wrong. They argued that the enemy was Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Iranians. This was the thrust of their publications, their books, their letters. They came into government when Bush was elected, dead set on war with Iraq, Iran, and maybe North Korea. They were eager to press the policy Wolfowitz had suggested in 1992 [now known as the Bush Doctrine] of unilateral preemptive war.
When 911 happened, they saw their chance and sent us off to war with Iraq. Richard Clarke’s book made clear that the planning about Al Qaeda was ignored, even after 911. So we’ve been spinning our wheels in Iraq while the true center of our problem, Al Qaeda, has remained relatively free to think about whatever they are planning. This is one of the many great tragedies of Mr. Bush’s presidency.
But Bin Laden wants to make a pact with the American people to leave them alone and he’ll leave us alone. It might be the right thing for us to do, leave them [the Middle East] alone, but he’s not in a position to do the negotiating. And we sure aren’t going to leave him alone. He’s going to do whatever he does. I hope we catch him at it. But I expect he misses the point of our culture as badly as we misunderstand his. If the crazy neoconservatives will get out of the way and stop tying us up in knots, maybe we’ll figure out how to fight our real enemy…
Man, I got so mad reading Against All Enemies (RClarke) I couldn’t finish it.
The truce offering is an Islamic formality. It is a cultural formula for justifying doing something that is distinctly not justified by the Quran. It is used in war times to justify the coming slaughter of innocents.
If Clinton had gotten a minimum of support from Congress to go after bin Laden after the African embassy bombings we might not be listening to these tapes.