Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
we're not doing much of anything to address the greivances that animate Al Qaeda.
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How would you suggest we do this? What has JFK proposed to do?
as I recall, AQ 3 main ones articulated around 9/2001-
1] We support Israel.
now AQ was blowing us up during Clinton times, so this would be a problem even if, as you may suggest, Bush hadn't moved towards Israel more. But, at least as a promise Israel is moving out of the territories, so perhaps 5 years from now there will be 2 states.
I think we will still be seen as supporting Israel in AQ's eyes, and Israelis will still be getting blown up periodically. That is, maybe this one will shrink, but it ain't going away.
and JFK would do...?
2] We had troops on the arabian Penisula.
We at least are closing bases in SA, but moving them to smaller local countries. Of course, we moved many many more troops into the area. I'm not sure if Afghanistan is part of the Penisula, but I'd guess even if not, out troops there make a whole new grievence. So on this one, unless AQ was really just worried about SA, we probably are worse.
JFK would have.....? You can't say he wouldn't have sent troops to Afghanistan, because he's been saying we should send more. He isn't saying we shouldn't have gone to Iraq, he's saying we should have talked theFrench/Germans into going with us.
3]The UN sanctions are killing Iraqui babies
we did solve this one, though I'm pretty sure they'd want to update the grievance. But, if we can get a functioning country in place, we will have eliminated this one. Of course that will take time.
All of the grievances will take time to address to the extent we should address them. The thing that I keep going back to is that super high percentages of SA and Egypt citizens (these are the polls I remember) hated us before 9/11 and then thought we did 9/11 as an excuse to go grab oil. This is the only "grievance" I'm truly concerned about, and I don't see how status quo foreign policy would do anything.
