Donald Sensing has posted a significantly expanded version of his paper, The Soil of Arab Terrorism, online. It's a long version of the presentation he made yesterday to the Middle Tennessee chapter of the Military Officers Association of America.
To which I would add, an important part of the "soil" that nurtures it also lies in what Orson Scott Card refers to as "Moral Stupidity" in the West. He certainly makes a persuasive case.
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*ça c'est vrai*
Bad news, weasel. Shouldn't have included that URL this time. Today's home page entry notes:
"A troll whose IP address begins with 195.6... brags about having used my name to post comments on other blogs. I never really commented on other people's blogs, and now on, I will simply not."
Now you won't either. Your IP address just got banned.
The conventional wisdom about UBL and Al Qaeda is becoming more and more entrenched, and this paper is typical of the thinking of every counter-terrorism expert in the U.S. government and the policy think thanks.
I want to hear more about state sponsorship. I want to hear from the "loose networks" advocates like George Tenet how UBL and Al Qaeda have been able to do something never before seen: plan and execute the largest terrorist attacks in history without any assistance from a hostile state. I want to understand how Al Qaeda obtains the resources that its needs to operate that the terror groups of the 1970s and 1980s (PLO, Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, Carlos the Jackal, Bader-Meinoff, IRA, Red Brigades, Hizb'Allah) needed to get from the Soviet Bloc, Sudan, Libya, Iran or Syria: weapons, training, money laundering, safe houses, passports, visas, unsearchable diplomatic pouches, etc. Somebody needs to explain to me how UBL created in Al Qaeda an "NGO of terror," supported entirely by private, non-governmental resources.
It makes no sense. We've never seen it before, and it needs to be explained.
Joe:
As distasteful as the weasel's "comments" were, I take them as compliments to the outstanding job Winds of Change does, and he is reduced to insults because he can't even come close to presenting a logical argument.
I don't think banning his ISP will prevent his reappearance for long, but at least will make him work a little bit harder to try to bust our balls.
While I would not hesitate to contract the muscles in my forearms if the weasel's neck happened to find itself between my hands, I am not obsessed with him, nor do I let his images drive me into a raging frenzy (his most fervent wish, I'm sure). I also note that no other commenter paid him much attention (a troll's nightmare).
So when he comes back, we should continue to display our indifference to his cries for attention, and he will shrivel up like a plant without water.
I didn't bust him because he was an idiot - we can deal with those. I busted him(?) for impersonating someone else. Apparently, this wasn't the first time either. People like that, we can do without.
Your advice is sound if our troll returns, but from now on I'll be banning on suspicion in this case so it won't last long.
Joshua, of course OBL had state sponsorship, at least two: Afghanistan and covertly, Saudi Arabia.
The difference was that the Taliban were actual allies with OBL (although I read reports that they were beginning to tire of him about a year before the WTC/Pentagon attacks) and Saudi's government was buying him off, paying him protection money, as it were.
But as Jane's Defence documented even before 9-11, OBL had established al Qaeda cells in up to 60 countries by the attacks. OBL funneled money and orders to them.
What Iran's direct involvement was, I do not know. I suspect rather more than Saddam Hussein's. But I can't cite it.
Don't forget Pakistan, which started the Taliban to begin with, ably supported by Saudi money.
That's all the state sponsorship they needed.
And just because wisdom is conventional does not mean it's wrong.