bin Laden says: Iraq is 'perfect base'
Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 08:50:13 PM PDT
For those of you who don't think bin Laden will try to influence the U.S. elections, consider his recent pronouncements that Iraq is the perfect base for setting up an Al Queda regime.
Sometimes, we really do have to think like John McCain. The world these days is Stratego or Risk on steroids, and it doesn't hurt to sometimes think like a military man. Which is why Jim Webb of Virginia, rather than being a good Obama running mate, would make a good secretary of defense (almost the bizarro-world of Rumsfeld).
So, from a military and strategic standpoint, it's a brilliant move by Osama to say that Iraq is the perfect base for Al Queda.
On first glance, you might think that this kind of statement merely enhances the argument against further entanglement in Iraq, and, especially, the argument that the U.S. should never have been there in the first place.
However, Osama's argument actually helps McCain, and McCain will trumpet the quote during the election by declaring that when we leave, Iraq will become a haven for Al Queda.
Osama wants McCain to win because he is convinced that the Taliban revolt in Afghanistan sent the Soviet Union to its demise, and that a continued American presence in Iraq will do the same.
Oddly, he's wrong on the first count, and possibly right on the second. Although there is no doubt the foibles of the Soviets in Afghanistan did nothing to help prop up an already bankrupt system, it was nothing more than the Soviet version of Vietnam. Afghanistan had much less to do with the fall of the Soviet Union than did the incredible domino effect that followed the Helsinki accords. If you need background on this, nothing is more eloquent, or complete, than Tony Judt's Postwar, A History of Europe Since 1945.
Right or wrong about his attitude about the Soviets, Osama is being proven correct on an almost daily basis about his strategy for defeating America. This is a strategy he laid out a long time ago, and one that Bush, that President-on-a-brain-stem, decided to lend a hand to from almost his first day in office. The strategy is simple, and is as brilliant as the tactical strategies he used to destroy the Twin Towers. Suck the United States into a protracted war in the Middle East, and watch its economy collapse.
What's really a pisser about all this is that Osama is not so smart that he could have come up with this scenario all on his own.
Nobody is, actually. It's like when New Coke came out and there was all this outrage for the original Coke. No marketing guy is that smart to generate that kind of brand demand, but it happened.
Nope. Osama got his boys in planes and they did a nasty, but tactically brilliant thing, but I can't imagine that he thought the U.S. would give him this great strategic blunder on a platter the size of the Alaskan oil fields. In fact, I bet he was counting his fingers every night during the first few months, after the U.S. attacked Afghanistan and drove him into Tora Bora.
But now he has his enemy in his crosshairs.
And John McCain, hero, ready to carry on the tradition of King George.
If you were Osama bin Laden and wanted to finish off the U.S., who would YOU vote for?
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