On OBL, USA and Murder

[DeTomaso]

It's perhaps not up to us "non-believers" from abroad but up to the neighbours to keep an eye on them and to find a workable solution where we have failed. After ten years of fruitless actions on all possible fronts one simply has failed. We should realize this.

On the lack of female rights within Muslim societies. Since how long do women in the Christian West have equal rights - in practice and not only in theory? A brief view to the "Arab Spring" shows that fundamental social shifts in Muslim countries presuppose an internal development first that calls for support more than our direct military intervention on the ground. Guess the US is the 1st Western military power involved in Libya that has understood.

On terror bases in Afghanistan. The most recent CIA report speaks of 50 individuals in the max. That is by far less than the Germans host against their will and approximately 1/10 of the al-Qaeda fighters in Pakistan.

On intervention. If there is something that unifies all Afghans then it is their abysmal hate of being occupied by foreigners. This has less to with us today in special, it is historically founded. A Chinese occupation force would have to face the same reaction.

It is not only safer to pull out as the Dutch did already last year, followed by the Canadians this year, occupation is no longer to be justified after the death of bin Laden as the cause of war in 2001.

But if bin Laden was just a cheap forwarded reason to intervene, to take over the strategic points at the borders predominatly to the Iran as an interception of the Pakistan-Iran axis to come, perhaps even to ravage the local resources (is there something beside opium?), to control the Russian gas pipelines, or to change the Afghan version of hardcore Islam, to export our Christian-orientated lifestyle, well, then an ongoing occupation has to fuel the war and finally our boys and girls there have to pay the prize for our political failure. Is that really what we want?

Edited May 14, 2011 by DeTomaso

[grannywils]

It's perhaps not up to us "non-believers" from abroad but up to the neighbours to keep an eye on them and to find a workable solution where we have failed. After ten years of fruitless actions on all possible fronts one simply has failed. We should realize this.

On the lack of female rights within Muslim societies. Since how long do women in the Christian West have equal rights - in practice and not only in theory? A brief view to the "Arab Spring" shows that fundamental social shifts in Muslim countries presuppose an internal development first that calls for support more than our direct military intervention on the ground. Guess the US is the 1st Western military power involved in Libya that has understood.

On terror bases in Afghanistan. The most recent CIA report speaks of 50 individuals in the max. That is by far less than the Germans host against their will and approximately 1/10 of the al-Qaeda fighters in Pakistan.

On intervention. If there is something that unifies all Afghans then it is their abysmal hate of being occupied by foreigners. This has less to with us today in special, it is historically founded. A Chinese occupation force would have to face the same reaction.

It is not only safer to pull out as the Dutch did already last year, followed by the Canadians this year, occupation is no longer to be justified after the death of bin Laden as the cause of war in 2001.

But if bin Laden was just a cheap forwarded reason to intervene, to take over the strategic points at the borders predominatly to the Iran as an interception of the Pakistan-Iran axis to come, perhaps even to ravage the local resources (is there something beside opium?), to control the Russian gas pipelines, or to change the Afghan version of hardcore Islam, to export our Christian-orientated lifestyle, well, then an ongoing occupation has to fuel the war and finally our boys and girls there have to pay the prize for our political failure. Is that really what we want?

 

I must say you are making a certain amount of sense to me.

[ginnyfizz]

It's perhaps not up to us "non-believers" from abroad but up to the neighbours to keep an eye on them and to find a workable solution where we have failed. After ten years of fruitless actions on all possible fronts one simply has failed. We should realize this.

On the lack of female rights within Muslim societies. Since how long do women in the Christian West have equal rights - in practice and not only in theory? A brief view to the "Arab Spring" shows that fundamental social shifts in Muslim countries presuppose an internal development first that calls for support more than our direct military intervention on the ground. Guess the US is the 1st Western military power involved in Libya that has understood.

On terror bases in Afghanistan. The most recent CIA report speaks of 50 individuals in the max. That is by far less than the Germans host against their will and approximately 1/10 of the al-Qaeda fighters in Pakistan.

On intervention. If there is something that unifies all Afghans then it is their abysmal hate of being occupied by foreigners. This has less to with us today in special, it is historically founded. A Chinese occupation force would have to face the same reaction.

It is not only safer to pull out as the Dutch did already last year, followed by the Canadians this year, occupation is no longer to be justified after the death of bin Laden as the cause of war in 2001.

But if bin Laden was just a cheap forwarded reason to intervene, to take over the strategic points at the borders predominatly to the Iran as an interception of the Pakistan-Iran axis to come, perhaps even to ravage the local resources (is there something beside opium?), to control the Russian gas pipelines, or to change the Afghan version of hardcore Islam, to export our Christian-orientated lifestyle, well, then an ongoing occupation has to fuel the war and finally our boys and girls there have to pay the prize for our political failure. Is that really what we want?

 

It doesn't altogether make sense to me, Grannywils, since where I come from it is a very long time (if ever) since women were mutilated or worse for going to school,or forced to dress in a certain way. Putting on my lawyers hat I do know that as originally laid down in the Koran, married women in the Islamic world had property rights far earlier than they did in the West. Unfortunately much of the Islamic world has gone backwards in that respect and had a particularly bad attack of selective amnesia about the provisions on women's rights.

 

I said the war wasn't working, and I have doubts about staying or leaving, but I am saying that I can understand the sort of dilemmas that are probably taxing the Western governments. And I assuredly said NOTHING about exporting our Western lifestyle (I am not quite sure why you describe it as Christian when it patently is not) to anywhere else.

[DeTomaso]

Our Western lifestyle, our culture, is patently Christian stamped, not only Greek, or we weren't baptized. If we think of ourselves as superior in special or in general, fine, cos that's what others that are different think of themselves too, in all or part of.

With that said, from the very first moment of occupation on the export of lifestyle begins. That isn't new, for that's the way it goes, the only way, often successful, but sometimes a dead end.

A workable solution, especially for Afghanistan, well, that is probably something else entirely. What would have made sense and what not we'll see within a few years if not already earlier, when the die is cast. In the meantime we might reconsider our good relations to the semi-medieval Saudi Arabia, the well of religious terrorism we are dealing with.

 

I leave it at that. Perhaps others would like to drop in with new insights.

Edited May 14, 2011 by DeTomaso

[marharth]

Seems to me like this is starting to turn into a religious debate...

 

I do think that the western culture for the past hundred years had a ton to do with christianity.

[ginnyfizz]

No it isn't, Marharth, at least not from my point of view. Certainly where I live, the Western lifestyle is most certainly NOT Christian oriented (practising Christians are actively discriminated against.) Thus it is simply unrealistic to suggest that one of the aims of these wars is to export Christian oriented values to an unwilling Moslem populace, when in fact most Western societies are so highly secularized. The desire to bring basic human rights and freedoms cuts across religious boundaries, as was briefly shown during the revolt in Egypt (what a shame that sectarianism has broke out there again). I guess you could call them humanist concepts whose principles are shared by people of different faiths.

[marharth]

No it isn't, Marharth, at least not from my point of view. Certainly where I live, the Western lifestyle is most certainly NOT Christian oriented (practising Christians are actively discriminated against.) Thus it is simply unrealistic to suggest that one of the aims of these wars is to export Christian oriented values to an unwilling Moslem populace, when in fact most Western societies are so highly secularized. The desire to bring basic human rights and freedoms cuts across religious boundaries, as was briefly shown during the revolt in Egypt (what a shame that sectarianism has broke out there again). I guess you could call them humanist concepts whose principles are shared by people of different faiths.

I am not saying that any purpose of the war is to make convert Muslim countries.

 

I guess it comes down to what you would consider western culture as a whole.

[DeTomaso]

"Western culture as a whole" is, when it comes by force, the background of naming us "crusaders" in certain areas, no matter if we're in fact religious or absolutely not. Actually our today understanding of right and wrong, freedom and justice, wealth and luck, our way of life, is exclusively founded in our Christian roots and traditions, we have no others. But these folks simply prefer to choose by themselves, and as the Arab spring might prove, to choose a quite similar way of life, finally. But it's their own way of life, unique for chosen from within.

Every good man is free; we shouldn't change this early-Christian understanding of a human right of self-determination.

Keep in mind that Western culture is just one culture of today among others and not even the largest one, a culture we were born into by chance and not by necessity. And there is no legit cultural supremacy, or we'd belong to a monoculture already since the days of Noah's flood.

On covered military actions on foreign soils. This is still a crime according to international laws, the US have to realize this if they want to remain in the international community as an integral part. The only legit exception is an internal deal made between the states involved (here: the US and Pakistan) already in the forefront of such actions, or a defined UN mandate. Quite obviously this hadn't been the case during operation Geronimo by different reasons. This might explain the harsh diplomatic reaction by the Pakistanis in the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden, reactions that, if things get worse, might end in a cut off of Nato supply lines in Afghanistan by the Pakistani army or at least in a Pakistani cancellation of the US drone agreement. Guess the US will avoid any risk by blowing up the money aid package for Pakistan.

Edited May 17, 2011 by DeTomaso

[ginnyfizz]

There is a more cynical view which, as I have stated before, suggests that Pakistan may have actually agreed to the US operation and the US agreed to let the Pakistanis huff and puff to the gallery about the incursion before doing precisely nothing.

 

I'm not sure quite what you mean by harsh diplomatic reaction, since as far as I can make out, neither side has given the other sides diplomats their marching orders. Sure, things are strained. But the USA really has them by the ear with that aid, which they can use as a very big stick to stop any Pakistani action.

 

As to the niceties of international law, it is certainly legal to kill an enemy combatant and military leader, irrespective of whether they are armed or not.

[DeTomaso]

The first diplomatic reaction by Islamabad was a somewhat wooly condemnation of the US action against Pakistan's sovereignty, a quite normal reaction btw, the USA wouldn't react much different, hopefully, but in Pakistan it is additionally fired by a public opinion which is clearly anti-American, anti-Western. This anti-attidude has directly led to the second official reaction which is directed against all or perhaps only selected foreign journalists in West-Pakistan - they have to apply for a new journalist visa now, unfortunately the offices don't make out a document in such a special, not to say strange case, alJazeera has lately reported. The possible consequences are obvious, for the broadcasting services as well as for us as interested viewers. The third reaction is that the Pakistani government right now reassesses the tacit predator drone agreement with the US, quite essential for US military operations on both sides of the Afghan Pakistani borderline. A cancellation of the agreement would mean a heavy set back not only for the US administration but for the coalition forces in Afghanistan as well. And this at the worst possible moment, in the forefront of the upcoming spring offensive by the Taliban.

It is, however, just in the interest of the today Pakistani government to keep the US money line alive, to set up the new prize for the bilateral conspiracy of silence, once central part of former president Bush jr.'s War against Terror supported by Gen. Musharraf, the former Pakistani president.

The interests of the Pakistani people lay in different things though, as there were food, jobs, less corruption, a better infrastructure, health care and, of course, the Islam. Unfortunately the Western aid packages have never reached the imo right addressee, the people, instead the bulk of the money was and is used to improve Pakistan's military position against the arch-rival India. That's why the pedestal on which the Pakistani government rests is everything but safe. The new blasphemy law to protect the Islam and its prophet against any verbal attack by non-believers, forbidden under penalty of death, is just a gift given to the public to dope them for any destabilizing Islamic revolution they may have in mind.

Now, if the upcoming new money aid isn't high enough for the Pakistani general staff the officials have to react; and if the Pakistani people put up or shut up as their reaction it might result in a bloody take over by the Pakistani fundamentalists and the bin Laden patient sufferer Nawaz Sharif (the loser of the last parlamentary election) and of course the assassination of Bhutto widower Asif Ali Zardari, the today Pakistani president. Assassination is by no means a US invention, it's a kind of people's sport in the Hindukush since ages.

Consequence of such a possible radicalization, with or without a change in the government, has to be the pro-Islamist threat to cut off NATO supply lines in Afghanistan. Many people in Pakistan would indeed love to be engaged in the Afghan War at their threshold, not unofficially as Taliban fighters or something that stands for terror in Pakistan, but officially as Pakistan's army. And that is a problem for us cos we'd lose Pakistan as an ally. And we need an ally between the Iran and China, don't we?

 

I really don't share the strange idea of legalized combatants in illegal wars only to kill them on sight, cos this might end up in anarchy - the War against You and Me. Look, a War against Drugs doesn't give us the licence to assassinate by the way all known Columbian producents in Columbia, all merchants in Port Rotterdam and all the dealers in the Bronx or elsewhere, even if the annual death toll of drug- taking outnumbers by far the numbers of 9/11, how sad it may be for the next of skin. And the same goes for a War against the Mafia or her Slavonic clones and the hazy War against Terror as well. Nobody stands above the law! We simply have to put them on trial and here: on international trial by the ICC, the International Criminal Court in The Hague. And with law the modern societies don't mean a video-game like medieval drumhead trial in the dark with dispersed corpse so that nobody can ever argue for a fair trial as part of a righteous justice that is worth the name. The assassination of bin Laden has thus left more questions than anwers. And it doesn't end the terror, it just leads to a new stage in terror, I fear. That said, creating facts against the highly praised principles of justice is always a risky thing that all-too often has ended in the later political fall of the responsible creator. In so far I really don't see Mr. Obama in a second term of presidency. A temporary success at the political homefront, a long prayed-for jubilee for those who vividly remember the catastrophe of 9/11 and especially for all those who believe in nothing but words from above, words that have already betrayed us on alleged WMDs in the Iraq. That's all. Not enough to feel comfortable, I'd say.

Edited May 18, 2011 by DeTomaso