MikeK
Gold Member
First, at the time Osama bin Laden initially issued his grievances to us he was not our enemy. In fact he was a provisional friend who had led a large faction of Mujahideen guerillas during their conflict with Russian occupiers in Afghanistan.[...]
But listen to Bin Laden? You have got to be shitting me. That goes right along with Obama bowing to other rulers.
We have always had enemies, should we bow to them and listen to their warnings? What language do you want to learn?
For the benefit of those who don't know what those grievances were I will summarize them here but the full transcript of John Miller's PBS interview with bin Laden in 1998 is available via Google.
First Grievance: In preparation for Operation Desert Storm H.W. Bush requested and was granted permission to establish a temporary staging area in Saudi Arabia on the edge of Mecca, the Islamic Holy Land. Instead of removing the installation when Desert Storm was completed, as was originally promised, the temporary installation gradually became a full-size military base which extended more deeply into Mecca and became a serious offense to devout Muslims throughout the Islamic world. Bin Laden repeatedly requested that the base be removed as promised but his requests were ignored by both Clinton and Bush.
Second Grievance: When Israel began expanding its territory into the Gaza region by building settlements and aggressively evicting the Palestinians from land they had occupied for generations, bin Laden protested U.S. support of Israel and in 2000 his request that the U.S. pressure Israel to cease that expansion was ignored. It was then that he issued his warning to Bush that if the bin Sultan Air Base was not removed from Mecca, and if Israel did not remove the new settlements from the Gaza region, "a great misery will befall the United States."
In spite of the fact that Bush had been warned (by Richard Clarke and others in his administration) that it wasn't wise to provoke the fanatical Al Qaeda faction without valid cause, Bush expressed contempt for bin Laden's warning with his typical "Bring it on" attitude. But it wasn't long after the 9/11 attack that Bush quietly removed the bin Sultan Air Base from Mecca and he pressured Sharon to evict the new settlers from the Gaza region, which was done. If the stupid bastard had the good sense to understand that bin Laden's grievances were valid, and had he cooperated with those reasonable requests when they were made, 3,000 American civilians would not have died hideous deaths, nor would 4,000+ American military personnel be dead and tens of thousands more maimed, we wouldn't be engaged in two costly and totally unnecessary occupations, our treasury wouldn't be empty, the World Trade Center would still be standing and we would not be driven into a state of precautionary paranoia.
So, Ollie. If your dog shits on my lawn and I ask you more than once to put a stop to it, and you see that I'm getting angrier each time I ask, and if you've heard that I have a bad temper and a reputation for violent conduct, do you think it's smart to ignore my reasonable requests and just allow your dog to keep shitting on my lawn?