Bush’s legacy: Food for the Crows
In my post last week titled Bush Bids Adieu, I wrote:
Let me address a point I haven’t heard discussed yet. Seems I recall that al-Qaeda statement that their post-9/11 strategy was twofold: to hurt the US where it would count the most, its economy; and, after Bush’s invasion of Iraq, to punish its allies who supported it with troops of their own.
Jon Basil Utley over at Anti-war.com gives me hope that this ‘Bush kept us safe’ meme will be left to twist slowly, slowly in the wind as history’s crows pluck its eyes out.
His post today is titled: How Bin Laden Bankrupted America: The five ways, and begins thusly:
For a man who spent years living in caves, Osama bin Laden sure knows his Sun Tzu and the basics of jujitsu. Sun Tzu’s famous dictum was “know yourself” and “know your enemy.” Jujitsu is based upon using your enemy’s strength against him, e.g., like Jack in “Jack and the Beanstalk,” who used the giant’s own size and anger to get him to crash from his own weight. Bin Laden understood that the way to beat America was to turn its power back upon itself. His early stated aim was to bankrupt America. He knew his own weaknesses, and he profoundly understood America’s, how its pride and fears could trigger irrational, self-destructive reactions.
The genius of bin Laden’s pinprick attacks, costing a few hundred thousand dollars, has left America reeling with two unending multi-trillion-dollar wars it doesn’t know how to get out of. He knew that his own strength was mainly in his appeal to the minds of men, particularly to the lost dignity of Muslims trampled under the heel of their own dictators, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and America’s military. Getting rid of the “far” enemy was the way to take on the “near” ones.
Read the rest here.
