- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
The global War on Terror was based on a mistake.
Quintupling down are we? Never change, The Atlantic.
ETA: Not sure if there’s a paywall, so just in case: https://archive.ph/68sf0
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Haven’t we already known this for, you know, 23 years?
People who actually paid attention have known; people who read The Atlantic not so much.
yeah. I even heard the bin laden guy was a saudi /s
I don’t understand how sarcasm applies. Not only was he a Saudi of enormous wealth and close ties to the royal family, he was a CIA asset for years.
6 December 1993: Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace
The sarcasm is that anyone who was paying attention knew all this 20 years ago.
Everyone was too busy pushing the war on Iraq and buying American flag stickers for 30 bucks a pop to notice, however.
these taliban guys are going to the top I say. Thanks Bin Laden for being a western ally against those horrible communists.
You know, communism/socialism is a failed model that has never succeeded.
Laissez-faire is the only economic model that has been 100% successful every time. Capitalism is the only way to stop the RED MENACE. /s
Now please lemmy/mbin. Commence your “tankie/russian bot” comments.
To be fair afghanistan was where bin laden was holed up.
Talib government at the time asked US for evidence of Osama involvement, they would consider extradition. They didn’t get any. Thinking about it, neither did we.
Even if the US had 2024 intelligence at the time they would have still went after the rest of al kaida, in particular the rest of the leadership. It is sorta funny because I think they did buy into bin ladens press who ended up being just like trump or others. rich guy not going to be living in a cave and surprise surprise actually lives in luxury while pretending to be this cave dwelling freedom fighter man of the people.
Except he was found in Pakistan, yes?
yes, although even if the US had 2024 intelligence at the time they would have still went after the rest of al kaida, in particular the rest of the leadership. It is sorta funny because I think they did buy into bin ladens press who ended up being just like trump or others. rich guy not going to be living in a cave and surprise surprise actually lives in luxury while pretending to be this cave dwelling freedom fighter man of the people.
Bin Laden was “from” within the borders of the Saudi Arabian (Sunni) state but he was a Shiite pan-islamist and a lot of Al Quaeda’s support came from Iran, a major enemy of Saudi Arabia.
This is just to say it’s much more complicated than “Saudis did 9/11”, and maps like this grossly oversimplify things when they put Arab peoples into the types of cultural boxes westerners are used to seeing. It doesn’t apply here.
If you read the full article, it seems as if the Saudi religious establishment was infiltrated by Egyptian extremists fleeing a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood following the assassination of Sadat. Their ideology meshed with Wahhabism and Bin Laden’s religious vendetta against the United States. The Saudi state apparatus did not have effective oversight over the religious establishment and so this all happened under the House of Saud’s nose. The countries in red are (at the time) places with either US puppet regimes or some form of Arab Revolt descended, nominally secular/socialist regimes. The religious extremists pushing Islamic rule operated in these countries under various militias and terrorist groups, notably Al Qaeda, backed by the newly radicalized Saudi Wahhabi establishment, and of course, Iran.
From that perspective, the US was waging war against militias and terrorist groups with roots and support in Saudi Arabia, but the House of Saud was not considered to be complicit. The article goes on to say…
Astonishingly, the attacks of 9/11 had little effect on the Saudi approach to religious extremism, as diplomats and intelligence officials have attested. What finally changed royal minds was the experience of suffering an attack on Saudi soil. In May 2003, gunmen and suicide bombers struck three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 39 people. The authorities attributed the attacks to al-Qaeda, and cooperation with the U.S. improved quickly and dramatically.
Interesting stuff, to be sure.
