Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Paul Campbell,
I guess my point was that OBL/AQ as a threat was bubbling away in the news through much of the 90's - probably the real problem was that Entertainment Tonight and Leno weren't covering them
Going back to that, very detailed & pretty highly regarded, Ghost Wars book I mentioned up-thread, the central theme of the last part is how far OBL and AQ were off the US radar through to 2001. There was, as you say, an ongoing threat noise - mostly because of a very small group of people who could see the potential for something bad to happen and their contacts in the media.
However, at almost every level - security, governmental, media, intel and public, this threat was not being given any real priority. The '93 bombing was seen as solved and contained - and the buildings, after all, stood up to the bombs. The US had been attacked at home and survived. All the other AQ related attacks (and it was - primarily from lack of resources and focus - fully understood that these were all related) were offshore. The US has a history of attacks on embassies, military targets and much more going back decades so they were hardly a pointer to something like 9/11 - at least not to the public or most of the government agencies.
There was a small group of intel operatives who were aware of the building noise but they were regarded as almost quacks.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to glennd,
Still, Osama said himself that it was the presence of infidels in the land of Mecca and Medina that was the primary cause for al Qaeda's war against America.
And yet he declared it before that - in Pakistan in the 1980s. Prescient I guess.
He was quite clear before GW1 that the United States was the ultimate satan and, later, said of this:
"The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel."
There is no doubt that the US infidels in Saudi Arabia hugely raised the stakes but Osama was fervently anti US long before that and the roots of Al Qaeda, and indeed the anti-American activism, goes back far earlier than 1990.
But, please, don't take my word for it - buy both books I listed above as a start.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to glennd,
But the reasons are well known, even inside the USA.
The surprise when the images of the people dancing in the streets of the Middle East were shown on US TV in 2001 would tend to argue that there was less awareness of the anti-US rage in the Islamic world than you suggest.
Such images didn't cause the same reaction beyond the US.
I'd also point you in the direction of The Looming Tower and Ghost Wars, if you've not read them, both of which, in some detail, underline just how unprepared the US was for 9/11, both on a security and a more emotional level, and why.
Middle America, too, has and had little idea how their government had acted in the years before 9/11, or, more, of the fury in the ME with the pro-Israel stance. The road to 9/11 began, if you need a date, in June 1967 when the US sided with Israel during the Six Day War.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to John Holley,
But let's be clear that there is no evidence that the US have killed hundreds of thousands of dead brown people.
Actually I think there is voluminous evidence that far, far more people have died in the War on Terror than died in 9/11, many of who were innocents, and many of who have died as a direct result of US military action. When you add to that the people who died as a result of the gates of hell being opened in Iraq, then the hundreds of thousands figure has some substance.
The US may have helped flame the fires, especially with the invasion of Iraq, but Al-Qaeda set the world on this path.
Qualifying deaths that way does make me a little queasy.
Al-Qaeda started this also seems to a gross simplification of the past thirty or forty years.
In 2001, if you recall, as the world reeled from 9/11, there was also a sense - outside the US - that this was almost inevitable. It was when rather than if.
The size of the strike astounded the world but not the fact that one happened. Unfortunately the question that United States most needed to ask in the aftermath- why? - still mostly remains unasked.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to John Holley,
What we also ignore is the 100s/1000s of deaths Al-Qaeda has some responsibility for via aligned jihadi groups through the Middle East e.g. Gaza and Iraq, Africa and Asia.
Yes and no. Jemaah Islamiah, who bombed Bali twice, has only ever had a very loose operational affiliation with AQ despite Umar Patek being picked up in Pakistan a few weeks back.
They are quite capable of operating on their own and have done so since the 1940s on and off. Their current regime of letter bombs and the recently raided training camps in Aceh and Java owe are domestically - or SEA - targeted it seems.
That said creepy old Abu Bakar Bashir has already put his few cents in:
In a statement released via his spokesman, Sonhadi, Bashir said that al-Qa'ida would not die despite the demise of bin Laden, killed in an operation by US special forces near the Pakistan capital of Islamabad.
"We're still waiting for clarification from al-Qa'ida, whether it's true or not - that news of his death," Bashir said.
"When it's true, then it will not put al-Qa'ida to death. Osama's death will not make al-Qa'ida dead."
Words that probably carry some weight in parts of Indonesia.
Was thinking of Java/Indonesia actually but will give that a year at least
I think you're absolutely fine in the large urban areas - Jakarta / Semarang / Surabaya - I'd head there without any hesitation.
And despite my earlier post, I'd imagine you'd be more at risk from the insane driving than the threat of terror most everywhere else. There will be a blowback - and it may be very bloody - from the FPI and the thugs who bomb churches and the like. When it does come it will be symbolic rather than targeted at individuals. Bali may be a target again and it remains a fairly easy one despite the past.
I have to say that even at the peak of post-Iraq WOT anger I didn't once feel at all physically threatened in places like Central Java, where I spent a lot of time in the 2000s and where Bashir holds court.
The viaduct in Auckland on Friday night is scarier.
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From a personal POV I'm just happy neither myself or my wife are in Central Java right now - it was a possibility a short while back.
There are a lot of pretty determined hotheads - Bin Laden T shirts and wall posters are very, very common and that's just the public face of it.
It will get messy. Very.
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Hard News: Any excuse for a party, in reply to BenWilson,
No, that was number 1:
1. Through force of habit and upbringing, they actually believe they serve a public purpose.A was meaning something a little more than that - destiny through perceived entitlement. A thousand years of being told that your family is royalty because they were somehow destined to be by right - or worse - by god (a belief which played a part in Charles losing his head), can likely mould a family psyche.
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Hard News: Any excuse for a party, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Charles I, defeated by Parliament's army, captured, executed.
- James II, deposed by invading army of William of Orange, fled.Both those pre-dated (and indeed led to) the various acts which define constitutional monarchy though.
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Hard News: Any excuse for a party, in reply to BenWilson,
I think the PM has the right to demand her abdication immediately.
Are you sure about that? I know she can't abdicate with the approval of every state she 'rules' but I wasn't aware that HM's government could demand abdication. And of course each government from each country in which she is monarch would have to independently do the same to effect abdication. The empire is kaput.
Either way, there's a pretty thorough wiki covering prerogative.
I can only see a few reasons why they don't self-disband
I think you missed the key one: destiny. For centuries the family has had their (once seen as divine) destiny drummed into them. And they sit at the very top of a tree of aristocracy which sees its place as determined by right. I've yet to hear any member of the royal family question that inherited right and destiny.
The last person to walk away was Edward in 1936 and he walked away into a sideshow of extreme, if gagged, privilege.
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Hard News: Any excuse for a party, in reply to TracyMac,
don't have their own bizarre views and seek to impose them where they can - quite directly in some cases; look at the abstinence-based "sex education" Bush and his ilk came up with.
The elected leader of the United States has, whether we like it or not - or approve of the way the he was elected - a mandate to govern. The 'bizarre views' as you put them (and I'm not arguing with that at all, although they are widely held in that country) were there for all to see when the USA cast their votes in 2000 and 2004. Surely they came as no surprise.
Such is democracy, as broken as it may be.
Charles, as person, is perfectly entitled to his quackery and I guess follows in a grand tradition of eccentric - some much worse than others - monarchs that goes back hundreds of years.
Even Victoria was - during much of her lifetime - regarded, probably correctly, as decidedly odd, only to have the reputation she now enjoys created by Disraeli as a pretty successful marketing campaign to personify Empire to the realm, and in particular India.
I'm just not sure I want such a person as my lord and master, even if it is, in practice, usually ceremonial.
That said, in the 20th Century monarchs were, from time to time, able to exercise a fair amount of behind the scenes influence on UK politics. Churchill in particular used to take policy to the palace for informal royal assent during wartime, often spending hours there. And twice the current Queen has made a call on who will form the government - in the 50s with Alec Douglas-Hume, and in the 70s with Wilson - the office still has some teeth.
The last comes from the still extant and not insubstantial royal prerogative, which also still includes the right to declare war!
Power may not be exercised often but it still has not been completely extinguished.