Three Takes on bin Laden
He’s winning, say Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, just in time to promote their new book at the New York Times (got a derogatory book about Bush to plug? There’s a spot waiting for you on the Times Op/Ed page!):
The author of the 9/11 attacks did not, of course, think that his musings would jump-start a negotiation. Had Americans instead listened with the ears of those for whom the message was intended – Muslims around the world – they would have heard something very different. Instead of a weak Osama bin Laden, they would have heard a magnanimous one who could offer a truce because “the war in Iraq is raging, and the operations in Afghanistan are on the rise in our favor.”
He’s losing, says Christopher Hitchens, who asks: “Why are formerly triumphalist jihadists using the language of “truce” at all?”:
I have been attacked for callousness and worse for saying that Bin Laden did us a favor on 9/11 [Hitchens says bin Laden did us a favor! I demand he apologize to himself!], but I am increasingly sure I was right. Until that date, he partially owned Afghanistan and his supporters were moving steadily toward the Talibanization of Pakistan as well. There were al-Qaida sympathizers within the Pakistani intelligence services, armed forces, and nuclear establishment (which then included the A.Q. Khan network). There was also an active Saudi support system, consisting mainly of vast tranches of money, for jihadism worldwide. Now, Afghanistan is lost to Bin Laden and Pakistan has had, at least officially, to modify its behavior considerably. The A.Q. Khan network has been shut down. The Saudi ruling class identifies its state interest with a repudiation of al-Qaida, inside and outside its own borders. And the one remaining regime that openly preached holy war and helped train jihadist forces like the “Fedayeen Saddam”—the pseudo-secular terror state in Iraq—has been irretrievably smashed. Wherever Bin Laden is now, it cannot be where he wanted or hoped to be four and a half years ago.
Says Douglas A. Borer at the Christian Science Monitor, why not take bin Laden up on his offer and negotiate with him? Sure, Douglas, what a brilliant idea! Negotiate with him…why, it’s a wonder no one thought of this before.
If we ever catch him alive, we can negotiate on his last meal…
Interesting thing about Hitchens is you can’t stay upset with the guy for something he writes which really rubs you the wrong way for long, because then he’ll come back and perform a rhetorical vivesection on the antiwar folks out there.
A loose-cannon Hitchens is worth the entire editorial staff of the New York Times.
Comrades,
One thing about Hitchens is that, unlike many others of the left, he will give credit where and when it is due. He comes the closest of any of the libs to actually being open-minded and objective. Not always, mind you, but I have more respect for him than any of the others.
Respects,
Tim
Mark – sorry to change the subject, but it looks like the Iranian madman’s own people just missed sending him to his 72 virgins again:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/international/middleeast/25iran.html?_r=1
I don’t see how anyone can say with a straight face that he’s not going to be eliminated before this thing reaches the crisis stage – this latest effort now makes it two attempts to take him out, in full public view.
dmac, I had not seen that – thanks for the link…very, very interesting, isn’t it? You know, it’s kind of poor taste to root for someone’s death, but…let’s just leave it there…
Is Al Qaeda losing?
Chris Hitchens argues “yes”:
I once hypothesized that Osama Bin Laden might be dead. The induction went like this: Proof of life is easy to furnish, but some of the tapes allegedly showing him could easily have been cobbled from earlier r…