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re: spawned off an irrelevant point
Larry J — (archived)

What does it matter what they tell eachother at night around the campfire? What matters is that in the end, Al Qaeda ceases to exist and we don't. The average citizens in Japan thought the war was all but won all the way up until near the end. We still won.

I guess you've never heard of recruiting. Terrorist groups point to successes to gain new members, to the point of falsely claiming responsibility for things that weren't terrorist attacks at all (see Air Lauda crash). It matters very much, especially when they haven't had too many successes in the last year or so.

As for the average citizens in Japan, their cities were being burned to the ground on a weekly basis in 1945. They may not have said it out loud for fear of being killed, but they had to know they weren't winning.

Let me put it this way: We can not stop irrational people from believing insane things. That this was some sort of victory or mandate for Al Qaeda is a really bizarre interpretation of events. (I might add: its an interporetation I only hear coming from the American Right- nowhere else, and not even from Al Qaeda 'mouthpieces' yet.)

Then I guess you have not been looking very hard in places like <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/15/international/europe/15POLI.html?hp>this, or this, or this, or this. None of those sources could be classified as part of the "American Right Wing", and that was just from a few minutes of looking.

The articles point out how the election results have dealt Bush a blow or have weakened the coalition. I don't know about you, but things that weaken the coalition sure sound like a win for Al Queda to me. But then, I'm used to looking at such things in military terms.

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