Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events

Nice analysis of bin Laden's recent rants
Gary — (archived)

Dan Darling has performed a very thoughtful, comprehensive analysis of bin Laden's two most recent tapes. Refer to:

http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006101.php#dec16

A couple of conclusions that I extracted from Dan Darling's long analysis:

1) Bin Laden is still a dangerous and intelligent adversary. Don't underestimate him.
2) Saudi Arabia is becoming the new epicenter of Islamic terrorism, e.g. al Qaeda is winning significant Hearts-and-Minds in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is really our Achilles heel vis-a-vis the War on Terrorism. The Saudi government's embrace of Wahabiism makes them ideologically sympathetic to Islamic terrorism. However Al Qaeda is hell bent on overthrowing the Saudi government. Consequently the Saudis are in a double bind. We (the U.S.) are also in a double bind. If we were so stupid as to try and destabilize the Saudi government, something much worse would probably replace it. If the Saudi government falls, the price of oil will go through the roof and the industrialized world's economy will tank. The new regime in Saudi Arabia would probably be a clone of the Taliban. This new obscenity would have the wealth of Saudi Arabia and control the cities of Mekka and Medina. There are no easy short term solutions to this problem. The long term solution is to beat our addiction to Middle Eastern petroleum muy pronto!

Gary

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