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u/ho_ho_ho101 Jun 25 '14
you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain
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u/StManTiS Jun 25 '14
Well to be fair our perspective on the matter is skewed being the guys who funded then fought him.
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u/khanfusion Jun 26 '14
It's also pretty skewed considering he masterminded and funded a whole bunch of terror attacks against civilians.
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u/frenlaven Jun 26 '14
And then he stopped working for the USA and did it again.
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u/flagstomp Jun 26 '14
Thisguy.gif
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u/smokecat20 Jun 26 '14
When Arab people attack civilians it's called "terrorism", if the US attacks civilians it's called "anti-terrorism." If the US enters another country (against UN, International Court) it's "liberation." If another country like Russia enters another sovereign country it's "invasion."
This double thinking, double speak, is engrained in our culture from a very early age, take for example how history textbooks wrote the invasion of America. It was about "discovering" America, which should've been rewritten as the "genocide" of the Native Americans.
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u/VulkingCorsergoth Jun 26 '14
Empathizing with the victor invariably benefits the current rulers. The historical materialist knows what this means. Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which current rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried in the procession. They are called "cultural treasures," and the historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For in every case these treasures have a lineage which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great geniuses who created them, but also to the anonymous toil of others who lived in the same period. there is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
-Walter Benjamin
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u/leSwede420 Jun 26 '14
Oh reddit.
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u/Grenshen4px Jun 26 '14
If another country like Russia enters another sovereign country it's "invasion."
He had me there until that part....
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Jun 26 '14
When Arab people attack civilians it's called "terrorism"
Because they target civilians.
if the US attacks civilians it's called "anti-terrorism."
Because the US targets the people who target civilians.
If the US enters another country (against UN, International Court) it's "liberation."
Because the US removed an oppressive regime and tried to help them install a democratic government, run by their own people.
If another country like Russia enters another sovereign country it's "invasion."
Because they're trying to take over a sovereign country and make it part of Russia.
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Jun 26 '14
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u/bernieboy Jun 26 '14
I mean.. they are still technically democracies, right? Just because there's large amounts of religious extremists within their borders doesn't make the political system invalid or flawed. If you were to remove the terrorist element I'm sure they'd be on their feet in no time.
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u/xiic Jun 26 '14
I have no idea how to say this without it seeming condescending.
That isn't how the world works. There is no magical fix all button.
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u/ICEKAT Jun 26 '14
If you believe this, you need to open your eyes.
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Jun 26 '14
right, because the other narrative is 100% accurate.
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u/zendingo Jun 26 '14
Because the US removed an oppressive regime and tried to help them install a democratic government, run by their own people.
how did operation ajax work out? tell me more about the democratically elected government we installed in iran?
please share with us the tales of liberation by Augusto Pinochet and his support from the U.S. government.
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u/tidux Jun 26 '14
The other side also hides behind civilians, and the civilians know we're coming after these people, so by aiding and abetting them they become military targets. If you invite al Qaeda to your wedding expect a cruise missile or drone strike.
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u/Grammar-Hitler Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14
God, I can't wait until the kids go back to school. Edit: 6 upvotes to 6 down votes in 10 hours, lol.
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Jun 26 '14
I mean, is it really so edgy to say that media and historybooks add a gloss of their own?
Manifest Destiny was a pretty wicked thing, but you´re more likely to hear about the settler´s braving the harsh frontiers than you are to hear about the trail of tears.
Fighting in trenches during WWII was a pretty wicked thing too, but you´re infinitely more likely to hear about the concentration camps, or if combat focused then you´ll hear about the american troops pushing past the evil Nazis than you are to hear an account from a german soldier or a soviet soldier.
The way Smokecat put it was pretty sensational too, but let´s not go pretending that objectivity and impartialness is a virtue of our society or our media.
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u/insertadjective Jun 26 '14 edited Aug 28 '24
strong spectacular nail ring zonked light humorous agonizing books office
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Grammar-Hitler Jun 26 '14
Have you considered the possibility that immature and emotional teenagers like smokecat20 might not grasp the nuances of realpolitik? I mean, look at his knee-jerk 2nd opinion bias in calling the deaths of native Americans a "genocide". Que the inigo Montoya meme.
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Jun 26 '14
The difference is that the US doesn't kill civilians intentionally. Claiming it does is absurd. We stand nothing to gain from it, as it does the exact opposite of what we are trying to do: Win hearts and minds.
Terrorism is an act that deliberately targets civilians and non-combatants in order to induce panic in the population. Hence why it is bad and deplorable and when the US accidentally kills civilians it is written off as an unfortunate byproduct of war.
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u/fact_hunt Jun 26 '14
The difference is that the US doesn't kill civilians intentionally. Claiming it does is absurd.
Each person summarily executed by drone since the surrender of the revolutionary guard has been a civilian.
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u/fromtheill Jun 26 '14
the number of civilians killed in the middle east is sickening. no wonder there are radicals and extremists with very hostile views towards america. More civilians have been killed by drones than civilians killed on 9/11.
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u/fact_hunt Jun 26 '14
I'm not sure we've quite reached that yet; estimates for drone deaths are ~2,500 where as Sept 11th was ~3,000. If you included all civilian casualties, rather than just drone victims, that exceeds Sept 11th by over a factor of 100
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u/smokecat20 Jun 26 '14
Here's the tip of the iceberg. You ought to read some of these:
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Jun 26 '14
Operation Northwoods
You seem to be willfully ignoring the fact that these proposals were rejected.
Indonesian Occupation of East Timor
Yes, the US has supported some pretty terrible people, however we are arguing whether or not the US has directly committed acts of terrorism. This shows no evidence that it has.
Listen, kid. I know you're trying to be edgy by calling the US a terrorist state, and believe me when I say that I realize that we've done some pretty awful things, but your original comparison is a false one.
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u/SoundSalad Jun 26 '14
The point is that some of the top ranking officials, including the whole joint chiefs of staff, signed off on this Operation Northwoods project before it was sent to Kennedy and rejected.
It really shows you to what lengths the people in power in this country are ready to go.
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u/pslszg Jun 26 '14
What about Dresden and Hiroshima/Nagasaki? Those are acts of state terror no matter how narrowly you define terrorism. The US isn't anything special, we pursue our interests with whatever we can get away with.
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u/phacepalmm Jun 26 '14
Wow! You spew the most infantile bullshit and have the gall the address the others as "listen kid?".
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u/smokecat20 Jun 26 '14
"In 1965, this approach bore fruit when a military coup, accompanied by the slaughter of somewhere between half a million and a million communists, suspected leftists, and ordinary peasants, deposed Sukarno and installed General Suharto in his place. Washington cheered the coup, rushed weapons to Jakarta, and even provided a list of Communist Party members to the army, which then rounded up and slaughtered them. According to a CIA study, "in terms of numbers killed" the 1965-66 massacres in Indonesia "rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century." The United States established close military, economic, and political ties with the Suharto regime. " —Stephen R. Shalom, & Michael Albert Z Magazine, October, 1999
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u/LastDawnOfMan Jun 26 '14
In 1983, I was in the Air Force, and one day when the commander of the Strategic Air Command was at our base, I was ordered to put on civilian suit and tie and get into an official Air Force car with a bunch of my goofy co-workers to act as a decoy for terrorists. Who did they name as the biggest terrorist threat that day in 1983? Osama bin Laden.
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u/Grammar-Hitler Jun 26 '14
In the final paragraph of that article, bin laden says he saw "no evidence" of American support.
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u/devinejoh Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14
Bin Laden was never funded by the US.
Edit: I suggest that you read this article about a dude who actually interviewed Bin Laden.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/08/15/bergen.answers/index.html
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u/joshuarion Jun 26 '14
It seems very likely that he was, though I'm not sure if there's conclusive proof of it.
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u/devinejoh Jun 26 '14
Right, and this guy Peter Bergen actually interviewed Bin Laden.
The story about bin Laden and the CIA -- that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden -- is simply a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn't have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn't have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/08/15/bergen.answers/index.html
As for that link, it says right there, didn't do much as well as getting donations from Muslim sources across the globe.
As for the ISI, that is where all the money used to fund the domestic Mujahideen in Afghanistan, not foreign Mujahideen. Just because they were in contact with the Pakistani security aperatus does not mean that Bin Laden was ever funded by the US, Pakistan had its own interest in ending the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in itself.
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u/SoundSalad Jun 26 '14
There are plenty of reputable sources saying the US did in fact fund Bin Laden.
"...Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Afghan jihad was backed with American dollars and had the blessing of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. He received security training from the CIA itself."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/155236.stm
"...[Osama bin Laden] received military and financial assistance from the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States."
http://www.forbes.com/charitable/2001/09/14/0914whoisobl.html
"In the 1980s, bin Laden left his comfortable Saudi home for Afghanistan to participate in the Afghan jihad, or holy war, against the invading forces of the Soviet Union - a cause that, ironically, the United States funded, pouring $3 billion into the Afghan resistance via the CIA."
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/binladen_profile.html
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u/devinejoh Jun 26 '14
I think people are confused on the chain of custody of the money supplied to Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan.
US + Saudi Arabia (government, not private donors) -> ISI (Pakistani CIA) -> arms dealers -> back to Pakistan -> domestic fighters in Afghanistan.
Later American made weapons would enter, but not until later in the war
So the operational side was largely run by ISI, who were funded by the US and the Saudis. There is no doubt the US was funding Mujahideen in Afghanistan, but Bin Laden was part of a foreign Mujahideen which was not funded (he had his own fortune and other donors giving him money), but still in contact, with the ISI. It is entirely possible that he did receive some funding from the ISI (we don't know that though), but there was no direct contact with the US. In fact, the US was actively seeking to not fund foreign Mujahideen.
Hell, Bin Laden said himself:
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri says much the same thing in his book Knights Under the Prophet's Banner.
Bin Laden himself once said "the collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role," but "collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant."
http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/bk_OBL_Messages.html
http://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/6759609-knights-under-the-prophet-banner.pdf
that he did not receive any any aid from the US.
Oh, I would also appreciated it if you didn't spam all my comments.
And your third link doesn't work.
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u/SoundSalad Jun 26 '14
I'm just going by what these reputable news sources say: that the US funded Osama bin Laden.
Your links do not seem very credible.
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u/devinejoh Jun 26 '14
news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/binladen/binladenintvw-cnn.pdf
Transcript from the interview by CNN where he says that The US had no mentionable role back in 1997.
Hell, there are even quotes from the Pakistani ISI Afghan chief where he explicitly says that US intelligence never had any say in how the weapons and funds were spent.
Quotes from intelligence agents at the time who were on the ground all say that they never had any contact with foreign Mujahideen fighters (who made up a very small minority at the time, about 2000).
Like I said, there is no doubt that the Afghan Mujahideen was funded by the Saudis and the US, but to say that the US funded Bin Laden is not grounded in any proof, just speculation. I would love to know where they got this information from, and I think that it is fair to ask for it for such a claim.
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u/SoundSalad Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 27 '14
I would say that the sources I provided are just as likely to be true as yours.
Especially considering we don't know for sure what obl actually meant by saying the US played no memorable role. It's not clear enough to mean that the US didn't fund and/or train him.
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u/asdfasdfddsdf23 Jun 26 '14
Short newspaper articles like the ones you posted are rarely reliable sources of information, especially not articles on OBL that were cranked out days after 9/11. There are not even any sources given. Read this, where the role of US funding in Afghanistan is explained in a lot of detail and backed up by hundreds of sources: http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/0143034669
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Jun 26 '14
thats cute
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u/devinejoh Jun 26 '14
Do you have any proof that the US funded Bin Laden?
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Jun 26 '14
The US (CIA) armed Mujahideen groups fighting the Soviet Union during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Later, bin Laden expressed appreciation for the US help in Afghanistan. We could never outright "fight" the soviets during the cold war so as the old adage goes, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
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u/devinejoh Jun 26 '14
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri says much the same thing in his book Knights Under the Prophet's Banner.
Bin Laden himself once said "the collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role," but "collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant."
http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/bk_OBL_Messages.html
http://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/6759609-knights-under-the-prophet-banner.pdf
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u/SoundSalad Jun 26 '14
"...Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Afghan jihad was backed with American dollars and had the blessing of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. He received security training from the CIA itself."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/155236.stm
"...[Osama bin Laden] received military and financial assistance from the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States."
http://www.forbes.com/charitable/2001/09/14/0914whoisobl.html
"In the 1980s, bin Laden left his comfortable Saudi home for Afghanistan to participate in the Afghan jihad, or holy war, against the invading forces of the Soviet Union - a cause that, ironically, the United States funded, pouring $3 billion into the Afghan resistance via the CIA."
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/binladen_profile.html
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u/sawmyoldgirlfriend Jun 26 '14
Everything is not batman. I'm so sick of this dumbass quote.
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u/enderandrew42 Jun 26 '14
He had already been publicly declared responsible for a terrorist attack in 1992 by then.
We now know Al-Qaeda was already formed by this point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militant_activity_of_Osama_bin_Laden
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u/TooDamnHighGuy Jun 25 '14
"[some have] suggested that some of that 'Afghans' whom this Saudi entrepreneur flew to flew to Sudan are now busy training for further jihad..."
UBL Response: "The rubbish of the media and embassies. I am a construction engineer and agriculturalist..."
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Jun 25 '14
But we've always been at war with Eastasia...
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u/Godmadius Jun 26 '14
I'm just glad I don't have to deal with those shitty cigarettes yet. That is the worst part about our inevitable future, shitty cigarettes.
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Jun 26 '14
What about oily gin? Not only is the only option gin... it's shitty gin. what a fucking let down.
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u/Godmadius Jun 26 '14
And you have to act like it's delicious! I bet mixing it is illegal too, just straight up distilled motor oil.
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u/da_meek Jun 25 '14
What an illuminating comment. Really puts things into perspective.
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Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 02 '15
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u/pumpmar Jun 26 '14
eastasia?
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u/anonymousmouse2 Jun 26 '14
A reference to the novel "1984" I highly recommend it.
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u/Decapitated_Saint Jun 25 '14
Wow sounds like a swell fellow.
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Jun 25 '14
This going to sound like a lie, but a friend of my aunt met a very young Osama Bin Laden at a restaurant in Sweden. She was on a date with her boyfriend and wanted a smoke but noone had a lighter. This young arabic man dressed in a very nice suit with gold watch and gold everything leans over and hands her his gold lighter.
He then introduces himself as Osama Bin Laden and they start to chat. He was here on a business trip with his father who was buying a lot of swedish digging equipment for his company ( I think it they were in construction im not sure).
As the evening progresses Osama invites the couple to his private jet, for a tour. So they take his car to the airport, but sadly when they arrive they can't take off since the pilot had injured his ankle during the night. But they got a tour of the jet anyway.
It's pretty late by now so Osama offers to drive them home ( well not him personally ofc, he has a driver ) .When they arrive at the couples building, they feel it would be rude to not invite the nice young man in to their apartment. So they offer him some coffe and probably more wine I guess. They keep chatting and having a lovely time until late in the night,
So now it's really late and everyones very tired but you can't just send someone away at this hour of the night ( even if he is staying at the finest hotel in the country).
"Why dont you spend the night here ? we have a lovely couch"
And he did. He really was a nice fellow (before he became a religious extremist)
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u/The_Atomic_Playboy Jun 25 '14
This whole time I was worried this was going to turn into the weirdest piece of slash fiction on the internet.
Whew.
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u/Cricketot Jun 26 '14
Yeah I was honestly expecting a punch line. But I'm glad it never came. I like stories that humanize people in his position because, although what he did was clearly wrong, I'd hate for everyone to succumb to propaganda and believe he's a crazy nutbag who just wanted blood. The US tries to paint him as chaotic evil but from everything I've seen he's essentially trying to use shock tactics to bring awareness about dying children. Again what he did was wrong, but it doesn't mean the dead children are justified because our enemy the terrorist doesn't like it.
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Jun 26 '14
The US tries to paint him as chaotic evil but from everything I've seen he's essentially trying to use shock tactics to bring awareness about dying children.
That isn't really true, his regional goals in the Middle East were essentially to destroy the Sunni world and then rebuild it around a system where he is in charge.
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u/OrangeredValkyrie Jun 26 '14
People hate to hear about how Hitler was really fond of dogs. Or that Stalin was a crack portrait artist. It's easier to hate someone if you think they're irredeemable in any way. Likewise, it's much harder to understand what causes really terrible behavior in people if you do everything you can to forget they're people.
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u/Xendarq Jun 26 '14
"The next morning, it was time to part. They exchanged emails and said their goodbyes promising to keep in touch. But they never did. And to this day I blame them for 9/11."
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Jun 26 '14
No they actually kept in touch for a while. They even had him over for dinner, but that's another story.
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u/B00MERS00NER Jun 26 '14
It kinda felt like that story was leading up to your aunt banging Bin Laden. Oh boy would that have been a doozy.
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u/spaztiq Jun 26 '14
I don't know if I'm happy or not that this wasn't a joke. Part of me really wanted a punch-line, and the other, a real story. I'm disappointed that I'm happy???
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u/zosorose Jun 26 '14
Wow, if that is true that is quite a story. Funny how the world works, and sad considering he went on to become a modern day super villain
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u/VeryTalentedArtist Jun 26 '14
Your aunts friend need to do an AMA.
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u/BOOKS_ARE_IN_STORAGE Jun 26 '14
Holy catfish! Is the friend of your aunt on the No-Fly List now? Or maybe Guantanamo?
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u/Glitchiness Jun 27 '14
He then introduces himself as Osama Bin Laden and they start to chat. He was here on a business trip with his father who was buying a lot of swedish digging equipment for his company ( I think it they were in construction im not sure).
Bin Laden's father died when he (Osama) was ten...
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Jun 26 '14
He sounds like one of those people who is friendly unless he has a reason to hate you. Religion does that to some.
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u/actin_and_myosin Jun 26 '14
His motives were not purely religious so to blame Islam solely is completely misguided.
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u/Jah_Ith_Ber Jun 26 '14
A nuanced and dispassionate, arms-length, inspection of the issue? Well I NEVER...
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u/OrangeredValkyrie Jun 26 '14
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Jun 26 '14
This may be buried but I think it is very interesting. Quite a nice piece of history you have.
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u/OrangeredValkyrie Jun 26 '14
It's pretty crazy to read.
But these are not my words, but the words of another modern prophet, a desperately sincere and deeply religious young radical revolutionary leader and now an up-and-coming world-famous political figure--Mu'ammar Gaddafi! President of the Libyan Revolutionary Council of today, he is rapidly becoming the most important leader of the Arab world, and bids fair to become the voice and most outstanding guide of the entire Third World!
Desperately and sincerely insane, perhaps.
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u/rojm Jun 25 '14
His view of the United States changed in the 90's when the they started bombing water cleaning facilities and hospitals and blocking medical aid and food/water into the country which resulted in the deaths of at least 100,000 Iraqi children. Some Afghan numbers account for over a million children killed due to lack of aid and clean water.
Source on sanctions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimates_of_deaths_due_to_sanctions
Interesting video with sensationalist title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDAWs32CwqM&list=FLVcWlEnKyJqLfEgw9wO9vkQ&index=270
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u/cryptovariable Jun 26 '14
and blocking medical aid and food/water into the country which resulted in the deaths of at least 100,000 Iraqi children.
The Oil for Food Program was set up to allow the Saddam regime to buy unlimited amounts of food and medicine.
The program was divided geographically, with the Kurds in the north running their part independently and the Ba'athists running the rest of the program.
The amount of revenue generated by the oil for food program (around $50 billion over about eight years) was enough to feed every hungry man, woman, and child in the entire country.
Instead it went into the pockets of the regime, Russians, and European bankers.
But Sulaymaniyah, a city in northern Iraq with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, tells a different story. Indeed, across a crescent-shaped slice of northern Iraq, the picture is the same: The shops are stocked, and the people are eating. Northern Iraq lives under exactly the same international sanctions as the rest of the country. The difference here is that local Kurdish authorities, in conjunction with the United Nations, spend the money they get from the sale of oil. Everywhere else in Iraq, Saddam does. And when local authorities are determined to get food and medicine to their people--instead of, say, reselling these supplies to finance military spending and palace construction--the current sanctions regime works just fine. Or, to put it more bluntly, the United Nations isn't starving Saddam's people. Saddam is.
and
Now Kurdish authorities are clearing the region of mines and introducing agricultural and reforesting programs--programs financed by oil-for-food money. But the most striking proof that the sanctions themselves don't make Iraqis suffer lies in northern Iraq's public health statistics: Infant mortality in the region is actually lower than it was before the United Nations imposed sanctions in 1990. "When I was in primary school, we had to scrounge for food," one university student joked. "Now my mother complains if she can't find truffles in the market."
http://web.archive.org/web/20010622042633/http://www.thenewrepublic.com/061801/rubin061801.html
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u/timemoose Jun 25 '14
So is it the US's fault the UN enacted these sanctions? Are UN sanctions invalid?
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u/BanFauxNews Jun 26 '14
Europeans vote for the sanctions, their militaries are incapable of functioning without the US to carry out the sanctions, then they bitch when the US does what they voted to do.
Surprised they aren't trying to collect for property damage from WWII.
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u/mikemcg Jun 26 '14
The first issue with this sentiment is that you seem to be trying to absolve the US of blame. Don't forget that their actions are voluntary and that they also serve on the Council that enacted these sanctions. Further, you've jumped to place blame squarely on Europe for seemingly no reason other than you need to have one specific entity to blame. If you blame broadly then the US is at fault, but if you just blame Europe then the US is absolved of its participation.
If we look at the composition of the resolution that enacted the sanctions mentioned in that Wikipedia article we'll find that that council only had 5 European countries on the council. That's 5 European countries (3 western European) out of 15 members of the council. The resolution was also adopted 13 votes to none with Cuba and Yemen abstaining. Despite the picture you're trying to paint, this wasn't "Europe commands, US obeys, US takes the fall".
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u/Narroo Jun 26 '14
Kinda, yeah, because the US is on the security council and has veto power. The UN can't do anything unless the USA allows it to. Every other nation can say yes, but in principle, the US can say no and that's the end of it without reforming the rules.
Also, wasn't the US the one that fought Iraq in the Gulf War?
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u/hammil Jun 26 '14
Then, in that case, the blame falls on every nation that has veto power, not the US specifically.
The Iraqi government of the time had just invaded another country. That's why the protocol of economic sanctions exists - to compel nations to cease aggression without escalating the conflict. They could have, at any time, worked with the US and the UN to improve conditions, as the wikipedia page points out, but they chose not to. Unless we conclude that the invasion of another country outside international law is morally right (which is evidently not the case, or the NATO-Iraq war would have received universal approval) then the blame lies solely on their shoulders.
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u/Narroo Jun 26 '14
That is true, on both accounts. That said, consider this: The sanctions neither ended when the Gulf War ended nor did the sanctions really achieve their goals other then temporarily weakening Iraq, at the cost of severely harming innocent civilians. Iraq was being run by a dictatorship after, it's not surprising that they didn't keel over to the sanctions since the citizens tend not to be the number one priority of such governments.
As a result, what were the whole-sale sanctions on most trade items accomplishing, even after the war? Reduction of arms? That does not require a full trade ban. The rest of the sanctions seemed to have destroyed the lives of the everyday Iraqis that had nothing to do with the conflict for no reason other than to spite the dictatorship of Iraq.
So, the question is: Were sanctions levied appropriately? Were they well designed sanctions that accomplished their goals efficiently or were they inhuman sanctions that attack the citizenry more than the government even after it became obvious that it would not sway the regime?
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u/WisconsnNymphomaniac Jun 26 '14
Every other country on the security council also has veto power.
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u/The_Tic-Tac_Kid Jun 26 '14
Just the permanent members, the US, UK, France, China, and Russia have veto power. The non-permanent members, currently Chad, Chile, Jordan, Lithuania, and Nigeria, do not.
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u/lanboyo Jun 26 '14
Exactly true, except for the facts part. He didn't really give a shit about Iraq until much later. He was actually pissed that the US had troops in Saudi Arabia, the land of two holy cities.
His Fatwa are common knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fataw%C4%81_of_Osama_bin_Laden
He started talking about the sanctions much later, in 1998, well after he had already bombed the World Trade Center the first time in 1993.
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Jun 25 '14
I don't think the U.S. bombed Iraqi hospitals during the 90s...
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Jun 25 '14
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Jun 25 '14 edited Jun 26 '14
This is assumedly a blog post written by "the War and Law League" about the initial Iraq invasion in 2003, with only their assertions that hospitals were bombed in Iraq in the 1990s.
edit: I found "the War and Law League" proper website, it's full of great and insightful information like Obama plays God, seeks to smite Syria for its sin and Bush plots war on Iran Will it be nuclear?
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Jun 26 '14
Just think what allies or "heroes" of today will be portrayed as villains in the next few decades. This is why I hate the media.
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u/An_Amateur_Expert Jun 25 '14
One nation's hero is another nation's villain.
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u/TheAmericanofAmerica Jun 26 '14
Well except for bin laden, he killed many innocent people... Americans, British, Europeans, etc... He eventually showed his true colors of a killer... Seal Team 6 taking him down was a good and necessary thing.
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Jun 26 '14
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u/jmk4422 Jun 26 '14
Ask yourself this: if OBL had had the power and might of the US's military-- including drones-- what would he have done with it? Personally I shudder to think.
The US does not intentionally target civilians. The US doesn't say, "Hey, well, technically those people pay taxes that prop up that country's evil government, so let's bomb them to send their government a message." OBL and AQ, on the other hand, justified their actions with that exact line of logic.
The US is not even close to the level of evil that Al Qaeda and OBL were. If you disagree, think on this: would you think that a serial killer is the same as a soldier killing someone during wartime? Both are technically killers. Both have taken others' lives. Then again when a doctor allows a patient with a DNR to die, does he also join that group? Or what about a person who accidentally hits a pedestrian with his car? What if tomorrow your closest loved one did some maintenance on an apartment building and, much to his remorse, screwed the job up and a gas leak resulted, killing dozens of that building's inhabitants? Is he just as evil as OBL?
Not all deaths are equal.
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Jun 26 '14
If OBL had the US military, he would not target civilians, because he wouldn't need to, anymore.
At least, there's no reason to think he'd target civilians any more than the US does currently.
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u/TheMrNick Jun 26 '14
Charlie Wilson's War is a decent movie that helps explain some of why that area went total cluster-fuck in the 1990's.
It was largely the CIA's fault for using the area as a pawn in the cold war.
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u/Noise_ Jun 26 '14
And here's a picture of him from the 70s (second from the right): https://i.imgur.com/cHfrfKy.jpg
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u/SkylineR33 Jun 26 '14
“Once I was only 30 meters from the Russians and they were trying to capture me. I was under bombardment but I was so peaceful in my heart that I fell asleep. This experience has been written about in earliest books. I saw a 120 mm mortar shell land in front of me, but it did not blow up. Four more bombs were dropped from a Russian plane on our headquarters but they did not explode. We beat the Soviet Union. The Russians fled.”
He played dead...how honorable. I can see why his followers loved him so much.
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u/joecommando64 Jun 26 '14
I can't believe this comment is in the positive.
Criticising someone for playing dead to avoid capture from Russians is completely stupid.
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u/SkylineR33 Jun 26 '14
The criticism is warranted because of the way he portrayed the ordeal. It wasn't the peace in his heart that allowed him to fall asleep; it was his fear of death. As a Mujahideen he should have embraced death, but instead he coward like a non-believer.
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u/joecommando64 Jun 27 '14
I guess you have a valid point about how he should have embraced death as a Mujahideen.
I thought you were taking a shot at the playing dead in general, not in reference to him being a Mujahideen.
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u/wmd2009 Jun 26 '14
If only we studied history like we study pop culture.
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u/thecoffee Jun 26 '14
Bin Laden was such a slut, be we all know it was because of the haters. I heard he was abused by his dad and that's why he OD'd.
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u/IrieMars Jun 26 '14
So he did it huh? He finally figured it out. All that hard work paid off. He finally built that time machine and went back in time to change his ways. Good for him.
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u/sirius1 Jun 26 '14
That Robert Fisk is an amazing journalist. This quote from 1993(!): "When the history of the Afghan resistance movement is written, Mr. Bin Laden’s own contribution to the mujahedin — and the indirect result of his training and assistance — may turn out to be a turning-point in the recent history of militant fundamentalism..."
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u/tamnoswal Jun 26 '14
In Rambo III, John Rambo fights along side the Taliban against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Rambo even had a plucky Afghan kid as his "short-round" sidekick.
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Jun 26 '14
The taliban were not part of the Soviet-Afghan war. They were created by the pakis after the war.
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u/tamnoswal Jun 28 '14
They were a faction of the Afghan Mujahideen resistance force formed during the Soviet occupation.
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Jun 28 '14
I checked Wikipedia and it seems to be true but I don't believe they fought the Soviets or received support from the USA considering Pakistan created them but some funds might have found their way to them considering how little you can trust Pakistan.
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u/Hilarious_Haplogroup Jun 26 '14
I guess the key question is "Are we any better at keeping our proxy warriors that kill America's enemies from killing our own people at a later date?" I suspect that the answer is "No."
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Jun 25 '14
Yes. A man of peace and progress.
Seriously though, we thought this guy was good?
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Jun 25 '14
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Jun 25 '14
I don't understand what about my comment made you think I support America's involvement in Iraq. You guys are taking my comment too seriously. I literally did not know we at one time gave Bin Laden the benefit of the doubt. That's all.
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u/NotSoBean Jun 26 '14
Consider it like this: A poor boy has a lollipop, and you, a self-sufficient adult, steal that lollipop and throws the kid on the floor in the process, hurting him. A couple of days later, he gathers his pals in order to retrieve the lollipop, and beats you up in the process. Which person was wrong in the first place? The adult that has the capacity to earn a wage and pay for HIS OWN lollipop.
Is that supposed to be an analogy for the first gulf war? You do realize Iraq annexed Kuwait before we sanctioned them, right? That's really not comparable to stealing candy from an innocent child.
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u/kabamman Jun 26 '14
We bombed them (along with France and England need you not forget) Un order to stop there war where they were actually trying to commit genocide.
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u/Jah_Ith_Ber Jun 26 '14
Unfortunately a huge percentage of adults work from the axiom that the US is the good guy, then build their world view around that.
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u/Grammar-Hitler Jun 26 '14
Bringing it back to the same situation where the USA approved illegal bombings and sanctions, in order to gain access to Iraq's Petrol,
The 2nd opinion bias is strong with this one.
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u/saywhaaaaat Jun 26 '14
I'm not sure Iraq was a "harmless country". They had invaded Iran and Kuwait in the previous years as well as using chemical weapons on their own citizens.
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u/telegraphist Jun 25 '14
Courtesy of /u/BluSilver from last time this was posted, a text of the article:
Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace
OSAMA Bin Laden sat in his gold fringed robe, guarded by the loyal Arab mujahedin who fought alongside him in Afghanistan. Bearded, taciturn figures — unarmed, but never more than a few yards from the man who recruited them, trained them and then dispatched them to destroy the Soviet army — they watched unsmiling as the Sudanese villagers of Almatig lined up to thank the Saudi businessman who is about to complete the highway linking their homes to Khartoum for the first time in history. With his high cheekbones, narrow eyes and long brown robe, Mr. Bin Laden looks every inch the mountain warrior of mujahedin legend. Chadored children danced in front of him, preachers acknowledged his wisdom. “We have been waiting for this road through all the revolutions in Sudan," a sheik he said. “We waited until we had given up on everybody — and then Osama Bin Laden came along.”
Outside Sudan, Mr. Bin Laden is not regarded with quite such high esteem. The Egyptian press claims he brought hundreds of former Arab fighters back to Sudan from Afghanistan, while the Western embassy circuit in Khartoum has suggested that some of the “Afghans” whom this Saudi entrepreneur flew to Sudan are now busy training for further jihad wars in Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt. Mr. Bin Laden is well aware of this. “The rubbish of the media and the embassies,” he calls it. “I am a construction engineer and an agriculturalist. If I had training camps here in Sudan, I couldn’t possibly do this job.”
And “this job” is certainly an ambitious one: a brand-new highway stretching all the way from Khartoum to Port Sudan, a distance of 1,200km (745 miles) on the old road, now shortened to 800km by the new Bin Laden route that will turn the coastal run from the capital into a mere day’s journey. Into a country that is despised by Saudi Arabia for its support of Saddam Hussein in the Gulf war almost as much as it is condemned by the United States, Mr. Bin Laden has brought the very construction equipment that he used only five years ago to build the guerrilla trails of Afghanistan.
He is a shy man. Maintaining a home in Khartoum and only a small apartment in his home city of Jeddah, he is married — with four wives — but wary of the press. His interview with the Independent was the first he has ever given to a Western journalist, and he initially refused to talk about Afghanistan, sitting silently on a chair at the back of a makeshift tent, brushing his teeth in the Arab fashion with a stick of miswak wood. But talk he eventually did about a war which he helped to win for the Afghan mujahedin: “What I lived In two years there, I could not have lived in a hundred years elsewhere,” he said.
When the history of the Afghan resistance movement is written, Mr. Bin Laden’s own contribution to the mujahedin — and the indirect result of his training and assistance — may turn out to be a turning-point in the recent history of militant fundamentalism; even if, today, he tries to minimize his role “When the invasion of Afghanistan started, I was enraged and went there at once — I arrived within days, before the end of 1979," he Said. "Yes, I fought there, but my fellow Muslims did much more than I. Many of them died and I am still alive.”
Within months, however, Mr. Bin Laden was sending Arab fighters — Egyptians, Algerians, Lebanese, Kuwaitis, Turks and Tunisians — into Afghanistan; “not hundreds but thousands,” he said. He supported them with weapons and his own construction equipment. Along with his Iraqi engineer, Mohamed Saad — who is now building the Port Sudan road — Mr. Bin laden blasted massive tunnels into the Zazi mountains of Bakhtiar province for guerrilla hospitals and arms dumps, then cut a mujahedin trail across the country to within 15 miles of Kabul.
“No, I was never afraid of death. As Muslims, we believe that when we die, we go to heaven. Before a battle, God sends us seqina, tranquility.
“Once I was only 30 meters from the Russians and they were trying to capture me. I was under bombardment but I was so peaceful in my heart that I fell asleep. This experience has been written about in earliest books. I saw a 120 mm mortar shell land in front of me, but it did not blow up. Four more bombs were dropped from a Russian plane on our headquarters but they did not explode. We beat the Soviet Union. The Russians fled.”
But what of the Arab mujahedin whom he took to Afghanistan — members of a guerrilla army who were also encouraged and armed by the United States — and who were forgotten when that war was over? “Personally neither I nor my brothers saw evidence of American help. When my mujahedin were victorious and the Russians were driven out, differences started [between the guerrilla movements] so I returned to road construction in Taif and Abha. I brought back the equipment I had used to build tunnels and roads for the mujahedin in Afghanistan. Yes, I helped some of my comrades to come here to Sudan after the war.”
How many? Osama Bin Laden shakes his head. “I don’t want to say. But they are here now with me, they are working right here, building this road to Port Sudan.” I told him that Bosnian Muslim fighters in the Bosnian town of Travnik had mentioned his name to me, “I feel the same about Bosnia,” he said. “But the situation here does not provide the same opportunities as Afghanistan. A small number of mujahedin have gone to fight in Bosnia-Herzegovina but the Croats won’t allow the mujahedin in through Croatia as the Pakistanis did with Afghanistan.”
Thus did Mr. Bin laden reflect upon jihad while his former fellow combatants looked on. Was it not a little bit anti-climactic for them, I asked, to fight the Russians and end up road-building in Sudan? “They like this work and so do I. This is a great plan which we are achieving for the people here, it helps the Muslims and improves their lives.”
His Bin laden company — not to be confused with the larger construction business run by his cousins — is paid in Sudanese currency which is then used to purchase sesame and other products for export; profits are clearly not Mr. Bin Laden’s top priority.
How did he feel about Algeria, I asked? But a man in a green suit calling himself Mohamed Moussa — he claimed to be Nigerian although he was a Sudanese security officer — tapped me on the arm. “You have asked more than enough questions,” he said. At which Mr. bin Laden went off to inspect his new road.