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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Hey, this a non-climbing thread. You're not allowed to mention chalk here.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Lol Anders.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/08/60-mile-traffic-jam-in-china-enters-its-9th-day/1?csp=obnetwork
A 60-mile traffic jam on one of China's major national freeways is now entering its 9th day, the Chinese media reports.
Global Times says residents along the Beijing-Tibet Freeway are cashing in by gouging stranded drivers, with noodles going for four times the normal price.
It all began Aug. 14 when thousands of Beijing-bound trucks got jammed up because of construction on a nearby roadway, National Freeway 110.
Despite the efforts of 400 police officers, the congestion is likely to last at least until Sept. 13 when the construction work is scheduled to be completed, the newspaper says.
(Posted by Doug Stanglin)
Now this is the civilization we will clash with. Once they figure out grid lock that is.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Sep 10, 2010 - 10:24am PT
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charles krauthammer praises barry? this is a must read (warning: it will make libs' eyes bleed)
September 10, 2010 12:00 A.M.
Your Bid, Mr. Abbas
Until Palestine is ready to offer concessions, peace talks will accomplish nothing.
The prospects are dim but the process is right. The Obama administration is to be commended for structuring the latest rounds of Middle East talks correctly. Finally, we’re leaving behind interim agreements, of which the most lamentable were the Oslo accords of 1993.
The logic then was that issues so complicated could be addressed only step by step in the expectation that things get easier over time. In fact, they got harder. Israel made concrete concessions — bringing in Yasser Arafat to run the West Bank and Gaza — in return for which Israel received growing threats, continuous incitement, and finally a full-scale terror war that killed more than a thousand innocent Israelis.
Among the victims was the Israeli peace movement and its illusions about Palestinian acceptance of Israel. The Israeli Left, mugged by reality, is now moribund. And the Israeli Right is chastened. No serious player believes it can hang on forever to the West Bank.
This has created a unique phenomenon in Israel — a broad-based national consensus for giving nearly all the West Bank in return for peace. The moment is doubly unique because the only man who can deliver such a deal is Likud prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu — and he is prepared to do it.
Hence the wisdom of how the Obama administration has shaped the coming talks: No interim deals, no partial agreements. There are no mutual concessions that can be made separately within the great issues — territory, security, Jerusalem, the so-called right of return — to reach agreement. The concessions must be among these issues — thus if Israel gives up its dream of a united Jerusalem, for example, the Palestinians in return give up their dream of the right of return.
Most important is the directive issued by U.S. peace negotiator George Mitchell: What’s under discussion is a final settlement of the conflict. Meaning, no further claims. Conflict over.
What’s standing in the way? Israeli settlements? Foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, one of Israel’s most nationalist politicians, lives in a settlement and has said openly that to achieve peace he and his family would abandon their home. What about the religious settlers? Might they not resist? Some tried that during the Gaza withdrawal, clinging to synagogue rooftops. What happened? Jewish soldiers pulled them down and took them away. If Israel is offered real peace, the soldiers will do that again.
The obstacle today, as always, is Palestinian refusal to accept a Jewish state. That has been the core issue of the conflict from 1947 through Camp David 2000 when Arafat rejected Israel’s extraordinarily generous peace offer, made no counteroffer, and started a terror war (the Second Intifada) two months later.
A final peace was there to be had. It remains on the table today. Unfortunately, there’s no more sign today of a Palestinian desire for final peace than there was at Camp David. Even if Mahmoud Abbas wants such an agreement (doubtful but possible), he simply doesn’t have the authority. To accept a Jewish state, Abbas needs some kind of national consensus behind him. He doesn’t have even a partial consensus. Hamas, which exists to destroy Israel, controls part of Palestine (Gaza), and is a powerful rival to Abbas’s Fatah even in his home territory of the West Bank.
Indeed, this week Abbas flatly told al-Quds, the leading Palestinian newspaper, “We won’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.” Nice way to get things off on the right foot.
What will Abbas do? Unable and/or unwilling to make peace, he will exploit President Obama’s tactical blunder, the settlement freeze imposed on Israel despite the fact that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations had gone on without such a precondition for 16 years prior. Abbas will walk out if the freeze is not renewed on September 26. You don’t need to be prescient to see that coming. Abbas has already announced that that is what he’ll do.
That would solve all of Abbas’s problems. It would obviate signing on to a final settlement, fend off Hamas, and make Israel the fall guy.
The trifecta. Why not walk out? The world, which already condemns Israel even for self-defense, will be only too eager to blame Israel for the negotiation breakdown. And there is growing pressure to create a Palestinian state even if the talks fail — i.e., even if the Palestinians make no concessions at all. So why make any?
The talks are well-designed. Unfortunately, Abbas knows perfectly well how to undermine them.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010 the Washington Post Writers Group.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Sep 10, 2010 - 10:48am PT
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Krauthammer is an anti-intellectual piece of dung.
He is a horrid person and I afford him NO credence.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Sep 10, 2010 - 11:58am PT
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Your right, KrackedHummer and his ilk could be the cause of the next clash.
Bebe Rebozo you are a broken record.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Sep 10, 2010 - 12:01pm PT
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very thoughtful reaction, philo
here's some more to stoke the fire:
September 10, 2010 12:00 A.M.
The Eternal Flame of Muslim Outrage
If they’re not outraged by Ground Zero mosque protesters, it will be something else.
Shhhhhhh, we’re told. Don’t protest the Ground Zero mosque. Don’t burn a Koran. It’ll imperil the troops. It’ll inflame tensions. The “Muslim world” will “explode” if it does not get its way, warns sharia-peddling imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Pardon my national-security-threatening impudence, but when is the “Muslim world” not ready to “explode”?
At the risk of provoking the ever-volatile Religion of Perpetual Outrage, let us count the little-noticed and forgotten ways.
Just a few months ago in Kashmir, faithful Muslims rioted over what they thought was a mosque depicted on underwear sold by street vendors. The mob shut down businesses and clashed with police over the blasphemous skivvies. But it turned out there was no need for Allah’s avengers to get their holy knickers in a bunch. The alleged mosque was actually a building resembling London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. A Kashmiri law-enforcement official later concluded the protests were “premeditated and organized to vitiate the atmosphere.”
Indeed, art and graphics have an uncanny way of vitiating the Muslim world’s atmosphere. In 1994, Muslims threatened German supermodel Claudia Schiffer with death after she wore a Karl Lagerfeld–designed dress printed with a saying from the Koran. In 1997, outraged Muslims forced Nike to recall 800,000 shoes because they claimed the company’s “Air” logo looked like the Arabic script for “Allah.” In 1998, another conflagration spread over Unilever’s ice-cream logo — which Muslims claimed looked like “Allah” if read upside-down and backwards (can’t recall what they said it resembled if you viewed it with 3D glasses).
Even more explosively, in 2002, an al-Qaeda-linked jihadist cell plotted to blow up Bologna, Italy’s Church of San Petronio because it displayed a 15th-century fresco depicting Mohammed being tormented in the ninth circle of Hell. For years, Muslims had demanded that the art come down. Counterterrorism officials in Europe caught the would-be bombers on tape scouting out the church and exclaiming, “May Allah bring it all down. It will all come down.”
That same year, Nigerian Muslims stabbed, bludgeoned, or burned to death 200 people in protest of the Miss World beauty pageant — which they considered an affront to Allah. Contest organizers fled out of fear of inflaming further destruction. When Nigerian journalist Isioma Daniel joked that Mohammed would have approved of the pageant and that “in all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them,” her newspaper rushed to print three retractions and apologies in a row. It didn’t stop Muslim vigilantes from torching the newspaper’s offices. A fatwa was issued on Daniel’s life by a Nigerian official in the sharia-ruled state of Zamfara, who declared that “the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed. It is abiding on all Muslims wherever they are to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty.” Daniel fled to Norway.
In 2005, British Muslims got all hot and bothered over a Burger King ice-cream-cone container whose swirly-texted label resembled, you guessed it, the Arabic script for “Allah.” The restaurant chain yanked the product in a panic and prostrated itself before the Muslim world. But the fast-food dessert had already become a handy radical-Islamic recruiting tool. Rashad Akhtar, a young British Muslim, told Harper’s Magazine how the ice-cream caper had inspired him: “Even though it means nothing to some people and may mean nothing to some Muslims in this country, this is my jihad. I’m not going to rest until I find the person who is responsible. I’m going to bring this country down.”
In 2007, Muslims combusted again in Sudan after an infidel elementary-school teacher innocently named a classroom teddy bear “Mohammed.” Protesters chanted, “Kill her, kill her by firing squad!” and “No tolerance — execution!” She was arrested and jailed, and faced 40 lashes for blasphemy before being freed after eight days. Not wanting to cause further inflammation, the teacher rushed to apologize: “I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone, and I am sorry if I caused any distress.”
And who could forget the global Danish-cartoon riots of 2006 (instigated by imams who toured Egypt stoking hysteria with faked anti-Islam comic strips)? From Afghanistan to Egypt to Lebanon to Libya, Pakistan, Turkey, and in between, hundreds died under the pretext of protecting Mohammed from Western slight, and brave journalists who stood up to the madness were threatened with beheading. It wasn’t really about the cartoons at all, of course. Little remembered is the fact that Muslim bullies were attempting to pressure Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for continuing with its nuclear-research program. The chairmanship of the council was passing to Denmark at the time. Yes, it was just another in a long line of manufactured Muslim explosions that were, to borrow a useful phrase, “premeditated and organized to vitiate the atmosphere.”
When everything from sneakers to stuffed animals to comics to frescos to beauty queens to fast-food packaging to undies serves as dry tinder for Allah’s avengers, it’s a grand farce to feign concern about the recruitment effect of a few burnt Korans in the hands of a two-bit attention-seeker in Florida. The eternal flame of Muslim outrage was lit a long, long time ago.
— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies (Regnery, 2010). © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Sep 10, 2010 - 02:42pm PT
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I think that Iranian just double dared us to burn it.
Seems its a war on 2 fronts these days. We have the Muslims on the outside
and Obama on the inside.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem.html
Theories abound to explain the President's goals and actions. Critics in the
business community--including some Obama voters who now have buyer's
remorse--tend to focus on two main themes. The first is that Obama is
clueless about business. The second is that Obama is a socialist--not an
out-and-out Marxist, but something of a European-style socialist, with a
penchant for leveling and government redistribution.
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dirtbag
climber
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Sep 13, 2010 - 01:42pm PT
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Why I'm always a target:
I thought it was because you are wide.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Sep 13, 2010 - 03:21pm PT
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Al Quaeda is back in basra and taking over now that the US is gone....rj
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Sep 13, 2010 - 04:04pm PT
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Al Qaeda in Iraq rises again
The militant group exploits a political vacuum in Baghdad and anger among minority Sunni Arabs to regain control in some areas.
By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times
September 13, 2010
Reporting from Jarf Sakhr, Iraq — Sheik Sabah Janabi wears a painful-looking metal brace on his left hand, its rods pressing into the puffy flesh like the spring on a mousetrap. He fumbles a Marlboro from a pack with his good hand, sucks in the smoke and frowns.
In this farming town that was a center of extremism when Iraq fell into its nihilistic civil war, Janabi sits in a darkened room, his white shirt half tucked in and his blue tie slightly askew. He talks about how gunmen tried to kill him three months ago and describes himself as a leader under siege.
Al Qaeda in Iraq is back from the dead.
Once vanquished by Janabi and other Sunni Arab fighters who joined the U.S.-backed Awakening movement, the Islamic militant group is carving out new sanctuaries here in the farmlands south of Baghdad, in the deserts to the west and in the mountains to the east.
Almost weekly, suicide bombers wage war in the Iraqi capital. Tribal leaders, local officials and some U.S. officers worry that Al Qaeda in Iraq has successfully exploited the country's six-month political vacuum and anger over arrests of Awakening members in Sunni areas to establish its new foothold.
"We went a lengthy time without huge car bombs, and suddenly we are getting them," a senior U.S. officer said. "Without good support for the Awakening, Qaeda is starting to morph back into areas."
Although Al Qaeda in Iraq is nowhere near its level of power in 2005 and 2006, when it controlled large swaths of territory in Baghdad and other cities, its ability to once more establish havens is an ominous sign that could point to the possible renewal of the country's sectarian war if the political void persists and communal resentments are not addressed.
The disenchantment of Iraq's minority Sunnis, who benefited under President Saddam Hussein and provided the ballast for the insurgency after U.S.-led forces ousted him in 2003, is ripe for exploitation.
"It's still self-defense and survival," the U.S. officer said. "The American military isn't on the scene. The Iraqi security forces are still not trusted in most areas, and the government of Iraq is absent. It doesn't mean they are joining Qaeda, but it means that some are not acting against Qaeda so Qaeda doesn't do anything against their families."
Defense Minister Abdul Qader Obeidi said security forces were aware of the return of Al Qaeda in Iraq to Diyala and Anbar provinces and south of Baghdad. But he insisted that his commanders were on top of the situation.
"We have to recognize that we are dealing with the third generation of Al Qaeda that is more advanced, so we have to deal with this," Obeidi said. "There are definite signs of regeneration."
In western Iraq's Anbar province, where Al Qaeda in Iraq was dealt a knockout blow in 2007, security officials, prominent sheiks and former insurgents warn that the group, along with Hussein's Baath Party, has infiltrated the police force and has sleeper cells in command positions. Some of them speak of Al Qaeda's ability to move freely and potentially to overrun at least two cities for several hours.
In Diyala, to the north and east of Baghdad, areas have been marred by car bombings and several beheadings, including one of a Sunni cleric. Two weeks ago, Al Qaeda fighters killed eight Awakening members and then paraded and planted a black flag in the town of Sharaban. The group is now seen as having loose control in some of the province's mountains and has a substantial presence in the suburbs around its capital, Baqubah.
Al Qaeda in Iraq's rekindled influence can be traced back a year in Jarf Sakhr and other places, after the Shiite-led Iraqi government finished taking over the Awakening program nationwide in the spring of 2009. Soon army raids intensified in Sunni communities and Awakening salaries were often paid late. Progress on incorporating Awakening members into the security forces was tepid at best. The ranks of the paramilitary group were diminished, and Al Qaeda in Iraq used the opening to reassert itself.
"Villagers and simple people go to those people they are afraid of. They are terrified of Qaeda," said a former insurgent leader, who asked not to be identified for security reasons. "They are always going with the one who is strongest."
Two years ago, Sheik Janabi was mighty and Al Qaeda was weak. He claimed the loyalty of hundreds of men. Now his world is crumbling.
The players who put him on his pedestal have faded away: The Americans are mostly gone, and his backers from insurgent groups that fought Al Qaeda have left or been severely weakened. Some locals resent him and the power he amassed.
He has little to show for his tribesmen. Electricity is sparse; there are no hospitals and no jobs. Some have defected to Al Qaeda for money, others out of fear, frustration with Janabi or hatred of the government.
Two of his brothers have been killed. Janabi nearly met the same fate.
One morning in June, he left his farm in a white truck, his bodyguards traveling in a second car. Janabi was talking on his phone when a burst of gunfire raked his car and smashed out the back window. Bullets grazed his forehead and ripped his hand.
Some of his men fired back madly and he was raced to a hospital, where they wanted to amputate his finger. He refused and chose to go to Jordan for surgery.
Sitting in his office decorated with a rumpled Iraqi flag and pictures of U.S. Gens. David H. Petraeus and Ray T. Odierno, Janabi says that one of Al Qaeda's leaders here is a rival member of his tribe, a man called Mohammed Awad. He and his colleagues call Awad "a man of no value" before he rose to his position in Al Qaeda. They dismiss him as an "illiterate" and lesser member of the tribe who was attracted to crime before he heeded an Islamic fundamentalist call.
The rift speaks to the tribal conflicts that Al Qaeda has manipulated to worm its way back into rural districts. Awad now holds sway in the countryside where Janabi lives; at night, Al Qaeda followers wander freely. Roads toward Ramadi and along the Euphrates River are treacherous by late afternoon.
Men stop by Janabi's office and they talk more about Al Qaeda. Janabi says at least 100 Awakening members are now loyal to Al Qaeda in Iraq. He brags that with government support he could defeat the group in a month.
"I can't leave the field to these killers," he growls. "We sweated blood. I can't give up."
But his strut masks an anxiousness, apparent in the bags under his eyes and his occasionally dejected stares. He acknowledges that he could very well leave Iraq soon.
"Sabah can't be tough with Qaeda or they will kill him," said one prominent resident here, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. "He is weak and trying to survive."
Janabi's relationship with officials in Baghdad remains tense. Zuhair Chalabi, in charge of the government's Awakening file, calls Janabi a Baathist and says that there are arrest warrants against him but that now is not the time to implement them.
Leaving his office, Janabi walks by his pickup and puts his good hand on the side of the abandoned vehicle, riddled with holes. A bodyguard sweats, gripping his rifle. Janabi glances around. A few people stand by their houses. The road will be dangerous soon and he cannot be sure whom to trust.
ned.parker@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Sep 14, 2010 - 01:36pm PT
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Blargle blargle gargling too I've got a steaming coiler for you.
Yargle yargle gobbley goo don't be surprised it smells like...
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Sep 14, 2010 - 11:28pm PT
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Sorry CornHole I don't see the problem you do. This ignorant AssHat deserved to get fired and I bet he now knows it.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Sep 15, 2010 - 08:45pm PT
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Hamas has broken out the Willy Pete.
http://debka.com/article/9020/
When will our resident terrorist apologist decry this war crime?
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Sep 17, 2010 - 12:49am PT
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From Newsweek's resident genius:
We’re Safer Than We Think
But no one wants to admit it.
by Fareed Zakaria
September 11, 2010
Are we safer now than we were on 9/11? It sounds like a simple question, amenable to an answer or at least a serious conversation. But we are so polarized in America these days that it almost seems more difficult now than it was in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Let me try and answer the question as fairly as I know how.
Of course we are safer. During the 1990s, Al Qaeda ran training camps through which as many as 20,000 fighters may have passed. It was able to operate successfully during that decade and into the next because most governments treated the group as an annoyance rather than a major national-security challenge. After the attacks, the world’s attitude changed dramatically, and the series of security measures instituted since then have proved effective. Take one example: sealing cockpit doors has made it highly un-likely that an airplane could be used ever again as a missile.
In addition, U.S. forces went on the offensive in Afghanistan, toppling the regime that supported Al Qaeda, destroying its camps, and chasing its recruits around the mountains of the region. Washington, in partnership with other governments, has tracked the communications, travel, and—most important—money that fuels terror operations, blocking these at every turn. As I wrote at the time and subsequently, and as I continue to believe, the Bush administration deserves credit for these measures. Whatever one may think of its subsequent decisions, its policies to secure the homeland and go after Al Qaeda in 2001 and 2002 were mostly smart and successful. President Obama’s decision to amp up the campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan has further fractured the group.
As a result, Al Qaeda “central”—Osama bin Laden and his gang—has been whittled down to about 400 fighters. It has been unable to execute large-scale attacks of the kind that were at the core of its strategy—to hit high-value American targets that held military or political symbolism. Instead, the terrorist attacks after 9/11 have been launched by smaller local groups, self-identified as affiliates of Al Qaeda, against much easier sites—the nightclub in Bali; cafés in Casablanca and Istanbul; hotels in Amman, Jordan; train stations in Madrid and London. The fatal problem with these kinds of attacks is that they kill ordinary civilians—not U.S. soldiers or diplomats—and turn the local population against Islamic radicals.
The real threat of Al Qaeda was that it would inspire some percent-age of the world’s 1.57 billion Muslims, sending out unstoppable waves of jihadis. In fact, across the Muslim world, militant Islam’s appeal has plunged. In the half of the Muslim world that holds elections, parties that are in any way associated with Islamic jihad tend to fare miserably, even in Pakistan, which has the most serious terrorism problem of any country in the world today. Over the last few years, imams and Muslim leaders across the world have been denouncing suicide bombings, terrorism, and Al Qaeda with regularity.
Of course, we are not 100 percent safe, nor will we ever be. Open societies and modern technology combine to create a permanent danger. Small groups of people can do terrible things. We could make ourselves much safer still, but that would mean many, many more restrictions on our freedoms to move, congregate, associate, and communicate. It’s tough to do terrorism in North Korea.
So the legitimate question to ask now is, have we gone too far? Is the vast expansion in governmental powers and bureaucracies—layered on top of the already enormous military-industrial complex of the Cold War—warranted? Does an organization that has as few as 400 members and waning global appeal require the permanent institutional response we have created?
I’ve been asking these questions for a few years now, and in fact described our “massive overreaction” in a 2008 NEWSWEEK essay, but with little effect. During the Bush years, there was a reluctance on the left to acknowledge that the administration could have done anything worthwhile to counter terrorism. The far greater problem is on the right, where it has become an article of faith that we are gravely threatened by vast swarms of Islamic terrorists, many within the country.
This campaign to spread a sense of imminent danger has fueled a climate of fear and anger. It has created suspicions about U.S. Muslims—who are more assimilated than in any other country in the world. Ironically, this is precisely the intent of terrorism. Bin Laden knew he could never weaken America directly, even if he blew up a dozen buildings or ships. But he could provoke an overreaction by which America weakened itself.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Sep 17, 2010 - 03:35am PT
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Hi Fatty
What did you say the death and injury toll was from those alleged WMDs, same as we used in Iraq and Israel used in Gaza before?
I don't condone violence on either side but as long as the Palestinians lose many times the women and children to wanton killing, I'm hardly seeing that Israel is any kind of underdog here
Peace
Karl
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