Comments on: Things That Matter

By: Top Posts « WordPress.com

Top Posts « WordPress.com — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:02:11 +0000

[...] Things That Matter Well, I’m back from a long, cloud-ridden, sleep-clotted weekend holiday and ready to blog. But there’s a [...] [...]

By: stephanadams

stephanadams — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:04:31 +0000

Zawahiri's message about President-elect Obama was inevitable. AQ's world-view has always been that the US and the west are bad. This will continue until they get what they want which is the restoration of the Caliphate. The policies of the Bush administration made it very easy for AQ's propaganda machine to feed that narrative that the west is the root of all the evil that is oppressing the Muslim people of the world. Had Sen. McCain had been elected then AQ would have had an easier time linking McCain to their basic narrative, this would be because of some of the similarities in the policies of McCain and Bush. With Obama the end state will ultimately be the same; tie his policies to the basic narrative that the west is oppressing Muslims. It started out with the character assassination that Obama is a "House Negro" and a Jew and really no different then President Bush. It will continue as Pres. Obama outlines his policies for dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Gitmo. Nothing short of complete withdraw from the above three countries and release of all AQ operatives will satisfy AQ's demands. Even if that were done they would find a different line of attack tied to US corporations or our support to Israel. The election of President Obama has made their job tougher because it appears that most of the world including moderate Muslims seems willing to give the US the benefit of the doubt in the hopes that we will strive to improve our relationship with them rather than unilaterally act for the sole purpose of promoting US national interests.

By: grant czerepak

grant czerepak — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:39:13 +0000

I'm looking forward to real issues identified and intelligently handled for the next four years.

By: dueconsideration

dueconsideration — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:28:43 +0000

I thought your analysis that Obama's election represents a massive threat to Al-Qaeda psychologically was absolutely correct. The Arab world, as a vast generalism, appears to feel broadly repressed by the more wealthy more white more Christian world, which they perceive to be lead by America. Obama's color and background make that a more difficult view to sustain.

The only path to sustaining this point of view would be to discredit Obama - hence the houseslave or lapdog epithet.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:17:45 +0000

I'm hardly your knuckle-draggin type, and after 9/11 I had more apprehensions about America's reactionary behavior than about substantial security threats to the nation (*AHCHOO-Iraq was inevitable-OOO*). But any more I believe when these cowardly, flow-stone, self-important "revolutionaries" send us anonymous video messages, we should really be sending them video responses. I'm just tired of the cliche'd stock footage of dude's playing on monkey bars in the desert, or a line of guys in ski masks round-housing a ping pong paddle---as if the counterattack to an American invasion would involve issuing millions of ping-pong paddles as our last line of civilian defense. Any takers? Hey Osama! Ya muthah!!

By: hold2file

hold2file — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:07:55 +0000

There was about $288 billion in wholesale heroin produced in Afghanistan in 2007. (The number came from muliplying the crop production times the wholesale street price. You can Google the numbers yourself.)

That pays for a lot of insurgent weapons.

You can't build infrastructure (roads, schools, power plants) without security.

We do need to buy up (and destroy) the heroin crop. It might cost about $30 billion for the first year, but it would shut down Al-Queda in Afghanistan almost completely. Don't be surprised, however, that it will take years to bring "civilization" to Afghanistan. It took Moses 40 years of wandering in the desert to do something similar.

By: jagadgurusriji

jagadgurusriji — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:10:59 +0000

My hope is that the next administration will not give in to those individuals who cannot stand what freedom is all about.

Good luck.

By: dorywilson13

dorywilson13 — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:03:47 +0000

Joe,

Take a vacation more often! Seriously, you're right on points.

Obama's cabinet picks (the latest presumably Napolitano at Homeland Security): doesn't competence feel soooo good?

By: Zawahiri’s taunts | folo

Zawahiri’s taunts | folo — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:18:34 +0000

[...] Joe Klein thinks: The Zawahiri letter is one of the first real indications we have of the new international state of affairs (the Ahmadinejad letter of congratulations may also have been a good sign, but was leavened by the author’s lack of real power and the fact that he’s running for reelection). The terrorists are now exposed as racists, on top of everything else. We have many miles to go in Afghanistan and the northern and western precincts of Pakistan, and more blood to shed–and innumerable ways to screw up, since no one has ever gotten Afghanistan right–but the wind seems to have shifted slightly and is now at our back. [...]

By: Without Lifting a Finger | I, Claudia

Without Lifting a Finger | I, Claudia — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:11:50 +0000

[...] Joe Klein This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 9:11 am and is filed under Politics . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [...]