Obama and Osama

Is Iraq a distraction?

Can an Obama supporter please come forward and tell me why Michael Totten is wrong? It's not obvious to me and I consider myself quite knowledgeable in the subject.

"Obama could, perhaps, argue that fewer resources were available for the fight in Afghanistan because of the war in Iraq. That would be true. But that’s also true of Al Qaeda’s resources. They also deployed manpower and material to Iraq that otherwise could have been sent to Afghanistan.

The Al Qaeda leadership emphatically has not agreed with Obama that Iraq is a distraction. It has been their main event for years.

“The most important and serious issue today for the whole world,” Osama bin Laden said on December 28, 2004, “is this Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation. It is raging in the land of the two rivers. The world’s millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate.”

It’s only natural that an Arab-led and mostly Arab-staffed terrorist group like Al Qaeda would be more concerned with a strategically critical country in the heart of the Arab Middle East than with a primitive non-Arab backwater in Central Asia."

 

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/totten/31621

 

7,127 views 13 replies
Reply #1 Top

Anyone here who understands the wisdom behind Obama's thinking?

 

Reply #2 Top

There was another thread that answered this already--QUESTIONING OBAMA IS WRONG. It's "stupid and imflammatory." When are you going to understand that?

Reply #3 Top

Wait.  I'm having a blonde moment, I suppose.  What was the point of this article?  Sorry, that sounded rude.  I mean, I don't understand what you're trying to get at.  Are you agreeing with Obama or criticizing him???

Reply #4 Top

There was another thread that answered this already--QUESTIONING OBAMA IS WRONG. It's "stupid and imflammatory." When are you going to understand that?
End of quote

Yes I have seen that one.  Shame on me for every doubting the new messiah.

Reply #5 Top

What was the point of this article? 

End of quote

Did you read the linked article? It's about Obama saying that the war in Iraq distracts from the war against Al-Qaeda and the fact that Al-Qaeda is actually being fought in Iraq. So according to the article (and according to what I can see myself), Obama is wrong.

 

Are you agreeing with Obama or criticizing him???

End of quote

I disagree with him. But I would like to hear a possible explanation for his view. Do he and his supporters not know that the coalition and Iraqi forces are fighting Al-Qaeda in Iraq? If he knows, why does he say that fighting Al-Qaeda distracts from fighting Al-Qaeda? And if he doesn't know, why does he claim to have a solution for a problem he doesn't know anything about?

 

Reply #6 Top

But that’s also true of Al Qaeda’s resources. They also deployed manpower and material to Iraq that otherwise could have been sent to Afghanistan.

The Al Qaeda leadership emphatically has not agreed with Obama that Iraq is a distraction. It has been their main event for years.
End of quote

if what was previously termed al qaeda-in-iraq was, in fact, what it claimed to be, why have we wasted the past 7 years fighting al qaeda anywhere instead of engaging them in financial negotiations?   for only $10 a day (not that much more than what those missionaries on late-night tv require to save impoverished kids in third-world hellholes) we've managed to buy off aii, transforming it from terrorist insurgency to surge-friendly 'sons of iraq'. 

if $10 per day per jihadist is the going rate in

a strategically critical country in the heart of the Arab Middle East
End of quote

we should get way fewer bangs for our buck in

a primitive non-Arab backwater in Central Asia
End of quote
 

somehow i doubt real members of the real al qaeda have a dollar price.

Reply #7 Top

if what was previously termed al qaeda-in-iraq was, in fact, what it claimed to be, why have we wasted the past 7 years fighting al qaeda anywhere instead of engaging them in financial negotiations

End of quote

You are perhaps not realising the seriousness of the situation. In fact you don't seem to understand the war at all.

It's not about failing to buy off the terrorists. Al-Qaeda are blowing up mosques in Iraq. If they wanted money, they would simply keep the oil money Bin Laden brought into the organisation and not waste resources on terrorism at all. But that's not what they want.

You cannot "negotiate"" with them, not when they still think they have a chance to hurt us/Jews/Shiites/Iraqis/anyone.

Did you even read the article I linked to?

It's not about ten dollars a day.

It's about walking down the street without needing Peshmerga soldiers standing around. It's about praying in a mosque without fearing that Al-Qaeda decide to blow it up. It's about driving from Erbil to Suleimaniya without passing four or five checkpoints. It's about having electricity all day without having terrorists blow up pylons somewhere. It's about building an irrigation system that is not designed to dry up the lands inhabited by Shiites.

I really think you totally misunderstand the situation. You totally don't get the seriousness of the situation.

It's not about money. It's about a military presence that stops the terrorists (and/or Baath loyalists) from taking over the country again.

Iraqis think that Obama cares only about America.

I think Obama cares only about himself.

If Obama withdraws the troops, Iraq will turn back into what it was before 2003. Baath loyalists are already rebuilding a militia in Tikrit. And Abu Ghraib will become unknown again. They will have ten thousands executions per year again, but nobody will tell you about them. And Obama will be happy. And that's what I am afraid of.

 

Reply #8 Top

Ah.  Didn't see the link.  Gotcha.  Thanks.

 

 

Nader in '08!!!

Reply #9 Top

I would like to know why this is our problem? If we are going to be a bunch of humanitarians why don't we go to Russia and any other country with injustices going on. Matter of fact why don't we send all of our food to starving countries too. I know it sounds selfish, but before you lash into what I think, wrap your minds around this. If we were to take care of ourselves before we take on a mission to help the world, then the money spent in Iraq could have been used to help our economy problems. The money could have been set up to improve our countries distribution routes, schools (both k-12 and college), and many other things to stimulate the economy. I think that Obama made an error, and everyone has had their fun poking at it. But he does atleast have a quasi valid point. We invaded the Taliban to find Osama Bin Laden. Now we are only fighting the taliban. In Iraq there was a group called Al Quieda in Iraq, but we were fighting so many groups there. Most of the people we were fighting against we not even Iraqi's. They were radicals that came in from other neighboring countries. That was the consensus while i was there anyhow. If they shot once they were Iraqi's a gun fight they were radicals. So if someone could please explain why our mission is more important there than at home in the US I sure would love to hear it.  

Reply #10 Top

Did you even read the article I linked to?
End of quote

several times. 

no matter what obama bin laden said or didn't say in 2004, there's no verifiable proof the real al qaeda (as opposed to al zarqawi's self-styled aqi) provided any significant financial support or manpower.  there was no organized iflux of foreign fighters--the number of which now seem to have been greatly overestimated. 

you also missed my point entirely.   fanatics--specifically wahabbi fanatics--aren't likely to sell out the way the sunni and shia miitias have.  

in the meantime, the real al qaeda--the group obama is focused on--might have murdered most of pakistan's new government who were supposed to have been meeting at the islamabad marriott the night it was bombed. 

Reply #11 Top

obama bin laden
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Obama bin laden?  You been taking speech lessons from Ted Kennedy?

Reply #12 Top

Obama bin laden?
End of quote

dammit...that lil slip's bound to cost me at least 2, maybe 3, virgins. 

Reply #13 Top

you also missed my point entirely.   fanatics--specifically wahabbi fanatics--aren't likely to sell out the way the sunni and shia miitias have.

End of quote

Actually, I haven't missed that point. I just told you that they cannot be bought. That's why the coalition and the Iraqi government are fighting them instead.

If we stop fighting them, they better be buyable.