How Bush Unwittingly Helped Bin Laden's Plan To Wreck U.S. Economy

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."
---Osama bin Laden, 2004 videotape statement.

"The past eight years of imperial overstretch, hubris and domestic and international abuse of power on the part of the Bush administration has left the U.S. materially weakened financially, economically, politically and morally. Even the most hard-nosed, Guantanamo Bay-indifferent potential foreign investor in the U.S. must recognize that its financial system has collapsed."

---Willem Buiter, London School of Economics, 2009.

Contrary to what George W. Bush would have us believe, Osama bin Laden does not hate America for its freedoms. Nor has bin Laden ever harbored ambitions of destroying America in a military confrontation.

No, actually, what bin Laden has long sought is to diminish America's standing in the world by wrecking our economy. Bin Laden believes this is possible because he saw first-hand how the Soviet Union met its demise.

As bin Laden said in a 2004 statement, "We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat."

It's clear that the main goal of the 9/11 attacks was to provoke the U.S. into a costly war in Afghanistan that would drain our treasury and ultimately weaken the main lever of America's global power and influence: the U.S. dollar.

Unfortunately for America, after 9/11, Bush took bin Laden's bait. As bin Laden put it himself in 2004, Al-Qaeda found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."

In fact, bin Laden succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in provoking America into not one, but two disastrous and ruinously expensive wars that have done untold damage to America's global standing, as well as our economic power.

Eight years after the 9/11 attacks, America's economy is in the worst shape it has been since the Great Depression. But the damage is actually far worse than that. As bad as things were in the 1930s, few people then seriously expected the dollar to collapse or for America to become a bankrupt nation. Now, such forecasts are increasingly common.

It's becoming frightening clear that the U.S. dollar is now teetering on the edge of a cliff. For all of the economic misery of 2008, the dollar managed to avoid a steep collapse in value. But it's increasingly likely that in 2009, the East Asian nations that hold trillions of dollars in U.S. debt will finally start off-loading their assets. And when they do, the dollar will crumble in value.

The destruction of the dollar's value will mean an end to America's reign as the world's sole superpower. Once upon a time, such a scenario was embraced only by an alarmist fringe of commentators who weren't taken seriously. But these days, more and more mainstream respectable observers now believe this will be America's fate in the near future. Even Warren Buffet, the wealthiest man on earth, has said the U.S. is at risk of becoming a "sharecropper’s society."

How Bush Took Bin Laden's Bait

During the Soviets' disastrous war in Afghanistan, bin Laden saw first-hand the devastating effects that imperial overstretch can have on a nation's economy. Clearly, that costly fiasco played a role in the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union.

The 9/11 attacks were meant to provoke the U.S. into a similarly costly and debilitating war. And in this, it succeeded beyond bin Laden's wildest dreams, as Bush proceeded to launch not one, but two disastrous wars. (That one of these wars was against the secular state of Iraq, headed by bin Laden's old nemesis, Saddam Hussein, was the icing on the cake).

The 9/11 attacks presented a series of challenges to George W. Bush. The challenges were clear: kill or capture bin Laden and destroy Al-Qaeda.

Eight years later, it's difficult to comprehend just how much Bush has utterly failed to meet this challenge. Bin Laden remains a free man. Al-Qaeda remains intact and is still as lethal as ever. And the Taliban are back and growing in strength.

On the other hand, America is a profoundly different nation than the one that existed before 9/11. We're now a country that is widely despised, feared and hated around the world. We're a vastly weaker nation, economically, than we were before 9/11. America's debts have mushroomed to fantastic levels that threaten the nation's economic security.

About the only thing future historians will remember about Bush's presidency is that he presided over the beginning of the end of the American empire. And it's clear that his bungled response to 9/11 was a key factor in America's ultimate demise as a superpower.

It's this last point that is especially noteworthy. Bin Laden realized early on that his ragtag group of Al-Qaeda fighters could never defeat the U.S. militarily. And horrific as they were, the 9/11 attacks by themselves were a mere pinprick on the overall American economy.

For bin Laden to succeed, he needed the unwitting cooperation of George W. Bush. And that's exactly what bin Laden got, with Bush's disastrous, bungling response to the 9/11 attacks.

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Santa Knows Who Has Been Naughty

I don't know what to make of this. Santa Gets His!!!! was posted to Youtube just yesterday by anothertypo.



Happy New Year.

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Reality Check

December 30, 2007 is the 2,301st day since 9/11 and the man who ordered the massacre is still at large.

Independent Television News

Meanwhile, 3,901 American soldiers have died in the Iraq war.

Associated Press/Richard Lui

“Nothing,”
— George W. Bush, responding to Cox News reporter Ken Herman's asking what Iraq had to do with 9/11, August 21, 2006

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2,185 Days

There is, however, one BIG difference between the two men. Osama knows exactly where Il Douche'™ is. Il Douche'™ doesn't have the vaguest idea where Osama is. Nor, does he care. Do you care? 2,185 days, and counting.

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Bush: We're Still in Iraq Because Osama Wants to Know Who Wins

In his Tuesday speech at Charleston Air Force Base, Bush claimed the reason we must stay in Iraq is because Osama Bin Laden thinks we should so that a winner may be declared:

He's proclaimed that the "third world war is raging in Iraq." Osama bin Laden says, "The war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever."

So Osama bin Laden is dictating American policy. Nice to know who's actually in charge, at least in George Bush's world.

In case you've forgotten, today is the 2,144th day since 9/11 and the man who ordered the massacre of nearly 3,000 people is still at large. Unfortunately, the men responsible for the deaths of 3,637 American soldiers in a country which had nothing to do with 9/11 are still in office.

John Conyers, Nancy Pelosi. . .are you listening?

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Romney Willingly Signs Offensive Photo

Mitt Romney is catching flak for holding up a sign created by one of his grammatically challenged supporters, appearing to endorse the message contained therein. Romney has attempted to deflect the flak by:

a) claiming he isn't responsible for all the signs he poses with;
b) explaining the wording was just a "funny play on words";
c) stating we should all just "lighten up".

Jerid at Buckeye State Blog asked the stormin' Morman candidate to sign a copy of the photo. Romney did. Happily. Predictably, Romney-ites and dittoheads have directed a great deal of hate toward Jerid, accusing him of fraud. Fortunately, that second photo shows Jerid offering the photo to Romney face up, making it clear Romney knew exactly what he was signing. That hasn't stopped the hateful comments, which fortunately haven't stopped Jerid. I especially enjoyed the post on the Young Republican pleading guilty to raping a fellow Young Republican at a Young Republican convention.

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Bomber Harris Was Wrong 60 Years Ago and Osama Bin Laden is Wrong Now

Sir Arthur"Bomber" Harris is one of the most important, but least known, figures of the 20th century. He was the leading proponent of saturation or terror bombing. In 1942, as head of the British Bomber Command, he launched the first 1,000 bomber raids against Germany. According to his BBC bio--

Using incendiary bombs, the allied planes targeted cities such as Cologne in 'thousand bomber' raids. In February 1945, the obliteration of the historic city of Dresden from the air became one of the most controversial episodes of the allied war effort.

His policy of "area" bombing was adopted by the United States Air Force.

"Bomber" Harris's theory was simple. If you drop enough bombs on the enemy civil population, the terrorized civilians will force their government to sue for peace. Sadly his theory didn't work. The German and the Japanese civilian populations were defiant to the end. The Allies had to physically conquer Germany. The atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki convinced the emperor that more bloodshed was useless. They didn't break the will of the Japanese people who had suffered greater losses in conventional incendiary raids on Tokyo and other major cities.

So what? Who cares about some stuffy old British Air Marshall? Well, his theory is at the core of modern terrorism. Al Qaeda's deadly attacks are intended to so dishearten us ordinary citizens that we will insist our government grant the terrorists their demands. According to Max Abrahms

The prevailing view within the field of political science. . . is that terrorism is an effective coercive strategy. The implications of this perspective are grim; as target countries are routinely coerced into making important strategic and ideological concessions to terrorists, their victories will reinforce the strategic logic for groups to attack civilians, spawning even more terrorist attacks.

Abrahms has examined a variety modern terrorist campaigns and concludes that terrorism is a singularly ineffective method for obtaining political ends. It works about 7% of the time and only in situations where the campaign is targeted to narrow limited objectives

Specifically, the group is fighting to either (1) evict a foreign military from occupying another country, or (2) win control over a piece of territory for the purpose of national self-determination.

Terror is utterly ineffective when the goals are "maximialist" as, for example, when a terrorist group is attacking a country to either (1) transform its political system (usually to either Marxist or Islamist), or (2) annihilate it because of its values. But even in cases where the objectives are limited terrorists are far more effective when they limit themselves to military as opposed to civilian targets. Over all terrorism only works when the goals are limited and the targets are not civilian, and then not all that often.

Why doesn't terrorism work? Enter a concept known as correspondent inference theory. Bruce Schneier writing in Wired explains correspondent inference theory this way.

People tend to infer the motives -- and also the disposition -- of someone who performs an action based on the effects of his actions, and not on external or situational factors. If you see someone violently hitting someone else, you assume it's because he wanted to -- and is a violent person -- and not because he's play-acting. If you read about someone getting into a car accident, you assume it's because he's a bad driver and not because he was simply unlucky. And . . . if you read about a terrorist, you assume that terrorism is his ultimate goal.

In simple terms when terrorists attack civilians, the survivors interpret the attackers as wanting to kill them. What the terrorists say is irrelevant. All that matters is what they have done. You don't negotiate with somebody you perceive as trying to kill you. You either run away or fight back. Since there is no place to run, we fight back.

We don't pay any attention to the terrorist's "limited demands." We don't care. Our reaction is not rational. It is biological. Human beings are hard wired to infer that terrorists are trying to kill us when they attack civilians. Our ancestors didn't negotiate with big cats or wolves. We are not wired to negotiate with predators.

Did you know that Osama bin Laden has been very consistent in his demands:

1. End U.S. support of Israel
2. Force American troops out of the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia
3. End the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and (subsequently) Iraq
4. End U.S. support of other countries' anti-Muslim policies
5. End U.S. pressure on Arab oil companies to keep prices low
6. End U.S. support for "illegitimate" (i.e. moderate) Arab governments, like Pakistan.

Neither did I. The truth is nobody pays any attention to what terrorists say. Nobody cares.

Again quoting Schneier

Although Bin Laden has complained that Americans have completely misunderstood the reason behind the 9/11 attacks, correspondent inference theory postulates that he's not going to convince people. Terrorism, and 9/11 in particular, has such a high correspondence that people use the effects of the attacks to infer the terrorists' motives. In other words, since Bin Laden caused the death of a couple of thousand people in the 9/11 attacks, people assume that must have been his actual goal, and he's just giving lip service to what he claims are his goals. Even Bin Laden's actual objectives are ignored as people focus on the deaths, the destruction and the economic impact.

Winston Churchill was smart enough to realize that terror bombing civilians doesn't work. That is why he called off "Bomber" Harris after Dresden. When is Osama Bin Laden going to learn the same lesson?

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