[ExI] Muslim Threat to Europe- Don't Buy All the Hype

[Stefano Vaj]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 7:14 PM, painlord2k at libero.it
<painlord2k at libero.it> wrote:
> He gave orders, someone followed the orders. This is enough to give and take
> responsibility for the attacks.

Let us say that you are the head of Al-Qaeda, mounting a kind of
crusade against the US and trying to get at head of it.

You learn from TV that you are credited to an attack on the
metropolitan territory of the same US of A, and of having achieved
what neither Mexican, nor German nor Japanese nor Soviet armies could
ever achieve.

Wouldn't you rush telling the world and its dog "Yes, sure, it's me, I
am in fact the greatest terrorist (that is, jihadist) mastermind of
history", even if you had not the foggiest idea of how it happened?

>> And when both parties are quite happy with the official version, one
>> wonders whether its actual "inaccurateness" would really change a
>> thing as to what the public is led to believe...
>
> Given the number of jihadi killed in the last years (al Qaeda only) I wonder
> what they would had done if not urged to combat the US in Afghanistan and
> Iraq. What do you do with training camps for guerilla and terrorism for
> 1.000's of men in Afghanistan and 20.000 trained men?
> Harvest daisies?

No, you misunderstand me. What I am saying is that sometimes you have
converging interests with your "worst enemies": e.g., bin Laden for
sure appreciated the opportunity to become a kind of mythical figure
and a world-class political and military figure, as much as the Bush
administration the opportunity to have somebody specifically to point
to with regard to what happened. This may well have galvanised the
combatants on *both* side.

Please note that I am not moralising on that one. For instance, I am a
staunch supporter of the idea that transhumanists and the most rabid
bioluddites have at least in common a short-term shared interest in
seeing a higher attention by the public opinion on the issue of a
possible posthuman change... :-)

-- 
Stefano Vaj