« Some Religious Leaders Condemn Robertson's Call for Hit on Chavez | Main | Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army Given an Ultimatum »
August 24, 2005
Bush Goes Back to the They Want to Destroy Our Way of Life Theme
Today U.S. President George W. Bush told a friendly audience in Nampa. Idaho, USA that, "Our nation is engaged in a global war on terror that affects the safety and security of every American. In Iraq," he added, "Afghanistan and across the world, we face dangerous enemies who want to harm our people, folks who want to destroy our way of life."
Has Osama bin Ladin and his allies ever said they wanted to destroy the American way of life, something they know they can't do?
Michael Scheuer, who once headed the CIA's bin Ladin unit, adequately addresses the "they want to destroy our way of life" issue in his book Imperial Hubris: Why The West Is Losing The War On Terror. According to the book, whose points are also outlined in Wikipedia, bin Ladin and his allies' attack U.S. interest because::
(1) The U.S. government supports Israel and is indifferent to the Palestinians
(2) To force U.S. and western troops out of the Arabian Peninsula
(3) To end U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan
(4) To end U.S. support of countries that oppress Muslims such as Russia, India and China
(5) To end U.S. pressure on Arabs to keep oil prices low; and
(6) To end U.S. support for tyrannical governments
These same reasons are outlined in Mr. Scheuer's book Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam & the Future of America, which was initially a CIA training manual on bin Ladin.
Here is a White House transcript of Mr. Bush's Idaho speech.
Posted by Munir Umrani at August 24, 2005 07:35 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)