[eDebate] bogus al-qaeda links: ignored CIA report

[Kevin Sanchez]

duane: "Kevin, has no second thoughts about endorsing people who resort to 
murder to achieve to their aims....very odd."

very odd indeed that you don't recognize our agreement on this matter, 
seeing as you're a tireless defender of the imperial military. what do you 
think happens when an american bomb is dropped on a village or a restaurant 
or a government building? you think nice propaganda pamphlets pop out 
detailining the beauties of america? although figures are imprecise, we can 
say with some degree of assurance that more innocent civilians have died in 
both afghanistan and irak due to the usa military than innocent civilians 
died in the world trade center (that is, 3,000 lives). i know you have handy 
euphenisms for these mass murders, like 'collateral damage' etc., but its 
just like you're refusal to call an empire an empire - orwellian 
doublethink.

d: "OK, Kevin takes John Brown and JWB and says that they are good people,"

never said JWB was a 'good person'; merely that he performed a moral act in 
assassinating a tyrant.

"... who fought for good, morally consistent causes. However - John Brown, 
while definitely anti-slavery, was a phsycotic lunatic, not all that shy 
about murdering people in the most gruesome ways if they interfered with his 
cause, his "raid" on Harper's Ferry kills three townspeople, including a 
freed slave, and results in total failure."

was harriet tubman a psychotic lunatic too? (because she was also set to go 
on said raid.) john brown was a military man and he understood that all the 
abolitionist talk about slavery wasn't going to accomplish anything. you 
look at history with the benefit of hindsight, as if lincoln's election were 
in the bag and as if lincoln were an abolitionist. that's revisionism. 
lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation to keep the uk out of the war 
and to deter those blacks who were fighting on the southern side - it was 
tactical, not moral. john brown and the abolitionist movement had no such 
certainty about their struggle. brown was intelligent, articulate, a friend 
to the leading abolitionists of his day, and he knew exactly what he was 
doing - he told fredrich douglas that *even if* he failed, it would set the 
nation's conscience ablaze, and that is precisely what it did. emerson said 
of him that 'he made the gallows look as holy as the cross'. thoreau plead 
for his life and his cause. black businesses in the north closed on the day 
of his hanging out of respect. 'john brown's body' was a fight song sang by 
northern troops during the civil war. were all these people psychotic 
lunatics as well? are all people who sacrifice and murder because of their 
religious principles lunatics; were the founding parents of the original 
state of israel (namely moses) and of your god-blessed america lunatics as 
well?

"JWB, while "opposing" tyranny was writing about slavery "god blesses the 
institution, it is the best for us, and for them..." In the end, JWB was 
himself complicit with the tyranny of slavery,"

true. but in defending a person's act i don't have to defend everything that 
person may have thought or even the motives which led that person to that 
act. i like the declaration of independence, but i don't like the fact that 
thomas jefferson held slaves. i like the state of texas, but i don't like 
the fact that it was created because mexico banned slavery and texans wanted 
to keep their slaves in captivity. i like that a dictator was assassinated, 
but i don't particularly agree with the reasons of the assasin.

"... and he kills the only man whose policies might have made the plight of 
the freed slave a lot better thant it was, but we'll never know because he 
killed Lincoln."

yes, we'll never know. one thing i do know however was tht if lincoln wasn't 
assasinated, you probably wouldn't have remembered him in the glowing light 
you do now. say what you will of assassination and killing tens of people to 
fight injustice, but embarking upon a war to perserve a federal tyranny 
which killed hundreds of thousands of americans is a crime of an entirely 
different order of magnitude. and that you stick by this alternative really 
shows how hallow your attacks on my political philosophy are: 'but you 
advocate violence!' - that's hypocrisy.

d: "I still think the Saudis made a better bet, it's highly unlikely that 
10,000 men under Bin Laden would have been able to defeat the Iraqi Army."

they had just defeated the largest conventional military in the world, duane 
- what the hell did they have to do to qualify for the job? repel alien 
invaders as well?

d: "Before the US aid starts to flow, and US advisors come in, the 
mujahadeen are dying, albeit bravely, in large numbers at the hands of 
Soviet troops. They lack the ability to bring down the Soviet's MI-24 "Hind" 
gunships, the Soviets are using the "Hind" to kill extremely large numbers 
of them. Enter the American stinger missiles, and the fortune of war shifts 
because now they have a weapon that can bring down the helicopters. The 
stinger also helps the "overmatched" forces of the Mujahadeen to gain 
battlefield parity."

like i said, the usa should've supported the mujahadeen again, and in fact, 
had a moral obligation to considering the assistance that went to saddam's 
butchery throughout the 80s. what was unacceptable was bombing populated 
areas for no goddamn reason, knocking out water treatment facilities so that 
30,000 people died of water-born diseases, destroying the power grid, the 
transportation system, etc., and killing tens of thousands of civilians in 
the process, and then leaving in place a horrid sanctions regime that 
might've killed a million irakis - and then you talk about the innocent 
people al-qaeda kills? ... thomas friedman (who i usually think is 
overly-simplistic) went to the middle east and came back with this 
conclusion: either there's going to be a war within islam or there's going 
to be a war with islam.

d: "US military history is replete with examples of units that have fought 
while facing overwhelming numbers."

holy shit duane, you mean you advocate violence to achieve political 
objectives?!? and i thought you were a pacifist! how unchristian!

d: "Well, the minute they stopped killing Russians in the defense of 
Afghanistan, and started killing office workers, moms, dads, and childrens, 
by hijacking airliners, blowing up buildings, and using terror to advance 
their anti-American agenda, yeah....they became..big shock...terrorists."

the quaran says, fight those who fight you *as* they fight you. with the usa 
military mass murdering civilians, and with no capacity for technological 
parity, what other option did they have? to just sit idly by and watch their 
families die. you think there weren't 'office workers' in the iraki 
buildings that the usa blew up? you think that no children and moms and dads 
were killed? my point was that one person's terror is another person's 
freedom fighter, and in a move that would make orwell proud, we've seen the 
usa go from calling al-qaeda the latter to calling them the former in a mere 
decade.

d: "no....not an empire Kevin, if we were an empire, I'd be setting on Ancon 
hill right now, enjoying the view of Albrook AFB, Fort Clayton, and the 
wonderful Canal Zone -all pristine and beautiful...wait, I did enjoy that 
view from 1975-1978, what happened???? Oh, right...dang...we gave it back to 
Panama, odd behavior for an empire."

empires often make calculated give-aways, that's not very odd; the british 
empire did it from time to time, for instance. again, i'd advise you to read 
bracevich's book, american empire, because it really speaks to folks like 
you, i.e. conseratives in denial. even more odd, i don't think wolfowitz or 
perle are in denial, even if they don't exactly use the e-word - they'll say 
'the new american project' (which is a global, economic project ... hmm? 
sounds like an empire) or they'll say 'hegemon'/'super-power' (of which 
there's really only one left with unrivaled military superiority) or the 
'pax americana' (to match the only other power that has had this much 
concentrated power in world history, the romans and their pax romana), but 
really all that's just semantics and euphemism, and i still find i'm an 
anti-imperialist at heart.

d: "Then Kevin out and out lies. He says that Osama is not bent on spreading 
Islam the world over, but merely will be satisfied if we leave Saudi Arabia, 
cut off aid to Israel, and end the sanctions on Iraq. Well, let's see - we 
are leaving Saudi Arabia, are currently harsher on Israel then any other 
administration, and have ended the sanctions on Iraq....But, Al-Queada still 
wishes to kill us."

they don't get a kick out of killing themselves in airplanes, duane; they 
have highly specific political reasons for what they are doing. if you 
choose to be blind yourself to these reasons, then they've made it quite 
clear that you do so at your own peril. as for your counters: the bases are 
still in saudi arabia (senselessly), saying the administration has been 
harsher on israel than any previous one is like saying that bush is the 
valedictorian of summer skool (cut off the fucking aid), and the sanctions 
were only ended after an imperial conquest that has left the usa in the 
position of sole occupation authority - one step forward, two steps back.

d: "Kevin ignores that Osama has said, on several occassions, that he will 
stop killing us only after the US becomes an Islamic nation,"

find it and cite it, because i've never read it. i've heard him say that he 
doesn't care if infidels go fuck themselves crazy as long as they stop 
killing arab/muslim peoples; and of course, in principle, the quran says 
that the world will one day be entirely muslim or something like that, but 
that's not what al-qaeda are fighting for; it is easy to mischaraterize 
religious militants by the weird things found in their religious texts - 
people did it to john brown too, people did it to george bush when he called 
the 'war on terror' a 'crusade' (which was funny). seriously though, read 
the fatwa of april 98 which authorized killing american, military and 
civilians - that's the direct line to 9/11 and other 9/11s to come.

d: "... but I guess the threat of terror to compulse mass conversion is not 
"imperialistic" to Kevin."

the word 'empire' isn't just some vague slur, duane, its a specific 
geo-political term for a power with overwhelming military force that then 
uses that to impose approaching-global economic conditions. second century 
rome was an empire, whether you liked it or not, because it set up a world 
market-place on the backs of the legions. they did some nice things, like 
connect much of the world with excellent roads, and they did some brutal 
things that go along with the militaristic expansion routine. and they also 
claimed to be a republic, but this was just for show: throughout world 
history one learns that democratic impulses are incompatible with imperial 
structures. now, the barbarians which fought the roman empire were not 
'imperialistic', no matter how evil you may consider them to be. so get you 
terminology straight. 'mass conversion' is about as credible a threat as the 
'communist takeover of the state department' - duane, answer me this, have 
you ever been a member of the communist party!?!

d: "Then, Kevin says that Osama's band of thugs is an "honorable" 
organization.....Duane needs to take a breather here and puke."

they are anti-imperialist, they use the methods of whatever empire they're 
resisting, and they're willing to die for their cause - that's honor to me. 
you should read what the british were saying about american terrorists when 
they burned loyalists houses down, families inside - oh, but i forget, those 
were 'freedom fighters'. of couse, i also wish al-qaeda would focus on 
political assassinations and property destruction instead of killing 
civilians, and that'd be my first question to ushama if i ever interviewed 
him: 'why did you part ways with abdullah azzam, al-qaeda's founder?'

d: "I give up."

expected. you obviously can't win through argument, and since force isn't an 
option, and there's no money in continuing, you call it quits. typical 
imperialist.     .k

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