Re: If Osama bin Laden has sneaked out of Afghanistan ...

Personally, I think the boy is stuck either in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Kashmir. My reasoning is that anywhere else, he'd stick out like a sore thumb and the U.S. government wouldn't think it a big problem to go in with a crack team and blow big gaping holes in him. I think he'd be safest in Kashmir because India doesn't really control it, there are lines of communication to Pakistan, and Afghanistan is going to be too hot for his whiny self.

I don't think he needs or wants direct control over his organization. That would leave it open to being dismantled easily once he goes. I think, rather, he is, as the State dept. pegged it, a facilitator. In a sense, he's already succeeded because he's had 10 years to train others which in turn will train others. If he did no more than commit suicide right now, his whole organization would still be in place and just as implacable an enemy.

If we really want to hurt him out, we need to make friends with Muslims. I don't mind blowing the heads off the radicals, but that isn't going to make life miserable for them, only give them what they want. If Muslims see that their future is tied to religious manipulators like bin Laden, then we've lost the fight. If, however, Muslims are able to see bin Laden as just another political carpetbagger dressing himself in Islam, then their rejection of him and his merry band of killers is the worst possible injury that could be inflicted on him.

That being said, I have little hope the Muslims will ever be friends of the West. We sometimes do stupid things like the BBC's report of Geri Halliwell (sp?) entertaining the British troops in Oman dressed in a bikini. Did the dumbass Brits really need to tweak the Muslim conservatives' noses just now?

in comprehending, manipulating others' symbols.

Were Billy n'Bally to mysteriously 'disappear' - er, on say, the anniversary of the Hallowe'en Documents ? - would the daily mini-agony of dealing with Windoze subversion of such concepts as "stability, affordability, ease-of-maintenance" disappear?

Were Foulwell, Robertson and a few Tee Vee brethren, to get 'raptured out' of the morass - er, in some appropriately sanctimonious way - would Fundamentalism in Murica be altered in any umm fundamental way?

I suppose we'd better hope that none of the smart bombs are WinCE-smart. That would help, but I can't think of many ways to de-fuze the popular overview held by every 3rd-world dirt-poor non-Xian group worldwide that, no matter what we say, nor how apparently 'surgically' we 'bomb':

A) It's about $ (oil) and international hegemony of the Murican-Christian-rich VS not-Murican non-Christian impoverished. The "5% controlling the half (\ufffd) of world's wealth" factoid - may prove a hard fact to spin.

B) We are the progenitors of spin, which permeates our daily lives - has extended beyond the ceaseless hawking of merchandise and on into the basis for every political utterance we make, at home or abroad. ie Clearly our Largest Valuez are, like our largest preoccupations: indistinguishable from commerce / the $ / ie Power.

Our concept of Freedom, and our reasons Why we must act in support of our definitions: is hardly compelling to the millions (billions?) who bloody well notice they are unFree - and do not 'feel' it is because they have behaved 'wrongly' in daily lives.

Should we point out that - the perpetuation of oppressive local regimes is a failure of these folk to organize, employ tactics to oust their own local oppressors (??) Will that argument not be answered by the pointing out of the numerous oppressive er "anti-Communist" local despots we have overtly supplied with terror-training in US schools, $$ and weapons? (All used *against* the aforementioned unFree - and still unFree)

It is going to be the Propaganda War to End all PWs. I have no idea how the tides shall shift, but would observe re such wars and the 'wisdom' of populations:

Windoze persists! It lives within the ids of the Murican "5%-Owners of half-OUR-wealth" -- this despite all the tables of costs, litanies of shitty performance and evidence of corrupt manipulation of the entire IT golden cow err.. calf. This despite the 'technical proof' of the Redmond h\ufffdmmorhage of locked-in $ and its endless nature.

So if We cannot overcome an analogous kind of local oppression! for all our vaunted 'freedom of information' and our self-deemed intelligence - then... what was that, about "locally overthrowing oppressive regimes" ?

{sigh}
As to making friends with Muslims.. Note that our present leaders / Executive branch - have demonstrated publicly, a Christian-orientation (locally described by US opponents as "Right-wing flavor Christianity").

In attempting to circumvent the basic Constitutional Principle\ufffd of "the separation of church and state" via such directions as, "government support of Faith-based organizations" (in lieu of effective actual support of the neediest): I don't see much here in our internal behavior - likely to be seen as other than disingenuous spin - by any thinking non-Christian in the world.

(Also - our repetitive xenophobia - currently taking the form of Arab- Semite- bashing sporadically, among Our Own Citizens! against other citizens - fuels that fire.)

So we have to ask ourselves, especially today:

IS the rest of the world any more immune to local spin than - 'we collectively' appear to be?

Ashton

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