The bitter legacy of 9/11

Anne K

I still think it was a mistake staying in Iraq after Saddam and his regime was brought down. The West should have gone after Iran. They are the true inspiration and financiers of Arab terrorism.

Ronnie

Are we going to keep pretending that Saudi Arabia, friends of the Bush family, have nothing to do with this?

cuffleyburgers

It might have helped if they hadn't f@cked it up completely.

Any possible good that might have been achieved by a salutary thrashing for Saddam has been abundantly p!ssed away through the sheer incompetence of the occupation.

Face it Bush was an idiot, acting largely at the behest of a sinister coterie of military-industrial-complex types with no clear or sensible war aims.

I never thought I'd see myself writing that but the combination of bushes stupidity and your extraordinary preconceptions makes it necessary.

David Lindsay

It's hardly being marked, you'll notice.

If the world is a conspiracy, then it is a remarkably unsuccessful conspiracy. And in the case of 11th September 2001, the truth is far worse than a mere inside job. That day was indeed the happiest day in the life of George Bush: at last, something that could be used to bring about his otherwise inconceivable second term as President.

And also in the lives of the neocons whose unwitting, because witless, puppet he was: at last, an excuse to take out Iraq, Iran, Syria... Anywhere but the real culprit, the country that funds both the Bushes and the Clintons. But this was not because of any sort of conspiracy. Rather, it was because, in their own terms, they had suddenly found themselves lucky beyond their wildest dreams. Yes, it really was, and it really is, as bad as that.

Then again, who cares about the neocons any more, really? And, in the faintest echoes of his party's foreign policy realist glory days, even Bush withdrew American troops from Saudi Arabia in response to 9/11, in consequence of which there has been no further attack on American soil.

WRS

I have to agree with (most of) what cuffleybugers's comments. a good idea wasted by very poor execution.

Craig Strachan

"They were Arabs."

But not Iraqi Arabs. Maybe we should have invaded Saudi Arabia?

badile

More unhinged anti-Americanism from Melanie Phillips, with an assist from Fouad Ajami.

Adonis

Check out the post by David Horowitz at frontpage on the Manchurian Candidate and his successes so far.

And who is Valerie Jarrett?

What are her plans?

steve

What a bizarre argument. If the war needed to be taken to the Arab world then Saudi Arabia should have been number one on the list. Ajami simply reinforces the flawed logic behind the invasion of Iraq.

David Lindsay

Craig Strachan, quite.

Brian O'Connor

Boy! Bush this . . . Bush that . . . Bush the other thing . . . Bush the puppet . . . Bush's state of happiness (!) because of 9/11 . . .. He shoulda, woulda, coulda . . .

It's almost like congress didn't vote to give the president the power to go to war, and after that with subsequent votes to support it (even after the Dems took control of both houses in 2006); that the key leaders in congress weren't briefed with all the raw intelligence and the analyses of it that formed the basis of our policy; that there wasn't a strong international consensus that Saddam did have WMD and would be willing to use them himself or via proxies (he'd already started two wars in the region); that the FBI/CIA claims it was "highly likely" that the Iraqi government hatched a plot to kill a US president (Bush 1); that without our presence a stable Iraqi government would have arisen, one hostile to terrorists and willing and able to hunt them down; and that the Iranian mullahs and A-jad would have sat passively outside Iraq, counting daisy petals as they contemplated the etherial beauty of the Western Left's Utopia.

Given how loud the cries of "No blood for oil" were with the Iraqi invasion, I can only imagine what would have happened were we to have taken on Saudi Arabia or Iran.

elixelx

David Lindsay; you give here the Neo-Com (that's New Communist) view....
On Sep 11, 2001, eight months into his Presidency, George Bush, the stupid one, knowing EVEN THEN, that he had zero chance of being re-elected three years and two months hence, went out, collected 19 Arabs, gave them boxcutters and single-handedly organised, in a day or two, a massive attack on the country he had sworn to defend--and thereby ensured his re-election...
Funny how vivious nincompoops think that Bin Laden was a genius for taking two years to organise 9/11, but GWB is an idiot for doing the same thing in a couple of days--for rewards he couldn't be sure of!
Talk about successful conspiracies, Davis. A man like you must be sitting there, open-mouthed, at the diabolical genius of GWB--or Dick Cheney?

Tim

Dear AMABs (ALL MUSLIMS ARE BAD)
When I first read your posts on this and other blogs I assumed you had got this way by living on sour grapes since November 2009 or April 1997. Since then your works, fuelled more by ego and bad temper than by facts and sober debate have revealed you as the kind of people who would welcome the Palestinian arabs as all HAMAS supporters crushed under IDF tanks. Thankfully the IDF is better than you and Israel is, thank God, a democracy.
Your 'Seventh Cavalry' has just come over the hill, the 'English Defence League' and 'Stop the Islamification of Europe'. You might not like their bone-headed tendencies and probably past of firebombing groceries or houses of British Muslims.
But think how much you have in common with them. After all, many of them have been traweled from football supporters clubs, the kind of place where Zelko Raznatkovich found most of the members for his "Arkan's Tigers" who liked treating Muslims rather less than kindly in Bosnia.
I'm sure you'll get on famously.

Marcus from the USA

Poor naive little Annie.

Iran is not an Arab nation; the majority of Iranians are Persians.

Secondly Iran is a Shia Muslim nation; very different ideology than the Wahabbi's.

Thirdly Iran would kick the collective butt's of any nations that invaded it. Not very many members of the "Coalition of the Willing" would want to mess with Iran.

Anne K

Marcus from the USA: "Iran is not an Arab nation; the majority of Iranians are Persians.

Secondly Iran is a Shia Muslim nation; very different ideology than the Wahabbi's."

And therefore ... what? What's your point? So the Iranians are not Arabs? And therefore they DON'T support Arab terrorism?! I think you'd better inform Hamas and Hezbollah stat that their funding is being cut off because their masters are not Arab after all. Oops!

/sarcasm.

trickey

We know who our enemies are & these may well include the British government itself for going after the wrong people. I think Iraq was invaded on behalf of the Saudis & 9/11 was a false flag event to prop up the Bush regime & facilitate the war.

daniel maris

Anne K. -

I agree. It was a complete b*** up.

Donald Rumsfeld, pretty useless himself, appointed the more than useless Tommy Franks - and the cause was lost.

We should have rolled right on to Tehran and rounded up all the Mullahs.

There would have been far less bloodshed in Iraq as a result.

Brian O'Connor

Fascinating . . . so few comments . . . and those which disagree with Ajami (and Mel) are so . . . well . . . flaccid.

Tom

Tim:

What on earth is going on inside your head?

I can't tell, because what comes out of your mouth is garbled nonsense.

Augustus

How interesting! A new illustrated edition of the Koran has just been published. An apt depiction of 'Jihad' would be 9/11. And yes, there it is, a picture of the smoking towers.

Gubulgaria

So in order to frighten any Saudis who were unimpressed by the US destroying Kabul they destroyed Baghdad? Because the Iraqis are of the same ethnicity as the Saudis? So as long as I can find someone of the same ethnicity who did something bad, I can do what I like to them? 'Them' being absolutely anyone at all? So, bearing in mind that most of the worst crimes in history were committed by Europeans, anyone could do anything they liked to any European? Is that what you're saying? I can kill Melanie Phillips as revenge for the holocaust? Wow.

David

Tim,

I think you've posted your comment to the wrong blog (You certainly give the impression that you're very worked up about something or other).