From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Nov 11 2001 - 07:56:01 MST
Michael said:
> Let me reiterate. Obi-L wants me dead until all infidels are out of Saudi
> Arabia. Well, that's what he wanted a few weeks ago. Now he's talking
> about Israel, I hear.
I *really* think people need to reconsider this. *If* the
conspiracy theorists are wrong (I've got *no* idea how to
validate some of the pointers posted by Daniel and Alex) --
and the "party line" motivations for bin Laden are correct --
then we are facing something much much worse than a megalomaniac.
Note my comment:
> I think the lessons of history are plain -- ignore the desires
> of megalomaniacs at your own peril.
It occurs to me that we are not facing a simple "megalomaniac" --
we are instead facing the first reactions of resistance of the
pre-post-human meme set to the singularity! If an essential part
of rational posthumanism is the development of secular states
(so children have at least some chance of choosing rationalism
over blind faith) then terrorist acts by "fundamentalists"
(Jew, Muslim, Christian, cult, etc.) are all attempts at
preserving "faith" over "reason".
I'll recopy a possible worst case analysis (which I haven't
seen anyone respond to yet):
> Here is the question for Amara, Samantha or others who think
> the U.S. current approach is ill-conceived -- If the U.S.
> immediately pulled out of Saudi Arabia, allowing Bin Laden
> to initiate a full revolt of the poor, unmarried young male
> population so as to depose the royal family and install himself
> as a leader of a hard line Islamic state -- *Do* you think he
> would stop there?!? Once he had the Saudi oil fields is there
> any reason he should not use that card to keep Europe and the
> U.S. out of the Mid-East while he proceeds to fund and supply
> bodies to overthrow the government of Egypt (3x the population
> of Saudi Arabia), continue on to retake Israel from the infidel
> Jews (returning it to an Arabic state) and launching a campaign
> to wrest Kashmir from India?
>
> Now, do you really think that Israel and India (both nuclear
> powers) are going to sit around and allow that to occur?
The threat of the "worst case" to Michael's governments existing
"to keep people feeling safe" seems much higher by capitulating
or ignoring bin Laden than going after him. I'll note that
the problem seems unlikely to go away even if bin Laden is
eliminated because the motivations behind scenarios to eliminate
secular states and reestablish states where the meme sets are
dictated by interpretations of a 1200+ or 2000 year old books
are *not* going to go away in this generation.
One thing that came up in one of references posted was
the likelyhood that CIA funds went to bin Laden to
construct some of the "caves" [bunkers?] in Afghanistan.
If true, one would presume the CIA knows the location
of those caves. It seems logical that the entrances
to such facilities would best be located in highly
populated regions (for easy access to critical
persons during bombing or shelling activities).
Where better to locate bunkers than underneath a
Red Cross storage facility? I think we have met
the enemy and he is us.
Robert
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