01-18-2019, 05:45 PM
(01-18-2019, 05:39 PM)Dill Wrote: I agree with the bolded, Au. You are absolutely correct that it is possible some current apparent "success" in the ME has set some group seething and planning revenge. And I think you are saying we can't let that imagined possibility prevent us from making sensible decisions based on the information we actually have, to which I also agree.
I am only aware of one CNN interview, conducted by AlJazeera's Tayweer Alouni in Feb. 2002. There he mainly talks about Western support for Israel and the deaths of Arab children in Palestine and Iraq. These appear to be far more motivating than anything else. The only references to US presence I can think of are general complaints about "continued" US presence on the Arabian Peninsula in his Letter to America and the Fisk interview from 1996. Anyway, my point is that for him the larger problem is US power over the Muslim Middle East exercised in part by Arab governments who, in his view, do the US bidding. The presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia is experienced as a special humiliation, yes, but it is a part of a larger whole, which he spends most of his time describing in his writings and interviews.
I was referencing the 97 Peter Arnett interview. This was the actual interview where he declared the Jihad. In looking back at the transcript he did mention a couple other things as to why (Muslim world as a whole, etc), but for some reason in my mind the Saudi staging stood out.
