Barry Soetoro

Nov 6th, 2008, in IM Posts, Opinion, by Guest Writer

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999 Comments on “Barry Soetoro”

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timdog Says:
January 28th, 2012 at 11:10 am
It’s a wild asside, but I do have a smidgen of sympathy for the Taliban over their trouble with the houseguest – in as much as you can have sympathy for a bunch of illiterate village boys with machine guns…

First thing to remember is that, despite the conflation of “Taliban-al-Qaida” in the rhetoric, the Taliban and al Qaida were radically different things in 9/11.
The Taliban were, first and foremost, an ethnic force with absolutely no interest whatsoever outside Afghanistan (remember, incidentally, that dashingly handsome, French-speaking Ahmed Shah Massoud’s lot were every bit as much women-oppressing Islamists as the Taliban; they just weren’t Pashtuns).
They most certainly hadn’t engaged in any kind of “international terrorism”, and had no ambitions to do so. They were anti-modern and engaged in the process of returning their country to the Dark Ages. They used to physically attack modern technology (except for the kind that kills people), hanging televisions from lampposts like dead dictators…
They were certainly not the sort to engage in internet plotting, or to wage war on an abstract concept (the West). They wouldn’t have had the imagination.
In a way they were vicitims of attempting to enforce an entirely insular and primitive ambition in a globalised world. The idea that events in New York could have an impact in Kandahar is not something they could get their heads around…

It’s quite well attested that once 9/11 happened, much of the Taliban leadership were thrown into termoil. As outlined above these were people who really didn’t want to have anything to do with the rest of the world; now the bloke with the money, the beard and the satalite phone had brought the world a-calling.

Their problem was that Osama was a guest, and a guest with money. The Taliban were exclusively Pashtun, and whatever Pashtuns might like to think about themselves, non, or at least supra-Islamic cultural codes are a much more important driving force that “Islam” per se. And offering hospitality to a guest, and refuge to any fugitive who demands it are amongst the most important parts of the Pashtunwali…
Breaking these codes is to cease to be a real Pashtun. Seriously, as absurd as it seems, your average traditional Pashtun man (and you didn’t get much more traditionally Pashtun than Mullah Omar’s boys), would rather die than risk failing to protect and offer hospitality.
As long as Osama wanted to stay, they simply had no option to order him out (though as mentioned, there was apparently considerable anguished debate about trying to find some way to do so honourably – and of course there was no honourable option, so they had to take the punishment)…

Anyway, nothing to do with anything, but it’s an interesting point, and the one, small point, where you can have a smidgen of sympathy for the Taliban.
ET Says:
January 28th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Don’t come and tell that the person of OBL was the only reason the US invaded Afghanistan. Any regime that harbours anti-western terrorists and refuses to hand them over – be it for whatever reasons, hospitality codes included – represents a danger and has to be eliminated. OBL happened to be a high-profile example and would represent the perfect precedent for any further terrorist seeking refuge after his strike. Osama is dead, Al Qaida may be decimated but the threat of a regime with honorary codes such as these cannot be tolerated. This is the reason why the US are still in Afghanistan.
Oigal Says:
January 28th, 2012 at 2:05 pm
I think you place far too much much faith in China’s ability to manage the transition although if you are right then most of Asia are going to rue the day they wished the USA out of SE Asia. China has no intention of being nice to anyone but China…

Timdog, there was a very interesting lecture on the ABC recently about the same thing (sorry missed the start, so don’t know who) but essentially exactly what you said. Apparently, the Taliban were as shocked as anyone when suddenly they found themselves running the country (bugger me..we just break things and cry havoc) suddenly being responsible for everything costs money which they didn’t have nor have the smarts to regulate/generate ..along comes BL and as they say the rest is history. The lecturer did make a big point that the Taliban and AQ had very very little in common.
ET Says:
January 30th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
The Taliban were exclusively Pashtun, and whatever Pashtuns might like to think about themselves, non, or at least supra-Islamic cultural codes are a much more important driving force that “Islam” per se. And offering hospitality to a guest, and refuge to any fugitive who demands it are amongst the most important parts of the Pashtunwali

But they are still muslims, aren’t they, timdog? Funny how it suddenly becomes appropriate – or should I say politically correct? – to become apologetic when muslims are involved.
timdog Says:
January 30th, 2012 at 6:24 pm
Nah, I’m not being apologetic ET, and note that I also pointed out that the much-celebrated, dashingly handsome Ahmed Shah Massoud, with his stylishly tilted pakol and his florrid French, was every bit as much the head of a bunch of medievalist woman oppressors and chauvenists as Mullah Omar; he was just more ready to be interviewed by fawning western journalists, who thought of him as a kind of glorious Oriental pirate (and oh so handsome!)…

My point, however, is that in 2011 the Taliban were principally an ethnic force. There were virtually no non-Pashtun Taliban (Massoud’s lot were mostly Tajiks; and the wider “Northern Alliance” was an unsavoury rag-bag of Tajiks, Uzbeks (including the militia of the thoroughly unpleasant Dostum) and sundry others. In terms of their approach to Islam, there was very little separating them from the Taliban, but they were of a different ethnicity…

Anyway, the Taliban, at that point, had absolutely no interest and involvement in the outside world, were not “terrorists” as the term is generally used, and were most certainly not waging war on the west, though they certainly were thuggish, primitive, nasty people (though they had, it must be acknowledge, dissarmed the general populace in the part of the country they controlled, and wiped out opium production far more effectively than the “coalition” have managed to do in the subsequent decade).
Osama bin Laden was their houseguest; and they got screwed over by their own non-Islamic social codes when he brought the world a-calling…

If a manifestly bad man gets picked up by the police and framed for a crime he didn’t commit, it’s perfectly legitimate to point out that it isn’t fair, is it not?

One of the tooth-grindingly idiotic things about the prosecution of “the war on terror” is that while the Taliban were not a terrorist organisation a decade ago, and had no interest in waging war on the west, and were VERY ethnically discrete, that is no longer the case.
They have been sucked into “global jihadism”, have started using the “terrorist” techniques of suicide boming and IEDs, and have found much more space in their ranks for non-Pashtuns (mostly hot-headed Punjabi boys from Pakistan, but also sundry others).
The idiotic and wildly innacurate coalition concept of “AQT” (al-Qaida-Taliban), first used in 2011 has to a large extent turned into a self-fulfilling prophesy, and the Taliban worldview is now much closer to that of the putative “al Qaida” than it was on that september day in 2011.
Way to go, coalition! Chalk that one up as a big victory for “freedom and democracy”…
Arie Brand Says:
January 31st, 2012 at 4:32 am
Yes, as has already been pointed out on this thread, one such triumph for “freedom and democracy” was the “Defense Authorization Act” recently signed by Obama, that apparently gives the executive the “right” to execute or incarcerate without due process any American citizen deemed to be a “terrorist” (as to citizens of less fortunate states, the American understanding seems to be that they are outlaws anyway).

This is what Senator Rand Paul, the son of Ron Paul, said about it:

James Madison, father of the Constitution, warned, “The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become instruments of tyranny at home.”
…
The discussion now to suspend certain rights to due process is especially worrisome given that we are engaged in a war that appears to have no end. Rights given up now cannot be expected to be returned. So, we do well to contemplate the diminishment of due process, knowing that the rights we lose now may never be restored.

My well-intentioned colleagues ignore these admonitions in defending provisions of the Defense bill pertaining to detaining suspected terrorists.
Their legislation would arm the military with the authority to detain indefinitely – without due process or trial – SUSPECTED al-Qaida sympathizers, including American citizens apprehended on American soil.

I want to repeat that. We are talking about people who are merely SUSPECTED of a crime. And we are talking about American citizens.

If these provisions pass, we could see American citizens being sent to Guantanamo Bay.

This should be alarming to everyone watching this proceeding today. Because it puts every single American citizen at risk.

There is one thing and one thing only protecting innocent Americans from being detained at will at the hands of a too-powerful state – our constitution, and the checks we put on government power. Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well, then the terrorists have won.”

The justification of this extreme measure has about the intellectual level displayed in this interview with the Defense Secretary, Panetta, in which he comes up with the brilliant proposition that a terrorist is a terrorist and with the lie that an American citizen deemed to be a terrorist can invoke his right to due process when (and only when), s/he is on American soil. See , in Glenn Greenwald’s most recent column, this fragment of a video on which he is interviewed by CBS.:

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/30/leon_panettas_explicitly_authoritarian_decree/

This power grab by the executive has now been approved of by both parties.
Oigal Says:
January 31st, 2012 at 4:54 am
Aawww youse blokes are going to ruin this thread debating difficult issues with a modicum of logic and factual references. I used to enjoy the BO thread loonies, you know BO is a secret Indonesian Muslim Communist (yea I Know) who sells southern belles to Asian shopkeepers foe use by evil Arabs.

Ok, if that is what is..My point still stands not withstanding the cluster-f aftermath, what would you have had theUSA do after 9/11 then..a really nasty letter. I mean seriously what sanctions could you apply to a villager in Aghanistan, no tea towels?

Ari, you must be wrong, the conservative right assured me that BO was a Muslim and soft on terror…
ET Says:
January 31st, 2012 at 3:08 pm
timdog

To put what to you seem complicated matters in understandable language, if someone who has killed your child hides in the house of a neighbour who’s got nothing to do with the murder but where the killer is given sanctuary and is treated and protected as a guest wouldn’t you still burn his house?
timdog Says:
January 31st, 2012 at 6:02 pm
ET, to try to put things equally simply, the Pashtunwali, which despite what many Pashtuns might like to think themselves, defines their “moral” behaviour far more than does Islam, makes it obligatory for a guest to be protected, and for a guest who seeks refuge to be protected unto death.
In the Pashtunwali’s arcane annals, the obligation to offer refuge overrides even the obligation to seek revenge (which leads to, quite literally, centuries-old blood feuds along the Af-Pak border). If someone you are duty bound to kill because of something that happened between your and his great-great-great grand uncles turns up at your house asking for shelter from the police on another matter, your are expected to give it to him.
That stuff is actually put into practice in that part of the world. Quite simply, these are not people like us.

The Taliban in September 2011 were not people with any real concept of the modern world, still less of diplomacy, though as I mentioned before there was reportedly a good deal of soul-searching about how to kick Osama out without breaking the tenets of Pashtunwali. No such solution was found, and the bombs started falling. Bad they might of been, but in finding themselves at the eye of the “war on terror” storm, they were rather like some primative (and thoroughly nasty) jungle tribe, suddenly finding themselves at the centre of a complex 21st century court case over something they didn’t really understand.

And besides it being entirely reasonable to point that out, unless you take an idiotic “they’re all Muslims and the only good Muslim’s a dead Muslim”, there is another pertinant point.
The Taliban were a bad lot. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy.
But the Taliban, a bunch of illiterate ethnic chauvenists with no interests outside their own country were bombed into the dust for their role in a high-tech plot carried out by educated Saudis thousands of miles away. And Saddam was bombed out of his palaces for his ownership of non-existant weapons of mass destruction, and also because of alleged (and nonsensical) links with Islamist terrorism.

And in both cases by a country that awards itself a role as a beacon of sophistication, “fairness” and “justice”.
Now how on earth do expect stuff like that to play well with anyone, still less with an angry young lad with a chin-beard and an internet connection?
Oigal Says:
January 31st, 2012 at 6:39 pm
In a pretty much pre-doomed attempt to bring the thread back on track (and a quick cast for the fun crazies)

And in both cases by a country that awards itself a role as a beacon of sophistication, “fairness” and “justice”.

If you mean the USA the current Republican candidates (Newt for heaven’s sake!) assure the USA won’t be recognized by the above anytime soon. Seriously this is a country where candidates who could actually speak another language (one Mandarin, the other French) were heckled for being able to do so. The country is so dumbed down that it is considered a negative to be able to speak anything other than “youall” and its socialism to consider that your secretary should pay more tax (by %) than you do.

Oh and Timdog, I take your points as valid and interesting however…

My point still stands not withstanding the cluster-f aftermath, what would you have had theUSA do after 9/11 then..a really nasty letter. I mean seriously what sanctions could you apply to a villager in Aghanistan, no tea towels?

Is it such a crappy question is not worth an answer?
ET Says:
January 31st, 2012 at 7:18 pm
Oh and Timdog, I take your points as valid and interesting however…

His points may be interesting for an anthropologist but how on earth do you deal as a nation with a culture and mindset that because of some honorary code are an open invitation for every scum on this planet to seek refuge. As I said before OBL happened to be a high-profile example and would represent the perfect precedent for any further terrorist seeking shelter after his strike. Osama is dead, Al Qaida may be decimated but the threat of a regime with honorary codes such as these cannot be tolerated. If they have to be bombed back into the real world then so be it. They aren’t the first – nazi megalomaniacs included – and probably won’t be the last. Karma is a bitch.
stevo Says:
February 1st, 2012 at 6:57 am
My point still stands not withstanding the cluster-f aftermath, what would you have had theUSA do after 9/11 then..a really nasty letter.

Wrong question to ask Oigal. Here is a better one….

Why did they attack and occupy Afghanistan, when the Afghans (and Taliban) were not behind 9/11? Are you seriously suggesting that this carnage is justified because some people in Afghanistan sympathised with Osama?

Using that logic, the US could also bomb and invade parts of London and Paris, or even Israel !

The irony is that the world has been made less safe (from terrorists) as a result of these disastrous invasions. Things have gone exactly as I predicted they would. It was the wrong response.
timdog Says:
February 1st, 2012 at 7:35 am
ET, actually, yes; I meant to mention that in the previous post myself: a bunch of people whose world view and policies are defined by a pre-modern tribal honour code are clearly not fit to govern a country in the 21st century.

But no one in Afghanistan, very much including the repugnant shower currently cowering in Kabul, had a great deal to do with the 21st century. One would have hoped that in other circumstances they might have been eventually nudged out or nudged forward, but instead with have the situation we have now. Is Afghanistan better off now than it was a decade ago? (clue: the answer’s no) Disregarding “al Qaeda”, is the issue of violent Islamism less severe than it was a decade ago?

Incredibly, and somewhat disturbingly, I find myself in something approaching agreement with Stevos last post (I may need to go and take a shower after this).

Oigal, just imagine a different regime, reacting in a different way; just imagine that there was no long-standing project to “get Saddam”, and no cowboy rhetoric; just imagine they simply went after Osama in the fashion they actually used to get him in the end, and left the heavy weaponry, the shock and the awe back at base…
They would probably have taken less than ten years to catch him (surely not longer, anyway), and just imagine how different things would be, not just in Afghanistan…
Oigal Says:
February 1st, 2012 at 7:40 am
Things have gone exactly as I predicted they would. It was the wrong response.

I am sure BO will be calling you any day now, just stand by that phone ..Don’t forget to give your theories on world peace and rape as well now will you ..
Oigal Says:
February 1st, 2012 at 7:42 am
Oigal, just imagine a different regime, reacting in a different way;

Hmmm Israel…Olympics???

I not sure if that is what you meant but thinking about it..

As for Stevo, don’t worry about it even a clock that doesn’t work is right twice a day and give him ten minutes and he will reverse course again.
stevo Says:
February 1st, 2012 at 9:07 am
I am sure BO will be calling you any day now, just stand by that phone

Oigal, much the same as yourself, Obama does not allow his decisions to be tainted by reality.
Arie Brand Says:
February 1st, 2012 at 2:55 pm
Perhaps this old news item might have some relevance here:

Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 October 2001 22.19

President George Bush rejected as “non-negotiable” an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan.
Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban “turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over.” He added, “There’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he’s guilty”. In Jalalabad, deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir – the third most powerful figure in the ruling Taliban regime – told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but added: “we would be ready to hand him over to a third country”.
stevo Says:
February 1st, 2012 at 3:24 pm
Thanks for the flash back AB, though I am not sure of its relevance. I find history interesting myself, but we also need to keep an eye on the present.

I will assume you are reminding us how unsound Obama’s actions are in esculating this conflict, rather than ending it.
Arie Brand Says:
February 1st, 2012 at 3:29 pm
See this as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabir_Mohabbat
ET Says:
February 2nd, 2012 at 3:21 pm
AB

In Jalalabad, deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir – the third most powerful figure in the ruling Taliban regime – told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but added: “we would be ready to hand him over to a third country”.

Would require evidence? What evidence? He, Osama himself, claimed responsibility for the attacks in his videotapes that were broadcasted through Al Jazeerah. Immediately after the attacks there were demonstrations of support for Osama all over the muslim world, including Jakarta where the jilbabitches were cheering in the streets holding up posters with Osama’s face.

But forget that OBL was the only reason the allies invaded Afghanistan to wipe out the Taliban. Afghanistan had become a stronghold for Islamist terrorism, with several training camps for jihadi warriors under the protection of the Taliban. Many of those, among which Hambali who were responsible for the bombings in Bal, Jakarta and other places in Indonesia had their training in their facilities. (See the different reports of Sidney Jones for ICG).

But let us also not forget that Afghanistan – as is also Irak – are in close proximity to Iran, which constitutes a far greater threat to world security than the comparatively primitive Taliban. Troops and material are already in place in sufficient quantities in case of an emergency and as a constant reminder to Ahmadinejad to ‘tread lightly’ with his nuclear policy.
stevo Says:
February 2nd, 2012 at 5:05 pm
But let us also not forget that Afghanistan – as is also Irak – are in close proximity to Iran, which constitutes a far greater threat to world security than the comparatively primitive Taliban.

Let us, also, not forget the fact that Osama was Saudi, another strict Muslim country with Sharia law.

Will someone remind me why the USA has invaded Afghanistan…… but is on good terms with the worlds biggest oil producing nation, which shares Taliban values? (just like they once were with Sadam and the Taliban)
Arie Brand Says:
February 2nd, 2012 at 5:31 pm
The news item in the Guardian and that Wiki plus the Counterpunch article and CBS broadcast are not fully concordant. From that Wiki etc. it would appear that the Afghanis wanted to get OBL off their hands asap without bothering about “evidence”. Incidentally, did you ever see more “evidence” than that tape in which OBL only vaguely suggested that he was involved?

I have no desire to listen to the war drums about Iran that tell us, once again, that this or that country is a great danger “to the West” (read Israel and American imperial designs). Remember the (non existent) WMDs of Iraq?

“The West” can live with the nuclear weapons of North Korea, it can live with the (never acknowledged) nuclear weapons of a very belligerent Israel, it can live with that same weaponry of a very unstable Pakistan but it suddenly cannot live with the same stuff in Iran that hasn’t even come about yet.

Russia and China will look on with wry amusement if the US is, yet again, dragged into a war in that area.

Brzezinsky whom I remember as being rather hawkish during the cold war said some wise words about the whole matter on Charlie Rose:

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12103

Incidentally, I do not intend to get, once again, into a discussion about Israel. If you want to know my views about that unholy land you can find them all over the internet.
ET Says:
February 2nd, 2012 at 6:58 pm
Let us, also, not forget the fact that Osama was Saudi, another strict Muslim country with Sharia law.

Sharia law, despicable as it may be, is one thing, harbouring terrorists and terrorist training camps is another. If you protect and hang out wth the bad guys you share their fate and can no longer be considered collateral damage. Like I said, karma is a bitch.
timdog Says:
February 2nd, 2012 at 10:39 pm
Let us, also, not forget the fact that Osama was Saudi, another strict Muslim country with Sharia law

It’s a cheap joke, but a good one: 15 Americans, two Brazilians, a Colombian and a Panamanian launch a devestating terrorist attack on Mexico City. So the Mexican authorities go and carpet-bomb Canada…

Oh god! I find myself on the same side as Stevo again. This has got to stop…
Arie Brand Says:
February 3rd, 2012 at 3:08 am
karma is a bitch

Yes and it seems to be particularly unforgiving towards the American past. If the US is dragged once again into a futile and ruinous war the trustees, already waiting in the wings for that particular case of political, moral and financial bankruptcy, can definitely move in.

I fear that Sheldon Adelson’s casino money, now shoring up Netanyahu in Israel, and Gingrich’s campaign at home, will not be enough to plug up that particular financial hole. He only owns a paltry twenty billion or so.
stevo Says:
February 3rd, 2012 at 4:09 am
Oh god! I find myself on the same side as Stevo again. This has got to stop…

Maybe you have stopped channeling Oigal and have taken the correct meaning of my post Timdog

Truth be told, even Oigal largely agrees with me, but he won’t admit it.

I doubt any rational and informed person actually thinks the war on terror thing is working out for either side.
Asri Says:
February 3rd, 2012 at 4:04 pm
“I doubt any rational and informed person actually thinks the war on terror thing is working out for either side”

Talking about the US, how about the war in the name of democracy or nuclear weapon thing?
ET Says:
February 3rd, 2012 at 6:08 pm
I doubt any rational and informed person actually thinks the war on terror thing is working out for either side.

OK, next time there is a major terrorist attack lets’s all sit together and sing kumbaya.
Oigal Says:
February 3rd, 2012 at 6:16 pm
Stevo.. In three words..N.F.L
Arie Brand Says:
February 4th, 2012 at 2:54 am
OK, next time there is a major terrorist attack lets’s all sit together and sing kumbaya.

Well, that would have about the same results as what has happened now, minus the loss in lives and treasure. Only a few days ago it was widely reported that according to a leaked NATO report Pakistan secretly supports the Taliban and that large segments of the new Afghan army and Police are doing so. Kicking doors in to announce the arrival of democracy doesn’t seem to work.