[gaius]

I am genuinely curious as to the author’s proposed non-violent means of settling with Al Queda et al, but he doesn’t go into any details. If you listened to OBL’s speech after 9/11 what he was most upset about was the downfall of the Caliphate in Turkey some 80 years previous. Similarly ISIS mission was to provoke a war with “Rome” to fulfill the prophecy of the 13th Imam (I may be hazy on the details). There’s literally no peaceful solution that any Western government could offer them.

[peisistratos]

The problem is that Al Queda and Osama bin Laden are the fruits of American military funding as well. The "chickens coming home to roost" as Obama's former pastor put it.

The US desired to overthrow Afghanistan's secular government in the 1970s and 1980s so it funded and armed Osama bin Laden and various jihadists to launch a terrorist campaign against the Saur government. Bin Laden had the same principles in the 1970s as he did to the end - when the Pakistani high command handed him over to the Americans (read Seymour Hersh or the Urdu Pakistani press on the handover, the US press printed fictious news on his death ).

What angered the Arabs who flew a plane into the Pentagon was imperial acts such as the US military occupation of Arabia. Propping up the Saud dictatorship which is currently supporting massacres in Yemen and slicing up Washington Post journalists in their embassies.

Bin Laden is a creation of US military funding, he does not make a good Boogeyman for more US military funding.

[lostlogin]

Where does this argument factor in a century of the civilised west bombing the region and arming some of the worst governments in the modern world.

[gaius]

Umm, because there is no such thing as a time machine? Any serious proposals have to start with the state of the world as it presently is.

[lostlogin]

A century of fighting would suggest that most violent methods have been tried.

What is your serious suggestion?

[gaius]

Spend say 10% of the war money on development of alternatives to oil. Then cut off the money supply to Saudi Arabia et al, confiscating financial assets in the West, and cordon off the region. There would still be some force required to enforce the blockade but that’s all.

[lostlogin]

Staking everything on the ‘oil alternative’ shifts solving the problem into the future by an unspecified amount. This time machine of ours is going to be busy.