OK, here’s a concrete example of what Lee Harris’ theory of “blood feud” as a metaphor for terrorists’ concept of war does in the hands of a leftwing “moderate”. Mind you, I’m not saying Harris inspired it, just that it is parallel.
Harris postulates that “tribes” involved in a “blood feud” will commit atrocities up to, but not including, inviting massive retaliation; and that this may be a good way to understand Islamofascist mindsets.
It isn’t that Harris is wrong about “blood feud” informing Islamofascist terror, but his theory does imply that Osama bin-Ladin would not risk the predictable ferocity of US response to 9/11. I.e., Bin-Ladin didn’t see it coming.
I can’t buy it.
But Thomas Oliphant, of the Boston Globe and NPR, can. He has this exchange with Hugh Hewitt on the latter’s radio program (entire transcript here):
HH: Is it a good thing that Libya has given up its nuclear ambitions, and turned over their chemical and biological facilities and arsenals to us.
TO: Hugh, you’re talking to somebody who would go even further than that. Again, it’s great, and I have written that so much progress has been made with Libya, as a result of a process going back, by the way, several years, that it’s ridiculous that Libya continues to be officially listed as a terrorist supporting nation.
HH: So those are a couple of big wins.
TO: Huge wins, but let me try to balance that, to get people to think more. I think…I don’t think, I know from talking to American officials, that it is an operating assumption, though not one talked about very much, that on 9/11 itself, the leadership, if you want to call if that, of Al Qaeda, that was based in Afghanistan, realized instantly that not only had everything changed for the developed world, everything had changed for them, too. That we were going to come after them, that some kind of invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was inevitable, that life as they had known it would cease to exist also. And I just think that in the years since, terrorists have done as good, and sometimes a better job of adapting than we have.
Emphasis mine. Oliphant has to “balance” the capitulation of Libyan state terrorism by speaking about some terrorists’ ability to adapt better than we have. If true, it’s due to encouragement from the Deans, Moores, Chomskys and Kennedys in our midst.
I’d say continuing suicide bombings aren’t adaptation, but instead a good reading of Liberal mindsets.
Oliphant’s example can be charitably described as braindead. He thinks Al-Qaeda was surprised that after murdering 3,000 Americans and causing tens of billions of dollars in property damage that the US was going to come after him?
Right. “Realized instantly.” Not beforehand.
Only when he saw the WTC collapsing did Osama bin-Ladin realize what he’d done.
I can hear OBL now, “Oh shit, we shouldn’t have done that. Whoda thunk a decade of planning could have had this effect?”
That certainly explains why he gloatingly confessed to it, doesn’t it?
If bin-Ladin didn’t want us invading Afghanistan – the graveyard of the British and the Vietnam of the Russians – he would never have planned, much less executed, 9/11.
How stupid does Oliphant think bin-Ladin is? Probably not as stupid, or as useful, as OBL thinks Oliphant is.
Bin-Ladin wanted a massive American response, he did not “realize instantly” that the world had changed on 9/11. He plotted to change it – by this act.
Bin-Ladin wants the world to change into unified Islamofascism, Tom, and it’s people like you who can’t give him credit for being able to plot it who are a grave danger to the rest of us.