Did Bin Laden Win?

[bemildred]

Osama Bin Laden’s goal in 9/11 was to suck the US into Afghanistan and Iraq, sparking a regional conflagration that would sweep away the imperial legacy and establish a new caliphate. Over a decade later, this plan is still on track. As he led his jihadists triumphantly into Mosul and declared an emirate on Iraq-Syrian territory, ISIS ‘caliph’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced that the 1916 secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain, France and imperial Russia was at last being dismantled.

The US and Saudis now face an intractable dilemma.

For the US, allowing the local al-Qaeda rebels to consolidate their hold on Sunni Iraq and northern Syria means the complete failure of their post-9/11 strategy of creating a new Middle East under their hegemony.
For the Saudis, it means risking the very existence of the Saudi state itself.

Sykes-Picot and Saudi Arabia

All of the Middle East states, including Saudi Arabia, were founded as a result of the disintegration of the Ottoman Caliphate at the end of WWI and the Sykes-Picot Agreement that effectively abolished the Ottoman caliphate (Turkey’s new secular leader formalized this in 1924), dividing it into British-French “mandates” and eventually nation states. The prickly Saudis did not suffer the humiliation of direct occupation, but they followed the imperial agenda.

Saudi control of the Arabian peninsula was not what the British had in mind. The British had hoped that the Hashemites could consolidate power over the holy cities Mecca and Medina. They nominally ruled Mecca at the time—Hussein as Emir of Mecca (1908–1917) and his son Abdullah, as deputy for Mecca from 1909–1914 in the Ottoman legislature. In 1917 Hussein was internationally recognized as king of the Kingdom of Hejaz.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/10/did-bin-laden-win/

[FreakinDJ]

1. You have to ask - as your message is being recorded

[gordianot]

2. After more than a hundred years of shit stirring for oil they should have listened to Nicoli Tesla.

Several World Wars, countless proxy wars, now a radicalized Middle East holding most of the worlds energy reserves, Tesla had solutions for energy distribution. The same crowd that suppressed Tesla now denies climate change, the political impact of their personal greed has destabilized promising a radical Caliphate to come. We in the United States are left with counter radicals who call themselves conservatives.

[LoisB]

3. Yes.

[bemildred]

4. Oh course he did, better than he could have hoped for.

We did exactly what he wanted. But it is still playing out.

[LoisB]

5. Sad, isn't it?

[bemildred]

7. That's what comes of being predictable.

But yeah, I would have expected better. It is a real mark of the ineptitude of our "experts" and "leaders", like the NSA debacle.

[GeorgeGist]

8. If Osama believed that Americans would launch a clusterfuck after 9/11 ...

then YES, he is winning.

[Pauldg47]

9. He ran for the hills, he's a coward, he was killed and he lost....

...it all comes from centuries of developed hatred. He was a martyr, just like many others. So why would ONLY Bin Landen be the victor? He's dead, this running for the hills coward lost.

He wanted to run and survive. He did not want to die for his cause!

[bemildred]

10. He wanted to bring down the Great Satan, and he did, that's why.

He got us to engage in not one, but two, land wars in Asia.

I'm glad Cheney is still here to see the results of his work.

[bemildred]

11. An Overwhelmed America Withdraws Itself

You have to understand, we were talking here in 2002 about our hubris and the coming Nemesis, even before we went into Iraq, so now when it is happening, when we are broken and busted, an object of derision and hatred, we don't want the self-important fools that drove us into the ditch to pretend it is nothing.

The United States, the strongest military power in the world, is still the only superpower. To this end, it possesses everything that Harvard Professor Joseph Nye calls "soft power." This includes many things – from many of the rules and structures of financial markets to cyberspace and cyber warfare, from music and fashion to film and television, and all other modern forms of play. But the "sole surviving superpower" suffers from self-doubt – within reason.

After its triumph in the world turn of 1989-90, it did not escape the fate that sooner or later befalls all empires – even the liberal ones – which is inscribed in the chronicles of the 20th century as "imperial over-extension." The ancient Greeks recognized this, despite having difficulties with power, perhaps because of how Hubris and Nemesis, the ugly sisters, smiled at each other.

The Americans are undertaking some serious introspection, not only because of the runaway government budget or the erosion of the armed forces, but also because the old nice idea of making the world safe for democracy and via democracy no longer has the advantage for them that it once did in Asia and most parts of the world.

China's rise is shaking the political elite of Asia, leading them to ask for the recipe for future power and wealth, and Putin's "vertical of power" serves as internal political abutment for the reconstruction of the imperial space that was once filled by czars and commissars.

http://watchingamerica.com/News/241931/an-overwhelmed-america-withdraws-itself/