You're never going to make it in punditry with an attitude like that, Heebie.
Not to be confused with Obamaware, government software developed during the Obama administration.
And similarly afflicted by scope creep and contradictory stakeholder input.
It took me a second read to stop the very large unaddressed assumption in that article, which is "all counterterrorism efforts are pointless".
Look at this:
But there are reasons to contest the humanitarian argument for light-footprint warfare: it rests on a straw man counterfactual. Precision strikes only spare lives if the alternative is, as Obama argued, conventional force. But in many theaters, the more probable alternative to precision strikes more closely resembles inaction than conventional force. It is difficult to believe, for instance, that the United States would deploy large numbers of American ground troops to the Arabian Peninsula or East Africa if the precision strike option were off the table. The threats posed by al-Qaeda in Yemen and al-Shabaab are simply not big enough to justify such costly action. The relatively low cost (in American blood and treasure) of precision technology enabled Obamawar to expand the fight into more theaters, and at least in those theaters, to kill more people (including civilians) than otherwise possible.
That argument only works if you believe that the rate and severity of terrorist attacks will be unaffected by the rate and nature of US military operations, or if you believe that terrorists never actually kill civilians at all; that the targets of Obamawar are just, you know, people we don't like for some abstract reason, like maybe they're cruel to cats or don't recycle.
Otherwise, it's nonsense; it doesn't even address the argument that maybe precision strikes are preferable to inaction, in civilian casualty terms, because inaction would allow terrorists to conduct more attacks against civilians. But in every Obamatheatre of Obamawar, the number of civilians killed by Obamabombs and Obamaseals is small compared to the number killed by people like ISIS and the Taliban - the Obamatargets. The article is written by someone who apparently thinks that the only civilians who die are those killed by US forces.
Another unaddressed assumption: that this
Regardless of which branch is to blame and why, the fact is that the erosion of congressional power to authorize American force is a defining feature of Obamawar
has somehow become a permanent feature of US politics, rather than being a very temporary tactical decision by the congressional leadership of one party. "Regardless of which branch is to blame and why" might as well be "now, now, let's not get bogged down in who killed who".
Why did Congress decline to act? Because Republican leadership in House and Senate decided that they wanted to give Obama enough rope to hang himself; if the wars went badly, they did not want to be on the record voting for them, and if they went well, they did not want to be on the record voting against them. Why on earth assume that the same will apply for, say, a D-led Congress voting on President Trump's wars?
OP: I'm slightly confused by the use of the word Obamawar as though it's a well-defined term that we've all been using for years.
It's also a little to close lexically to "infowars" (Alex Jones) for my comfort. The two are totally disconnected, but reading "obamawar" on the screen I immediately think "crazy conspiracy person."
has somehow become a permanent feature of US politics, rather than being a very temporary tactical decision by the congressional leadership of one party.
It is a permanent feature of US politics since . . . Granada*? I feel like congressional approval is the exception rather than rule, and has been for at least 30 years.
* here's a site which I know nothing about except that it is pro-Reagan, which says,
The constitutional division of war powers between the president and Congress has been debated since the Constitutional Convention. History provides us with many examples of presidents committing troops without either a Declaration of War or prior congressional approval. But the War Powers Resolution of 1973 required presidents to consult with Congress before committing troops, except in cases of serious and immediate threats. In the case of Grenada, Ronald Reagan's administration informed some congressional leaders but did not seek actual approval or advice before the invasion.
President Reagan's position was that as commander in chief he had an obligation to ensure national security and protect the interests of the country and its citizens. As for the War Powers Resolution, President Reagan reported to Congress, but only consistent with, not under the War Powers Resolution. He stated that he was acting under his constitutional authority to swiftly commit troops. Subsequent presidents have also used this distinction when reporting to Congress concerning troop deployment and have not sought formal consultation with Congress before committing troops.
Not to be confused with Obamaware, government software developed during the Obama administration.
Or Obama Dare, Dan Dare's secret Mekon half-brother.
I feel like congressional approval is the exception rather than rule, and has been for at least 30 years.
No, that is wrong. Authorisation for the 1991 Gulf War was sought and received, with a fairly narrow majority in the Senate (52-47). Congress forced a US withdrawal from Somalia in 1994 under the War Powers Act. US actions in Lebanon, Bosnia, Haiti and Kosovo were also highly constrained by the limits of Congressional authorisation.
Do you think the Gingrich Republicans just rolled over for Clinton over Bosnia because they respected the executive's untrammelled right to wage war? If so, you don't remember the 1990s very well.
9: or obamamono no aware, the delicate spiritual melancholy experienced when one realises that Obama is no longer president.
Obamaware
Presidentially approved plastic food storage containers?
and Kosovo were also highly constrained by the limits of Congressional authorisation.
Do you think the Gingrich Republicans just rolled over for Clinton over Bosnia because they respected the executive's untrammelled right to wage war?
No, I wasn't trying to claim that it was unlimited*, just that both congress and the presidents act as if they believe that the president has some leeway for use of military force.
* I do appreciate your correction. I'd forgotten about the debates over use of force in Lebanon and, in general, I think I was underestimating the limits that Clinton was working under.
The 2001 AUMF has a certain bonus feature that has, and for the rest of all time* will, prevent its repeal. Trump has repeatedly said he plans to do the one thing that would make the application of this AUMF to the war with ISIL directly legally reviewable, but there's not that much mileage in listening to what the guy actually says.
* Or until the deaths of 41 specific individuals, whichever comes first.
The Obamaseals need to be a brand. Like a sports team or something.
Something something Barbary Pirates something.
Or, god forbid, investigating terrorist groups as one would criminals.
Withholding comment for now except to say 9 is excellent.
Or, god forbid, investigating terrorist groups as one would criminals.
That is happening too.
Barry (and anyone else with knowledge), since you're here, does all this sound right?
I use the term takfiri to describe the enemy's ideology, and the phrase "takfiri terrorist" to describe those who use terrorism to further that ideology. The doctrine of takfir disobeys the Qur'anic injunction against compulsion in religion (Sûrah al-Baqarah: 256) and instead holds that Muslims whose beliefs differ from the takfiri's are infidels who must be killed. Takfirism is a heresy within Islam: it was outlawed in the 2005 Amman Message, an initiative of King Abdullah II of Jordan, which brought together more than 500 'ulema (Islamic scholars) and Muslim political leaders from the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League in an unprecedented consensus agreement, a "unanimous agreement by all Muslims everywhere as represented by their acknowledged most senior religious authorities and political leaders." Al Qa'ida is takfiri, and its members are universally so described by other Muslims, whom they routinely terrorize. In my view, and (compellingly for me) in the daily vocabulary of most ordinary local people, religious leaders, and tribal leaders with whom I have worked in the field, "takfirism" best describes the ideology currently threatening the Islamic world. I prefer it to the terms jihad, jihadist, jihadi, or mujahidin (literally "holy war" or "holy warrior"),which cede to the enemy the sacred status they crave, and to irhabi (terrorist) or hiraba (terrorism), which address AQ's violence but not its ideology. Takfiri is also preferable to the terms salafi or salafist, which refer to the belief that true Muslims should live like the first four generations of Muslims, the "pious ancestors" (as-salaf as-salih). Most extremists are salafi , but few salafi believers are takfiri, and even fewer are terrorists: most, although fundamentalist conservatives, have no direct association with terrorism.
20 is what I've understood, but it's a folk understanding, not anything informed by actual expertise.
It's got roots that go back to Sayyid Qutb and classically but in a very limited sense to Ibn Taymiyyah (who was a fairly fringe figure back then but has become a founding intellectual father of Wahhabism/Salafism). Politically it can be traced back to Egypt of the 60s/70s as a radical offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. It's become a common accusation thrown around since the civil war in Syria. Classically and by general consensus of the ulema one can be considered a Muslim if one accepts the rightness of the 5 pillars and a handful of other uncontroversial and widely shared points of faith. This would have been seen as being inclusive of both Shiite and Sunni sects as they both adhere to the five pillars and the points of faith in question (Belief in God, the angels, prophets, holy books, last day, etc). The takfiris really resemble the Kharijites to me in attitude and their terrorizing methods. I don't know if that helps. I'm kind of rambling here.
It does help, thank you. Specifically, do you agree with the the term takfirism, that it's a heresy, and that it should be distinguished from Salafism?
The original Kharijites, I take it, not the harmless Zanzibaris?
The Zanzibaris were pretty hard motherfuckers, as the ghosts of the Portuguese would attest.
24 The original Kharijites. Though their intellectual pedigree differs their methods and overall attitude is very similar.
25 I'm not an `Alim that I could pronounce it so, and it's been a long time since I've studied early Islamic heresiology (though I did study it fairly deeply at one point). But yeah, I've got absolutely no problem with the term. Those groups who are will to pronounce as unbelievers or apostates those Muslims who accept the shahada (there is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet), the rest of the 5 pillars and other basic axioms of belief are clearly Takfiris. I would have no problem seeing it as a heresy too, it basically places outside of the community of Muslims everyone but oneself and ones small group. Classical Islam was very much inclusive of a great variety and variance in belief.
Basically is it okay to call Takifiris heretics is the is it okay to punch Nazis of contemporary Western discourse. They'll kill the lot of you and enslave the rest if they get half a chance. Punch away.
who are will s/b who are willing
"That argument only works if you believe that the rate and severity of terrorist attacks will be unaffected by the rate and nature of US military operations, or if you believe that terrorists never actually kill civilians at all; that the targets of Obamawar are just, you know, people we don't like for some abstract reason, like maybe they're cruel to cats or don't recycle.
Otherwise, it's nonsense; it doesn't even address the argument that maybe precision strikes are preferable to inaction, in civilian casualty terms, because inaction would allow terrorists to conduct more attacks against civilians. But in every Obamatheatre of Obamawar, the number of civilians killed by Obamabombs and Obamaseals is small compared to the number killed by people like ISIS and the Taliban - the Obamatargets. The article is written by someone who apparently thinks that the only civilians who die are those killed by US forces.
"
If someone was drone bombing your town, isn't that going to make you more likely to be a terrorist? Drone bombing is a horrible idea and I an happy to be hypocritical and attack it now that Obama has left.
not happy enough to give my name though apparently
Go ahead and reveal your identity. There's nothing to worry about.
If someone drone bombed the local ISIS leader, if might make me less likely to want to be a terrorist, since I don't much fancy being blown up. It might also make it less likely that said ISIS leader will have my brother beheaded, because people who have been blown up generally don't do things like that.
Again, that argument only works if you assume that all counter terrorist actions are absolutely useless, which is quite a big assumption.
I can't believe no-one's mentioned Obamawear, the Obama-themed underoos that were handed out willy-nilly to those people along with free Obamaphones. Or how they are to this day worn by Alinskyite radicals as a secret sign of faith, akin to Mormon temple garments.
Again, that argument only works if you assume that all counter terrorist actions are absolutely useless
Absolutely useless and net out to being useless are two different things. I don't know what I'm talking about in any detailed sense at all, but the argument for counterproductiveness as I understand it is that ISIS (et al.) leaders are replaceable roughly as fast as they can be killed, and that killing them is more motivating than it is discouraging.
I don't know that this is the case, but it doesn't seem obviously nonsensical to me, given that drone bombing has been going on for quite a while and yet ISIS still exists.
Counter terrorist actions are useful if:
TK * X > CK + TC * X + OC * Y
TK = Terrorists Killed
X = Expected civilian deaths per terrorist
CK = Civilians Killed
TC = Terrorists Created
OC = Financial cost of operation
Y = Marginal cost of saving a civilian by other means
along with free Obamaphones.
An instrument similar to the saxamaphone.
An Obama, Omaha, Bahama: Mahna Mahna!
I used to be a big fan of Obama RAW, but the storylines got less interesting once Diamond Joe Biden did a heel-face turn and started NWO Acela.
Obviously someone needs to form an all female 80s nostalgia band called Obamarama.
I don't know that this is the case, but it doesn't seem obviously nonsensical to me, given that drone bombing has been going on for quite a while and yet ISIS still exists.
A few thoughts in search of an argument:
a. Al Qaeda was--eventually--decimated and greatly reduced in capacity. Some of that, at least, had to do with decapitation strikes. A lot of that, of course, was...
b. Ground troops have generally been seen as necessary to any successful air-based approach. And those aren't part of the attacks on ISIS, except...
c. We have been supporting attacks on ISIS by Iraqi forces, and they have, in fact, greatly rolled back ISIS forces, who at this point mostly retain strength because...
d. Syria provides the sort of effectively headless state that AQ profited from in pre-9/11 Afghanistan. But for the Syrian civil war, which AFAICT is coincidental to the rise of ISIS*, perhaps ISIS would by now be reduced to the sort of rump organization that AQ is.
Now, "My strategy would work if not for global uncertainty and violence" is no defense of any strategy (at least in unsettled parts of the world), but I'm suggesting that LB's final clause may not be dispositive of drone warfare in general.
*not that ISIS in no way contributed (or vice versa), but that it wasn't sparked by them, and that it would have proceeded roughly as it has whether ISIS existed in its current form or not
Well they don't seem so successful that you can point to any clear success stories. Also they tend to take place in the context of ongoing civil wars, so it would be really strange if they were a direct cause of a significant chunk of the fatalities, but we could talk about how many deaths are caused by the ongoing American effort to arm and fund sides in these various wars.
I don't really count one a years long campaign against one particular organization leaving it in a still exsisting but reduced form while the over all level violence from similar organizations has increased as a success story.
while the over all level violence from similar organizations has increased
I feel as if something other than drone strikes may have played a role in this part.
It would be a mean trick to go and check how many people have asserted both a) "drone strikes have done nothing to reduce the threat posed by Al Qaeda significantly, it's still out there and still functioning" and b) "Al Qaeda is simply a paper tiger now, it doesn't pose anything like the threat it did in 2001".
I don't think anyone arguing against drone strikes thinks we should stop doing them, but keep every other part of our psychotic failure of a foreign policy.
ISTM that while there is an endless supply of pissed off people, people with the motivation, skills, and charisma to lead an organization that can present a genuine transnational danger are going to be fewer and further between. It probably did make some sense to try to go get the last of the 4 founding members of AQAP --if the intelligence had been any good, the opportunity had been genuine, and operational security maintained.
Instead, it was a cluster.
Which obviously understates the tragedy to the individuals killed in the thing.
36: The better test case is the Taliban, against which there's been a decapitation campaign for many years, and which continues not just to exist but to gain ground.
My impression is that the Obama strategy is very much the strategy of the Politician's Syllogism, and the upshot is playing whack-a-mole in default of a comprehensive solution, or even a comprehensive theory of what the problem is.
Like, for instance, if AQ-alikes are the enemy, why are you allied with their homeland and chief financier? And if, because oil, you can't cut the Saudis loose, do you seriously not have enough leverage to stop them from fighting the Houthis, who are in fact fighting AQ, and that more effectively than the local government ever did?
37 is all fucked up.
a) You're adding incommensurable units: dollars and civilian deaths.
b)it's wonky to include that anyway. The operator is all wrong, and I don't think people are going to go for "A bomb killed twelve white women in Georgia today. Authorities are increasing funding for heart disease education and increasing tobacco taxes."
But, assuming for the moment you could get away with that, what you want is something like
(TK*X - (CK+TC*X)) / OC > Y Civilian deaths prevented per dollar
TK = Terrorists Killed
X = Expected civilian deaths per terrorist
CK = Civilians Killed
TC = Terrorists Created
OC = Financial cost of operation
Y = Marginal cost of saving a civilian by other means
In fairness, I think the CT strategy would be looking a lot better had it not been for the invasion of Iraq and bombing of Libya; but those things did in fact happen, and now that all the powder is smoldering civil wars and/or state failures in Muslim-majority countries are going to keep happening indefinitely, and local takfiri franchises are going to spread with them.
Which is a long way of saying, 49.
The best news since the Obamastration.
Except in that the US is now handling a NK missile crisis with no undersecretaries of State or Defense and no National Security Adviser. 3 weeks in.
Except in that the US is now handling a NK missile crisis with no undersecretaries of State or Defense and no National Security Adviser. 3 weeks in.
And handling it in public on the terrace at Mar-a-Lago, no less.
WaPo. Russians, Russians, Russians.
The Clinton containment strategy for Iraq was based on military action. That no-fly zone was enforced by US planes armed and ready to shoot down any Iraqi military aircraft flying. They even shot down a few before the Iraqis got the message. Still, a few Iraqis flew anyway, but landed quickly when spotted. The US didn't have to kill any civilians. That was Saddam Hussein's job.
Bush and Obama's drone strategy actually worked pretty well considering. It was a holding action, but it imposed a cost on operations in the area. There's some proverb about the nail that sticks out is the one that gets hit out by the hammer, and the drone war was about making things harder for the leaders who always had to be watching the sky, arranging decoy motorcades, avoiding obvious appearances and so on. That kind of stuff doesn't stop you, but it gets old fast.
Not exactly on topic, but given how many things Trump admin officials have done that are, or are very similar to, things they've accused with little evidence opponents of doing, I'm almost at the point where I would not be surprised if it turns out that:
1. There was massive fraud in the election, but it was carried out by Republicans.
2. Trump was not born in the United States.
Even though there's obviously no evidence for either of these statements.
You were warned. You were given an explanation. Nevertheless, you persisted.
I'm honestly kind of surprised that's it's possible for a scandal to take down someone in the Trump administration. I'd have expected him to take the "never back down" approach. I mean, I expect him to randomly fire people because he's angry or whatever, but I really was expecting Flynn to survive this.
Turns out Trump isn't immune to any and all political repercussions after all.
If he hires Petraeus there might even be one sane person in the White House!
Has a cabinet level (? NSC seat anyway) appointee ever been fired before by presidents of two different parties?
67 Let's see what his parole officer says first.
He won't have to leave Washington at all! And law-enforcement officers can monitor his movements at all times!
And law-enforcement officers can monitor his movements at all times!
Only if he sets up his office on the terrace at Mar-a-Lago.
I don't really count one a years long campaign against one particular organization leaving it in a still existing but reduced form while the over all level violence from similar organizations has increased as a success story.
This is a weak argument, especially coming from someone who is endorsing instead the approach of "treating terrorist groups like criminals", because law enforcement has been going after organised crime for a very long time indeed, and yet it still exists, albeit in a reduced form. Come to that, treating the IRA as criminals for a couple of decades did very little to bring them down.
Come to that, treating the IRA as criminals for a couple of decades did very little to bring them down.
Treating Sinn Fein as a political outfit was more effective. But I wouldn't advocate that in the case of ISIS.
I'd say that the all-axis approach was what worked: you needed the army and the RUC keeping a lid on things on the streets, the mainland police forces running risk-reduction on potential targets, the intelligence services running agents within the IRA and undermining it from within, special forces running rural surveillance and strike, and the politicians coming to a deal with Sinn Fein and the Loyalists.
I'm not sure why ISIS is so uniquely horrible that it doesn't deserve to be treated as a political actor. We should certainly be treating the Taliban as a political actor. And treating entities as political actors isn't a compliment - it's an acknowledgement.
This is kind of the Clausewitz Misreading (warning: hobby horse):
Everyone thinks he said "War is the continuation of politics by other means". But he didn't, and that is pretty much 180 degrees away from what he said. What he actually said was "War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means [emphasis added]. We deliberately use the phrase 'with the addition of other means' because we also want to make it clear that war in itself does not suspend political intercourse or change it into something entirely different. In essentials that intercourse continues, irrespective of the means it employs. The main lines along which military events progress, and to which they are restricted, are political lines that continue throughout the war into the subsequent peace."
But I wouldn't advocate that in the case of ISIS.
Nor would I. The Taliban OTOH...
You just need to convince them to make an org structure with committees and subcommittees and reporting requirements and they won't have any time left for terrorism.
74.2. ISIS may or not be "uniquely horrible", but it's ideology is uniquely expansionist in the sense of wanting to take over the whole of Dar ul Islam; eliminationist, a characteristic it has in common with other takfiri groups; and includes an unsettling commitment to bringing about the end of the world.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't be treated as political actors when they obviously are, but any dialogue with them would have to be significantly different from dialogue with SF, whose stated objective is/was solely the unification of a small Atlantic island, who appear to be ready to settle for a voice in government, and who seem to understand that government is largely about roads, schools, drains, etc.
And I agree with you and Barry in re. Taliban.
So that's what Halford's been up to.So that's what Halford's been up to.
Meanwhile I've been up to inventing new ways of double posting on the blog.
Halford is a female North Korean assassin? Figures.
No but I figure it would be his dream job to run them.
So he's Kim Jong-un, then? I could see that.
"Moby says he has secret intelligence info on Trump," trumpets boingboing, brought to my attention by Kotsko otherwhere. But alas, it's only the dj.
Anyone got any words because words I have got none of.
[The Islamic State], now confronting its own eventual fall, is devising a modified survival strategy that may involve surrendering control of its "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria but seeks to preserve a virtual version of it online.As Drum says,
Barack Obama's approach was the right one. His goal was to win the war against ISIS slowly, inexorably, and with a minimum of US involvement.[...]Iraq is taking the lead, which forces them to get battlefield experience that will stand them in good stead when the US leaves. Residents are angry at the brutality of ISIS, not US forces. And the American public is willing to be patient as long as US casualties are low. The end result is a longer war but a more effective one. When ISIS is finally defeated, Iraq will be in good position to keep it from rebuilding itself. ISIS understands this, and that's why they're preparing for their eventual defeat in the physical world.So all preceding comments predicated on the premise that the Obamawar on ISIS has been a failure have been effectively McLuhan'd. One last quote:
The group began altering its propaganda themes last year to prepare followers for the collapse of the caliphate, depicting its mounting battlefield losses as Ânoble and inevitable struggles, in contrast to the triumphant messages that had previously dominated its output.They've known for months now that their time as a physical entity is drawing down. Presumably non-intervention would have had the same outcome.
Also worth noting that ISIS is having recruitment issues; it's down from 2000 foreign fighters a month to 50.
But surely ISIS soldiers and even leaders are easily replaceable, and if we bomb them it'll just radicalise them and help their recruiting. (Someone should tell them!)
That will be great if it turns out to be true over time. But... we've been actively engaged in military operations against related entities in the Middle East since 2003. And there has been an awful lot of good news over that time, about how effective we've been. And yet the region doesn't seem to be reliably safer.
It's not impossible that now things are really working, and that a year or two from now, areas now controlled by ISIS will be peaceful. I really hope that's the case. But it seems weird to me to put much faith in optimistic news reporting about how great the situation will be next year.
I would imaging that the drying up of recruitment reflects mostly but not entirely increased security in the countries supplying recruits. One problem with the "Caliphate" model is that recruits have to get from Rawalpindi to Raqqa, crossing various international borders and a lot of country with not much surviving infrastructure. If you go on line you can just order your "jihadis" to go and blow themselves up in a supermarket like all the other groups. Of course you lose your USP and will probably wither on the internet in a year or two, but thems the breaks.
crossing various international borders and a lot of country with not much surviving infrastructure
Or, alternatively, flying to Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport and taking one of several comfortable and convenient long-distance bus services to the Syrian border, with the quiet assent of a Turkish government that was, a few years ago, fairly happy with foreign jihadis going into Syria to do a bit of Kurd-slaughtering in the cause of God.
The Turks have changed their attitude a bit since 2014, hinc illae lacrimae.
91 I was going to add Istanbul.
89 One problem is Trump threw out the Obama strategy, at least in Iraq, which certainly seemed to be working although it was taking time and has replaced it with nothing.
Trump has pledged to put the Greek embassy in Istanbul.
... taking one of several comfortable and convenient long-distance bus services to the Syrian border,
It's been awhile now but I've taken one of those long-distance bus services in central Turkey. I assure you it was anything but comfortable.
94: ha, yes, me too. Being forcibly turfed out of the bus at two in the morning for half an hour because we'd reached a roadside kebab shop owned by a friend of the driver... the regular spraying of lemon-scented cologne... the terrible Turkish pop music... I think the Turkish buses did more to turn me into a Turcophobe than anything except the massive amounts of actual state violence that I also saw.
Still comfortable compared to trekking overland from Rawalpindi, I suspect.
Were all the windows rolled up and did everyone smoke? In the middle of the summer?
Also my friend had a stomach bug and had explosive diarrhea and the bus driver would not stop for like 6 hours (it was a 13 hour trip). He was twirling around in his seat in utter agony (so glad I wasn't sitting next to him).
Yes, yes, and yes. Fortunately we were both healthy throughout.
Oh interesting, I also saw a great deal of state violence. Still I am a Turcophile. I love the people, the country, the food, etc, just about everything but the government. And that even less now than before.
98: the people seemed generally courteous (at least as long as you were male) and the country was fascinating; my Turcophobia's mainly directed at the food and the government.
Also there were long stretches of basically unpaved road but the bus did not slow down, almost skidded off into a ravine a few times and there were several news reports that week of serious bus accidents of the "bus plunge" or head-on collision type. Including one memorable one where the two bus drivers involved in a head-on collision with about 20-30 fatalities were related. An uncle and nephew IIRC.
I wasn't suggesting anybody trekked overland from anywhere. But as you point out, the Turkish authorities are far less complaisant than they used to be, plus arrangements have to be made to move people from the border to wherever they're supposed to be trained/deployed.
And the lack of personal hygiene I mean come on guys "Turkish bath" is a world-famous thing, try taking one yourselves from time to time.
Well, maybe I kept eating in the wrong places.
I found Turkish street food generally excellent. The one place I had trouble was at one of those tourist trap places in Sultanahmet.
It's a good piece.
It doesn't adress whether Obama's counterterrorism efforts worked or not, which is a different discussion.
I would say "obamawar" have been a good thing in the fight against Isis, where the US would always have been involved.
If we're basing our prejudices on transportation infrastructure, I think I'm a European nationalist.
The fight against Isis is pretty clearly a conventional conflict mostly involving other countries than the US. I mean naively it would seem to be evidence that the drone campaign wasn't very successful and defeating. ISis required a massive conventional effort from several countries.
But surely ISIS soldiers and even leaders are easily replaceable, and if we bomb them it'll just radicalise them and help their recruiting. (Someone should tell them!)
They absolutely get this. There's a reason that they like to stage attacks in the West -- or claim credit for whatever lone wolf picks up a gun.
Granted, it's a high-risk strategy, and one can legitimately question its long-term efficacy. But I suspect bin Laden is grinning in hell over the results of 9/11.
But I suspect bin Laden is grinning in hell over the results of 9/11.
No, not really. The attacks had three stated objectives:
1) discourage the US from supporting Israel
2) motivate the US to lift sanctions on Iraq
3) motivate the US to withdraw all its troops from the Arabian Peninsula
So, in the words of Sarah Palin, how's that workin' out for ya?
If you think that bin Laden just wanted to weaken the US, or "hated your freedoms", or whatever, you need to do a bit of reading around. Al-Qaeda made its goals very clear before and after the attacks, and it has completely failed to meet them.
Well, I suppose it has met goal 2), but in a kind of "Monkey's Paw" way...
112 Stated objectives. There was a heavily implied objective of embroiling the US in unwinnable Middle East wars, giving us our own Afghanistan. And thereby destabilizing the entire region. I'd say they succeeded wildly beyond all expectations here.
The last one is ambiguous too. It certainly succeeded in motivating the US to withdraw all troops from KSA which was the real issue. Having US, non-Muslim, troops too close to the Haramayn and there with an implied promise to prop up the regime. They really didn't seem to have much of a problem with the US keeping its massive naval base in Bahrain or the massive AF base in Qatar as you'll note by the lack of al-Qaeda sponsored anti-US terrorist attacks there (and yes, I'm absolutely sure robust intel/CT has a lot to do with it but it's not the only reason, they just don't seem to care). Khobar which is in KSA and very close to Bahrain OTOH. So even though the phrase used was "Arabian peninsula" the context and everything that followed was concerned with US military presence in KSA.
113.1: well, people keep saying this but I've yet to see proof that this was the case before the fact. Sure, there were statements after Iraq and Afghanistan kicked off that "woo hoo, this is totally what we wanted to happen, now we will drag the Crusaders into an unwinnable war" but that could as easily be AQ putting a positive spin on something they hadn't expected (or particularly wanted) to happen.
I'm not really seeing how their stated intention of stopping "the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and ... the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million" - i.e. the 1991 war on Iraq and subsequent sanctions - can be reconciled with this supposed implied objective of provoking another, even bloodier invasion of Iraq.
There were certainly AQ attacks against US troops in Kuwait and, of course, in Yemen; so it looks like it's not just about Saudi Arabia.
And the lack of al-Qaeda attacks in Qatar is much more likely to be an example of al-Qaeda having the good sense not to shit where it eats, given how much of its funding came from Qataris.
And, don't forget, one major result of 9/11 was the severe degradation of Al-Qaeda. Where's Mohammed Atef now? Pink mist in a Kabul suburb. Where's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Stuck in a tropical prison camp for ever. Where, for that matter, is the Sheikh himself? Bottom of the Indian Ocean with half his skull missing. This sort of thing has massively affected their ability to carry out major operations of the 9/11 type. I can't imagine OBL has much to grin about there.
Bin Laden's rhetoric was filled with references to the presence of American troops in the land of the Haramayn. That's definitely a reference to KSA but he had to be a bit coy about it, can't just attack the monarchy directly for letting them in. Saudi legitimacy rests on their custodianship of the two holy cities (how are they doing? Take a look at recent photos, they've turned it into Mecca-a-Lago, only tackier).
114.last indubitably.
115 Yeah but we're talking squad goals here.
OTOH I think we're both being too American (or Western) centric here. If you measure the effect by the increase of Iranian/Shi'ite influence in the region I think you could make a very good argument for al-Qaeda failure to achieve their goals or worse, suffering a major long-term setback.
118: hmm. But how bothered were AQ about the Shia, back in the 1990s? If anything, I would think, they were mainly bothered by the Iranians because they were non-Arabs, not because they were Shia. The 1998 fatwa is full of pan-Arab concern. Iraqi Arabs are mainly Shia, after all, and the fate of Iraq is still high on their list because Iraq was "the strongest Arab state".
It's probably worth reiterating that the Obama strategy they were all so BUT HER EMAILS about actually killed Osama Bin Laden dead. His ass was tagged, kicked, counted, DNA-sequenced for purposes of identification still in the helicopter, and committed to the deep after receiving the relevant sacraments from the USS Coral Sea's Islamic chaplain. Which is possibly the most Obama thing ever.
I wonder how many Americans, if polled, still know he's dead?
119 Not to have been bothered by it back in the 90s doesn't mean they wouldn't have been dismayed at the consequences of Gulf War II. Unforseen blowback.
120 I've mentioned it to my Fox news watching parents a couple of times over the years. They insist that it was Bush who planned the operation, even though Bush is on record several times saying that bin Laden was not a concern and all his actions bore that out while Obama made it the top priority on day 1 of his administration. (Well reported on at the time too)
NMM to the two North Korean assassins.
122: what? Last I saw they'd arrested one of them.
122, 123 I've seen conflicting reports. The one about the two assassins being found dead appears to be unsourced or has a single Korean language news source.
99: I had no problems when alone, though it probably helps that my looks don't mark me as obviously foreign to strangers on the street. It also helped that I have a name that translates and so I just went by the Turkish version. There were a few instances of things being awkward because I was a woman in not-woman space (hardware store because I had the best Turkish of our group, which is saying nothing; playing soccer) but zero sexual harassment.
126: I think you're right that a lot of it has to do with foreigners being seen as inferior and therefore fair game. I am thinking in particular of the two Polish women we encountered who had effectively been confined to their hotel room, because they had been harassed consistently every time they stepped outside it unless in a group; they definitely looked non-Turkish.
127: Part of the time I traveled with a redhead, whose experience was entirely different from mine.
Like Schrodinger's Assassins, they are simultaneously dead and not dead.
On the other hand... The simplest explanation is that there were more than two assassins.
If the "Vietnamese" woman they arrested is indeed one of the assassins, she deserves kudos for going out to kill another human being while wearing a sweatshirt with "LOL" in big letters on the front. I can only hope her accomplice was wearing one with "WTF".
129 That's basically the same unsourced report referred to above. There's nothing new added there.
Hey, what the fuck is going on with Russia?
In the past 24 hours we've had our UN Ambassador call them out for their actions in Eastern Ukraine, we've had information released about a Russian spy ship off the coast of Connecticut, we've had information about Russian planes buzzing a US ship in the Black Sea, and we've had Trump tweeting about Obama being weak about letting the Russians have Crimea.
Is Trump breaking up with Putin or is this a smokescreen?
134: Your error is in assuming there is something coherent going on. We live in a post-fact, post-truth world now. Assume everything you hear is just spreading FUD. Trump doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground and he's surrounded by crazies of wildly different flavors, all pushing him in their own unique and stupid directions. Since he listens to the last person he talked to nothing is going to make sense until someone wins the internal battles within the administration, at which point we'll settle on a coherent but insane course of action. That's assuming he doesn't get impeached first.
I do wonder if President Pence will feel the need to veer in a sharply anti-Russia direction to establish his independence from the brief unpleasantness preceding him.
112: I think you are misrepresenting bin Laden's stated objectives. Those items were more casus belli than they were the objects of his strategy. He used those things (and others) as justification.
Proponents of aggressive war need a rationale, and they'll use whatever is handy. Maybe the US really did invade Iraq because of WMD and Saddam's ties to bin Laden and whatnot, but I don't buy that, either.
If, as you suggest, bin Laden was unhappy with the aftermath of 9/11 -- and in particular, the invasion of Iraq -- why did he want Bush re-elected? (Or do you doubt that he did want that?)
134. I think smokescreen. The admin did not release the spy ship info, that was an IC leak. Talking about Ukraine is great. Arming them is something else again.
Russia's next big potential gains (aside from control of a land route to supply Crimea) are EU elections yielding EU executives who want to lift sanctions. Fillon is out of the race for personal corruption, so that means LePen. Speaking in support of NATO and in support of sanctions both in public and to other nations counts for something, but that has not happened.
137: I would be happy to hear how I've misrepresented Bin Laden's stated objectives. My source was a translation of his 1998 fatwa "A Declaration of Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders" which I thought laid them out fairly clearly.
As for why he wanted Bush re-elected: I don't know whether he did or not. If he did, maybe simply because he thought Kerry would be a more dangerous opponent? It certainly doesn't imply that everything in 2002-4 was exactly what he wanted. We binned Op FOXLEY because we wanted Hitler to stay in power, because he was incompetent. It doesn't necessarily mean that everything up to 1944 had gone exactly as we wanted.
139.1: Not much I can add to 137.1, but I'll try to restate it with your objection in mind. You say:
My source was a translation of his 1998 fatwa "A Declaration of Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders" which I thought laid [bin Laden's objectives] out fairly clearly.
Right. That was what I was thinking of, also. Bin Laden's statement is largely a listing of grievances, and not a declaration of military objectives. You quote a bit of the document above. Here's that bit in context:
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula ... If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people ... Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres ... here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors ... Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq ...
Throughout the document, bin Laden (mostly) is justifying war, not listing military objectives.
It's true that he does get down to business and call for generalized killing with the objective of getting Americans out of Muslim lands:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.
If we're going to say that any failure to completely accomplish this is a failure to meet his stated objectives, well I guess he failed. I have likewise seen people argue that because he said Americans are weak and cowardly and unwilling to fight back when attacked, he was shocked when they invaded Afghanistan. You can find explicit backing for that in bin Laden's words, but it still strikes me as nonsense.
I just don't think he was that dumb. I think 9/11 was a deliberate provocation, not an effort to make Americans turn tail and run.
Likewise, I think it's naive to think that bin Laden didn't understand he was boosting Bush when he spoke out before the 2004 election. Ron Suskind reported that the CIA believed bin Laden wanted to help Bush. Regardless of the CIA's view, that seems pretty obvious. The question is: Why?
140: Speaking of which, when Toni Basil sings "Any way you wanna do it, I'll take you like a man" what precisely is the connotation there?
I have likewise seen people argue that because he said Americans are weak and cowardly and unwilling to fight back when attacked, he was shocked when they invaded Afghanistan. You can find explicit backing for that in bin Laden's words, but it still strikes me as nonsense.
He'd seen them turn tail and run in 1979 in Iran and 1983 in Beirut and 1993 in Mogadishu, and he'd seen how wary they were of getting involved in a prolonged war in 1991 with Iraq, and 1994-6 in the Balkans. And he also had confidence that the Afghans would be able to fight off a foreign invasion and keep him safe; after all, he'd seen them do it in the eighties, against another enemy who was far less afraid of casualties.
I'm not saying he was rational to believe that the US would also be cowed by 9/11, but it doesn't strike me as impossible that he believed it. Lots and lots of other people have thought "oh, they're too rich and soft and afraid of getting hurt, they'll never fight; let's just go ahead and invade Belgium/invade Poland/annexe the Falklands/annexe Kuwait" and come an absolute cropper as a result. There are a lot of stupid people out there making important decisions.
On the second point: sure, OK, he knew he was boosting Bush. But that is not the same as thinking everything was going according to plan; as I say, maybe he just thought Bush would be an easier opponent than Kerry. More easily distracted, for example.
I've always thought that the main point of the 9/11 attack was to demonstrate prowess, much more than to provoke one reaction or another from the US. A win for AQ no matter what we did.
To the extent that BL thought the US doesn't have the staying power in Afghanistan, he hasn't been proven right, obviously, but hasn't been proven wrong either. Everyone thinks/knows that the day after we leave, the Taliban retakes power. And that we have no policy or plan that can prevent it.
Killing Saddam has to be a bonus that BL could not have imagined, and he'd have had every reason in 2004 that more of the same idiocy would follow if Bush was re-elected. There was certainly a not-insubstantial chance of war with Iran throughout GWB's second term, and that would really be a gift that keeps on giving.
A War on Islam in which we are killing Shiites.
143.1 seems a bit confused. You don't win by "demonstrating prowess".
What were bin Laden's actual strategic objectives? I would argue that he expressed them pretty clearly: get the West, in particular the US, out of the Middle East; in particular get the US garrison out of Saudi, halt US support for Israel (allowing the Arab people to destroy it) and end US sanctions on Iraq.
Was killing Saddam a bonus for bin Laden? Not really. He cared about Iraq because it had been a strong Arab state, and now it was defeated and in penury because of the 1991 war and the sanctions. But did he want Saddam dead? Why would he?
Again, did he want the US involved in an insurgency in Iraq? Yes, but only in order to achieve his strategic objectives - bloody them enough to make them pull out of the region completely. The "in order to" is key.
And yet, fifteen years on, the US remains very heavily involved in the Middle East. Would he really be happy about this?
He'd seen them turn tail and run in 1979 in Iran and 1983 in Beirut and 1993 in Mogadishu ...
Yup. I hadn't realized before now that bin Laden explicitly says this. I always thought that argument was merely a projection by neocons of their own point of view onto bin Laden, but I ran across the 1996 declaration, and bin Laden is quite straightforward on this point.
I still don't buy it. It reads to me like an insult -- like Bush calling the 9/11 hijackers "cowards." Secondarily, it's the sort of rhetoric that seems designed to goad nitwit neocons into doing stupid things. (I'd argue further that the US made basically the right calls in Iran, Beirut and Mogadishu once the shit hit the fan.)
But one's mileage can vary on these things, I suppose.
I'm not sure we're ever going to agree on this:
I'm starting from the point of view that bin Laden wanted to do what he originally said he wanted to do, and he wasn't very bright and so made a few bad assumptions and decisions and tried to change his tactics as he went along, to adapt to the changing situation and keep trying to achieve his stated objectives but died having largely failed.
You're starting from the point of view that in fact all his public statements were calculated lies, and he predicted US reactions accurately in advance and so everything that happened after 9/11 went according to the plan he had secretly laid out in the late 90s and never, as far as we know, told anyone about (right up to, presumably, the point where he was shot in the head).
You don't win by "demonstrating prowess". No, you recruit.
148: and did he, in fact, achieve an improvement in recruiting as a result of 9/11? Just think about that for a moment. Because recruiting for AQ wasn't just a case of someone watching a video of bin Laden and clicking "like". It's the whole chain that starts with "unaware Muslim bloke sitting at home" at one end and finishes with "trained fighter swears bayat to the Sheikh" at the other.
And the immediate result - well, within a few months - of 9/11 was the complete destruction of the recruiting infrastructure he had spent the previous five years building. All those training camps? Gone. His planning staff? His military commanders? His head of operations? All his instructor cadres, every fighter in his training pipeline? In prison, dead, or running for their lives into Pakistan.
Not to mention a massive outpouring of pro-American sentiment across the Muslim world. For heaven's sake, there were spontaneous candlelit pro-American rallies in Teheran of all places. Attacks on Khobar Towers and the Cole hadn't attracted that sort of reaction because the US military is not terrifically popular. But killing three thousand civilians?
No, that wasn't a recruiting tool at all.
147.3: In asymmetrical warfare, propaganda is a pretty important tool, and bin Laden has shown himself to be a master. I have argued that bin Laden favored Bush in the election, but he said he had no preference for reasons that seem obvious and that suggest a rather subtle understanding of how his words would be interpreted by his enemies. Is that a lie? Sure. Bin Laden lied a lot.
It strains credulity to suggest that bin Laden thought the US wouldn't engage in direct war. He knew quite well that the US had lately invaded Iraq based on a provocation that was considerably less than 9/11.
Bin Laden was a little guy with big dreams and limited resources. I don't think things played out exactly the way he expected, but he's a terrorist and was smart enough to understand that when you sow chaos, you can never really be sure where things are going to end up.
Anyway, he certainly never repented all of his repeated "failures." Even after seeing the neocon resolve he had stirred up, and the lack of American "cowardice," he continued to think that direct attacks against the US were a good idea.
in particular get the US garrison out of Saudi,
Calling Saudi Arabia "Saudi" seems to be entirely a British phenomenon; I haven't seen it over here yet but the BBC does it all the time. Feels strange to me, like calling the US "United."
I don't disagree with 149 as to the impact of 9/11 on AQ itself. I'm speculating, baselessly, about the point of picking a big landmark as the target, one that had been the object of someone else's failed strike, and having basically no additional plan to do anything in the US. It wasn't predominantly because of our involvement in the ME, to show us as a paper tiger, or, certainly, because he hates our freedoms. It was to show would-be jihadis that his was the baddest-ass jihad going. And capable of finding the seam and doing something the whole world would notice.
[151 -- I find myself usually saying, and often writing, Saudiya. I think that should be the English name for the country.]
150: no, bin Laden was no master or propaganda. AQ propaganda was hopeless compared to, say, what ISIS is putting out now.
People mock hiring consultants for marketing, but it is an actual skill even if nearly everyone who has the skill is horrible.
154: Yeah, ISIS does impressive work (as I said in 111), especially given the fact that, like bin Laden, it is acting from a position of weakness.
But there was a time when you couldn't open an Islamic terrorism franchise without labeling it "Al Qaeda in Lichtenstein" or whatever. The roots of al-Baghdadi's organization are in the Iraq al Qaeda franchise.
ISIS co-opted bin Laden's PR, learned from bin Laden's successes and is also piggybacking off the success of 9/11. And ISIS gets great propaganda mileage out of attacking the West (or semi-plausibly claiming to do so).
This doesn't mean that ISIS ultimately has a winning strategy -- the caliphate doesn't look like it's going to be a going concern for too much longer. But given the inherent difficulty of the organization's goals, it has had impressive successes.
v But did he want Saddam dead? Why would he?
Saddam was a Ba'athist secularist opposed to political Islam.
Yeah, ISIS does impressive work
Meh. If decapitation videos were that effective as advertising, US beer and car companies would have started using them by now.
158 Well I guess when you're prohibited from using T and A you go right for the decapitation vids.
"This is Spuds McKenzie, broadcasting from an undisclosed location, and I'm going to show you what we do with teetotaler scum."
"Saddam was a Ba'athist secularist opposed to political Islam."
Umm. Well, maybe? He wasn't averse to using Islamist slogans and rhetoric when he wanted to. They had a shared enemy - the Saudis. And, well, did bin Laden ever say anything negative about Saddam? Saddam had built the greatest Arab state in the region, remember?
What exactly bin Laden and his AQ wanted or expected is fairly inconsequential, because they've been destroyed. Their successors haven't been. IS grew directly from AQ in Iraq, AQI directly from bin Laden's AQ. In Iraq, AQ controlled nothing; AQI peaked at three provinces; IS so far has peaked at three provinces, Mosul, and a large swathe of Syria. You can interpret that as successive failures, they as successive waves of a rising tide. On the evidence, we can't say that they're wrong. I still think they will very probably lose in the long run, but the trend so far isn't promising.
Again, 49. Light-footprint counterterrorism in isolation might have contained terrorism, but CT doesn't exist in isolation, it's been accompanied by US policies that destroyed the Iraqi and Libyan states, and helped to destabilize Syria. (And maybe Pakistan and Yemen. I don't know enough to argue about either.)
IS grew directly from AQ in Iraq, AQI directly from bin Laden's AQ.
That's not entirely true. First of all, AQ in Iraq did not grow directly from bin Laden's AQ. You're giving the impression that bin Laden decided "let's start an operation in Iraq" and sent Zarqawi off to do it. This is not true. Zarqawi was a low-level muj propagandist in Afghan in the late 80s just as the Soviets were leaving, then spent fifteen years in prison in Jordan (he was Jordanian) before making his way back to Afghan in 1999. Bin Laden gave him a small amount of logistical support which allowed him to set up shop in Herat, training terrorists for a planned AQ cell in Jordan.
In Jordan, not Iraq; Zarqawi had never been to Iraq in his life.
When the coalition invaded Afghanistan in 2001, he was wounded and fled to Iran, where he received medical treatment. Then he entered Iraqi Kurdistan, only to be evicted again in 2003 by another American invasion; he fled to western Iraq and set up with the protection of his tribe.
After he'd been blowing stuff up for a bit, bin Laden got in touch with him and suggested he become AQ's franchisee in Iraq; Zarqawi agreed only on condition that bin Laden give him complete strategic autonomy - he later rejected advice from bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to focus on attacking western targets, instead choosing to murder Iraqi Shias in the hope of provoking a sectarian conflict.
And as for IS growing directly from AQ in Iraq (or rather the "Al Qaeda Jihad Organisation for Mesopotamia"); no. Islamic State in Iraq in October 2006 (after Zarqawi's death) was a general umbrella group for extremist Sunni groups in Iraq, including the (by then very sparse) remnants of Zarqawi's group. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was never in Zarqawi's group, but he managed to achieve a leadership position in ISI by 2010. By this time, organisationally and strategically, the gulf between AQ and ISI had grown very wide. The agreement with Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri's Baathist network, and the decision to declare an Islamic State, would have widened it still further.
Also, not entirely true that "AQ controlled nothing". For several years they had freedom of operation in Taliban Afghanistan! No subsequent jihadi group has had anything like that luxury.
163: All of which strengthens my point in 162.1: OBL's AQ is, and was rapidly reduced to, a minor faction in the global jihadi movement.
164: "AQ controlled nothing *in Iraq*."
165.1: but it is misleading to talk about AQI and ISIS as AQ's "successors" which grew directly from it. They didn't.
165.2: AQ wasn't even in Iraq. I think it is misleading to try to claim it as less successful than AQI and ISIS, because even though AQ didn't control any of Iraq, it controlled (jointly) most of an entire other country, Afghanistan.
He wasn't averse to using Islamist slogans and rhetoric when he wanted to.
Putting the takbir on the flag, a phrase every Muslim says multiple times a day at prayer and at other times isn't really dispositive. I suspect other uses of Islamist slogans would be much the same, common phrases embedded in Islamic culture but nothing particularly Islamist about it.
The Bush White House tried very hard to prove a Saddam Bin Laden link and they came up with nothing much at all. OTOH there are plenty of times Bin Laden criticized Saddam Hussein harshly, going so far as to volunteer some of his fighter's to protect KSA against his forces during Gulf War I.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying there was a link - that was Bush-era nonsense.
That whole business in 1990 remains very puzzling. Bin Laden surely couldn't have actually believed that a few thousand mountain-trained guerrilla fighters would be able to hold off the fourth largest army in the world as it rolled across an entirely flat empty desert. Could he? Was it ever a serious offer? Did he, for that matter, really sincerely believe that the Iraqis were coming south?
Maybe just a way of inflating his importance? These were early days for his group.
Did he think the Iraqis were coming, but the point was to render KSA ungovernable for them and incidentally make sure the future, post-Iraqi polity would be to his liking?
Or maybe get his organisation wedged into the KSA military hierarchy with an eye to gaining power and influence in the Kingdom? I'm not even sure he was particularly anti-Saudi family at that point in his life. That came later when they kicked him out and he had to go and live in Sudan.
166.1: "Directly" - a messy organization with a messy history, but an organization none the less. You could argue argue either way, but I'll concede it. "Successor" - I don't think this misleading, given the number of organizations that swore allegiance to IS. AQ used to have that symbolic leadership role. Again though, I don't think it matters, save to AQ itself. For everyone else's purposes, what you have is increasingly destructive jihadism in increasingly numerous countries.
166.2: AQ didn't control Afghanistan. It was permitted to operate, but only controlled its own small territories. The Taliban was a confederacy of militias and AQ was one of them.
I don't think you can understand OBL's strategic thinking without including the belief that God himself was going to ensure victory, just as he did over the Russians in Afghanistan. Apparent stupid strategic blunders can make sense if you think God is going to intervene on your side.