Guest Opinion: Agreeing With Bin Laden

Though I am utterly opposed to his methodology, I am in total support of Bin Laden’s three demands on the U$A.

One is to end the bombing of Iraq. For eleven years, Britain and the U$A, without UN mandate, have been bombing Iraq. This deliberate, continued bombing of water and sewerage infrastructure has resulted in the needless death of over 500,000 Iraqi children (UNICEF). In 1990, there were zero cases of cholera per 100,000. Today the figure is more than 1400 people getting cholera per 100,000 and that’s only the cholera.

Two is for the U$A to take a more even-handed approach in the Israeli / Palestinian crisis. A good starting point would be getting behind UN resolution 241 which Israel blatantly disregards. UN resolution 241 calls upon Israel to get their collective ass out of the occupied ‘territories’. Instead, Israel continues to usurp land from the Palestinians imprisoning them in their own homes.

If the U$A and her coalition of the willing, can invade Iraq for defying a UN resolution without UN support, then isn’t it logical, consistent and fair for a coalition of Russia, Libya, France to invade Israel, remove Sharon, and replace him with someone more willing?

Three is for the infidels to leave the Holy Land meaning get the U$A military out of Saudi Arabia. It is anathema to orthodox Moslems that infidels are on holy soil.

Bin laden is not pro-active. He is reactive. Based on his own statements that if the U$A adhered to the three reasonable demands above, the Al-Qaeda threat would go away. On 12/11/02 he is reported saying, "The road to safety begins by ending the aggression. Reciprocal treatment is part of justice. The incidents that have taken place ... are only reactions and reciprocal actions. "

The news media misrepresented the above. The AOL headline was "Bin Laden vows to attack." Not exactly a neutral, truthful interpretation of his words.

Bin Laden gets treated as if he is an unyielding recalcitrant. In fact, what he says has always been couched in conditional terminology. To whit, all the media outlets reported this Binny statement 12/10/02: "By God, the youths of God are preparing for you things that would fill your hearts with terror and target your economic lifeline, until you stop your oppression and aggression against Muslims."

They all omitted the last line: "So let America increase the pace of this conflict or decrease it, and we will respond in kind."

Bin Laden and his ilk are the natural outcome of decades of mishandled foreign policy. The sure path to reduce terrorism is to address the root causes and for the U$A to transform its’ use of power.

But what can we expect when the most powerful nation on earth is deliberately kept in a state of ignorance by a gang of oil billionaires and presided over by an inarticulate draft-dodger who stole the Presidency? How can this greedy clique ever provide the compassion, wisdom and maturity to lead a great people?

- Paul Recher is an Australian columnist for the regional newspaper Northern Star.

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