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Bellicose Yankee Air Pirate
+1,182|6714|'Murka

Flecco wrote:

Mekstizzle wrote:

Nobody is calling no shots in Afghanistan, that's partly why it's such a mess. From what I've seen, each country is pretty much left on their own to defend their own slice of the country. There isn't much integration and it's each guy and his own slice of pie...for the most part...
The Aussie/Dutch sector seems to be doing okay.
It's totally dependent on Taliban (south) or AQ (east) influence. There are far more peaceful provinces than there are problem ones.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
― Albert Einstein

Doing the popular thing is not always right. Doing the right thing is not always popular
Turquoise
O Canada
+1,596|6708|North Carolina

Vax wrote:

Beduin is right though, Bin Laden was exiled by the Saudis way back, and stripped of his Saudi citizenship...OBL was ( i believe) among those who wanted the Saudi royals overthrown.. Yes the big issue was US troops in the holy land, but those troops were there at the behest of the Saudi gov't 
There has been a long history of complicated political/religious struggles within Saudi Arabia, a lot of radical types disliked the Royals, but i think OBL was among the most extreme

...On August 2, 1990, shortly after bin Laden's return from Afghanistan, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Riyadh's subsequent decision to invite the U.S. military to protect the kingdom radically transformed the Saudi debate about the Western "cultural attack." Deployment of Western troops to Saudi soil fit the narrative of those ulema who said that Western cultural penetration of the kingdom was just a precursor to a Western military reconquest of the Middle East. To these young Saudis, the House of Saud was at best duped by the West and, at worst, complicit.
...From his Afghan exile, he issued "a declaration of war" and, in several press interviews, called for an armed struggle against U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. He also claimed responsibility for the June 1996 explosions in Dhahran, which killed nineteen U.S. servicemen, saying they were a warning and a response to the collusion between the Saudi regime and the "Zionist-Crusade" alliance.[35] While he drifted apart from the mainstream Saudi opposition of the early 1990s, his emphasis on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia and his consistent criticism of the House of Saud reflected the concerns of Hawali and ‘Awda and made him merely a Saudi opposition figure.
quoted from here, an interesting read
Good points, but I'm just saying...  Salafis aren't exactly fans of Westernization.  They do distribute anti-Western propaganda.  So again, they may not be allied with OBL, but they do seem to have a bit in common in terms of mindset.

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