[Silver Cheetah]

Y'know, bin Laden is a lot of things - but 'stupid' isn't one of them. In fact, the man seems almost fiendishly clever (and no, that adjective doesn't mean I am buying into the mindless good/evil polarities that a dismaying percentage of our politicians and media seem to favour...).

Given this, does anybody think for a second that he is holed up where American troops are going to be able to get at him? I don't think so, somehow. Is he even IN Afghanistan?

This dude knows what he's doing. So far, all is going to plan, with America and the West doing exactly what he wants - i.e. fighting a war in Afghanistan and getting the ordinary Middle Eastern man in the street riled up enough to start thinking that maybe old Osama *is* a hero, and maybe, yes, maybe the US is the source of all evil on the planet, just like Osama says, and should be destroyed. (Doesn't look good from afar, the richest country in the world bombing hell out of the poorest...)

Given the way al-Qaida operates, i.e. cells in countries all over the world, and drawing upon hordes of different organisations, the majority of members of whom have not even met Osama, the notion that bombing Afghanistan is going to make two pence worth of difference is a ridiculous notion, if you ask me. All that's happening is the situation is getting worse.

bin Laden's reach extends far far beyond Afghanistan. Taking out most of the country's infrastructure along with the Taliban (who seem to be proving somewhat more resistant than was first expected)is not really going to do a lot to to make the world safe from terrorism. I don't understand why on earth anybody would think that it would. What are you going to do, bomb the whole world to be safe? Terrorists hang out in locations all over the globe. You start bombing one place, they'll go some place else that's a little less uncomfortably 'warm' to make their preperations. Such preparations are frequently made in countries other than the ones they habitually reside in, in any case, witness the recent training of the Sept 11th attack pilots in Florida.

As 'the war against terrorism' gets more sophisticated, so will the terrorists. The notion that they'll just give up and go away because you're bringing big guns to bear in Afghanisatn just doesn't bear up. (Some of the other measures being taken may be more effective... )

Do people stop committing crimes because they'll get punished? Nope. Even when the death penalty was awarded for such crimes as stealing food, (in Britain, few hundred years ago) people still did it. Desperate people who are in need/feel strongly enough about something will always do what they feel they need to do to combat the perceived source of their desperation.

(Whether they are right about the source or not is not the matter I'm debating here, by the way... I'm talking about what they see as the problem - and that's what you are up against. People's beliefs - which currently has some British Muslims desperate to get to Afghanistan and join the fight against the west.)

Meanwhile, Pakistan is looking increasingly unstable, and India is *well* pissed off with the fact that econcomic sanctions have been and continue to be lifted. Much grumbling and mumbling...... by India, who no longer feel like America's fav rave in the area, (panic about Pakistan pinching their markets is currently rife, epecially in the huge textiles sector) and who continue to deeply resent Pakistani terrorist action in Kashmir. (Terrorist to them, freedom fighters to others... ) Tensions between India and Pakistan run deep at the best of times, now they're starting to run high as well. Great stuff. World War III, here we come... (potentially.)

Funny, when Bush got in, me and my Dutch friend Hester called each other to express our total fear and terror at what the world was getting itself into. 'He's got world war three written all over his forehead', she said.

We watched with horror as he stamped all over the multilateral treatys/agreements/conventions which much of the rest of the world had worked hard to put together. Then came September 11th, and we watched again as he incited the west to war, all of a sudden abandoning his prediliction for unilataralism, and going all multilateral instead.

'Anyone who is not for us is against us'. Hmmm... now, where have I heard that one before? Bush better start looking behind him then - support around the world is cooling off big time according to the list of public opinion polls I have right here in front of me. If the bombing continues into Ramadan, then those polls will start looking even less healthy than they do now...