Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
Over the long term I believe that this will make the U.S. safer, or at least safer than it would be it had troops in both Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Still this will not eliminate al Qaeda's hatred of the U.S. as Saragon seems to think I should believe.
Saragon has argued that those who have said that removing troops from Saudi Arabia would lead to less hostility towards the U.S. should now believe "we've won the war against Al Qaeda. Completely and totally." This distorts the full argument that Saragon is countering. The presence of troops in Saudi Arabia has not been the sole grievance of al Qaeda against the U.S. The group is also opposed to U.S. actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel, and presumably would be opposed to the U.S. taking over any other country it sees as being an Arab and/or Muslim country. Furthermore the U.S. continues to support the Saudi Arabian government, which won't be very endearing bin Laden and those around him, if in fact bin Laden is still alive and/or in charge of al Qaeda. Furthermore the proverbial cat is already out of the bag. Al Qaeda already hates the U.S. Making the case for anything else is the equivalent of wondering why a person who smoked for 40 years has damaged lungs even though they quit five years ago. posted by micah holmquist at 5/02/2003 12:50:00 PM
