Hi Tom,

And an effective alternative is...what?

better intelligence work could have prevented 9/11 for a start.

And what could we have done with that intelligence?

arrest the would-be pilots before they board the plane?

I would guess you realize it's not like in the James Bond movies, and
for
information to be even moderately accurate is a bonus.

what are the various agencies there for, if not to provide information
enabling such arrests? I appreciate that it's not an easy job. Yet in
case of 9/11 it was found later, that such information was available.

Or
choosing our friends more wisely would be a good idea. E.g. not
supplying terrorists like OBL with weapons just because at the
moment
they are shooting them at people we don't like.

We supplied the Muhajeen with weapons to fight off the Soviets in
Afghanistan...that was a righteous fight. Oddly, we supplied the
Soviets
with Lend-Lease equipment 40 yers earlier. using that formula, we'd
never
had divorces between couple that once were in love but now want to
kill each
other.

It's not as if the Muhajeen had ever been in love with US or the West,
nor vice versa. They welcomed the weapons, but it was not so
unforseeable that they would just as well turn them against us.

Who, under that measure, could we ever consider our "friends"?

People who share our values, a common conception of human rights.

Please note that I'm not ruling out military action as an option,
if
there is reason to believe that possible future terrorist acts can
be
prevented.

Prevented how?

arresting (or killing) the terrorists.

Afghanistan was justified in my view, given that the taliban
openly supported OBL, only the job was not finished (yet again!).

What would "finish" that job in your view?

To be honest, I don't know. Support in establishing a stable form of
gouvernment and also development, I suppose. It is a very difficult
job, that's for sure, but noone said it would be easy.

Iraq
was never really about terrorism, was it?

They supplied equipment, training, military intelligence, possibly
funding.

Did they? I haven't read about any finds that back up that claim.
Wouldn't we know about that, given the short supply of WMDs as
justification for the war?

But even if this was the case: We should have much rather invaded Saudi
Arabia if that was our motivation.

For Iraq, the US was the hurdle to his domination of the region; for
the
Islamic fundelemtalists, it was our open, free and "immoral, infidel"
society.

Yes, I agree with that.

regards,
Friedrich

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