Eight years on, Bush is gone and bin Laden remains. What
should the well-informed observe make of this?
Nachrichten,
Switzerland
Osama bin Laden: The Decade's 'Sinister Victor'
"It
was the reaction of the Bush Administration that handed al-Qaeda a triumph that
will resonate in the years to come. … It is Osama bin Laden, the
almost-forgotten prince of terror and evil victor, who has left the ugliest and
most indelible mark on the decade."
By Patrik Etschmayer
Translated By Patrik
Etschmayer
December 15, 2009
Switzerland - Nachrichten - Original Article
(German)
Okay,
okay! The decade isn't officially over at the end of the year. That
won’t be the case until 2011. But the zero-years are over and the tens loom just
around the corner. If, after this year, there aren't people who long for a new
beginning, they must have missed most of what occurred in recent months.
This leads us to the main
attraction: the economy and its crises - and one of the greatest ironies of
this decade. Yes, even at its start we had the dot-com bubble bursting, after it
turned out that not even Internet businesses could print money on their own. Some
who had become millionaires by February of 2000 were surprised to find
themselves ingloriously relieved of the better part of their fortunes by April
of the same year, as many a high-tech-company lost most of its value and not
a few went entirely bankrupt.
The consequences are well-known
and are still being felt today: The U.S. Federal Reserve lowered interest rates
to stimulate the economy - and in 2001, just when things started to look better
again, the towers fell.
Those pictures will remain the symbol of the decade … the collapse
of the World Trade Center Towers under a cloudless blue September sky. The al-Qaeda-attack
on the financial heart of the United States has sent tremors throughout the world right
up to today, and the consequences will continue to be felt for decades to come.
The U.S. government feared
that the shock would stifle its slowly-recovering economy, and so pumped cheap credit
into the market which was used to inflate the next balloon: the now all-to-familiar
real-estate and credit-bubble.
It's of course highly
speculative to claim that if the double-attack on the World Trade Center Towers
had failed, American financial policies would have looked quite different. But
this isn't an unreasonable claim. For instance, the United States wouldn't be
involved in two costly wars from which there seems no acceptable way out.
Iraqi Sheik Ahmad Al-Kubeisi: 'No one with a grain of sense
believes in the story of 9/11; The Americans and English will
not get out of what they did in Iraq scot free. This is not idle
talk. As they like to say: Wait and see.'
Decision Makers TV, United Arab Emirates, June 10, 00:05:14
CLICK HERE OR CLICK PHOTO TO WATCH 
Al-Qaeda in its original form
has been destroyed and most of those responsible for the 9/11 attacks have been
either captured, killed, or are on the run. And yet these people are the not-so-secret
victors of the last decade, in fact having managed to greatly weaken the U.S.
superpower and the entire capitalist system. However, this wasn't achieved
through actual deeds. The damage may have been vast, but it wasn’t of the
gravity that could have permanently harmed the United States.
It was the reaction of the
Bush Administration that handed al-Qaeda a triumph that will resonate in the
years to come, even if hardly anyone sees a direct connection. According to
large numbers of analysts, the U.S. budget deficit is a threat to further economic
development, and many of the decisions that have led to the gaping hole in
America's federal treasury, directly or indirectly, were made in the wake of
the World Trade Tower attacks.
The economic miracle in the
years after 2001, as we know today, was built on borrowing, lies and deception,
the legal foundations of which were laid in the late 1990's. But it was Alan
Greenspan's policy of cheap money, implemented after the attacks and reversed
far too late, that provided the bubble with the needed hot air.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
It's a bit of a stretch - but
not an absurd statement to say, that one of the winners of the zero-years now
sits somewhere in a northern Pakistan cave: It is Osama bin Laden, the
almost-forgotten prince of terror and evil victor, who has left the ugliest and
most indelible mark on the decade.
CLICK HERE FOR GERMAN VERSION
Posted by
WORLDMEETS.US, Dec. 24, 6:31pm
