Yeah. We've sure taught Afghanistan a lesson. They'll never mess with us again. NosireeBob.
After 10 years or better, we've managed to bomb them back to the stone age, which in there case, was 10 years ago. They've embraced freedom and democracy with a passion, and have totally given up their terrorist ways.
Taught them a lesson, we have. No doubt about it.
Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy
. . . but, but, but COG, civil diplomacy was working so well with bin Laden, et al.
* February 26, 1993 -- A bomb explodes at the World Trade Center in New York City, killing six and wounding hundreds. Six Muslim radicals, who U.S. officials suspect have links to bin Laden, are eventually convicted for the bombing. Bin Laden is later named along with many others as an unindicted co-conspirator in that case.
* October 1993 -- Eighteen U.S. servicemen, all of them part of a humanitarian mission to Somalia, are killed in an ambush in Mogadishu. Bin Laden later says that some Arab Afghans were involved in the killings and calls Americans "paper tigers" because they withdrew from Somalia shortly after the soldiers' deaths.
* 1994 -- Officials believe bin Laden funds and directs a series of attacks, including a failed attempt to kill Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and a 1995 suicide bombing at the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan. Authorities now believe that this marked the early days of a growing alliance between bin Laden and other militant Islamic groups, including the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and its leader Ayman al- Zawahiri.
* 1995 -- A truck bombing at a military base in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, kills five Americans and two Indians.
* 1996 -- That year, U.S. authorities indicts bin Laden on charges he helped train the people involved in the 1993 attack that killed 18 U.S. servicemen in Somalia.
* June 25, 1996 -- Nineteen U.S. soldiers die in a bombing of the Khobar military complex in Saudi Arabia.
* August 23, 1996 -- Bin Laden declares a holy war against U.S. forces. He signs and issues a Declaration of jihad from Afghanistan entitled, "Message from Osama bin Laden to his Muslim Brothers in the Whole World and Especially in the Arabian Peninsula: Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques; Expel the Heretics from the Arabian Peninsula."
* 1997 -- In his first interview with Western media, bin Laden tells Peter Bergen -- now a CNN analyst -- that the United States is "unjust, criminal and tyrannical." "The U.S. today, as a result of the arrogant atmosphere, has set a double standard, calling whoever goes against its injustice a terrorist," he said in the same interview. "It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us."
Bin Laden also says that "Arab holy warriors" trained in Afghanistan had banded with Somali Muslims in October 1993 to kill 18 U.S. soldiers in a bloody battle on the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. He says, "The U.S. today has set a double standard, calling whoever goes against its injustice, a terrorist. It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose agents on us to rule us, and then wants us to agree to all this. If we refuse to do so, it says we are terrorists."
* February 1997 -- According to court documents, bin Laden orders the militarization of the East African cell of Al Qaeda, a move that culminated in the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998, eight years to the day after U.S. troops landed in the Saudi kingdom.
* February 1998 -- Bin Laden and al Zawahiri endorse a fatwa under the banner of the "International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders." This fatwa, published in the newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, on February 23, 1998, states that Muslims should kill Americans -- including civilians -- anywhere in the world.
* May 7, 1998 -- Bin Laden associate Mohammed Atef sends Khaled al Fawwaz a letter discussing the endorsement by bin Laden of a fatwa issued by the "Ulema Union of Afghanistan" which termed the U.S. army the "enemies of Islam" and declared jihad against the U.S. and its followers. The fatwa is subsequently published in Al-Quds Al-Arabi.
* May 29, 1998 -- Bin Laden issues a statement entitled "The Nuclear Bomb of Islam," under the banner of the "International Islamic Front for Fighting the Jews and Crusaders." In it, he states that "it is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God."
* August 7, 1998 -- A pair of truck bombs explode outside the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Some 224 people are killed.
* November 1998 -- Bin Laden is indicted in the United States on 224 counts of murder -- one for each death in the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania
* May 2000 -- In the Philippines, Muslim separatist guerrillas who seized 21 hostages at a diving resort in Malaysia publicly announce that they are being supported by bin Laden.
* October 12, 2000 -- Bin Laden is linked to the attack on the USS
Cole in Yemen, which leads to the death of 17 sailors and injuries to another 39.
* 2000 -- Algerian Ahmed Ressam pleads guilty in connection with a failed plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium celebrations. He claims he was trained in urban warfare and explosives at an Afghanistan camp run by bin Laden.
* September 11, 2001 -- Four U.S. commercial aircraft are hijacked and then crashed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, leading to the deaths of more than 3,000 people. Soon thereafter, the U.S. government names bin Laden as a prime suspect.
* June 12, 2002 -- A Russian newspaper publishes what it claims is an interview with Omar. The ousted Taliban leader states that bin Laden is alive in Afghanistan. "Osama helped us during the war with the Russians, he would not leave us now," the newspaper quotes Omar as saying. "The Holy War is only just beginning. The fire from this war will reach America, and it will burn the capital that launched an unjust attack on Muslims."
* July 2002 -- Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Al-Quds Al Arabi newspaper, says the al-Qaeda leader is in good health, but had been wounded in an attack on his base in Afghanistan last December. Atwan says that Bin Laden's followers had told him that he would not make more video statements until his group launches another attack on the United States.
* January 29, 2010 -- A man thought to be bin Laden is heard on two audiotapes, released in the span of a week. On the first, he claims responsibility for the alleged Christmas Day attempt by Nigerian national Umar Farouk AbdulMuttallab to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane as it neared Detroit, Michigan, from Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
. . . besides: "War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means.” Clausewitz
