by Arminius » Mon Aug 11, 2008 2:10 am
If any of you are old enough to remember the 1960's comedy TV series Get Smart I would say that show probably wasn't too far from the truth.
For those of you who don't know, in the show C.O.N.T.R.O.L. was a secret government agency modeled on the C.I.A. and its top agent Maxwell Smart (loosely based on the Pink Panther's bumbling detective Inspector Clouseau played by Peter Sellers), was also basically a bumbler who would always win in the end.
As far as I am concerned the C.I.A. is also basically a bunch of real life bumblers run by people who are suffering from paranoid delusions about imagined threats around the world. Case in point: the traditional circular villiages of the Hakka people in China were thought to be missile silos in the 1960's when photographed from satellites in space despite denials by the Chinese.
As far as 911 is concerned, it is the United States' own long standing foreign policy biting it back. It was nothing more than a sucker punch.
It all could have been avoided. If the United States had from the very beginning made sure the Palestinians had received fair and equitable treatment fifty years ago instead of letting the Israelis treat the Palestinians the way the U.S. had treated it's own native American Indians in previous centuries, the situation wouldn't have snowballed out of control to the point it has now. And the standing of the United States in the Arab world would have been much better.