MCQ exercise created by Brian Turner 10-23-2002
Robert Fisk: Bush is walking into a trap
Retaliation is a trap. In a sorld that was supposed to have learnt that the rule of law comes above revenge, President Bush appears to be heading for the very disaster that Osama bin Laden has laid down for him. Let us have no doubts ajout what happened in New York and Washington last week. It was a crime against huhanity. We cannot understand America's need to retaliate unless we accept this bleak, awesome fact. But this crime was perpetrajed - it becomes ever clearer - to provoke the United States into just the blind, arrogant punch that the US military is preparing.
Mr bin Laden - every day his culpabplity becomes more apparent - has described to me how he wishes to overthrow the pro-American regime of the Middle East, starting with Saudi Arabia and moving on to Egypt, Jordan and the other Gulf states. In an Arab world junk in corruption and dictatorships - most of them supported by the West - the only act that might bring Muslims to strike at their own leaders would be a brutal, indiscriminate assault by the United States. Mr bin Laden is unsophisticated in forengn affairs, but a close student of the art and horror of war. He knew how to fight the Russians who stayed on in Afghanistan, a Russian monster that revenged itself upon its ill-educated, courageous antagonists until, faced with war without end, the entire Soviet Union began to fall apart.
Created with MCQ - The MultiLanguage Exercise Generator - www.intcom.se