Why Publish Bin Laden's Speech?

Hey

Why have you listed up Bin Laden's Speech on your Web Site? Is not oilcrisis.com about the coming - Peak Oil related - oil crisis?

Having scoured Bin Laden's speech, I find nothing other than a reference to oil as "black gold", and nothing that directly correlates with your Web Site's supposed point. Though I cannot believe that you would post anything to justify the murderous actions of September 11th, I am at a loss to find the real point in this speech's inclusion.

Since I have now been given an oportunity to read it, in the false belief that there must be something relating to Peak Oil, I am unable to boil Bin Laden's rhetoric down to anything other than his belief that two wrongs make a right. I.E the speech points to wrongs comitted [sic] to wrongs previously committed to people in the middle east, and makes the argument that doing exactly the same things as one condemns in return is justified.

Well, I do not agree. Indeed this distorted view ignores the fact that those muredered [sic] on the 11th September did not have anything whatsoever to do with those earlier attrocities [sic] described, and were completely innocent people going about their daily lives. Not to mention the innocent families who have been left without fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, and dauhters [sic].

How dare you post this on Peak Oil! You have greatly disappointed me, who have become interested through your Site in this momentous issue to mankind. This latest post will undermine your Website, and the awareness of Peak Oil by association with Bin Laden.

Disgusted.

Christopher Briggs [2004 November 4]

Dear Mr. Briggs:

Bin Laden's act was ostensibly one of the main reasons for the USA's excursions in Afghanistan and the Middle East where most of the world's remaining conventional oil reserves exist. I believe it is important for this web site's consituency to know something about what makes that person tick.

I listed it because I found endless critiques of Bin Laden's speech in the press without offering readers a chance to read it for themselves. To become informed, you don't have to agree with Bin Laden any more than I do.

The coming oil peak is substantially constrained by physical geological limits. But timing of the peak depends on human socio-economic behavior. One may observe that George W. Bush's inference of a connection between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein is influencing the global oil arena. You can take it from there.

Ron Swenson, editor [2004 November 7]

To the Editor:

Unlike some of your readers I would like to thank you for the link to Aljazeera's page of ben Ladin's tape.

I believe before we can make informed decisions regarding the direction we should take in the future we need information about where we are and from where we have come.

To understand the turmoil in the mid-east we need to know what actions we have taken, why we have taken those actions, and what reactions those actions have initiated.

We are disliked by many in the world because we are a colonial power with a belief in our manifest destiny.

The biggest difference in the last 200 years is the location has changed from the west to the mid-east.

F. L. Hurst [2004 November 8]

As to publishing Bin Laden's speech, I offer a quote from the great Chinese Warrior, Sun Tzu:

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
- Sun Tzu

I would say we fall into a category worse than the "know neither" category - the "I don't want to know either" category. We are blind to what is going on over there, and to our own disastrous energy trajectory.

He says exactly what he will do, and what he wants us to do in response - then we do it and claim victory. We think we are winning the war against Al Qaeda when his greatest victory (9-11) was to drag us into the middle east (like the Soviets in Afghanistan, and us before in Vietnam). His dream is a United States that gets more dependent on Arabian oil every day, and bankrupts its government with military spending that only inflames his base. The day of reckoning he wants wasn't 9/11, it will be the collapse of the United States economy and retreat from the middle east.

Here is an outstanding article on the subject: Al Qaeda's economic war against the United States

Robert Haston
Satellite Beach, FL