Afghanistan and a review of 9-11

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Originally uploaded by donzelion

While I encourage my students and parents to read the background of the 9/11 attack at worldbookonline.com or wikipedia.org, there are a couple of facts that I'd like to emphasize.

Osama bin Laden and most of the assassins were natives of Saudi Arabia. The average American probably thinks they were Afghani because many members of al Qaeda were trained in Afghanistan.

"Then why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia?"

We have an uneasy relationship with Saudi Arabia. The overriding fact is that we need their oil. The fact that al Qaeda got most of its money and philosophical support from Saudi Arabians was an inconvenient truth in the post-9/11 war on terrorism.

"Then why did we attack Iraq?" In my opinion, there's no satisfactory answer to that one aside from faulty intelligence and questionable judgement.

The mountainous, impoverished nation of Afghanistan remains a problem for the US. We used bombs and soldiers to get rid of the Taliban, the radical Muslim leadership group. The radical terrorist group called al Qaeda used this nation as HQ for training.

Subsequently we have tried to rebuild the nation. We have not been terrifically successful. Today, there are reports that the Taliban are again becoming a factor in Afghan life.