Taking jelly & ice cream with Osama Bin Laden
"[Foreign secretary Raymond] Johansen told the website for newspaper Dagsavisen Wednesday afternoon that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also called for reconciliation among the various groups in Afghanistan. That would include Osama bin Laden's followers.
"We support that," Johansen said. "Engagement and dialogue have a lot going for them." He also stressed that "negotiations are not the same as weakness."
...
Johansen's remarks come in the wake of a visit by Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey to Iran, and her call for dialogue with Osama bin Laden. "We have no military forces (Yes, they do - and I'm not going to make any tired jokes about the SAK. C) we don’t have anything other than the power of the word to influence other states or to influence decisions in a multilateral setting".
One of Johansen fellow Norwegians, legal philosopher / sociologist Vilhelm Aubert devised a bi-partite model for analysing conflict - conflicts of value and conflicts of interest. The latter lend themselves to a splitting of the difference after negotiation, the former decidedly do not. Given that the short form version of OBL's wish list includes the restoration of a Caliphate ruling rom the Atlantic to the South China Sea, the Swiss and Norwegian foreign offices do not really have the power to offer up that on a plate, negotiation with OBL is at best a waste of time, and at worst, well no detail is required.
However Johansen, sensible fellow that he actually is, has gone on to note the following: "I don't think Osama bin Laden or the forces around al-Qaida want dialogue," Johansen said. "They prefer rather to take the lives of infidels." Well done Raymond, ten out of ten.
Labels: idiots, Norway, Switzerland, war on terror
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on Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 8:32 am.
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Good Job! :)
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