I can't help but wonder, as I read a bunch of stuff on the 3rd Crusade, if Osama Ben Laden hasn't modeled himself (and nol very well in my opinion, but then I am not an Arab) after Saladin... (and I wonder if the CIA has studied Saladin in order to understand Osama better -- if not, they should.)

Saladin, btw, was a Kurd, from Tikrit in what is now Iraq...

Best,

howy

Good pickup, Howy.

Back a few years when I was still in Naval Counter-terrorism, a few analysts had floated that issue as a possibility.

Unlike Qaddaffi, meglomania wasn't as apparent as a driving force in Bin Laden's motivation, however, many of his actions and his rhetoric seemed not to follow Koranic teachings. It was surmised that he may indeed has see himself as the new Saladin, and is patterning his organization based on historic Arabic military teachings.

Well, I think it's fair to say that just about every Arab despot tried to apply that analogy to himself. Saddam certainly saw himself as a new Saladin, out to unite the Arab world against the West. Nasser with his pan-Arab party as well. These two examples were much more secularist than Ben Laden, but the point is, that they and many others have tried to promote the comparison for their own political ends.

Brian M

And it was little old Nasser, the secularist, the unbeliever, who succeded more than any of the others. He at least, even if only for a little while, mannaged to unite Egypt and Syria, and managed to fight at least one war where he didn't embaress himself against the Israelis. 9_9

Every modern Arab leader has pointed back to the past and said they were going to bring back the glory days -bin Laden included.
We really don't have to worry about them, though. The extremism of Usama's crowd prevents them from developing leaders who can develop true power -while it makes them dangerous as terrorists and maybe even solders, it makes them incompetent as rulers. The minute they take the reins of a country, they destroy themselves.
It was Saddam who could have been great. He had the army to do it, he was a secularist who oppresed the overly religious. Fortunately for us, he was narcisistic and made too many enemies. A smarter man in his positon could have taken all of Iran's assets on the Caspian Sea, and taken Syria to boot. Instead he was a fool and threatened powers he couldn't possibly hope to defeat.

Let this be a lesson to us. If you want to be a conquering king, know your own strength, know all of your enemies' strengths, make friends with *everybody*, and conquer people that *nobody* likes. :cool:

er... everyone that Brian mention *was* Arab. :wtf: Besides, our curreint crop of Militant Islam has been a primarily Arab (and arab-exproted) phenomena. The Iranians aren't in the same boat.
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Caution gentlemen.

This discussion can lead to interesting historical comparisons, but don't let it degenerate into personal issues of ethnicity and religon.

In the 48 war, he got beaten about as well as it's possible to be beaten by a vastly smaller, underarmed force of irregulars.
Well enough that his enemies at least respected him until the next war, and as far as the end results go, that war came the closest to getting him what he wanted.

The 72 war was a suicide mission. >.< A suicide mission and disastrous failure that happened to be somehow spun into a propaganda victory. *shrug* Well, everybody can be excused of their first mistake. The stupidity of it -from a purely military standpoint- came after the battle when they (government and military) focused only on their initial gains, without looking at their losses later on, and anticipating similar results the next time around. :confused: The idea is only original ONCE. 9_9

I'm actualy very sympathetic to the greater Arab cause and the problems Islam is having as a religion, for a handfull of reasons, and the more I read and learn, the more I'm frustrated. Historians, two hundred years from now are going to look back at this chunk of the world between Egypt and Syria and Kuwait and tear their hair out in empathic frustration. They're going to spend years asking themselves what went wrong, and how briliant men could behave so stupidly when they most needed common sense, and how things could have been allowed to go on as they do, and how in heaven's name could a people's greatest strength become the one thing that keeps them from gaining strenght of any other kind? :\
*sigh*
don't mind me. I'm just a frustrated political scientist watching an entire people happily march themselves to the guillotines just so they can spit at the blade when it's coming down. :(

Can one of you tell me how this topic is related to the arms and armour hobby?

Actually, I find it heartening that we can have a slightly OT, but still polite and well-read discussion on a volatile subject. Shows how classy the members are! ;)

I'd heard that too Howard, though I don't recall where.....