Word: balies
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Seven years ago, on October 12, 2000, the U.S.S. Cole was attacked in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 American sailors. Two years later, to the day, a pair of suicide bombers killed 202 tourists and Indonesians in Bali. Neither attack would have the fateful consequences of September 11. But, in their own way, the Cole and the Bali attacks were important turning points in radical Islam's war on the West...
...That distressing reality was further underscored by the Bali attacks, which, while having much less of an effect than 9/11, removed any doubt about the nature of the war we were entering. The first Bali suicide bomber blew himself up in a nightclub filled with foreigners on vacation. A second suicide bomber outside the nightclub blew himself up in a van. The intent was to kill as many people as possible. It not only didn't matter to al-Qaeda that it was killing civilians, but it also didn't matter that many of the victims were Muslim Indonesians...
...Bali and 9/11 were proof enough to many Americans that radical Islam is at war with the West; that there is nothing to negotiate, such as the withdrawal of our troops from Saudi Arabia or peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis; that the battlefield is everywhere, with everyone a combatant...
...this mind-set, this gut reaction to Bali and 9/11, that drew us into two wars without end, Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the same reaction that has led to such excesses as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and allegations of torture...
That much was clear to many of the European attendees in Washington, who viewed the summit at best as harmless, and at worst as an attempt to undermine the upcoming UN climate negotiations in Bali at the end of the year. But the good news is that if Bush is unlikely to move on global warming between now and the end of the term, there is another branch of the government that just might. Currently there are several pieces of climate change legislation floating around Congress, and with the Democrats in power, there's a chance that one might pass...