posted
And while the UN has little point as far as many things military go, that does not make it lack a point. It has been a considerable resource for international cooperation, and a large enough one that lack of presence in it has allowed it to exert real if minimal pressure through threat of exclusion.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
This truely is the land where time stands still...
I presume that the meaningless sound and fury simply means that amira and others haven't checked in yet?
And much as i am loathe to wade into the quagmire, Dagonee, are the madmen because they kill "indiscriminately" (although, it does seem that they are perfectly aware of who they're attacking), or because they disregard the lives of others for the sake their ideology? Because, if that is madness, then history is full of madmen. (my point is that i think they are the opposite of madmen, they are cold calculating bastards who don't care about other people.)
And my parting shot:
Quoting Kos:
quote:The wingers, stung from the spectacular failure of their "flypaper" theory, are now desperately trying to rebut the obvious fact that Iraq has fueled terrorist attacks.
"What about 9-11?" they shriek. "That happened before Iraq!"
"What about the WTC bombing", they add. "That also happened before Iraq."
Yeah, sure. Of course those happened before Iraq. No one is claiming that terrorism was created by Iraq. We're arguing that letting Al Qaida off the hook in Afghanistan and pursuing an unecessary war in Iraq has fueled terrorism.
quote:And much as i am loathe to wade into the quagmire, Dagonee, are the madmen because they kill "indiscriminately" (although, it does seem that they are perfectly aware of who they're attacking), or because they disregard the lives of others for the sake their ideology? Because, if that is madness, then history is full of madmen.
Is there a particular reason this was aimed at me?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Actually, let me be clearer: I haven't called them madmen. I fail to see how any "quagmire" that may or may not exist in this thread is related to me in any way.
Nor does calling me a "winger" or posting a quote aimed at "wingers" as any kind of shot, parting or otherwise, reflect any understanding at all about me or my views.
Thank you for playing.
Dagonee Edit: Written without seeing FG's post.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
FG, this is the fourth time someone from this particular group of people has attributed something to me I didn't say in an out of the blue manner like this. I have no idea what their problem is with me - whether it's personal, whether they just formed the entirely wrong impression about me and have reinforced it amongst each other, or whether it's just a total coincidence. But it's getting a little tiresome.
posted
Dags, I say this with no malice or intention to insult you, but your posts come off so correct and crisp that it gives them (unintentionally, I'm sure) an arrogant, somewhat condascending tone when read, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with you.
The fact that you post so much causes me personally to attribute certain types of responses to you if I see your name in a thread. I know that I've personally done this in a thread within the last two weeks when I wasn't careful about checking who posted a given comment.
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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Pod -- are you implying (through the Kos quote ) that Al Qaida operated, trained and recruited ONLY in Afghanistan, and no where else in the world? That their funding and ideological support came only from Afghanistan?
posted
London was quiet this morning but generally back to business. We are grieving, but also amazed at how quickly our emergency services have responded, how little disruption is visible today and how stoic our people are being.
The comments most made about these terrorists today is how different they are to the IRA. The IRA’s MO was to inflict maximum damage to building with minimum damage to people. These terrorists are different, aiming to inflict maximum casualties and create maximum fear.
Bob_Scopats: Thanks .. I think I remember us agreeing after 9/11. I’m also hearing the same about Al Qaida decentralisation, although I’m also hearing Al Qaida is also in the business of providing funding for a very broad anti west agenda.
Jim-Me … no worries. Just watch the road rage ☺. On the legal merits … I hope we can all agree that it’s very complicated given that International Law is still in its infancy. There are many different opinions and a whole panel of experience legal professionals were not able to come to a unanimous decisions. My point was to show the British resolve to combat terrorism. (Aside, we all know of cases where the defendant can’t legal be proved guilty ‘beyond a shadow of a doubt’ but clearly is not quite innocent either.)
Lyrhawn: Thanks for spotting the difference between explaining why what happened happened and saying we are to blame. No need to repeat your point you did it very well.
To clarify my words for Jim-Me and others, I don’t feel guilty and the inference was not meant to be ‘look what they got us into’ but rather ‘Don’t question my resolve to see and end to terror just because I question how we are addressing it.’ My city has just shown how resolved it is, we knowingly pursued and action that would lead to retaliation, we have now felt the retaliation and our resolve has not been lessened.
Nevertheless, I will still not look for vengeance. I will demonstrate against my government if it choses retaliation. I will pray that our London Muslim community is not lashed out against. I will continue to oppose our ‘terror laws’ that remove the presumption of innocence, that remove our civil liberties, in the name of security.
I will continue to argue for a solution that acknowledges our part in creating the madness which is some people’s reality today. I will look for a solution that brings together moderate men who wish to find a road to peace. I don’t know what that solution is, but I believe the first step will be to find a solution for Israel and Palestine.
Posts: 571 | Registered: May 2001
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quote: The types of terrorists we seem to be dealing with -- and I am saying this totally disregarding race, ethinicity, religion, etc..... are people who relish in killing innocent people. Madmen.
See, I disagree. I think very few terrorists are madmen.
I think they do not think of what they do as the murder of innocent people. They certainly don't think of their victims as innocents -- they are citizens complicit in the rule of an evil regime, whose deaths are necessary to bring down the oppressor. And I suspect that they don't even think of their victims as people.
It is much easier to kill anyone if you demonize them and turn them into something subhuman. I'm not any happier about doing it to our enemies than I am about the fact that some of them do it to us.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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It implies that we've largely abandoned Afghanistan, which coincidentally means that the drug trade there has only boomed, funneling money right back into terrorism despite our efforts.
Also, the largest rallying cry for terrorists in the past few years has been Iraq, in a way that Afghanistan never could have been, because the connection was obvious to everybody.
Iraq was bad, but there are worse places. Iraq pushed its boundaries and violated the terms we imposed by occasionally shooting missiles at planes and the like, but there are other countries which do worse.
Trying to explain to someone already (justifiably) untrusting of us why an invasion of Iraq was justified, when they've heard first and second hand stories about the lives of relatives lost, is hard.
Using the invasion of Iraq to argue that the US isn't out for justice or safety to such a person is remarkably easy.
On another note, while there are certainly evil terrorists and madmen terrorists, research has found that's just not very accurate, similarly to how many of the thoughts about cults were woefully mistaken.
Most people who become involved in terrorism, just like most people who become involved in cults, are normal, every day people. Most suicide bombers are educated, and able to well-articulate why they're willing to give up their lives. Terrorists are not all out to destroy freedom; most of them see us as destroying freedom, and see themselves out to win freedom for their people. This is one of my beefs with Bush's administration -- the terrorist as inhuman, when many terrorists are all too human, and that is what makes them successful, and that is what makes them willing to die in their cause.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
To expand briefly on Tom's logic; we don't think of all the civilians killed by our bombs in Iraq as murdered by us, or even particularly troublesome; its not that far of a stretch, incorrect as it may or may not be, to think similarly about civilians killed by terrorism.
Or for an even better example, regardless of legality, where is our guilt for what we did to Cambodia? We killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians there, quite possibly more than half a million. Are we madmen, for failing to punish those responsible, and many of us for honoring them?
No, we aren't madmen. We have weighed, individually and collectively, what we find important, and generally decided what happened was regrettable, but okay, despite the horror, and the terror, and the awful tragedy of it all.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Tom you and I disagree for once. I think the terrorists are fully aware that they are klling innocent victims, that's the point, they want to send the loudest message possible and they don't care how they do it - but not because they are evil, it's because they are desperate. They know what the effect of killing civilians is. They know governments lose support when the people have to see the realities of a controversial war like this.
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
Well, I'm not trying to argue the semantics of the word "madmen". To me, people who would terrorize in this way are mad - evil - whether that be due to indoctrination they received or their own choices. But it is not a rational, logical, caring mind that chooses to go out and kill others outside the normal parameters of war.
Fugu -- I don't know how bringing up Cambodia or any other situation has relevance to what is being said. We can point to many many events in history that are bad, some done by others, some done by us -- but nothing done previously can ever justify, validate or excuse what the terrorists are choosing to do at this time and place. Just because it has been done before certainly doesn't make it right.
quote:But it is not a rational, logical, caring mind that chooses to go out and kill others outside the normal parameters of war.
Nice adding in "caring" to make your point fit, but it's not essential to being rational and logical is it?
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
FG, What's your take on the atomic bombing of Japan? Is that not outside the normal parameters of war? If so, were our leaders madmen?
I'm not asking to trip you. I'm saying that the persepctives are similar. It's easy to picture forthing at the mouth madmen, but from a certain perspective, these acts of terrorism are the best options avaiable to these people and they chose them in many cases for what seems to them to be logical reasons, just as we had logical reasons for incinerating whole cities full of innocent people.
posted
Well, I couldn't think of a better way to say it. That someone who cares even a little bit about other people, and about the human race, could justify just going to blow up a random group of individuals who are not directly involved in a war action against them. To me, that is sub-human.
If I, personally, were to go out tomorrow and kill a bunch of people on my way to work, just to make a point about something which is unrelated to those specific individuals, would you not think I was mad?
posted
FG -- I'm pointing out that we don't call those among us who did those things madmen or subhuman, that we don't call ourselves madmen or subhuman for having been involved in them. That's incredibly relevant to whether or not we call others madmen.
I'm not saying what they did was right, morally justifiable, or anything like that, but humans do many things for perfectly "logical" reasons which are not right or morally justifiable.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:t. That someone who cares even a little bit about other people, and about the human race, could justify just going to blow up a random group of individuals who are not directly involved in a war action against them. To me, that is sub-human.
Ummm, Farmgirl, you realize that the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, along with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are among the most large scale examples of this in history right?
Edit: and who said that the World Trade Center was a "random" group of people. It was probably the best economic target to hit in the entire US. The other place hit was the Pentagon, which was of course a valid military target...
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
We were at war with Japan, and there is an argument, whether or not you agree with it, that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to save further combat and more lives lost.
The attack on the people of England was not to prevent further war, or to prevent further loss of life it was only to cause fear, terror, and kill as many innocent lives as possible.
When we drop bombs now and civilians are killed in Iraq or in Afghanistan, it is collateral damage - the intention is to destroy military targets, civilians are NOT targeted. We don't bomb hospitals or subways on purpose. In contrast, terrorists intentionally seek out non-military targets.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:If I, personally, were to go out tomorrow and kill a bunch of people on my way to work, just to make a point about something which is unrelated to those specific individuals, would you not think I was mad?
Yes, but if you believed the killing of those civilians would help your point, then you wouldn't necessarily be mad, and it would also be far more analogous to the recent bombings.
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
They seek non military targets not because they would not love to score some dead soldiers. It plays well back home to meet the army of the Crusader, it is simply that they die when they try and we soak up the causulties we do take without getting all worked up.
They hit checkpoints and die, they try TCP's and die and they try to attack our vehicals and bases and they die. They do not want to die, so they attack soft targets and count on the Western Media to make them heroic freedom fighters instead of sniveling cowards.
"Hey Bob why you on the floor?" "I am looking for a contact lens" "Where did you drop it?" Over there Then why look here? "The light is better!"
We have been pressing them in there lairs now too, and when we rush in do they fight and scream curses and go down in glory?
Hell no! They lie and say the IED is the work of a six year old and was left by some stranger and they never saw it before...
There is no courage in Terrorist, they fear change, they fear losing power, and they fear to stand up like men. The only courage they ever show is when they are more afraid of looking like the cowards they are.
quote: Ummm, Farmgirl, you realize that the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, along with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are among the most large scale examples of this in history right?
Yes, I do.
I also realize that America now chooses to try to limit civilian casualties of war as much as possible. Call it evolving into a more humane war, or however you want to put it. Yes, civilians are still killed, but they aren't our TARGET anymore.
I have heard both sides of the debate on those incidences -- and all I can say is I am glad I wasn't the one making those decisions. But again, I'm not debating past history, or what happened in other conflicts. The stage of war has changed greatly in 50 years -- mainly due to the use now of instant communication that makes everything very now and very real.
So while we (America) are trying to hunt down just those who are actively targeting us with hostility, they, in turn, are killing anyone that associates with us. Two very different approaches.
quote:When we drop bombs now and civilians are killed in Iraq or in Afghanistan, it is collateral damage - the intention is to destroy military targets, civilians are NOT targeted. We don't bomb hospitals or subways on purpose. In contrast, terrorists intentionally seek out non-military targets.
Belle, while this is true and I believe it is 100% true, it matters very little to the people who die or have relatives killed. And, even in their most charitable moments toward us, they are unlikely to take into account that our bombs or bullets just missed by a bit.
Farmgirl-- I'm sorry to go back a page. It may surprise you to know that I agree with you 100%. In fact I thought I'd said as much in the post you responded to. I think you are responding to something I didn't say, which is that same old thing of us having "caused" the terrorism or the increase thereof. Or that somehow terrorism is justified by past bad actions of the US.
Not in the least. I merely said I understood that one of the inevitable consequences of not having gotten bin Laden (and a few others) immediately is that we are now facing a less centralized foe that still has access to his money and his advice.
In otherwords, we drove them further underground and it makes them harder to find.
That doesn't mean we should stop trying. It means we're in for more of the same. And it is unavoidable. I'm not blaming anyone, I'm stating a fact that has been stated by the government's own experts & the Rand Corp folks.
In other words: this is likely to continue.
I'm not certain how to stop it either. I mean, if people are willing to die to inflict this kind of damage, what possible range of punishments can we put forward as a deterrent?
If the cells can be formed and funded anywhere and without central coordination, what will we accomplish when we finally kill bin Laden, Zarqawi and the rest?
If not fighting them encourages them, and fighting them encourages them in other ways, what are we going to do?
I submit that there is no safe alternative. I submit that no matter what we do, our citizens will be attacked at home and abroad. I submit that maybe our best course of action is to show the bastards that no matter what they do, we will go on living in free and open societies.
In fact, if we really wanted to stick it to them, we'd just pass every possible law giving freedom and rights to every person in our societies.
In fact, we ought to really piss 'em off and pass laws granting US citizenship to every person in the World. Then we can legitimately go protect our citizens everywhere and enforce our decadent brand of freedom and justice wherever anyone lives.
Screw 'em! I say we just assert that everyone in the world is now free, uncategorically and anyone who doesn't like it will have to leave!
(hyperbole aside, the sad truth is that they win whenever we curtail our freedoms in response to their terror. And we will have to do so because we can't ask people to ride the subways or walk the streets if they aren't safe. So we'll end up like Israel with guards carrying machine guns on school field trips. Great. I hate the world sometimes.)
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
We bomb precisely now because we can, our surgical tools are sharper. But we made the tools because we wanted to be able to perform more precise surgery. That shows a long term commitment to a philosopy of preserving life and limiting the destruction of war.
Dresden was the Brits ballgame, they had been pounded and wanted to pound back, go figure. The history of the battle of the Pacific gave us good figures on the kind of casualties we could expect taking the Japanese Mainland, we saved scores of thousands of Americans and a million Japanese with the Atom Bomb.
posted
There should be little courage needed in a soldier either. The kind of courage that they show in the movies, of people fighting against heavy odds, is generally the result of ppor planning. The first rule of warfare is to accept as little risk as poosible. You attack where you're strongest and the enemy is weakest. If you can, you kill them when they're unprepared; from ambush; when they're asleep. That's not cowardice. That's being smart.
Of course they have no chance against our soldiers. Why would they ever fight a battle there is no chance that they could ever win? It's the same reason why the American rebels didn't fight the British from Napoleonic squares, the Spanish guerillas used hit and fade tactics against the invading French, and the Michael Collins and his men fought their British occupiers, not by attacking the soldiers, but by terrorizing the people behind the soldiers.
Right now, their options, as they see it, are to fight back using the best tactics available to them or give up. What they achieve with their terrorist attacks is the best return on the resources they put into it. A number of men who would barely even be a nuiscence to a small fratcion of our armed forces changed the world with the 9/11 attacks.
It's dumb and it's dangerous to assume that they aren't intelligent or that they are crazy. They have definitie (and indefinite) goals in mind and they believe, not without reason, that what they do is the best way of them to achieve these goals.
posted
(written without reading the entire fourth page and written only as an observation)
<aroundthebush> I'm completely sober this time </aroundthebush>
I've just noticed which I should have earlier
that some people here and on many other forums
judge and condemn people because they come off as "sounding" a certain way
pause...rewind "sounding" a certain way "sounding" a.. "sounding"
it's an internet forum text based
true though it may be that you can judge people a lot of the time by their writing
I think it safest in this situation to not jump to conclusions about someone's intentions unless you can see and hear them text is just not a safe medium for deciding someone's emotional intent
just thought I'd say soomething...
Posts: 83 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
My point was NOT that our actions were wrong in those instances, but that if Farmgirl uses her definition, both Churchill and Truman were "evil" and "madmen".
People talk about how "evil" the nazis, the commies, the current crop of arab terrorists, etc are, but they are just people. Pure and simple. Its dehumanizing to apply those labels, which coincidently are the EXACT SAME LABELS THE TERRORISTS USE TO DEHUMANIZE US.
People can't even agree on a definition of "terrorist". It usually starts out with "using fear as a weapon, often by killing civilians". When they are confronted with the other instances of that definition, the definition has "with no declaration of war" added. Then when its brought up that the US rarely declares wars anymore, and that the terrorist groups have quite clearly declared war on the US, "with no recognized country" gets added to the definition.
So you can kill civilians to provoke fear as long as you are at war and have a flag on your shirt and not be evil? But if you take the flag off your shirt you are a raving evil mad-man?
And you can't cop-out and say that the US no longer intentionally kills civilians. Either those in our government that ordered civilians targeted were evil or the terrorists are not evil.
1: Particular Arab Group leaders have ordered the killing of civilians to invoke fear as a weapon 2: Particular United States leaders have ordered the killing of civilians to invoke fear as a weapon
A: Anyone who has ordered the killing of civilians to invoke fear as a weapon is evil B: Anyone who has ordered the killing of civilians to invoke fear as a weapon is insane
Unless you add "without declaring war from a recognized country" to both A and B, I'm afraid I see no difference between 1 and 2.
Where does my logic fail?
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
I see your point, Xavier, and you made it well.
I will rescind using the terms "madmen" or "evil" when describing what the terrorists are. I can see how it can be interpreted in different ways, other than they way I think of it, which I can not find adequate words to express.
and Mr. Squick - I hope I never implied in my posts that terrorists lack in intelligence. Quite the contrary, I realize they put much thought and effort into their targets and purpose.
posted
And, I guess, I would like to go back to the core question -- how do we stop these people? You can't talk with them; they have made that apparent. They are very set on wiping whatever we represent off the face of the earth.
I mentioned education of the young that they recruit and indoctrinate. Someone else mentioned solving the Israel/Palestinian conflict as a means to an end to the ongoing hatred.
But with them so spread out, so diverse, so adament about their cause -- how do we stop it? It certainly isn't conventional war.
posted
When you try to use it. Show me an Order signed by our President saying "Kill Civilians to create Terror!" if you are refering to historical figures then your context is wrong, and not applicable.
To say that the terrorists are our equivelent conterparts is as foolish as thinking your computer has feelings, it is engaging in 'humanizing' them. Just as fallacious as 'De-humanizing.' I hate to be the one who has to say it, but those birds are just not right. A portrait of weakness, ignorance and wrongheaded direction. They will not live in peace because they know that peace means things they cannot live with, equality, fellowship and compromise. Peace is hard, war is easy to accept because life is cheap to them. They think that makes them stronger but that only works if we value our lives more highly then our own ideals.
posted
We end it by outgrowing it, we help the Iraqi's grow until the terrorist are trivial, marginal and ignored, we help them grow in infrastructure, wealth, self sufficiency, equity and pride. It is a mistake to think the terrorist here are anything more then drag or friction on forward progress, the insurgents are being left further and further behind and becoming increasingly irrelevent.
Reminds me of the French really, no wonder they sympathise with each other.
posted
FG, To a large extent, there is no "them". Our problem isn't with a fixed group of people. If it was, we could find them and kill them (and that's pretty much what we're going to have to do with quite a few of them) and that would be the end of it. We're fighting a cause, and a cause that currently has money and people pouring into it.
I don't know enough about it to give anything approaching a definite answer, but I'd argue that one of the first steps is to see that these are acutally people and not subhuman monsters; that there are reasons why poeple join this cause and do these things. You need to understand your enemy in order to defeat him, but somehow the call to understand why they do what they do and for complex solutions to complex problems has be painted as being somehow "weak".
The strategy that our leadership has been putting out only makes sense if you don't stop to question it. It sounds superficially good, but what's underneath? We had an examination of this in the President Bush's speech thread that I think you started.
In another example, I saw an interview with Donald Rumsfeld talking about Guantanamo where he said something like "We've been releasing prisoners from there. We've released hundreds. And so far 12 of them have shown up on the battlefields of Afghanistan or Iraq." with the implication that these people's original imprisonment was legitimate. And I thought to myself, "I can't believe our leaders could be that stupid."
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
BC, Your post illustrates the ignorance that pervades all such discussions involving "terrorists". These people are not cowards, not madmen, not criminals, and obviously not stupid. And, while I find their methods and goals deplorable, I cannot find fault in their desire to fight for what they believe, and to do it in the only manner that they consider possible. Dealing with these foreign fighters in any manner that dehumanizes them, or their native population, will ultimately fail because it doesn't deal with the underlying issues that allow terrorists to so easily recruit new members.
In no way should this be interpreted as a reason to discontinue our military actions against terrorism, but it should be obvious to everyone that other approaches need to be addressed if we ever plan on ending the war on terror...
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
To be honest, if the London bombing turns out to have been carried out by Islamic terrorists and there are further attacks in Europe, I could see a regretable but justfied greatly increased scrutiny of all the recent Muslim immigrants in Europe.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Not cowards? They most definitely are cowards, they kill civilians who are on their way to work. They high jack planes and fly them into buildings. They commit suicide so they do not have to face the consequences of their actions. There isnt much more in the world more cowardly than this.
Not criminals? Can you explain how these people are not criminals? Because that statement just blows my mind, that you think mass murderers are not criminals.
Posts: 473 | Registered: Sep 2001
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quote: Not cowards? They most definitely are cowards, they kill civilians who are on their way to work. They high jack planes and fly them into buildings. They commit suicide so they do not have to face the consequences of their actions. There isnt much more in the world more cowardly than this.
Promethius, they're fighting a war, just as we are. What is different is their classification of targets. We differntiate between civilians and soldiers and they don't. Demeaning them for what is essentially an idealogical difference does nothing to move this conversation forward. As to their cowardice, I'd like to see you knowingly blow yourself up to inflict damage on people you consider your enemies. If you do a little research you'll find that this has nothing to do with "facing consequences". It's about instilling fear in an enemies population. We accomplish the same thing with smart bombs and Marines, and no one calls us cowardly for it.
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote: Hm. I'm not comfortable with this assessment. Are you so certain that they're varelse?
The people currently perpetuation international terrorism-the deliberate targetting of civilians on their way home from civilian jobs-for deliberate, calculated, cold-blooded murder...they're definitely, obviously varelse.
Unless you spend massive amounts of life and treasure capturing them alive and essentially brainwashing them out of their varelse beliefs, that is.
-----
The people who will eventually become terrorists are a different story.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:The British are wonderful people, but I heard some news of retaliation against Muslims after 9/11. I sincerely hope that calmer and more rational heads prevail in this time.
The BBC, at least, is being extremely careful. They are having Muslim/dark-coloured people reading the news condemning the attacks, they are posting condemnations from Muslim leaders both at home and abroad. It is very clear, at least from that particular news source that there are precautions being taken. However, there is a lot of residual racism in Britain which may manifest itself. Hopefully, the work being undertaken, both obviously and subtly, by the BBC and the government to prevent a backlash is admirable.
And sadly, the retaliation against Muslims was not restricted to just the U.K., but of course Canada and the U.S. as well (for certain).
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:We accomplish the same thing with smart bombs and Marines, and no one calls us cowardly for it.
We do not accomplish the same thing as terrorists with smart bombs and Marines. That is a stupid statement. The goal of smart bombs and Marines and other conventional military tools and soldiers is to defeat another military enemy and to minimize civilian casualties. It is not to defeat the enemy by slaughtering as many innocent civilians on their way to work such that the enemy is too horrorstruck and terrified to keep fighting.
quote:Demeaning them for what is essentially an idealogical difference does nothing to move this conversation forward.
It's reprehensible that you classify deliberate murder of civilians as merely a 'difference in ideology'.
One ideology is that of decency and restraint, the other is that of cold-blooded murder.
And as for courage of fanatical religious extremist...I stand by previous statements I've made that blowing yourself up to go straight to everlasting Paradise while murderring your hated rivals isn't bravery, it's a freaking good deal.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I think the point about smart bombs is well made though. When the US wants to attack, it does so with cruise missiles and Nighthawks most of the time. For the last 10 years, you haven't really seen a lot of US troops on the ground, you see a Hornet dropping a JDAM. It might appear to some that we hide behind our technology. Pesonally I'm find hiding behind technology, the less US troops that die, the better.
How to end the conflict? Like I said before, you'll never, ever, ever, EVER win by fighting terrorists man to man. You have to fight the greater war.
Ending the Palestine/Israeli conflict would go a LONG way towards solving the problem. We could earn a ridiculously large amount of goodwill.
Increasing aid to Africa will ensure that less young Muslims there grow up in poverty with anti-US feelings.
Open trade to Iran and flood it with Western products. The youth of Iran are overwhelmingly pro-West, they just can't do much with the clerics in power.
Stop, for the love of God, supporting countries like Saudi Arabia. It undermines any sort of moral superiority we might have.
The sad thing is, without the Iraq war we could have afforded to do everything I just mentioned, and the world would be a very different, and much better place.
The birth of a terrorist is very similar to the birth of a gang member in America. They come from destitution and poor slums. Terrorists organizations have money, they give many young Muslims a place to feel like they belong, and they provide money. An American war on African poverty would do far more than our war on Terror in Iraq. Britain has the right idea, ending African poverty. Which makes it all that much more sick that they were attacked, they are one of the few countries really committed to ending the real problem.
We can hack away at the limbs for another hundred years, or we can start going for the roots. It all depends on how long you want the war to last.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote: The sad thing is, without the Iraq war we could have afforded to do everything I just mentioned, and the world would be a very different, and much better place.
posted
Rakeesh I appreciate your straight fowardedness in the face of such stupidity, these acts are the very deffinition of cowardice, how complex nonsense supplanted simple sense in our society is a sad story that starts with Marxism and ends who knows where. Will we see reasoned behavior in genocide and rape?
I tell you this and take for what you will, if they could these people would own you as slaves, use your wives as servants and your daughters as sexual playthings, they would take your lands and property from you to use as there own, killing those who said it was wrong. They would do this and their religion is no bar, the Koran not only allows this it encourages it.
The only thing that stops them is not moral conscience, it is the fact that we stand ready to kill them if they try. Terrorism is just the visible symptom of the frustration they feel at not being able to follow their inclinations to subjigate everything to their will to power. These are just the ones who hate not having your lands, daughters, and labor the most.
Are they human, of course they are. This is the way humans have been since the dawn of man, until We learned not to be this way. If that is not an achievement that sets us apart as worth preserving I hope I never have to come up with a better one.
posted
" An American war on African poverty would do far more than our war on Terror in Iraq. Britain has the right idea, ending African poverty. Which makes it all that much more sick that they were attacked, they are one of the few countries really committed to ending the real problem."
If you think helping Black Africa would not create as much hostility from Muslims as occupying Afganistan and Iraq you are a sad silly person, go ahead and tell an Arab he is black and see what happens... Hee Hee Thus far those are the only people the Muslims can beat, it is the only front they are winning on! They will be hemmed from all sides and made the equals of (to them) racial inferiors, I fear you are deeply ignorant or simply stupid.
I think you have vastly overrated the money spent on the war and the power of money in general.
NO amount of money will end the Palestine/Israel conflict.
No amount of history has... they literally have been out to exterminate each other since the oldest books of the bible.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Well, no, there were a few periods of rather peaceful coexistence prior to the crusades when jerusalem was in the hands of muslims. Fairly long periods, in fact.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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