Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on May 14, 2008 18:05:09 GMT -4
For starters -- not attacking countries that don't threaten us. That would be avoiding something, not a specific tactic or method.
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Post by wdmundt on May 14, 2008 18:12:02 GMT -4
Second -- I wouldn't assume that all of our actions are good or that we haven't provided our enemies with reasons for disliking us. The claim that the terrorists "hate us for our freedoms" is about the most ignorant thing one could say when approaching the problem.
I would say that understanding why our enemies dislike us would be a high priority.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on May 15, 2008 10:54:10 GMT -4
Second -- I wouldn't assume that all of our actions are good or that we haven't provided our enemies with reasons for disliking us. The claim that the terrorists "hate us for our freedoms" is about the most ignorant thing one could say when approaching the problem. I would say that understanding why our enemies dislike us would be a high priority. Why do you think they dislike us? I was very much under the impression that Osama bin Laden doesn't like us because we're not muslim (his type of muslim, specifically). He was outraged that heathen sinners were on the holy ground of Saudi Arabia and supporting what he viewed as a corrupt government that also wasn't muslim enough. Religious tolerance is his enemy - in other words, freedom.
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Post by Halcyon Dayz, FCD on May 15, 2008 17:54:01 GMT -4
Saudi Arabia is hardly free, nor tolerant of anything. And the US is allied with them.
Bin Laden and his ilk basically adhere to the conspiracy theory that the US is on a crusade to take over the Umma and eradicate Islam.
They did not pull this notion out of an unmentionable body orifice.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on May 15, 2008 18:25:28 GMT -4
I didn't mean to imply that Saudi Arabai has religious freedom (or that their government isn't corrupt, for that matter). ObL hates us more and we are more free. Now were you meaning to imply that we really are trying to irradicate Islam?
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Post by Ginnie on May 15, 2008 18:53:00 GMT -4
Eradicate Islamic Terrorism maybe?
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Post by scooter on May 15, 2008 20:18:31 GMT -4
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Post by wdmundt on May 16, 2008 11:11:33 GMT -4
Second -- I wouldn't assume that all of our actions are good or that we haven't provided our enemies with reasons for disliking us. The claim that the terrorists "hate us for our freedoms" is about the most ignorant thing one could say when approaching the problem. I would say that understanding why our enemies dislike us would be a high priority. Why do you think they dislike us? I was very much under the impression that Osama bin Laden doesn't like us because we're not muslim (his type of muslim, specifically). He was outraged that heathen sinners were on the holy ground of Saudi Arabia and supporting what he viewed as a corrupt government that also wasn't muslim enough. Religious tolerance is his enemy - in other words, freedom. But I think you can see even from what you wrote above that there is more to it than "they hate us for our freedoms." We have stirred up a hornet's nest through our own actions. Putting more troops into the middle east is not going to make the situation better.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on May 16, 2008 11:33:47 GMT -4
But I think you can see even from what you wrote above that there is more to it than "they hate us for our freedoms." We have stirred up a hornet's nest through our own actions. Putting more troops into the middle east is not going to make the situation better. We put troops in Saudi Arabia because they asked us to, to help defend them from Iraq. Sure the Saudis are not great humanitarians, but they were better than Saddam. Are you saying we should we have sat back and let Saddam threaten the whole area? Ignore his gobbling up of Kuwait and the pleas of the Saudis for help?
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Post by wdmundt on May 16, 2008 13:26:10 GMT -4
I think the first Gulf War was justified -- and we saw evidence of this by the very real coalition of nations that joined in the effort. Saddam invaded a neighboring country and we pushed him out and gave him a bloody nose, elbow and knee in the process.
The problem has been that our continued presence since the end of the war has been an irritant. Whether or not we care what our enemy's justification is, we need to understand how our actions play into the situation.
President Bush has made terrible mistakes by saying that we are on some kind of crusade, which is a word that does not play well over there.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on May 16, 2008 15:51:24 GMT -4
I think the first Gulf War was justified -- and we saw evidence of this by the very real coalition of nations that joined in the effort. Saddam invaded a neighboring country and we pushed him out and gave him a bloody nose, elbow and knee in the process. So if you had been running things then we still would have had a 9/11. And having the approval of the rest of the world does not mean it actually was justified, any more than having the disapproval of the world means the opposite.
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Post by PhantomWolf on May 17, 2008 0:52:21 GMT -4
There was far more to 9/11 that just troops being in SA (which btw was a seen by many in SA as a violation of the agreement that Cheney had made before being allowed to send troops there.)
If you really want to understand the mind of OBL and his followers, then read The Looming Tower, Ghost Wars, and a few of the Islamist publications such as Milestones by Sayyib Qutb. These will grant you a major insight into a world that in some ways isn't so different to ours, and in a lot of ways is very, very foriegn. You'll also discover that some of their complaints and reasons are very legitimate, whole others have come from conspiracies or just been made up out of whole cloth. In the end they are not that hard to understand, if you are willing to take the time to learn about their world and the way they view things, even when that way is totally different to the way we understand and believe things to be.
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Post by wdmundt on May 17, 2008 8:56:33 GMT -4
I think the first Gulf War was justified -- and we saw evidence of this by the very real coalition of nations that joined in the effort. Saddam invaded a neighboring country and we pushed him out and gave him a bloody nose, elbow and knee in the process. So if you had been running things then we still would have had a 9/11. And having the approval of the rest of the world does not mean it actually was justified, any more than having the disapproval of the world means the opposite. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and was not a threat to the United States before we invaded. So no matter how you want to spin it, attacking Iraq does nothing to solve the problems of Islamic terrorism and in many ways just continues to feed it. 4,080 US soldiers killed and all we've managed to do is kill or capture about a dozen Al Qaeda #2s in Iraq. I'm sure we will kill or capture many more. First you tell me that not doing something is not a plan (not attacking countries that don't threaten us), but then you tell me my plan wouldn't have stopped 9/11.... When were we talking about stopping 9/11? I thought we were talking about what to do about terrorism. Your plan, which seems to be to attack whatever country we think might pose a threat to us, no matter if they do or not, certainly wouldn't have stopped 9/11. And it certainly isn't doing anything about the future. So the next president is going to have to take over from this disaster of a president and deal with a terrorist threat we have done nothing about and a quagmire of a war in Iraq. I admit it -- I don't really have a plan. The current occupant of the White House has thoroughly screwed us out of being able to have a good plan.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on May 17, 2008 12:17:19 GMT -4
I support the war in Iraq primariy because the cost of defeat is unacceptable. Invading Iraq will ultimately be a good thing if we don't cut and run. The terrorists simply cannot win against a determined effort on our parts. The trick is to stay determined. And we've gone 7 years (nearly President Bush's entire term) without another terrorist attack on American soil, so he must be doing something right.
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Post by Ginnie on May 17, 2008 12:22:32 GMT -4
I support the war in Iraq primariy because the cost of defeat is unacceptable. Invading Iraq will ultimately be a good thing if we don't cut and run. The terrorists simply cannot win against a determined effort on our parts. The trick is to stay determined. And we've gone 7 years (nearly President Bush's entire term) without another terrorist attack on American soil, so he must be doing something right. I'm just wondering what the war in Iraq has to do with the terrorists attacks on American soil. Please explain.
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