Anyone sick of seeing peace protesters in NYC?

Great Debates
41

msmith replied to december: *“I agree with your your point #4 if you mean their actions could be considered treasonous in conversation.”

Just to clarify, I meant that it was treasonous in terms of loyalties, not in a legal sense (unless the demonstrations somehow overtly and directly threaten the safety of our troops). *

I think that even that is a serious misuse of the term “treasonous”. If what is going on is to be considered a war between the US (or US + allies) and terrorist forces, then treason would involve literally supporting the terrorists: i.e., helping them commit terrorist acts, hiding them from the authorities, etc. Someone who didn’t actually provide that active support, but vocally endorsed terrorist acts or argued that they had a right to commit them, etc., could be said to have a “treasonous” attitude or to be “treasonous in conversation” (if I understand that expression correctly) or something like that.

I have not seen or heard anyone in the antiwar movement taking such positions (though, human nuttiness being what it is, I have little doubt that there must be a few such). On the contrary, many antiwar activists support toning down or eliminating use of military force precisely because we think that the side effects and aftereffects of military force are likely to create even more support for terrorism than its direct effects may eliminate. Arguing against a policy because you believe it helps the enemy is the very reverse of treasonous.

In short, if we’re all agreed that terrorism is unconscionable and wrong, and that Americans (and everybody else) are entitled to live free from the threat of terrorism, then none of us are traitors. What we’re left with, then, is a disagreement about what the best means are to fight terrorism. Using names like “traitor” to vilify concerned fellow-citizens who happen to have different views from yours on this issue is, I think, not helpful in any respect.

grienspace: Those mature people who have a clearly vested interest in opposing the government on just about any issue are largely supportive of it. We call them politicians.

Politicians “have a clearly vested interest in opposing the government on just about any issue”? How you figure? Politicians are the government. (Refreshing to see politicians characterized as “mature”, though.)

They know that they have to put behind their own interests in support of their country. They know that psychology plays an important role in war, and unity sends a powerful and important message.

I think the entire country—most of the world, in fact—is indeed sending an extremely powerful message of unity in opposition to terrorism, no matter what our differences of opinion may be about the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan. As has been pointed out above, uncritical support for war sends a negative message too: it can give the impression that Americans are indifferent to the suffering of other innocent victims, which is easily parlayed by terrorists into stronger and more virulent resentment of the US.

But that doesn’t matter to these protesters does it. They have no vision or hope for anything better.

I think you’re wrong on this. The protestors are out there precisely because they do have a vision and hope for something better: for the strength of a world united against terrorism, pursuing justice against terrorists rather than indiscriminate retaliation, and for increased international humaneness and justice that will weaken the hatreds inspiring terrorism, rather than increased international violence that will strengthen them.

42

People – sane people, at least – go to war for specific “war aims.” These can be quite limited and specific or quite broad-brushed – such as our involvement in World War I with the stated intent of “making the world safe for democracy.”

We are “at war with terrorism,” according to our President. Our aim is to remove all opportunity for terrorism and to see that justice is done to all terrorists and to those who provide them with support.

We are not at war with Afghanistan. We can be said, based on our stated war aims, to be at war with the Taliban, which is a religious dictatorship by committee controlling 5/6 of that country.

It is quite legal to debate, within the limitations imposed by the nature of war on publicizing information which would benefit the enemy, whether any particular act will further our war aims or not. To give a classic example, for a long period the British Chiefs of Staff were opposed to the Normandy Invasion, on strategic and logistical grounds. Obviously a bunch of peaceniks, right? :rolleyes:

I am myself strongly opposed to our air strikes on Afghan cities (pending obtaining further information that clarifies why our planes are doing so). I feel that commando activities aimed at killing or capturing al-Qaeda leaders and limited air intervention taking out their camps, combined with appropriate actions against the Taleban, would be the more effective way to achieve our stated war aims.

I not only have a right to this opinion, but, given our democracy, a responsibility to convey it to our elected leaders. Which I have done.

Now my responsibility is to be supportive of our leadership – Bush and his cabinet, and Congress, including those expressing my view – in the full understanding that they may have more and better information than I.

If I directly stated “we should not be bombing Afghan cities” and later discovered that we had information that Osama and the Talebandits were ensconced in city centers on the presumption that we would not bomb Afghan cities, I would feel foolish. But in the absence of that information, I think we’re killing innocent people and causing trouble within our coalition in order to look aggressive, like teenage boys impressing each other with how baaaaad they are.

And no, I don’t think anybody should be accused of treason, “conversational” or not, unless they’re doing precisely what the Constitution defines it as.

Opposing a war is not treasonous – we covered that back in 1967-75. (What was it Cecil said about people having the historical awareness of tree shrews?)

43

I agree with this statement. I believe that the protestors are sincerely well-motivated. However, the same could be said for those extremist pro-lifers who murder abortion doctors. IMHO both the murderers and the protestors are tragically wrong.

I think the anti-war protestors’ current actions are likely to affect policy in a way that’s conducive to a continuation of terrorism in the West and to many more murders of dissidents in the terrorists’ countries.

Although I support the protestors’ Constitutional right to demonstrate, I have contempt for their actions.

44

That was the Vietnam War wasn’t it? Didn’t America lose that war?

45

No, december, it can’t be said for abortion doctor murderers. One side employs peaceful means to exercise their constitutional rights. The other employs illegal violence to attempt to curtail the constitutional rights of others.

I’m afraid that to call them both “tragically” wrong trivializes the evil of one and drastically overstates the import of the other.

46

Yes, this is true. There’s no doubt that the murderers are vicious criminals and the protestors have a right to demonstrate. However, what I believe I said was that both groups were sincerely well-motivated. I stand by that statement.

You may be right Maeglin. It’s anyone’s guess whether these protests will have any impact at all. Demonstrations certainly have the potential to affect policy. E.g., IMHO the anti-Vietnam War protests eventually led to the end of the war. I think we would all agree that civil rights protests had significant impact on policy.

If today’s anti-war protests do have their intended impact on US policy, IMHO the result will be more terrorism, more suffering, and many more murders. The amount of increased suffering that these protests could potentially cause is huge. Here’s an extreme example:

There have been a number of reports that Iraq is developing nuclear weapons. If the protests succeed in discouraging the West from overthrowing Saddam Hussein, their ultimate result might be the death of millions of civilians.

Or, consider the fate of the Kurds in Iraq and other local croups who are opposing these terrorist states. Our withdrawal might lead to the murder of thousands of these brave people.

47

As I seem to be in the company of persons who pride themselves on thier hard-headed realism, let us think the unthinkable. What if there was no military action on our part? Impossible, I hear, we must strike back. Why?

Will the terrorists be deterred? Don’t be ridiculous. If they can do us harm, they will. If they can, they will, regardless of whether or not we have retaliated! How will dropping a bomb, or a thousand bombs, on Kabul stop a madman from blowing up a building? There are situations where all our military might is useless. This might well be one of them.

What, then, is the probable result of our attacks? Very likely, we are playing directly into Bin Laden’s hands. He wants us to bomb, the more, the better. He knows it is impossible to commit military action without killing civilians, shrapnel is sloppy. Is there anyone posting here who is so ignorant as to believe that bombs can be targeted so as to injure only the guilty?

So: what if we did the unthinkable? What if we bury our dead, mourn our heroes and say to the world “We cannot attack the guilty without injuring the innocent. That is immoral, and we will not do so. We will sooner suffer an atrocity than commit one. Further, we stand ready to extend our assistance to the hungry and suffering of Afghanistan. We refer our case to the U.N. for deliberation, confident that no civilized nation will support these actions, and we ask that body for a decision as to the correct course of action in dealing with a criminal, and the proper stance in relation to a regime that protects him.”

The only way for BinLaden (May he simmer in Hell in a pool of bacon fat) to succeed in his stated goal of provoking “Holy war” (oh, vile oxymoron!) is with our cooperation. Which we are doing. How might we help him more? By expanding our military attacks to other Muslim countries. Which action our leaders are currently contemplating, “make no mistake about it”.

If vengeance and retribution is precisely what will give most aid and comfort to our enemies, who then is “traitorous”? The wooly-thinking naive peace protesters, or our hard-headed, realistic leaders?

As I said, this is unthinkable. Until you think it.

As to the Kurds: we should send Henry Kissinger to negotiate with them. They have a lot of things to talk to him about. Oh, yeah.

48

msmith537 I live a few blocks from Union Square and I can’t even bring myself to walk by the south end, which was hijacked by the peaceniks and I don’t even know if they’re still there. I agree with you on point 2. As to the rest, don’t worry about it. Don’t let yourself get to the point where you are accusing people of treason or sedition. Just remember that the vast majority of Americans (if recent polling is to be believed) support military action against Afghanistan. If there are a few highly vocal jerkwads, try not to let it get to you. There will always be people who automatically blame the U.S. for everything that goes wrong in the world. I have even seen more vitriol aimed at Laura Schlessinger and Rush Limbaugh than Osama Bin Laden.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr011003b.asp
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/628177_asp.htm

49

Polycarp,

Do you have any information that says we are bombing Afghan cities? I thought most the targets hit were on the outskirts of cities. The cities themselves certainly were not targets. And would you be opposed to hitting a comand & control facility belonging to the Taliban if it happened to be in a city?

50

You’re quietly ignoring another way, which seems closer to what we’re doing: well-targetted, restrained military action directed at military and government targets, coupled with humanitarian aid to the common muslims. In other words, bin Laden can claim we’re attacking Islam worldwide, but it we don’t, and we’re obvious about not doing it, then it’s plausible that our little “police action” will have the desired effect: the removal of the Taliban as a supportive government to terrorists, and the death and destruction of the terrorists themselves, without alienating muslim nations around the world.

This MSNBC article is a love-fest for an afghan scholar in the Bush administration, who’s intimately familiar with Afghanistan, Islam, and radical Islamic terrorism. According to the article, Bush is following a playbook this guy wrote in the nineties about exactly how to defeat bin Laden and his ilk without turning it into a war of The West vs. Islam.

51

So while America sit around with our thumbs up our asses like a bunch of bitches what exactly do you think happens?

  1. Terrorists will continue to hate America regardless of what action we take.

  2. Said terrorists now have the opportunity to continue to plan, train, and execute terrorist attacks. They will continue to remain free from retribution, sheltered in the countries that protect them.

  3. Our enemies realize that all that is required to influence American policy is to commit an outradgeous enough act of violence against us.

  4. The UN continues to be an symbol of impotance.
    What these bleeding-heart liberals do not seem to understand is that we are not “one world”. There are countries and people out there who actually hate us. These people actually want to do us harm. The people who attacked the WTC/Pentagon did not radio a message of “free Pakistan” or “long live Islam” or even “save the whales”. They simply launched a makeshift missle attack designed to destroy and distrupt our way of life.

Why must we strike back? Retaliation? Rebuild our bruised ego? I don’t think so. We strike back in order to keep this from happening again. Our goal is not to ‘deter’ terrorist attacks. It is to nuetralize the terrorists and destroy their networks. A dead terrorist is not much of a threat.

I appreciate the plight of the Afghan people. Most of them probably don’t want this war any more than we do. Unfortunately, our bombs cannot simply target the guilty. That is one of the unfortunate side effects of war.

I am an American first, however. I don’t believe my country is perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than living in some totalitarian, fundementalist theocracy. And when push comes to shove, I would rather sacrifice a handful of Afghans who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time than another 5000 Americans and another downtown urban area. That may sound harsh but these are harsh times.

52

Two thoughts on this thread

1)Criticism without suggesting alternatives…

This drives me nuts too. BUT I think it is defensible to try and establish the principles from which a solution must be derived, without knowing exactly what that solution is.

For instance, I hope one of the principles the folks in charge are using is that we won’t kidnap family members of known terrorists and threaten to kill them if the terrorist does not surrender himself. And then kill them if the terrorist does not surrender himself.

I heard a commentator being interviewed (on NPR I think) who recounted a case of the Jordanians dealing with a terrorist group and the aforementioned technique was extremely effective.

Now I don’t dispute that that might be a highly effective way of dealing with terrorists and I haven’t got any ideas that sound MORE effective, but I think it is legitimate for me to lobby my government to adopt NOT doing so as a principle from which we move forward.

So I think the peace protestors could be understood to be trying to do the same thing. They would like us to establish as a principle that we do not respond with military force. No arguing that they might find themselves more persuasive if they came up with very effective sounding alternatives.

2)elucidator’s recent post was doing just that. What would happen if we (or rather the policymakers) established as a principle that we will NOT respond with military force?

Well elucidator also stated that terrorists acts will continue in any case.

One scenario I can picture:

If there were to be another act of terrorism that approached the scale of the WTC collapse AND policymakers still refrained from any military response, I honestly think it might incite civil war in this country. Before September 11 there were a lot of heavily armed people in this country very very angry with their government. Probably most of those people have directed their anger outward right now, but a second attack could be the match that lights their fuse. Does anybody else see this as a real possibility?

53

Well, by this measure, I think you could say that Bin Laden is sincerely well-motivated. After all, he is concerned about the suffering of Palestinians on the West Bank and people dying of starvation in Iraq (or at least he purports to be).

Anyway, my point here is that I don’t think the “sincerely well-motivated” standard, however tempting it might be to use, is a good one. It is necessary to judge people to a greater degree by their actions.

54

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With
them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our
God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with
the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their
wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring
the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their
little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports
of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee
for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their
lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the
white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source
of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble
and contrite hearts. Amen. "

excerpt from “The War Prayer” by Mark Twain

55

I am not saying what I am about to say as a pacifist. I am saying this as someone that is concerned with preventing future terrorism.

This is not a conventional war. I don’t think it even qualifies as a war. We were not attacked by another country. There is no opposing military force. There are no targets. There is no real plan. So we bomb Afghanistan? What is that going to do? Might start up a civil war. Might overthrow the Taliban. Will this end, or even slow down terrorism? Nope. Terrorism knows no country. It has no center. It exists under and in between our understanding of nations. Conventional warfare will not affect it in the least.

Terrorism does rely on stereotypes. Every day they must convince fresh faces that America is the Great Satan. They must convince them that we hate them, we want their blood, we will stop at nothing to destroy them.

And this is why our traditional military tactics won’t stop terrorism. What we must do is prove the terrorists wrong. When they preach about how bad America is, we need people to stand up and say “No they aren’t”. We msut show the world that we really arn’t that bad. I know, it hurts that we were attacked and yet we cannot directly attack back. It sucks that we cannot use our familier tactics. It is hard to suck in your gut and realize that the world needs to know more about your humanity than your might.

And the only way to do this is through International action. If we bomb cities, we are the Great Satan. If we kill Osama Bin Laden ourselves, we are the Great Satan. We have made new converts for the other side. We have suceeded in making the fight against terrorism that much harder.

If we work Internationally, however, I still have hope that we can make some progress. We must alientate terrorists from Islamic countries. We must make the terrorist look like freaks. We must make them unpopular and unwanted. And this is not something we can do on our own. We will need real input and real cooperation with many nations. We must make the terrorist alone in the world.

Not very satisfying, is it? But if we really want to see an end to terrorism, we must realize that military posturing and displays of might are not going to help our cause. We must stoop down to the level of our sisters in Europe, our bothers in the Middle East, our…ummm…cousins in Asia and our second uncles in Africa. We must seek an International solution to an International problem.

56

Great, that was my point, too.

57

That’s a peculiar use of the term “sacrifice”. Is there some particular God you intend to sacrifice these innocents to, or do you instead mean to imply that it would be noble of the Afghan civilians to, unkowingly, choose to die in order to to reduce some americans feelings of insecurity ?
If you are in favor of killing innocents to achieve your ends, at least have the decency to call it murder. Will you call it justice when the relatives of those same civilians turn around and attempt to kill you and your murderous friends ? Some will, and they’ll be wrong too.

58

sounds like an excellent plan to me! Quoting Twain’s War Prayer is hackneyed, mostly because it ignores the larger issues, but I’ve noticed that the Left is a singularly obtuse crowd.

Please allow me to quote George C. Scott from Patton

59

There is an opposing military force in Afghanistan and there are some targets we can hit. By destroying what conventional military assets the Taliban have we can swing the balance of power in favor of the Northern Alliance.

This will slow down terrorism because terrorism requires space to train. It requires a government’s tolerance of its existence. If the terrorists can no longer breed in Afghanistan, they will have to go elsewhere. By working on building an international coalition, we are trying to make few elsewheres available.

There are aspects of conventional warfare that can hinder terrorism, but it certainly is not an end all solution and I have not seen the US suggest such a thing. The US is taking a multi-faceted approach.

You are assuming they need a legitimate excuse to target us. They don’t. All they need is an enemy. Something large to rally against. Any modern nation-state that does not live by their warped view of Islamic law will do. If France had the largest economy, I have no doubt they’d be the number one target right now. They’ve been a target of terrorism anyway. So has Great Britain, so has Germany… Even Saudi Arabia… apparently the royal family is too secular.

If we do no evil, they simply invent it.

We are doing this.

Sure it is, as long as leads to the current crop of terorists being rounded up or destroyed. I don’t care if a terrorist is stopped by a laser guided bomb or an FBI raid as the result of a finacial trail, as long as they are stopped. We are making an international effort.

We do need to work on steps for insuring that another generation of terrorists is not created but failing to combat the current crop of terrorists will not do that.

60

SVENWe are working internationally. ALOT Are you keeping up with your reading, or your own personal perusal of the war? Seems by your comments you are not exactly well informed. You know we are bombing key targets yet you don’t know we are working with many other nations to stop the terror in many ways??? Please be a little more informed when posting about America’s New War. We are targeting financial, tactical, and diplomatic areas to beat the terrorists, we are taking knocking the support beams out from under their feet. And yes we are bombing the shit out of the peoples that support, harbor and breed the Bin Ladens of the world. And this is only in one country so far. Be prepared to see more in other countries, you’ll see precise, surgical hits of terrorist bases, and other infrastructure.

Fight ignorance with knowledge, inform yourself. don’t surmise, or assume anything. A quote from Tony Blaire:

B