Bush won’t be president anymore in under 2 years.
The jihadist threat will still be there.
Which is more powerful again?
Just to be clear, my OP wasn’t intended to be critical of the patriotism of peace movements.
Bush. He can do more damage in two years than the jihadists can do in two centuries. No matter how much you try to wank them up, they are still nothing more than an irritant to all but the weakest, least stable countries. They are not the Soviet Union, with a huge army and thousands of nukes. The jihadists are weak.
When we pulled out in Vietnam hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed by the communists. They were starved, slaughtered, made slaves, whole towns and villiages were exterminated. We could have won if more troops have been committed and bombings increased. We quit because we lost our resolve to win. The anti-war movement had a large part in it. One of the leaders, Jane Fonda, later apologized for her part in the movement. Being older and wiser she was able to better understand the million deaths the movement caused.
We can win more easily in Iraq if we commit more troops and don’t lose our resolve. If we pull out the blood bath will be horrific as in Nam. But what is worse, the fanatics that want to kill all infidels will be in power to continue their terriorist attacks on our country. Is there anyone so naive to think they will give up.
No, no, not you, middleman. I think your OP is a very good question that deserves a good, honest argument. It’s just that Trotsky here is hi-jacking the Straight Dope with unrelated, tired, disproven arguments and will probably derail this thread enough that it won’t get the intellectual attention it deserves.
Jihadists with 1 nuke can do more damage against the USA than the Soviets could, because of PEOPLE LIKE YOU that don’t CARE what they do. It’s just a criminal matter.
They have done more than the Soviets did to the USA with our own planes. The KGB would’ve done so as well, IF they could have!
Are you forgetting that they will have nuclear bombs in five years if we do nothing. That they already posses missiles to deliver them. That North Korea will sell them what they want. That they number more than a billion. That they will control most of the world’s oil reserves. Be good to read up on what’s going on.
The OP mentioned Walter Cronkite and his change of heart. Cronkite has himself listed the anti-war movement, and the increasing level of emotion and violence caused by anti-war marches and demonstrations, as one of the reasons he traveled to Vietnam to look at things firsthand (“A Reporter’s Life,” 1996). Other politicians (most notably Walter Mondale) based political campaigns on pulling out of Vietnam, and Monday was regularly photographed with anti-war activists. But only within the context of influencing other influential people can the anti-war movement be credited with ending the war in Vietnam. Had there been no anti-war movement, and had that movement not grown to the size it did, we might still be there. Remember, there were anti-war movements prior to the U.S. entry into both World War I and World War II, but neither was in any way effective.
That statement isn’t even coherent. Calling it a criminal matter means that I do care what they do. And the “jihadists” don’t have a nuke, and if they did Bush would hardly stop them - he’s to busy with his Iraq fantasy to actually do anything that might help.
And I fail to see what I am or am not doing that would let terrorists attack the US with a nuke.
Why ?
And IF they could have ? If Al Qaeda can do something, the KGB could have done so, and done it bigger and better.
“They” will have nothing of the kind. Iran might, but probaby not, and they will neither let any nukes out of their hands nor attack anyone with them. And they don’t have the missles to reach us with a nuke, especially a huge, crude one. Nor would they do so if they could.
The same goes for the South Koreans. Nobody with nukes is going to give them to a bunch of fanatic loose cannons.
Dude, the difference is that the Soviets knew of the idea of deterence. They knew if they flew planes into the WTC it would’ve mean nuclear war.
AQ isn’t worried about that, yet… They figure they can be the islamic world’s army by proxy and do whatever, and the islamic world itself is more or less safe. Or at least with ‘acceptable’ losses.
That needs to change, fast.
Let’s see some evidence, even a Wikipedia cite, anything. Offer a little proof that (1) “jihadists” have any means at all of delivering any kind of nuclear-based terrorist weapon, (2) that this would somehow be more damaging than a Soviet launch against the U.S. would have been and/or (3) that **Der Trihs ** is somehow personally responsible for “losing” Iraq. Otherwise, you’re just blowing hot air and you need to take this to The Pit and let people actually carry on some kind of intelligent discussion here.
Or what? We toss some nukes around?
A Reagan style policy of nuclear deterrence is a hundred times more frightening than suicide bombers and the World Trade Center attack.
I’d rather live in the cold war than be above the 80th floor of the WTC or on any of those planes. Or the victim of jihadist atrocities around the world.
You act like 9/11 was the worst they can do. It must be nice down there in the sand.
It probably WAS the worst that they could do. That’s why they did it.
And would you have rather have lived in the Cold War if the missles had flown ?
Look, fellas, we’re letting a guest hijack an otherwise discussion-worthy thread here. Let’s either address the OP or move on to another thread. I see nothing to be gained exchanging juvenile “Oh Yeah!” and “Sez You!” with someone who doesn’t get SDMB.
Any mods on duty? What say you?
To be fair, that quote didn’t say that the jihadists were going to topple western civilization.
Quoth Trotsky:
Trotsky is very correct in saying that the “War On Terror” threatens the very existance of western civilization. I doubt he realizes why he’s correct, but you take what you can get.
Don’t tell me, you think the reaction of the threat of jihadist attack is going to be worse than the jihadists could ever do.
Hell, we might even have duck and cover shows…
ISTM that anti-war movements generally have more effect on postwar politics than on the actual conduct of wars. I’m thinking of the so-called “pro-Boer” movement during the Anglo-Boer War at the turn of the 20th century, which seems to have boosted pre-WWI internationalism and diplomacy efforts.
The anti-Vietnam-War movement peaked around 1970. McGovern ran in '72 on a peace platform and got creamed – would have got creamed even if the Nixon team had not resorted to dirty tricks. We didn’t pull our last troops out of Vietnam until 1974. No anti-war movement in American history has ever succeeded in getting the administration to end a war until the administration was damned good and ready to end it in its own time for its own reasons.
That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, of course, just that history gives us little reason for optimism.
Thankfully our policy isn’t run by street-bound hippies.