Yeah, sorry about that earlier one. Typed and posted to fast.
Jimm, of course I reaize that the actions of the US have consequences that we should consider. I am not saying that we should do whatever we want and tell the world to go screw.
But, people have made the claim in this thread that the attacks were deserved. Latro doesn’t seem to understand the difference between the governments that we get along with like Saudi Arabia and the terror organizations who attacked us.
I also think one can look at any situation with hindsight and see things differently. The arming the the mujahadeen in Afghanistan during the war with the USSR, for example. This was the right thing to do at the time. The soviets were our enemies and we wanted to hinder their efforts to conquer Afghanistan. This doesn’t mean that we are forever responisble for anything that happens in that country.
In foreign policy, you make the best decisions you can at the time. The Northern Alliance is another good example. They did a lot of the grunt work in defeating the Taliban for us. It was a good move to ally with them to accomplish our goals. It saved American lives (less of our troops needed on the ground). But, if the Alliance who now controls Afghanistan should act against the interests of the US in the future, then we can deal with that situation differently.
As far as the IRA comparison. Sure, I agree with the gist of your points. All I was trying to point out was the difference between the terrorist organizations and the goverments in that region.
If the government of Ireland said “get out” to the US we would have to comply. Close down the embassy, all US citizens that don’t have Irish citizenship get on planes and come home. It’s their country, we have to respect their wishes. If the IRA came out with some statement tomorrow demanding that the US leave all it’s bases in Europe then of course we wouldn’t. The demands by Al-Queda for us to leave the middle east are equally rediculous. The Saudi’s don’t mind our military presence in their country. Why should we listen to a terrorst organization operating mostly outside thier borders over their own government?
Careful jjimm, Latro has jumped on your bandwagon!
From the animation:
I agree, but the problem is that the Saudi government is not representative of its people. The House of Saud is only in power because it is propped up by the US government. Sure, they want the US military there, but I’d be willing to bet that the “street” in Saudi don’t. The problem is when the wishes of the people coincide with the wishes of terrorists. If you refuse to do what the people want because the terrorists want it too, then the terrorists have lost 
but the people have too. And therein lies the problem at the heart of a lot of anti-terror policy.
Which people said this? Actually which person said it? The closest was Latro who said
so relax a second and take a deep breath. There isn’t that much anti-American stuff in here either BTW IMO.
Why do you take criticism of US foreign policy as anti-American? Very very few outside America and a lot within don’t agree 100% with US foreign policy.
Debaser: But, people have made the claim in this thread that the attacks were deserved.
I don’t think so. I think we’re pretty unanimous in thinking that a murderous surprise attack on innocent civilians is a dirty rotten crime. There is no way that those civilians, or the US as a whole, “deserves” such attacks.
What some of us are saying is that the US does a lot of things that make other people angry at us—in many cases, justifiably angry. That’s not trivial; as you say, no nation has the privilege of believing that we can do whatever we want and the rest of the world can go screw. Intelligent foreign policy, not to mention simple justice, requires that we pay attention to what other people want and what pisses them off.
The connection with terrorism is secondary: it’s simply that angry people are less likely to condemn or oppose dirty rotten crimes against the people they’re angry at. No, of course I don’t suggest basing foreign policy on what terrorists want; I don’t care what terrorists want, because terrorists are criminal loonies (as evinced by their delusion that they have the right to kill innocent people) and there’s no point reasoning with them. I do care about what angry people who are not terrorists want, because I know that there can’t be any real and lasting suppression of terrorism without cooperation and alignment of goals among many different countries.
We’ll never make progress against terrorism if even the **non-**terrorists are thoroughly hacked off at us and convinced that we’re their enemy. And I don’t see how a unilateral first strike against Iraq can fail to give a lot of non-terrorists precisely that impression. Especially when it’s accompanied by all this unfortunate rhetoric about “declarations of war” between the “Islamic fundamentalist east” and the “Christian west” (where does Israel fit into that concept, I wonder?), and similar crusade-speak.
jjimm I don’t know that I would say that the Saudi government is propped up by the US. Are you saying that without our support they would not be controlling the country? I am not nessesarily arguing against this yet, it’s just that if this is true I wasn’t aware of it.
Also, as far as the people on the street are concerned. Well, are we supposed to look at public opinion polls of the populations of countries we are doing business with to determine our policies?
You have a valid point about the Saudi government and the Saudi people having different opinions about the US. I agree that this is something worth considering. But, I don’t see much we can do about it. If Bush’s approval ratings drop below 50% should treaties he sign no longer be honored by other countries? I think that for better or worse, we need to make agreements with lots of countries, and they aren’t all democracies.
yojimbo, I am not imagining things here. There were 4 posts immediately in response to Latro’s tirade half way down the thread all warning him to “batten down the hatches” because he was so far out of line.
Later, jjimm went out of his way at the beginning of his post to “distance himself” from Latro’s “incorrect and deeply insulting” comments.
I should have just pitted him, but I thought he might actually be capable of debate. Alas, he has failed after several promptings to even try to make an argument supported by any kind of facts.
I just deleted a long post which was nit-picky about who said what and why they said it because I realised that’s it’s not my fight.
Fair enough Debaser. I don’t see the thread the way you do.
I’m off now for a lot of Friday pints of Guinness. Have a good one and try not to let the Dutch annoy you so much
Yeah I’m off too. Have a nice weekend everyone.
Kimtsu said:
Agreed. Not just that this was a dirty rotten crime. But, I agree, that most posters feel this way as well.
However, Latro’s beliefs about the US are pretty far out there and I don’t think my responses to him were over the top. I feel even more justified in going after him now, that he has refused to back up his position in any meaningful way.
Now, as to the rest of your post, I am intrigued. Come to think of it, it is probably worthy of it’s own GD thread. I read all of them, and don’t remember such a thread, but it seems hard to imagine no one has covered this ground before.
Well, lets get on with it, shall we? You say
Well, I don’t think that justice actually requires that we never piss people off. But, I agree with this gist of what you are saying.
You also say that you don’t care what the terrorists want, but do care what the people want. This seems like a reasonable idea. Get people to not hate the US so much and there won’t be as much support for terrorists.
Now, how exacltly do we go about doing it? I seem to recall something about the US getting private PR firms to work on marketing our image better overseas. This seems like a good first step in the right direction. What else can/should we do to make these people hate us less?
Oh, and this last part:
I have no idea where you are getting this from. Who ever talked about a declaration of war between these groups using these words? You are using quotes, but who are you quoting. The Bush administration certainly has been trying to avoid the kind of language of which you speak. I would commend them on their efforts in trying to prevent this from becomming a holy-war type situation.
LOL, I don’t post on weekend’s either.
But, I must protest, it’s not fair that I have to stay at work another 5 hours after these Irishmen get to go off for a pint.
[mumbles]
…damn time zones, always screwing us American’s over…I want to have a pint…
[/mumbles]
No, Debaser, maybe you want to have a crack at someone who says you deserved 9/11 but I haven’t.
Again I state that ‘no surprise’ is what I’m saying.
What I’m trying to point out is that I think that US foreign policy is sometimes naive and sometimes outright dirty. More often than not creating other problems where you thought to solve one.
Most of the world accepts it grudgingly, because you are the guys with the big gun, frankly.
This time you have come up against people who don’t mind blowing themselves up for their cause. It’s a different ball-game.
What I meant with ‘welcome to the world’ is that other countries have already been in contact ,or still are, with terrorism.
They know that going in there guns blazing, isn’t going to work.
It will only make the problem worse.
Yeah Duck, it was meant as sarcasm.
I thought it sounded insane enough not to be taken as sincere, but I forget there’s no such thing.
K. 
Sarcasm doesn’t always cross the Pixel Barrier.
I didn’t get the sarcasm either. Never mind!