I was going to type a sarcastic response, but I think I’ll take the high road.
I hate it when people do this (because it’s annoying and not really much of an argument), but – cite? Particularly on the “It’s gotten worse” bit.
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“Even more contempt”? So, what, next time, they’ll blow up three towers instead of two? Either the terrorists hate us but respect us as a worthy adversary, or they hate us and hate everything about us.
I guess what I’m asking is: how much more contempt can they show us?
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I’m gonna ask you to do some more research here to support your point. Do you have any evidence that a show of force tends to cause non-traditional, guerrila, underdog, terrorist-type enemies to submit? I’m thinking of situations like Afghanistan vs. the Soviet Union, the US vs. Vietnam, Russia vs. Checnya, Israel vs. Palestine, and other situations I’m less familiar with, like the Tamil Tigers or the Basque Separatists. Hell, you could even get historical: the American Revolution (or just about any revolution, really), the Indian independence movement (or, again, just about any independence movement), and so forth. It strikes me that it’s very, very difficult (albeit not unprecedented) for an invader to win the peace simply by invading.
If this is your thesis – that “We’re bringing the fight to YOU” will cause the terrorists to lose heart and give up – I find it sorely lacking. Unless you can offer some extraordinary evidence to bolster it.
I don’t know, because I’m not talking about retribution. I’m talking about the fact that American soldiers are very hard to kill, and they are taking the fight to the enemy rather than just sit around being shot at.
We’re not talking about, “Kill one of us, and we’ll round up your family and shoot them”, which is what the Russians did in Afghanistan, and which you are insinuating I meant.
The fact is, the Americans are getting good intel from the Iraqi people, and they are using it to capture or kill the enemy. ‘Chemical Ali’ was captured the other day. That made the news, because he was a big, big fish. How many other captures do you think go on all the time that we don’t hear about because they’re just regional commanders, lieutenants, etc.?
Where exactly do you get your erroneous information/misguided beliefs about the Ba’ath administration from? Because as any fule kno, the whole thing about the Saddam’s party was that it was a SECULAR party, NOT an Islamic party.
I just cannot understand the depth of your ignorance on this matter. Please let me know what sources you are using and I will personally write to them to correct and de-misinform them.
Please read more carefully, istara. Of course the Ba’ath Party was secular. Taraq Aziz, former deputy prime minister and government spokesman, is Christian.
But, what I said was that most of the individual who made up Iraq’s Ba’ath Party were Muslims. That was an entirely true statement.
I’ve been hearing this thrown around, lately, mainly from John Kerry’s camp, and it doesn’t make any sense.
How many troops do you need to stave off terrorists and criminals and limit their room to operate?
The head of our armed forces in Iraq doesn’t think he needs more troops, and he’s in a position to know.
Terrorism works because it sidesteps massive military force. More force won’t help. Look at the Israelis. For all their military might they still have terror attacks.
The problem doesn’t have anything to do with force. We have all the force we need.
The problem is figuring out where to apply that force, finding the terrorists.
More force presents more targets for terorrists. It represents a bigger and more obvious imposition upon the Iraqi people and hence more resentment.
At this stage more troops, more force and more problems is what the terrorists want us to do.
Think it through. I strongly disagree. More force is not what’s needed. We have all the force we need. What we need is targets for the force we have.
No you didn’t - you said they were “mostly Islamic.” Obviously they are going to be mostly muslims in a muslim Arab country.
So giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you genuinely meant “muslim” not “islamist” - exactly what relevance does it have in any way that they were muslims?
Iraq wasn’t part of the ‘terrorists’ you mention, sorry. Well, at least before the war. They will be now. GJ Dumbya.
Israel has already shown us how driving in tanks and troops stops terrorists. See how well they have stopped all the suicide bombers (not)?
The last time I checked, the only way to find cockroaches who live and hide among normal citizens was with the co-operation of our friends in those nations hunting the people down. Kinda hard to rely on that type of support when you’re pissing everyone else off, isn’t it?
Too bad the anger caused by our occupation of Iraq is actually creating ‘hot-headed islamists’ faster than we can kill them off. I suppose it doesn’t really click to you that pissing people off in the middle ast drives them to militant islam.
Righhhht. Let’s actually encourage angry arabs to turn to militant islam and attack us. That is easily the smartest thing we could possibly do to enhance our national security.
What a dumbass.
It takes, what? Only 20 arabs to bring down 3000+ lives and the WTC? Let’s take a guess at how many pissed off arabs Bush & co. have pushed towards militant islam with comments like that and an unecessary attack on Iraq.
Exactly. Saying someone is Islamic" is just another way of saying he’s a Muslim. I never said that the regime was “Islamist”. That’s your word. So your insults were completely out of line. You owe me an apology.
I also don’t like your claim to be giving me the benefit of the doubt. All you offered was to assume that I meant what I wrote.
Wow, that’s just great. Too bad none of these ‘deck of cards’ were of imminent or immediate threat to the USA like Al-Qaeda is. This is like having a burgler breaking into my home with a gun, but the cops run outside and arrest my neighbor and say ‘look, you’re all safe now!’. No, the burgler is still inside my home with his gun.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick.” The use of this proverb in english appears to have begun with Theodore Roosevelt. He is quoted as saying ‘I have always been fond of the West African proverb - speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.’
Bush & Co. have a philosophy too: “Speak like an ass, offend your friends and enrage your enemies. Oh, and make sure you have a really big stick because you’re definately going to need it.”
Apologise for what, december? You still haven’t explained the meaning of your comment that Ba’ath party members were “mostly Islamic.” What is the relevance of it?
According to Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army’s chief of staff before the war, in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in early March, “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” would be required to occupy a postwar Iraq. (link.)
If he doesn’t mind the way things are going, then life’s good, from his perspective. But when 45 people a day are getting killed in Baghdad alone, as opposed to about 1 a day in NYC, I can’t see it the same way he does.
Forget terror for a moment; I’m talking about civil order. The Israelis have the latter, even though they’ve also got the former. The Iraqis don’t. We’ve got to provide it for them.
Well, such is life. Nobody asked us to take on this job; we chose it for ourselves, while not admitting to ourselves how difficult it was going to be. The question remains: are we going to continue to try to do it on the cheap, or is the Administration going to lay out a believable road map to a defined objective (“democracy” is too vague to suggest that anyone in the Administration actually knows what they’re trying to do), acknowledge just how much it’s going to cost - in terms of lives as well as money, and then try to sell that course to the American people?
I fully expect the Bushies to choose option A. They apparently still believe things will magically work out.
Let’s face it, one big message of the Iraq war, to every third-world government that’s less than 100% in our corner, is: get nukes. Once you’ve got nukes, like North Korea, you’re beyond the reach of Shock And Awe. If countries like North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan can have nuclear weapons, there are a bunch of other third-world countries that can also develop them. And if we have a bunch of third-world countries with nukes, some of them will use them. We probably won’t be the target, but the fallout, metaphorically speaking, will still find us.