I will briing them up if they are relevant to the discussion and I think it appropriate. If you want to bring them up again to describe disgusting abuse to their bodies, that is your decision.
So it’s fair for you to explot the victims, and I don’t get to challenge you on it?
Sorry, that doesn’t sound like a fair fight to me. You’re the one dishonoring those 3,000 victims. Yes, my metaphors are over the top. Pissed you off, didn’t they? You trying to justify the erosion of civil liberties with pictures from 9/11 pissed me off. I’m better at flaming than you are. Better at argument, too. You use something as a rhetorical weapon against me, I take it away from you and spank your little fanny with it. Then you cry about it. Entertainment ensues. God Bless America.
So does the US get to claim perpetual victimhood? As for the moral high ground, the US has permanently abandoned it as of the Iraq invasion. 9/11 was a criminal act. It does not justify anything and everything that Bush has done since then. Some people such as yourself see 9/11 as a trump card that they can play whenever they wish and that automatically wins the argument. Want to destroy civil liberties? 9/11. Want to torture other human beings? 9/11. Want to censor the press? 9/11. Want to drop white phosphorus on children? 9/11. Want to shoot unarmed civilians? 9/11. Enough. People need to grow up and quit hiding behind 9/11 as if it was your mother’s skirt.
You misunderstand me; as I said in my first post, I sympathise with your position. Of course 9/11 has relevance, and of course it was a seminal event. There are many conversations and debates in which the attacks can be used to make a point. I’m not attacking you for that.
What I am attacking you for is your use of the pictures; as if you honestly believed people had forgotten what happened that day. C’mon, magellan, that’s just hyperbole. As I said before; your point could have been made just as well without those pictures.
We know what happened that day. Surprisingly enough, it’s something that tends to stick in your mind. But to use those pictures when they’re clearly not needed is despicable.
Believe anything what you want. But if one of those things is that there is any equivalence between bringing up the victims in the context I did and usinng them the way you did, you are living in a deranged fantasy-land.
And you need to deal in reality. Please show me where I’ve used 9/11 as a trump card that I play whenever I wasnt to win an argument. And, as I mentioned, Iraq has squat to do with this. 9/11 was the seminal event. That is what instigated the program in question. If we had later decided to NOT go into Iraq, this program would still be on the table. Even the NY Times article (from 2001) explains that direct link between the 3,000 people being killed and the intelligence of trying to stop further such disasters by tracking the money.
If you weren’t so blinded with hate in regard to the decision to go into Iraq you would be able to see that. Right or wrong, Iraq has nothing to do with the direct relationship between 9/11 and the tracking program in question.
It is the nature of government to seek expanded power, just as it is the nature of dogs to pee on territorial markers.
The record showing one action to have taken under false pretenses has an obvious connection to the question of whether the same people have taken another action under false pretenses.
Or are you one of those people who objects to “profiling”, no matter how strong the evidence indicating that some people are more likely to be dangerous than others?
First, I do not see how the use of the pictures is despicable. We, particulalry the 3,000, were victims. There is no shame in being a victim. The shame falls on the murderers and their defenders. If I had done so gratuitously, you would have a point, but I didn’t. Or if I paraded them out in a discussion to which they were merely tangential, but I didn’t.
There seemed to be a desire on the behalf of some to eliminate the event from the discussion and deem it unmentionable. I explained a couple of times why it was relevant and fair to bring it up. Then BobLibDem tried to claim some mentally deranged moral high ground and ban it from the discussion yet again. That is what triggered me posting the images. I felt that doing so would remind he and others of the horror that is the genesis for the tracking program and the discussion about it. The power inherent in those pictures is a direct reflection of the murderous hate we are combating. It appeared to me that some would benefit from being reminded of that, inconvenient as they might find it.
There is a difference between being the impetus for a program and justification of it. There is no doubt that the program began as a result of 9/11. Big deal. That has squat to do with whether it needs to be secret or not.
But you did use them gratuitously; what point was it you could only make by showing them? The very fact that you are able to explain what you meant here, without using the pictures, shows that they were uneeded to make whatever point it was you were getting at.
Oh, for… WE KNOW! We fucking* remember* what happened, and what caused it; we’re not going to forget, or brush it under the rug; and for you to imply otherwise, that somehow we (who disagree with you) cannot remember the tragedy is disgusting. Murderous hate from people? Yep, we know that. There are people who would do such things again? Yep, we know that too. So I’ll ask you again; what point can you make with those pictures that you couldn’t without them? What is your point? Please, i’m all ears.
Well, i came in to compose a reply to you, magellan, but i see that others have already done it for me.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
But … but … 9/11 changed everything, don’t you understand? Everything!
That might very well be true. Might make a nice t-shirt, but it does not mean that everything governments do are done for that reason. If there was ever a time when it was clear that a particular event justified attention and action, 9/11 was it. That it birthed a response like the tracking program in question is completely logical. Did that program go too far? I think not. You evidently, do. Which brings us to the debate.
Okay. But just because you believe one was wrong doesn’t mean that the other was. And the fact that the desire to track financial information was raised well before the decision was made to go to war, and by people who were opposed to the war who wanted us to fight terrorism as we fight crime, separates them considerably. I think it would be fairer to say that in looking back on the two events (the decison to begin the tracking program and the decison to go to Iraq) that they both can be used to evaluate the wisdom ogf the person making them. But as far as evaluating the wisdom of each decision, that has to be done with focus on each decision in isolation, particularly the one that predated the other.
Or are you one of those people who objects to “profiling”, no matter how strong the evidence indicating that some people are more likely to be dangerous than others?
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Well, yes, the government has been trying to do so on some pretext or other for a long time. Conservatives used to object back when it was Bill Clinton who would be getting the information. The principled ones still do even though “Billzebubba” is gone.
The type of activity a program is trying to prevent (9/11) has to take into account just how undesireable it would be to have it happen again. Proportionality is relevant and important. If the only thing that happened on 9/11 was a taxi cab got blown up as the act of a sole terrorist, that would justify a lower level of defensive response. What actually did happen on 9/11 justifies a much larger level of response. One that, at the very least, puts a secret tracking program on the table for consideration.
Incorrect. I had raised the issue earlier in the discussion. A couple people whined. I explained why it was relevant and fair to bring it up both times, using words. People still whined and sought to ban the mention from the debate (and, it appears, any debate). Those pictures have a power that cannot be conveyed in words (by me, at least), I posted them.
Now, please explain to me what is so offensive about showing the pictures. Seriously. To me they point to the extremes rabid Muslim fundementalist will go to in order to hurts us. They are hard to look at, yes. But I think they should be more in our minds as we discuss to lengths we should, or are willing to, go to in order to stop it from happening again.
Actually, it did.
And your sarcastic attempt to sweep it under the rug is just the kind of atitude that demands that it be brought up again. And again.
Do you not think that the reason why a President might want to encroach on out=r privacy is part of the discussion? Do you think that Clinton’s plan had the same degree of justification as Bush did? Does it matter?
Really? So people in this thread, having failed to be convinced by your prior words, are now in total agreement after you posted the pictures?
Here’s what’s offensive; instead of using those pictures, you could simply have just said “9/11 shows the extremes rabid Muslim fundamentalists will go to in order to hurt us. That tragedy should be more in our minds as we discuss the lengths we should, or are willing to, go to in order to stop it from happening again”. The same point would have been made. People remember what happened that day, so it’s not like you need to remind them. So where the offensiveness comes from is that you didn’t need to post those pictures at all, yet you did; it’s clear (at least, to me) that you only used those pictures to lend an extra emotional cachet to your argument, and it is the use of them in that way, to attempt to tap into the emotional resonance of that event and so influence others to think only in terms of that emotion, and not the actual logic and reasonability of your particular argument, that makes what you did so offensive.
9/11 is certainly relevant; i’m in agreement with you that it’s a topic that should never be banned from an honest debate. What you did here, though, was an attempt to divert an honest debate, and to use the tragedy of 9/11 to do that is as bad as attempting to ignore it altogether.