As President George Bush stated today, “We are at war.” Afghanistan, if proven to harbor Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist followers will be blown straight to hell. Our armed forces are on full alert and have been informed to move out for battle as soon as called upon. We need to rally around our heroic defenders of freedom and give them our full support. Let slip the dogs of war!! America fights back! Rally around the flag and give 'em hell, boys!!! Hooah!
Call me a softie, but I’m thinking we should find a way to accomplish everything without killing all 25 million Afghans. You know, just in case 24 million or so have nothing to do with terrorism or bin Laden.
I’m in favor of a harsh response to the attack and to terrorism in general, but genocidal maniacs can count me right the fuck out.
What the Myster said.
This is exactly the attitude that really chaps my ass.
Yeah, “Nobody fucks with America”. Because we’re the only country that’s ever been the victim of a terrorist attack, right? Get your head out of your ass and realize that a war can be prevented here. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?
Everyone I’ve seen complains about the tragedy of 11,000 people dying, but then can’t wait to go blow away millions of Afghanistans. Unless you have something valuable to add, I would offer up this request: Shut the hell up.
Amazing. I seem to have lost my “jingoism=>reality” dictionary.
Was there any substance to the OP?
I hate to be the spoilsport, but there really isn’t an Afghanistan to blow up. The country does not have a government or an organized state in the sense we would understand it. It is, basically, just a bunch of armed thugs running around terrorizing helpless, starving peasants.
Depending how good our intelligence is, it might be possible to get in there and kill or capture Osama bin Laden, but if our intelligence isn’t that good, he may be unfindable. And if that’s the case, there will be nothing to fight, unless it turns out Iraq was in on this (and God help them if they were, the poor bastards.) How can we bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age when they’re still IN the Stone Age?
This IS a war, but it can’t be won by bombing anyone from tens of thousand of feet up. It’s going to require a radical change in military expenditures, and a very different way of fighting. This war will be won by spies, infiltrators, assassins, special forces teams, saboteurs, and intelligence agents. The West absolutely CAN win such a war if they’re serious about it. I’m not sure they are, but we’ll see.
The media would seem to be hyping up for the bombers to be sent in; they reported gleefully that more fuel was being sent to Diego Garcia (a U.S. bomber base in the Indian Ocean.) That’s great if there’s anything to bomb, but I don’t think there is. I just cannot believe that people like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice are THAT stupid, that they don’t know what a ham-fisted and ineffectual gesture bombing would be, or how difficult it would be to stage an invasion of Afghanistan…
But; Jones’s Fifth Law: You will always be biased towards solutions that require use of your best tools. The U.S. has a massive, more or less invincible conventional armed forces, and the political pressure to use it is enormous, whereas there’s NO political pressure to cut into their budget to fund a huge increase in intelligence operations and mustering a special antiterrorist corps, which almost by necessity would have to be a NATO formation, with all the associated political difficulties… does Bush have the foresight to go through those difficulties, or will he just level Kabul?
Hmm.
I can’t help but notice how many people calling for war don’t actually seem to be in the military.
It’s a little easier to yell “Let’s give em hell, boys!” if you’re not one of the boys going off for the hell-giving.
Yep… if getting bin Laden means killing 99% of the Afghani population you can count me the fuck out too.
Weird. I would have thought that it was in everyone’s best interests to pray to whatever diety they believe in to ensure that a war is prevented, not glory in it like some hyperactive five year old. Wow. 
The OP needs to learn that it isn’t 1914 anymore. Humanity has long since lost its innocence about this sort of thing. War is nasty, foul, cruel and most certainly not to be gloried in In this case it may turn out to be necessary but all intelligent mature people will be hoping it won’t.
And ditto to what Legomancer said. I don’t think the military are very keen for war because unlike the OP they actually know what war is like.
Jesus Christ in a Napalm Factory. :mad:
Rick Jay hit the nail on the head. This will be a very different war and a long one. This will not entail sending a cruise missile up Bin Laden’s ass followed by a ticker tape parade down Wall Street. It will be as Rick Jay says, a war of spies and special forces, so those of you who are sweating the draft, forget it. We won’t need that many people. However, don’t think you’ve seen the last of the terror either. This is going to be a long, drawn out, slow moving conflict, and many of the battles won’t be military at all. For example, they way they are financed needs to be rooted out and destroyed. For you pacificsts out there (and I heard you last night on NPR, you crazy lady at the Field Museum) doing nothing won’t solve this problem either. If you think a criminal like Bin Laden is going to stop just because we stop you’ve got another thing coming. This is a man who once attempted to blow up 11 aircraft simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean (the only reason he didn’t succeed is because the warehouse where they were building the bombs burned down). He wanted to assasisnate both President Clinton and the Pope. He is a psychopath and a mass murderer and therein lies the rub. He is not a country, doesn’t represent a country and cannot be fought in the traditional sense. But make no mistake, he must be confronted. It is impossible to completely insulate ourselves against a terrorist threat, so the only way to deal with it is to prosecute terrorists with extereme prejudice on all fronts and make it impossible for them to exist worldwide. So in one respect, I agree with OP, give HIM hell, just leave the 24 million innocent Afghanis out of it.
While I am obviously for military strikes against Afghanistan, IF they are proven to harbor bin Laden as I stated earlier, I am NOT for killing innocent civilians. However, it will be a war, and like it or not, innocent people die in wars. That is why they are so terrible. In this thread, I was simply trying to conjure up support for our armed forces as they are ordered into battle.
::sighs::
Geez, guys, I just want to let our troops know we are behind them…
I have completely had it with all the fucking idiots with their “But you’re killing innocent civilians” rhetoric.
The fact is, the United States Military is NOT in the business of going after civilians, and if you think it is, then you’re a fucking moron.
ManHec, chill. I don’t think anyone is accusing our government, or our military of going after civilians. I think the point is that if it is to be a war, then civilians will be killed. There just isn’t much getting around that.
Some people can’t fathom that dead innocents are worth it.
Some accept it as an unfortunate eventuality to meet a justified end.
Others are downright gung-ho to get the killing started.
Consider me in the middle.
I, too, am in the middle. Of those three scenarios at least.
Possibly the reason I get so riled over it is that in the course of my duties, my equipment HAS not worked perfectly, and civilians did die because of it.
None of us celebrated.
Event the hint of an insinuation that the military would consider going after civilian targets angers me no end.
Well, AMM; as a member of the US military (albeit a retired member), I certainly do not intend to be involved in a religous war our government will be fighting against innocents. Heck, we screwed up 1/2 that equation already. Why should anyone think this one would be any better?
Alright, AMM9132, fair enough, and I’ll withdraw my “genocidal maniacs” comment. I hope you see why your OP could be misinterpreted, though–nothing wrong with supporting our armed forces, but given the situation we have to be clear. There really are people running around spouting shit like “kill them all and let God sort them out”–and some of these people don’t even limit it to killing all the Afghans.
Manservant Hecubus: If you don’t understand the difference between “but you’re killing innocent civillians” and “let’s not kill millions of people for no good reason,” and if you further don’t understand that people who mean the latter are opposing a stupid idea rather than accusing the US military of some sort of institutional bloodlust, then the only fucking moron in this thread is you.