London Hit By Terror Attacks (What is the appropriate response?)

Great Debates
221

Means he’s the figurehead in charge of the military I’d say and responsible for the actions of the US. You do realize he doensn’t actually COMMAND anything right? He sets broad policy…and even then he probably listens and even take the advice of folks who’s actual job it is to do the real work.

Well, actually he HAS been shown to be in contact with AZ in Iraq…as he publically gave his blessing to the Iraqi insurgents and annointed AZ as his man on the spot. If we have any other communications (i.e. not public) from AQ concerning anything, including Iraq, I’m not aware that the government is publishing it…so its kind of disingenuous of YOU to say that this is the level of proof required.

Thats 'cause you are blinded by your own tunnel vision on this. The US DID have the fig leaf that Iraq was in violation of both UN resolutions and some of the provisions of the cease fire from the first gulf war. Either one is at least a quasi-justification in a legal sense of our actions. Then of course the US is a soveriegn state, so has some quasi-justification in just that to engage in war. AQ has neither of those happy circumstances.

Oh, I think I have. I’m just unconvinced that a Bush war in Iraq without 9/11 to give him the political capital to push it through is a liberal fantasy…well, its probably a Bush fantasy as well to be honest. In both cases though its pure fantasy IMHO.

He was probably going to shit gold bricks too…but then he’s wake up. Look…exactly HOW was Bush, a guy who barely ‘won’ the 2000 election and had exactly zero political capital and clout going to sell a pre-emptive war with Iraq not only to the American people (who were wallowing in our own grief over the whole dot com bubble bursting thing with a recession tacked on to boot), let alone the house and senate? Even today Bush can’t even push through his own choice to replace O’Connor. Even with 9/11 there was a huge protest against Iraq…and even protests over Afghanistan. Its fantasy DtC.

Without 9/11 there would be no Iraq…so I think ObL can take his share of the blame for setting off the events that followed. Yeah I know…you think Bush would have magically waved the WoMD card and the American people would have raised their weary heads from their inward gaze about the economy and all the money they lost when the bubble burst and fallen into line. But I’m not buying it. So…I guess we’ll just have to disagree on this.

Well, its nice you acknowledge that Bush actually is in charge and not just a puppet ( :wink: ), but you know, its actually not true. Bush is just the big decision guy, laying out broadly what he wants done. Sort of like, oh, say ObL, who at least purportedly masterminded the big picture of what he wanted AQ to do. Whether or not ObL is alive today is irrelevant. If Bush died a year ago it wouldn’t mean he wasn’t responsible for the chain of events HE started with his invasion of Iraq.

Well, the key there is…YOU think its not justified, non-defensive and illegal…and YOU think its akin to felony murder. That don’t make it so…nor does the fact that I agree with some of your points. Just means you and I think it. Fact though is that the US DID have a fig leaf of justification for its actions…and AQ has none at all. And of course there are the methods of the two to consider…

Well, two things here. First off I think you read what I was saying wrong. I wasn’t attributing 100,000 deaths to ObL…I was saying the US’s actual direct deaths that are on par with what AQ does are in the 10’s or 100’s…i.e. 1-10 or perhaps 1-X00. These would be direct deaths the US inflicted by torturing prisoners to death or executing prisoners without a proper trial., and would only include actual civilians wrongfully tortured to death or executed wrongfully.

I think we could safely say though that ObL has killed in the 10’s of thousands. Remeber AQ is responsible for attacks prior to 9/11, ObL also lead bands of fighters during the first Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and those bands didn’t alway just fight the Soviet military but targetted Afghani civilians in the cities who went along with either the Soviets or the Afghani puppet government, and then there is the death toll in Iraq by foreign insurgents directly targetting Iraqi civilians.

Perhaps…in fact I also doubt that the US thought Iraq was a threat. However, I do conceed that there were other reasons to invade Iraq that also weren’t cynical or self-serving…at least from Bush’s perspective. The US needed a heavier presence in the ME. The US needed to make an example of a nation in the region that was a credible military. Iraq has a sizable amount of oil, a vitally strategic resource…and it was being controlled by someone who was less than stable. Saddam was a loose cannon who repeatedly showed he WANTED to be a threat if he could…and at least gave the impression he was just waiting for the chance to rebuild once the pressure was off. Saddam had been pretty stupid by publically supporting terrorists in Palestine by offering them money. Saddam was deliberately combative with the US since the cease fire. Iraq was the logical choice.

Well, setting aside your assertion that the US didn’t really try and minimize casualties, again we get into the fact that YOU don’t think its justified…that YOU think its illegal, etc etc. That all well and good, and its certainly something that can be debated. There really is no debate though if AQ is justified in ITS actions though, being neither a soveriegn state nor having even the fig leaf of broken UN resolutions and various cease fire agreement violations to use. And of course there is the whole method thing…even if I acknowledge that the US didn’t actually try and minimize casualties (which I don’t btw), there is still a vast difference between being indifferent to civilian casualties and deliberately going after civilians with the intention of killing them. A difference you don’t seem willing to acknowledge.

-XT

222

(Accidental posting)

… of other citizens for little actual benefit at all.

223

Okay, let’s say you were an American who was completely and utterly against sending American troops to Europe in WWII (as many people evidently were). And let’s say you had perfectly valid arguments to support your position. IMHO, as an American citizen you would be perfectly within your rights–maybe even living up to your responsibility–to argue vociferously against the administration. But once the decision had been made and the troops were over there, I also think it is your responsibility, as an American citizen, to support them, i.e., want them to succeed in their mission. Hence, I hope you would conserve energy, recycle rubber and metal, maybe even buy a war bond. There are is only one other option: wanting them to fail. The idea of claiming to support your troops when that support extends just to wanting them back home out of harms way, isn’t support in my book. As I pointed out in a previous post, if I was around during WWII I would have “supported” the Japanese and German troops in that way. But once our boys were handed a mission and in the throes of accomplishing it, I’d SUPPORT thme in the full meaning of the word.

Make sense?

224

I don’t know what Scott PLaid of the right means, but by all means, discount my position. If you think that it hinges on my inability to recall specific instances in a thread and getting a sign wrong and attributing to a sister group, sleep well believing you have slayed one of the crazy people who supports Bush and Blair.

225

:rolleyes:

226

Make sense? No.

Do I understand your position better? Yes. Thanks.

I will disagree with you here. I don’t like the thought that, to you, somehow I am a traitor to my country because I use my voice. If something is wrong, it’s wrong.

What if the military institutes a policy of wholesale slaughter in Iraq, kicks out the “embedded” media, and starts feeding scripted stories to us? Should I stand mute while the Army that I pay for, that acts in my name is forced by the asshats in power to commit atrocities? Should I continue to make public displays of hope that they “succeed”? Should we have hushed up Abu Ghraib because it was negative and “not supporting our troops” to relate those facts?

Your notion of propriety in regard to this seems somehow self-serving to me. It seems more designed to assuage some guilt or something about not believing in the mission but not wanting to feel like you are abandoning or condemning the men and women of our armed forces. It doesn’t have to be that simplistic, tho. I do not hold our soldiers in contempt for carrying out their orders. And I don’t want their mission to fail. But they don’t really have a mission, do they? They accomplished that more than 2 years ago, remember? So why are they still there?

227

I should mention that I do not want our soldiers mission to succeed, either.

I don’t believe we should be on this mission at all, and I would rather withdraw from the fray. Not lose, not win, just take our ball and go home.

And YES, I also realize that we can’t do it that easily, because we’ve made a really REALLY BIG MESS over there and now we have to clean it up. :smack:

228

What year did England declare war on the IRA?

Wow. You’re in another of your moods, aren’t you?

What war were we conducting on 9/11? Hell, what war were we conducting during the previous WTC bombing? Can you name the President of the US in office during both? It’s a little hazy, but I think the last names were off by a letter or two of matching each other.

I’ll offer one constant. Refute as you see fit.

There is only one constant in all the bombings. They are carried out by al-Queda. For years. (Hell, let’s include some hijackings and Lockerbie and Tehran and the Munich Olympics, etc.) See a pattern here?

Yeah, you do, but it doesn’t allow a full on bashing of Bush, so you “forget” that part of the whole picture.

There is a fringe (Notice I don’t imply all Muslims) of Islamic fundamentalists that hate Western culture and Judeo-Christianity. For all your derision of fringe Christians in the US (Fred Phelps comes to mind) it seems you would hold the same contempt for Islam. Yet you don’t.

We know you hate Bush. With a passion. Fine. You know I voted for him, yet we seem to be doing pretty well on teh social part. (You still owe me that drink!) :smiley:

Looking at the big picture, I’d prefer some ass-hat spewing hate to people too incompetent to understand it (Phelps) to some ass-hat blowing up innocents in the name of Allah. YMMV

229

Thanks for your response. And now I understand your position better. too (which is what I meant by “make sense?”).

I think you may be right. There probably is a point where “blind support” of the troops is unwise and UNpatriotic. I guess the differnce might be that I don’t see us being anywhere near that point and you, or others, do. Yes, mistakes have been made and much of the exectution of the war seems to have been botched, but I don’t think that automatically equates with making it wrong or evil (your example above). I think Abu Ghraib is instructive. I assume, you condemmed the crimes that were commited there by the people in our uniform, as did I. But I don’t think that is justification for condemming the war. (I don’t mean to imply that you do.)

So, from where I sit, believing what I do about the validity of the war, I feel obligated, and proud, to support our troops. I understand you don’t. But I think our major disagreement is that I don’t think the mistakes are a tenth as bad as you do. If I did, maybe I’d be protesting against it. But even if I did, I think I’d still send a care package or two to the men and women in the field. Perhaps that sums up my position better than I have been able to earlier.

As far as guilt, I have my share, but not over being a supporter of going into Iraq. I know we probably won’t agree on this, but I genuinely believe that after 9/11 President Bush (who I didn’t vote for twice, by the way) did the intelligent thing (requisite joke goes here) by defining the enemy as global terrorism. Then in that war against terrorism, in addition to the Taliban in Afghanistan, he identified Iraq as a threat. Not that they were going to bomb us, but that they would/could give WMDs (which the world believed they had at the time) to terrorists that would be all to happy to deliver them to our soil. I also think that given the nature of the threat, and what had just happened on 9/11, that acting preemptively was justifiable.

I’ll stop about the war there becasue I don’t want to derail the dicussion. I understand the other side of the argument and think it has merit. In the end, I just see it differently.

We disagree also as to whether or not they have a mission. The mission was to get rid of Saddam and hand over a stable, free Iraq to the Iraqi people. It’s taking longer than anyone would like, but the mission is still under way. And yes, Bush claiming “Mission Accomlished” was just plain dumb.

230

Thanks for your response, too. I think we understand each other a bit better, at least.

Yes, Abu Ghraib was a terrible thing to find out. I don’t mind if a soldier enjoys their job, but that is not a job I want out soldiers doing, or enjoying. Guard duty is fine, but not that. No, I wouldn’t use that as the justification for stopping the war. It’s a bad thing that happened during an even worse thing, for sure tho.

The only other thing I would point out is your choice of words. “Belief” should never be acceptable as justification for going to war. Not from Islamists, not from abortion foes, not from nobody no time no where. I am not a pacifist, but I need more than belief to make me pull the trigger on another human being. I need to know. Not think I know. I need to know.

btw, you’re not the only one who uses the word with regard to this war, WMD, etc. I just think it’s wrong to act in this manner, i.e. causing harm and death to other human beings, because of a belief.

ok, bedtime for Bo. Thanks again for a frank exchange, magellan.

231

::golf clap::

It seems that so many people (especially in the U.S) are playing right into the terrorists hands by panicking. In a large part I blame the media for this also. The name “terrorist” already says what their goal is: to terrorize. The best response: don’t let them terrorize you!

Europe and the U.K. have been living with terrorism for fourty years. Go find out what “Rote Armee Fraktion”, “Irish Republican Army”, “Baader-Meinhof” “Euskadi Ta Askatasuna” mean. That is why I cannot begin to understand the American “War on Terrorism”. Who have they declared war against? Who are they fighting? Where are the enemy combatants? Where are the battles being fought? And don’t tell me Iraq and Afghanistan, because that’s bullshit.

The U.S. needs to rethink it’s entire anti-terrorsim strategy. The best way to fight terrorists is to remove their breeding grounds. In other words, educate the people who might become terrorists, remove their financing, make them unpopular, remove their “raison d’etre”. This is what worked against the R.A.F. and the IRA, and this is the only thing that will work against Al Qaida and their ilk. Invading Iraq didn’t help one bit and probably made matters worse.

232

The threat from the IRA is now seriously diminished. During the events of yesterday I do not recall a single person seriously suspecting them of this, it would not be the first time they’ve attacked London.

Look at our responses to the IRA in the past. We have attempted to bring people to justice through investigations and dialogue. We did not bomb Ireland and we certainly didn’t employ ‘shock and awe’ tactics on it’s populace. And yet the threat is diminished. If we had dealt with the IRA the same way we have dealt with AQ then we would probably have invaded America due to a few of it’s citizens supporting terrorists.

I’ll admit that the situations are different however. Ireland is, obviously, more stable than places like Iraq. The citizens have a good standard of living and the outside interference is inconsequential in comparison. It does however show that blowing the shit out of things isn’t the only way to combat terrorism.

233

Bah. Mycroft Holmes said it much better than me.

234

Go back and re-read the quote I included. See how it condenses everything “simply” to “No illegal war=no bombings”? I responded to that by asking what war GB has declared on the IRA.

Are you saying there have been no IRA bombings in London? Are you just trying to inject a little fuel to an already volatile subject?

Or are you ding…ding…ding representative of those that want to blame everything on the current political stance in the US? No matter who’s actually, you know, doing this shit.

:non-winking Wally:

235

No. The main opposition party was also committed to staying in Iraq. Voting Labour out wouldn’t have neded the war.

There have been several HUGE anti-war demonstrations in London. The British public, on the whole, don’t want to be in Iraq.

Britain oppressed Ireland for hundreds of years. The IRA are an offshoot of those who didn’t agree with the 1921 treaty which gave Eire independence but retained Northern Ireland. While the IRA’s actions were reprehensible and counter-productive, they weren’t as groundless as you suggest.

Muslims can be any colour. There are lots and lots of black muslims - including some of those at Abu Ghraib. There are lots of white Muslims from Albania and Turkey, with varying skin and hair tones. Then consider that not everyone with an ‘Arabic’ appearance is Muslim (many of them would be Hindu) and, for the men, there isn’t a religion-specific style of dress.

But then, you’re all for scrutinizing Italians too. Basically anyone who isn’t blonde and blue-eyed. That’s such a wide profile that it’s not worth calling it a profile at all. It would just be stricter checks on everyone - which I would agree with.

The insult was in using his first name rather than his surname plus a title, like with other passengers.

I’m home today because my daughter’s school is closed. One of her teachers was apparently badly hurt in one of the attacks, many of the others can’t get in to the school, and the school is a ‘major incident reception area’ - nothing happening there at the moment of course, they’re just standing by and it’s a bit of an over-reaction really. (We live about ten minutes’ walk from both Liverpool St and Old St tubes).

I blame, in no particular order:

The individual terrorists who organised this
The people who funded them
Blair and certain other British politicians
Bush and his administration (his response to these bombings was sickeningly self-serving)

And I know I’m not alone in this.

In response, we should:

Pull out from Iraq at the date we planned to anyway

Use any resourcess available to legally track down the physical perpetrators

Increase the security prescence, partly for the public’s peace of mind

and

Not over-react.

So far that’s what’s happening. It’s just a few bombs. We’ve had them before. Life goes on. It doesn’t for the ones that died, but more than that are killed in car accidents every day, and that’s just as sad.

236

I for one don’t think the current political stance in the U.S. caused the tragic events of yesterday. I do think that the current political stance in the U.S. is not going to help solve the problem.

“The War Against Terrorism” (or TWAT as I like to call it) is a joke. Again I ask: Who has the U.S. declared war on? Where are the battles taking place? Who are the enemy combatants? You can’t declare a war on a concept like “terrorism” and you can’t beat terrorists by declaring war on them. You beat terrorists by cutting off their life-blood. This means cutting off their financing, cutting of their supply of recruits, cutting of their supply of arms, etc. I can see how invading Afghanistan may have helped here, but where does invading Iraq help?

By invading Iraq the U.S. has not cut off any financing (Iraq was not giving money to terrorists), you have not cut off their arms supply (Iraq was not supplying arms to terrorists) and you may well have increased their supply of recruits. A much better thing to do would be to put diplomatic pressure on people or groups that are helping the terrorists (yes, I’m looking at you Saudia Arabia).

237

All your ideas would do is create more outrage and therefore more terrorists. Frankly I wonder whose side people are on sometimes when they propose the effective naming and shaming of an entire religion as potential terorists.

238

Elections certainly are not fought on one issue. The British electorate was broadly satisfied with the govts other policies and the only opposition feeble and running on racist scare policies. spain had a viable and attractive opposition. I opposed the war but voted Labour to keep the vile tories out and with the expectation Brown will replace Blair.

239

Suppose Blair had to win a national election as opposed to being head of the party with a parliamentary majority. Are there any other leaders that the British would rather have in his place?

240

For the sake of clarity, that should have read ‘wouldn’t have ended the war.’