True enough. But my point was that the bombing of Dresden wasn’t really an example of total warfare but an example of overkill on the part of the Allies.
I doubt it. I bet it had more to do with the fact that there were a bunch of angry Russians a few minutes from his door. To be quite frank, if I had to choose between being captured by the Red Army after I ordered as many atrocities committed on Russia as Hitler did or killing myself to avoid it, I’d kill myself every time. Plus, some of the Nazi leadership killed themselves rather than go through the trials at Nuremberg.
Hitler killed himself so that he would not be brought to justice (or tortured for years on end by the Russkies). It had nothing to do with our tactics used against his country.
A couple of minor points- the general consensus in Washington, from what I’ve read, is that even though Saddam is a very bad guy, any potential successor from the power structure would probably be not only much worse, but would also probably not be able to consolidate his power, leaving Iraq with fighting factions having access to Saddam’s arsenal. If this is indeed the thinking in Washington, I don’t think they would very willing to take him out just to have a scapegoat. They seem to be actively downplaying any Iraq link in the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax. Bin Laden OTOH is a real good scapegoat (I am not saying here that he was not behind the 9/11 attacks, just that if the US was looking for a scapegoat, he’d be a very good choice.)
Second, Bin Laden’s culpability for the African Embassy bombings is a good reason to go after him for them, but no reason at all to go after him for the 9/11 attacks. If somebody else did the 9/11 attacks, we should be going after them. JDM
This has been hammerred here, and in reputable meadia as well, but here goes:
The evidence has been presented to NATO - they were convinced of bin Laden’s guilt. The evidence has been presented to the Government of Pakistan, they were convinced.
If you start to doubt all the parties invloved, you have to start talking about a very large-scale conspiracy.
Also mentioned, many times, was the fact that not all evidence can be talked about publicly - this is to protect sources and strategies.
“i don’t understand you americans”
Your numbers are incorrect, Neurotik. You have made the common error of thinking that a “casualty” means the combatant was “killed in action.” This is untrue. From this site:
From the same site, the total of those killed in action is:
Union: 3155
Confederate: 2600-4500
Note that this includes the total killed over the course of the 3-day battle. The number killed at the WTC is certainly comparable, and occurred in a single morning. I believe it is certainly possible that WTC resulted in greater loss of life than any single day in U.S. history. (Also, whether one should include Confederate KIAs is debatable as well, I suppose. Similarly, should the WTC hijackers be included as casualties?)
Would you care to bring up your “many other” examples that demonstrate how insignificant the loss of life was at WTC?
Dresden was an extreme example of our total warfare campaign against Germany, destroying an entire country not just military targets. The Russians benefitted from our campaign allowing them to get that close to Hitler, just as we benefited from their offensives as well.
And the leg bone connects to the thigh bone . . .
BTW, can you imagine what the Russians would have done if they caught Hitler?
You, know I’m feeling extrmely masochistic today, I’ll sum up my points about setting aside morality when fighting a war by quoting Col. Kurtz as played by Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now” (boy am I going to get ripped for this! ):
. . .we went into a camp to inoculate it. The children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us, and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile–a pile of little arms. And I remember…I…I…I cried, I wept like some grandmother.
I wanted to tear my teeth out, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it, I never want to forget.
And then I realized–like I was shot…like I was shot with a diamond…a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, “My God, the genius of that, the genius, the will to do that.” Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they could stand that–these were not monsters, these were men, trained contras, these men who fought with their hearts, who have families, who have children, who are filled with love–that they had this strength, the strength to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time were able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment–without judgment. Because it’s judgment that defeats us.*
So… because they haven’t been practicing diplomacy the way you want, they aren’t practicing diplomacy? “If you give up ObL, we won’t attack you” is diplomacy. It’s not particulary generous diplomacy, but we aren’t really in a generous mood right now. We have no obligation to allow the Taliban to dictate terms to us. If the terms they offer are not acceptable, we continue bombing.
We have given them evidence. They say the evidence we’ve given them isn’t enough. Too bad. They do not have the right to decide what is and what is not enough evidence. Now, do you have a cite that if another country were asking for extradiction, we would ask for proof?
Have they named a country? If not, it’s useless posturing.
So the fact that we are giving them food shows that we don’t care about them?
Haven’t you been listening? That’s what the trial is for. And we can’t have a trial until the Taliban hands him over, now can we?
Lack of negotiation is not the same as lack of diplomacy. We gave the Taliban a peaceful way of resolving this conflict. Therefore, we tried to resolve this peacefully. IT is not our fault that the Taliban refused our offer.
The intent is obviously to help the people. There may be ulterior motives, but that does not change the fact that we are helping them with the purpose of helping them.
Whether the government has released the proof is irrelevant to whether ObL has been proven guilty.
Who cares? None of those treaties apply to Afghanistan.
So. Before September 11, Evil Man #1 Bush spent all his time just sitting around, praying someone would do something–anything–so he could fulfill his lifeling dream of bombing the hell out of innocent children?
I don’t know who said it, but I love the quote.
“For every complex problem, there’s a solution that’s neat, simple and WRONG.”
Now, I have way too many issues with your post to list them all. However…
The above situation is a straw man. Not everyone who is against force against Afghanistan do it because they have a simplified world view and think that “We shouldn’t contribute to harming other humans with senseless violence.”
It’s also a false dilemma. In any real-world situation you have more options than a) hitting back b) absolute total passivity. Do I REALLY have to point this out? We can just infiltrate Al-qaida(sp?), we have sanctions, we can do whatever… there are more than 2 options.
By doing this you’re on par with the KKK on a 60’s civil rights demonstration. But that obviously doesn’t matter to you, as long as dem peaceniks bleed. BLEED!
Being so sure that you’re right that you’ll inflict violence against people who disagree is exactly what brought on the WTC attacks in the first place.
In the above situation you do not only know exactly who did it (I’m not saying OBL is innocent did it - I think he did - but that he didn’t do it alone) but also EXACTLY where he is. Let’s say your opponent runs away to hide in a large mass of people, and the only way you can get to him is by punching everyone? That’s a completely separate argument - the version you decribed is so simplified and black-and-white it’s silly. To cut-n-paste from someone who summed it up better than me:
It’s not as clear cut what should be done anymore, eh?
You may think it’s clear that we should bomb the houses. Others think otherwise. Don’t go around insulting everyone with belief X 'cause you don’t agree. It makes you look like an ******* (We’re in GD, not in the BBQ pit.) The only ones who want Americans beating each other up are the Taliban.
I DON’T side with most of the peace protestors. I definitely don’t side with you. One thing you can do instead of beating people up because they disagree with you is to BEWARE OF SIMPLE SOLUTIONS. There’s a reason they’re simple, and that’s because they’re often wrong.
I think there is a simpler response to ElwoodCuse’s post. The argument he gives sounds great a first. Then think that the logic it supports is a good reason we were attacked in the first place, and the reason we probably will be attacked again. If you believe in the “hitting back an attacker is good” argument, you have to believe that our enemy hitting us back is also good. The argument goes both ways.
So if retaliation is a good thing(or even just violence to stop more violence) we’re right to attack Afghanistan. The same logic says they are equally right to attack us back. The same logic says that then we should hit them back, and then they should hit us back, etc, etc.
Hmm… Suddenly this doesn’t sound like such a great argument anymore. Actually, it sounds to me like a little fantasy of beating up peaceful people under the guise of teaching them a lesson. It’s actually is pretty sick, in my opinion.
Oh, please. First of all, sanctions don’t always work (look at Cuba and Iraq, for example), secondly, we’ve already had sanctions in place against Afghanistan for a couple of years now, fat lot of good they’ve done. Bin Laden’s operatives all tend to come from very close-knit families and the individuals involved have known one another for years. Infiltrating a group like that is exceedingly difficult and takes years upon years to do. In the meantime, Bin Laden’s free to go on another killing rampage.
No, Bin Laden being a power hungry demigog is what brought on the WTC attacks. The US, for all its faults, has always been ran by rational people. Rational people can be dealt with, can be negotiated with. You may not get exactly what you want, when you want it, but you’ll be able to modify the situation more to your liking. Bin Laden doesn’t want to negotiate, Bin Laden wants to be the ruler of the Arab world, and he sees us as the stumbling block to that goal.
Your analogy is false. In general, if a large group of people know that there is someone dangerous in their midst, they’ll help you find that person. The Taliban are not going to simply allow FBI agents to walk around Afghanistan looking for Bin Laden. The Taliban are going to do everything in their power to aid Bin Laden, and that means killing anyone who sets foot in their country with the goal of bringing him to trial.
Non-violent solutions work when the people you’re dealing with a rational human beings. When they are power-mad fanatics, there’s no point in trying to reason with them. All you’re doing is wasting your breathing and giving them time to plot against you. Its that simple.
But, Elwood humor invariably involves the infliction of pain on another. Thus humour=violence, and we must stomp … oops, sorry, that word has violent implications. We must bring humor to a peaceful end.
this is the kind of generalisation i intensely dislike and i try to avoid it whenever possible. i shouldn’t have said this; i have nothing against americans whatsoever. i meant that i dislike the policies, actions and seeming hypocrisy of the u.s. government, and the support it is getting from the american people.
i’m using the best figures i have available to me; those of the country where the deaths occured. i’m using u.s figures for u.s deaths and afghan figures for afghan deaths. while the taliban may not have given accurate figures, i had no better figures to go on. and given the extent of the u.s bombing, i would not be surprised if those figures were reasonable. regardless, the exact figures weren’t important. i was making a comment on my perception of america’s mentality, not on the numbers killed.
i don’t even see how i could begin to rebuke this. america is not a battered wife, there is incredibly little similarity. america’s foreign policy, and i’m not talking about ‘it’s support for israel’ (as muslim extremists seem fond of saying), but it’s foreign policy in general; everything from refusing to sign the kyoto treaty, to it’s abandoning of the nuclear arms non-proliferation treaty to the finer points of middle eastern policy. the entire attitude of ‘we’re king of the world, we’re going to do whatever we want and we don’t care how it affects anyone else’. i don’t support or condone the september 11 attacks; nor did america’s ‘misdemeanours’ deserve this consequence. but to claim america an innocent, to claim that there was no reason for the attacks is wrong.
in addition, i think it’s a bit rich for the american government to speak so strongly against terrorism after nicaragua, el salvador, chile etc. (hey… who were those guys that helped install general pinochet as leader of chile? displacing a demcoratically elected government in doing so?)
george w bush says: “there is a desire by the American people to not seek only revenge, but to win a war…”
while not straight out saying ‘we want to take other lives to compensate for the american ones lost’, on this board i’ve seen overwhelming numbers of people speaking in favour of ‘revenge’, ‘nuking the arabs’, ‘filling them with pork and sending them to hell’. i’ll look up threads if i have to, but i’m sure i’m not the only one who’s seen these threads.
i did…
george w bush: "Recently, a four-year-old son of a cargo specialist said good-bye to his Dad here at Travis. And according to his Mom, the boy has been telling the neighbors that “Daddy is saving the world.”
The boy is right. The boy is right. The future of the world is at stake. Freedom is at stake. But I want to tell that boy his Daddy has got plenty of help. There are a lot of people like his Daddy fighting this war. We fight it overseas and we fight it at home, as well."
doesn’t bin laden have the right to a trial by an impartial jury? i doubt you’ll find one of them in the u.s. hence, it would be fairer and probably more effective to try him in an international court.
what politics? read my post: the politics i was talking about. it being useful for america to have a stable government in afghanistan.
the govt of the u.s should act to stop bin laden. it doesn’t need to murder innocent afghan civillians to do it.
the u.s didn’t seem to feel this strongly about the taliban’s human rights injustices until the taliban started stepping on the u.s toes (you can treat your people however you want until we start feeling the effects?)
no it’s not. it’s the ‘the americans aren’t entirely blameless’ line. no, it isn’t their fault, but the us govt’s actions have helped to create anti-u.s feeling amongst other nations. i’ve already spoken about this.
cite?
yes.
so, because the afghanis are familiar with death, it means that when they are killed it matters less than when americans are killed?
it isn’t the only option available. with almost the entire world on the side of the u.s., diplomatic pressures would eventually force the taliban to cave in. instead, there’s now an unwinnable ‘war on terrorism’ going on in a hostile country causing (undoubtedly) the death of more americans, british troops, australian troops, plus any other countries that have sent military support. i don’t want to see another vietnam. this isn’t just the most morally corrupt solution to the problem, it could well turn out to be the most inefficient and devestating.
i was talking about oil! a stable government in afghanistan allows oil to be pumped through there. u.s gets oil without having to deal with iraq and saddam and the middle east! that’s how it helps americans!
i honestly do not know what you are talking about. my post was about lemur866’s assertion that a ‘rant’ of a ‘leftist’ political view (the OP), speaking against war in afghanistan was somehow ‘anti-american’. all i could assume was that lemur866 felt that these liberal-minded people expressing their view was somehow anti-american. it had tones of mccarthyism about it. if he meant something else, feel free to correct me.
not at all. i enjoy the exchange of views. as to your assertion that my arguments are ‘biased’: i doubt there are many arguments in this forum that are not ‘biased’. since bias is allowing a point of view to influence your writing, then by definition, taking a stance on an issue is bias. yes, my argument is biased; i am arguing in favour of peace in afghanistan. your argument is also biased. your arguing against peace in afghanistan. of course my argument is biased, but then again, every single argument in this thread, and probably this board, is biased.
and no, my argument is not ‘unthought out’. i have rebutted every single one of your points. it is seemingly very well thought out.
of course he didn’t. he probably was hoping for a government in afghanistan that would enable oil pipelines to be put throught there. when evil man #1 bin laden comes along and blows up his buildings, dub-ya thinks ‘i’m going to get this bastard… and while i’m at it, i could really do with some oil as well. why not kill two birds with one stone, then’*
*paraphrased version of george dub-ya’s thought process.
Oh for god’s sake, gex gex. In your obsessive reading of articles and websites to find evidence of Bush’s evil intent, you didn’t run across anything about the pilot training programs in which some of the hijackers enrolled?
Either you are the most selective reader ever, or you are trolling. I’m leaning towards #2.
I will start with the two most cited arguments by leftists from China to Brazil, thanks for raising them again gex gex. Not relevant, but I like to rehash them over and over.
Was it good that the U.S. opposed Soviet expansionism, particularly Joeseph Stalin and the Warsaw Pact, or was all anti-commusist action McCarthyism? If you disagree with someone, how is them trying to convince you to agree McCarthyism? I seem to remember hearing about subpoenas and hearings.
Did your country ratify the Kyoto Treaty?
Since “murder” requires criminal intent, please show one example of murder in the present campaign (not counting those perpetrated by OBL or the Taliban).
Perhaps you could explain why OBL justifies everything he does through religion and refers to us as Infidel and Kafir? How will changing our foreign policy remove us from Kafir status in his mind?
How? What can the international community do it already has not, save military action? I guess we could stop humanitarian food aid. (I am not talking about the recent drops, I speak of the tens of millions we give Afghanistan through the UN) Why do I just know you would oppose that also?
Is the brutally repressive Taliban regime, which bans women’s ankles, CDs, and executes people for the free exercise of religion, peaceful?
Since practically the entire world except Winston Churchill thought WWII was unwinnable for the English, and WWII led to millions of casualties, the English should have put Hitler on trial and sanctioned him, correct?
Without quoting Taliban sources, how do you propose this?
So you’re saying on one hand that you don’t condone the attacks, but you’re saying on the other hand that there was a REASON for the attacks.
Well, of course there was a reason. There’s a reason for everything. There’s a reason Jeffrey Dahmer carved young boys up and ate them; so what? Everything has a reason, but not everything has an excuse, and the 9/11 attacks have no excuse, no matter what U.S. foreign policy is. Either the attacks were justified or they were not. If you think they were justified, say so. But don’t say they weren’t and then imply they were.
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the terms “Revenge” and “Evening the score,” but they are not synonymous in the way you implied. To suggest that Americans want to seek revenge by killing 7,000 Afghan civilians - and that is what you said, so don’t start denying it now - is ludicrous. Every American I know wants revenge on Osama bin Laden, not Joe Q. Afghanpublic.
Sorry, but I don’t believe it. I’ve seen some hyperbole, and there’s always a nut here and there, but the overwhelming attitude of the American people is that they want action that will ensure security, not the wholesale slaughter of innocents. You know that’s true, so why are you being dishonest about it?
doesn’t bin laden have the right to a trial by an impartial jury? i doubt you’ll find one of them in the u.s. hence, it would be fairer and probably more effective to try him in an international court.**
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What the heck are you talking about? I mean seriously, what planet are you referring to? NO country, ever, anywhere, willingly allows criminals to be tried for domestic crimes in other countries. The U.S. is perfectly within its rights to try bin Laden in the United States, and I’m sure you could find twelve people who would be willing to give an honest look at the evidence. If it was an obvious setup job and he really didn’t seem to be behind it, I think you’d be surprised at how quick a jury would heave it out. Americans are not all drooling Neanderthals.
It was useful last year, too, but they did not attack then. It was useful in 1999, 1998, 1997; no attacks. Hell, it’s useful for the U.S. to have a stable government everywhere in the world, and yet they don’t attack every tinpot backwater with civil strife. There’s been ample justification before and yet they did not attack. And then, NOW, they attack. Do you think it’s just a coincidence that the U.S. happened to do this after a catastrophic assault on American civilians?
Your argument fails the test of Occam’s Razor; it defies the obvious and simple explanation in favour of the convoluted and the twisted. The really, really simple and logical explanation here is that the U.S. is responding to an unprovoked attack. Your explanation is comparatively hard to explain and defies logic in more than one way. So which should I believe?
IF you can devise a practical and realistic way to get bin Laden and his henchmen without using military force, I challenge you to present it. If you have devised a way to use force without risk to civilians, you should patent it and let us know what it is.
Well… of course not. The U.S. government should be more concerned about U.S. citizens than about other citizens, shouldn’t it? Isn’t that their job? Doesn’t the French government concern itself with the welfare of French citizens? Doesn’t the Australian government place the well-being of Australian citizens over the citizens of other countries? Of course they do.
You’re demonstrating the validity of Jones’s Eleventh Law: No matter what, no matter where, the United States will be blamed for everything. When asked why the U.S. should not do something about the attacks you blithely comment that they didn’t seem to care about the problems of the common Afghani - a non sequitur, but let’s run with it. If the U.S. HAD previously taken action against Afghanistan - sanctions, diplomacy, whatever - how do you think you’d react? My guess is you’d blame them for it, because earlier in this very post you accused them of trying to be the world’s saviour. If they do nothing, you blame them for that, but when they do something, you blame them for that. What reasonable course of action could they take you wouldn’t dislike? I don’t believe there is one.
**
no it’s not. it’s the ‘the americans aren’t entirely blameless’ line. no, it isn’t their fault, but the us govt’s actions have helped to create anti-u.s feeling amongst other nations. i’ve already spoken about this.
[/QUOTE]
cf. Jones’s Eleventh Law. And you’re contradicting yourself; you’re saying it’s not their fault, and then saying they aren’t ENTIRELY blameless. Well, in English, “Not entirely blameless” means “blame,” and “Blame” and “Fault” go hand in hand, my friend.
Let me be quite clear; they’re blameless. They aren’t blameless for a variety of other foreign policy misdeeds, but they’re blameless for Sept. 11. There’s no conceivable rationaliation for what happened; it was not a rational, justifiable or proportional response of any kind. It was EXACTLY equivalent to me hitting you with an axe because I learned that you had been mean to your mother; I had no right to do what I did, you had no right to be injured that way, and there wasn’t even a logical connection. Well, Osama bin Laden and his minions had no right to do what they did, the people they murdered had no right to be murdered, and there’s not a shred of logical connection between U.S. foreign policy and what happened. What the holy hell do Osama bin Laden and the poor people who died on Sept. 11 have to do with Chile in 1973? Nothing.
I am stunned by the awesome sweep of such ignorance. What, might I ask, would Gore have done differently that would have magically turned Osama bin Laden into a friend of the United States? Curious that bin Laden because so enraged at the USA while Gore’s mentor was President, isn’t it?
Is OBL really angry about the 1973 coup in Chile, the assasination of Allende, El Salvador, etc, or are you just trying to be a non-capitalizing Noam Chomsky?
Dryga_Yes:
I think that the suggetions are aimed at people who oppose all violence, not those that disagree with the exact manner in which violence is being applied. The point is that to stop violence, sometimes one must respond with violence. To categorically oppose violence is silly.
No, I don’t “have to” believe that or any other of the illogical ideas put forth. Hitting back the terrorists is good because their actions were not justified, and therefore deserve retaliation. Them hitting us back is not good because our actions are justified. The “anything we do everyone should be able to do” argument is ridiculous. According to that logic, the Nazis were justified in bombing Britain because Britain was bombing them.
gex gex
America is attacked.
People try to make America feel guilty for being attacked.
You don’t see any similarity to a battered wife?
And BTW, it’s “its”, not “it’s”.
No. Why would he?
Why does ObL get special treatment? No one else charged in a crime in the US gets shipped off to another country.
I certainly hope that there is concrete proof, and that this isn’t being publicly aired because of danger to informants. Otherwise, the US is bombing Afghanistan over the bombing of two embassies which occurred in 1993, and over which it has already deployed cruise missile attacks. Retribution for those incidents have already taken place.
“Going after him” is a different concept to bombing Afghan cities for somthing which happened 9 years ago.
The US does need proof of complicity in the WTC attacks to attack Afghanistan for the purpose of killing or capturing bin Laden.
To an extent its a moot point. I for one believe such proof exists. Pakistan would not be helping out otherwise. And setting aside the issue of bin Laden entirely, the Taleban government is so vile that attacking it because of its existence is justifiable, IMHO. But you confuse, dangerously, the concept of seeking a terrorist criminal with the concept of bombing another country. You need some evidence to justify the first: you need conclusive evidence to justify the second.
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