Really? Not the rebel Kurds in northern Iraq who have been targets of repeated poison gas attacks by Saddam Hussein? Not the minotry muslims in southern Iraq who have been driven out of the homes and into the swamps by Saddam Hussein? Not even your average Iraqi citizen in Babylon that have had their relatives disappeared by Saddam Hussein’s secret police? None of those people would welcome his being replaced?
Why do people keep insisting that this is about money? You think AID to the region is going to stop the terror?
Osama Bin Laden has declared Saudi Arabia and Egypt to be sworn enemies of his, BECAUSE they accept U.S. help.
This is a religious war, folks. It has nothing to do with poverty. Bin Laden sees us as infidels. He has declared a holy war against us.
We are rich, free, powerful, and in their eyes, decadent. As a result, they will always hate us as infidels. There can be no peace until they either learn that we can not be defeated or even seriously hurt, or until they are dead.
I’m also concerned that a “war on terrorism” would ultimately doomed.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully support military action to arrest (a trial in the Hague, would be nice, not necessary, but nice) and dismantle Bin Ladin’s (or whoever is ultimately responsible)organization. I’d extend that to all of Afghanistan if they do not cooperate, as nasty as I find that prospect. The same goes for all large terrorist organizations everywhere that present a real threat to America.
I believe such an action, or series of actions are winnable and should be undertaken.
But to beleive that we can wipe out “terrorism” is naive at best. One man’s terrorism is another man’s guerilla warfare. It is a tactic that’s highly accessible and, in some respects, highly effective. It will occur whenever and wherever any group of sufficently desperate, angry, and/or insane people find each other and some resources and a sufficent reason to hate their target. They will be aided by a state whenever their goals are similar, and whenever, as is the case with bin Ladin and Afghanistan, the terrorist can offer something to the state. I cannot see this ending. Not within my lifetime, anyway, and I’m a young man.
Rather than “killing them all”, or “putting the fear of god into them” (an ironic choice of words, don’t you think?), actions I can only see leading to more resentment, desperation, and terorism, I propose a more preventative approach.[ul][]Realize that the US is not God, and that other countries are not our playthings. Avoid exploiting other nations, in all senses of the world, as we would avoid exploting our own citizens.[]Don’t be bullies. Yes. We could reduce any nation on Earth to a smouldering heap. Make it clear that we won’t unless we absolutely have to do so.[]Avoid extreme economic inequality. Terrorists are recruited from the starving masses with nothing to lose, and bankrolled by untouchable billionares who can afford to lose too much. Both are a very bad thing to have against you. Combat the formation of the former especially.[]And for God’s sake, think twice before you train and arm zealots with situational, at best, loyalties to the United States.[/ul]Sorry if I rambled, but I had to get that off my chest. If any of my above statements are construed as a justification for terrorism in general or this Tuesday’s attack in particular, then I have made an error in communication, and apologize.
thank you for clarifying my statement with the word “legitimate”. I don’t by any means believe that the mainstream Muslim faith advocates this bloodshed.
What I meant was that the terrorist actions are fed be the religious fervor of fundamentalists who have coopted some religious beliefs.
They no more represent their religion than Falwell represents most of christianity when he recently said that we brought this upon ourselves by letting homosexuals & civil libertarians run amok. <still shaking head in disbelief>
but i do stand by the statement that the attacks had at least partially religious motives, “legitimate” or not. Given that, I think the US will find the adversary very dedicated.
I’m sure many of them would welcome his being replaced. But consider that the greatest decimation of that country’s infrastructure has come from US bombs and US lead economic sanctions. Consider that even US govt. figures put the iraqi casualties due to lack of clean water & healthcare well into 6 figures. Considering all that, I conjecture that those people see no greater evil than the US.
Which brings up a greater point - even if opposing factions to Saddam Hussein somehow wish to team up with us to remove him, are they necessarily the people we wish to help to power??
When the f@#$% will this country learn that “The Enemy of my Enemy is not my Friend”??
Saddam Hussein - originally supported by US, since he was fighting the Ayatollah
Manuel Noriega - CIA supported, as long as he was fightin commies.
Osama Bin Laden - classic “blowback”, where a CIA trained insurgent later turns on us. We were handing out Stinger missiles to his people to shoot down MIGs.
Guys, we have Colin Powell on our side. When the Haiti government had a coup, he stepped in and restored the democratic government without firing a shot. He was head of the Joint Chief of Staff when he faced the 4th largest Army on earth, and devised a plan to completely demoralize them in nine weeks.
To win this war, the US partly will have to change the Arabs’ hearts. Transform from The Great Satan to the Great Santa, so to speak. The Arab countries have serious problems of their own fighting terrorism. Maybe in this war, the US would help out in that regard. Reduce the sanctions and embargoes in the countries not targeted. The Taliban will have to go, they were tolerated for waay to long.
The fact that so many people seem to think that wiping out Osama bin Laden is going to put an end to this problem is the best evidence of the profound lack of understanding of the underlying political situation in the Middle East.
The situation is complex and multifaceted and involves the totality of US involvement in the region in the postwar period. It boils down to the fact that public opinion in the region is overwhelmingly negative vis a vis US policy in the region. This extends not only to US policy vis a vis Palestine, but to the repressive political forces which the US has supported in individual states in the region.
It is a mistake to believe that the people of the region are unsophisticated people. They live there and deal daily with the consequence of US policy in the region. They are increasingly angry and the moderate leadership in some of these states is increasingly isolated and discredited as a large section of public opinion has concluded that it is powerless or unwilling to resist what is seen as US meddling in the affairs of the region to the detriment of the people who live there.
Increasingly, the third or fourth generation of this region reject the calls for moderation of their elders as treason and are increasingly drawn to the call of the fundamentalists for a holy war against the US. It is an extremely dangerous situation, and has been so for some time. It is a hard mouthful for Americans to swallow but eventually they will have to confront this fundamental reality.
Grave and unpredictable consequence could result from any massive US military operation in the region. So-called moderate government could fall to be replace by Islamic fundamentalist regimes. It’s very difficult to imagine what the US could do to prevent this once the momentum develops. In the case of Pakistan, there is the very real possibility of a Taliban-type regime coming to power and having access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Bottom line. We’d better know what the possible consequence of military action can be.
Be it a Nuke or Bio they have something. No one in their right mind would protect one person at the cost of millions.
Afghanistan will have a fun time deploying any nuke they may possess. Do either Afghanistan or Pakistan have ANY kind of lng-range delivery capabilities?
That’s a hell of a lot of conjecture. Considering that the Iraqi government continually refuses any attempt to assess the situation or even confirm the number of dead, it’s logical to conclude that alot of the suffering in Iraq lies at the hands of the Iraqi government. Iraq has actually been exporting medical supplies sent to it. The suffering of its population serves the regime that rules it.
http://www.fair.org/articles/crossette.html
So your conjecture lies at whether or not the suffering people of Iraq embrace the nonsense their government spouts. My conjecture is that they don’t care and simply spend their time trying to make it through each day.
Afghanistan does not have any nuclear weapons at this time. Considering their total lack of research capability, the only ones they’d ever get would have to be given to them and Pakistan has no such intention. Especially considering that the Taliban just threatened them.
India and Pakistan both have the ability to inflict horrible harm on each other, but lack the missile range to strike much farther than their own regions. Max range is estimated at around 2000 KM.
Thank you, Blackclaw, for helping to put to bed some sensationalist panic-spreading.
We cannot bomb Afghanistan back to the stone age, they are still in the stone age.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction…The chain reaction of evil–hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars–must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation”.
Martin Luther King Jr, STRENGTH TO LOVE, 1963.