Sorry, when we have not even began to turn all industry back to the Iraqis Iran remains more democratic still. I do know that Iran is mostly a joke of a democracy; everybody knows that, surprisingly that joke has opposition still represented in their government. And there remains indeed a good chuck of people that did want change.
Possibly. But there was this thing called 9/11 (remember, the actual event where bin Laden’s people flew airplanes into skyscrapers, as opposed to the symbolic metaphor?) and we still ought to capture him, try him, and lock him up in the equivalent of Spandau Prison for the rest of his days.
Exactly. (We libruls have been pointing this out for years.) And this is why the “war on terror” as practiced by the Bush Administration is extremely convenient; since it’ll never conclude, it gets to be used as a justification for Iraq, the Patriot Act, Gitmo, and who knows what else, from now until the end of time.
Wonder whether we’re closer to, or further from, that goal as a result of the Iraq war?
You’re starting to sound like a liberal, Sam!
Not to mention, Pakistan has The Bomb, and they don’t mind sharing. Pakistan, unfortunately, is the hub of the true Axis of Evil.
Excepting Saudi Arabia, these are the nations I listed as more significant threats than Iraq to America and global stability during the run-up to the Iraq war.
Short on time at the moment but this I had to respond to. I mean, really, Sam, where do you get this stuff? Specifically the “last two years disaster for AQ” bit? Surely you’ve got facts to back that assertion, surely you can share. Or are they of the “super duper secret” variety that convinced you on the WMDs Of Doom a while back?
Meanwhile, us poor souls relegated to the realty-based community are relegated to reading stuff like this:
Study Published by Army Criticizes War on Terror’s Scope
State Department Report Shows Increase in Terrorism
Say it isn’t so, Sam.
PS-Book of the month for keyboard warriors: Dying to Win : The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
PS-Strike one “relegated” at will. :smack:
We’re talking about two different things. You’re talking about whether al-Qaida is ‘stronger’ in the sense that they have more recruits now, or whether there are more attacks. That may be the case (although they’re losing 'em pretty fast in iraq). I’m talking about whether they are achieving their goals and whether or not they are in a stronger strategic position today than they were two years ago.
By your logic, Japan was ‘winning’ the war in 1944 because they had more men under arms and there were more battles than there were in 1941.
It should be no surprise that there are more terror attacks now - that’s what happens in a war. The question is whether or not al-Qaida is in a better position to achieve what it wants today than it was two years ago. I’d say not.
Coincidentally, there was just a documentary on the KKK in the [del]Hitler[/del] History Channel, the way we virtually got rid of that terror organization was to use police action not a military one, far from becoming martyrs, the KKK was discredited in the trials that followed.
Also, all this talk on “we are at war” is in practical terms distorted by this administration and not by Liberals, it is really clear that it is not being considered a war by this administration. (No taxes to beat the axis, no war footing for the economy, no formal declaration of war, etc)
:sigh:
I also have been saying not! The question now is: Are we in a better position to kill, control, capture and discredit Al-Qaida? Keeping everything in secret, not doing trials, hiding the result of those trials: The result is to then watch their martyrdom grow in the Islamic world; we should be openly showing what bastards they are, and the lesson that the rule of law does not exclude them. Having currently a puppet government in Iraq is not helping.
The KKK is a little different. It was an unsophisticated, geographically isolated group of people living within a free society. Al-Qaida is a worldwide, decentralized terror network with numerous goals and members distributed through countries where we have little presence and no doubt often with the aid of those governments.
The main reason why treating al-Qaida as a criminal matter is because al-Qaida isn’t just some rogue, isolated batch of people who can be defeated and have the problem go away. Al-Qaida is more of a symbol, a representation of a much larger problem. As I’ve said before, trying to win the war on terror with better police work and intelligence is like trying to solve your wasp problem by buying a better fly swatter. It may help, but until you get rid of the nest your wasp problem isn’t going away.
Of course we need intelligence and police work. Much better, please. But it’s not sufficient. As long as governments continue to shelter them, and as long as elements within other societies are free to fund them and instigate the people into creating more of them, we’re going to need something more. Specifically, we’re going to need armies and the threat of force. At the same time, we need to help create conditions that give people in the region hope of a better life so they do not become radicalized, and we need to do everything we can to make sure the people in those countries know we have nothing against them and do not want to change their religion. We just want the radical elements expunged.
I agree. To a certain extent. On the one hand, you can’t have a formal declaration of war without having a specific country to declare war on. On the other, it’s certainly true that this is a ‘guns AND butter’ administration, and that’s folly.
The matter of trials is totally different. The argument against trying the people in Gitmo is simple: You can’t take people off a battlefield by the military and try them in the standard way. The military does not operate by police. When an enemy combatant is rounded up, their weapon is not tagged and bagged and entered into evidence with a chain of custody. The soldiers who captured them are long gone on to other assignments, and it may not even be clear who did the capturing. If you try them, they will be acquitted, and the U.S. will look even worse for having locked up ‘innocent’ people.
I don’t have a solution to the problem of enemy combatants in this kind of war. Some problems are pretty much intractable. That’s what terrorism has going for it. It forces the other side into difficult positions. Like the strategy of using ambulances to carry bombs, or running checkpoints in civilian vehicles with pregnant women behind the wheel with a gun to their heads. If you shoot them, you’re guilty of an atrocity. If you let them through, the next vehicle that looks exactly the same will be loaded with explosives. There are no easy, glib answers to these problems, but we know where the blame lies - with people who would put guns to the heads of pregnant women or prey upon the civilized instincts of their foes by using ambulances as bombs.
The KKK at its peak had 4 million members, including members of government at levels from municipal to federal and more or less outright control of several state governments.
Click on the Politics cartoon:
http://www.kchronicles.com/k-chronicles.shtml
Notice the year it was made.
And I will say it again: Afghanistan was necessary, Iraq not.
Not good enough, this is acknowledging that we even have less evidence to then subject then to torture or semi-torture.
Like the cartoon says: Shit!
I guess no one would have guessed that would happen!
I haven’t seen any evidence that Al -Q is operating in Iraq, let alone ‘pouring in.’
There are too many backdoor attempts to conflate action against Al-Q with the invasion of Iraq and I call ‘Hold!’ on this one.
Those aren’t terrorists dying in Iraq, least not on the defender’s side. Those are Iraqi nationals who want the occupying army out.
As to London, I agree with the response Londoners and their mayor are taking.
Actually what’s happening is that you’re framing the debate in your terms as per usual.
See? That’s has zilch to do with my comment. I am simply pointing out that AQ has grown stronger by virtue of the very evidence presented by the increased number of attacks worldwide – a fact that doesn’t sit quite well with Bush’s propaganda.
What ‘war’ Sam? Because there’s simply no way you’ll be able to subdue an ideology through conventional warfare. Hard as it may be for your to believe, AQ has no discernible central command or base of operations. Sure, capturing/killing OBL would likely be disruptive in the short term – but much like you felt killing/capturing Saddam and his sons would turn the tide in the Us’s favor in Iraq and in fact did squat, AQ, has grown into a loosely affiliated, many-headed hydra. Invading random countries for the purpose of “defeating Islamic terrorism” is like trying to nail jello to a wall. Just much bloodier.
Meanwhile, as much as you try to brand Spain’s response to the attacks a “capitulation,” fact of the matter is that our response has been the most pragmatic and direct: treating acts of terrorism as criminal acts and terrorists as mere criminals and going directly after those responsible to bring them to justice.
No need to declare war on Bolivia.
Um…what? The head of AQ in Iraq-a man praised by Osama himself-just had killed the Egyptian Ambassador, this week. You must have come across the name Abu Musab al-Zarqawi once or twice. A Jordanian BTW.
And almost none of the suicide bombers are Iraqi either (we had a thread on this, I’ll try and find it, but there’s so many of these). According to this Egyptian source, the Iraqi and foreign insurgents are fighting among themselves now.
…and here’s a cite quoting AQ’s aims in the Madrid bombings, just FTR:
I can’t get there from here right now, since a change in OS here at work has wiped out my computer’s memories of usernames and passwords at various papers. But waving my cursor over the link indicates that you’re citing an op-ed, rather than actual reportage.
Unlike with actual reporting, op-eds aren’t fact-checked by the newspaper’s editors. And I’m finding this document a bit too ‘good’ to be true, from a particular POV. Just sayin’.
But if it is true, I wonder how AQ got the Spanish government to lie about the attack and say it was the Basques’ fault - which was what seems to have been what got the Spanish to vote them out.
Sorry, it sucks when that happens. It is an op-ed piece by a contributor; he’s Robert A. Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, whose specialty is analysis of analysis of suicide terrorism. He doesn’t seem to be particularly conservative. Yes, it is an editorial, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d fudge cites.
And while you and I might understand that the government’s jumping to conclusions and the backlash is most probably what got them out of office, I don’t know if the AQ plotters are that sophisticated in their thinking. I think they think “We bombed them and they caved in and pulled their troops from Iraq. Let’s try it again.” QED.
OK. But I’m still suspicious of this document - Norwegian intel found it in December 2003, it talked about how hard to hit Spain before their March 2004 elections, and this was shared with the Spanish intelligence services (and public) how??
Maybe after the fact - but my point was their analysis was in fact nowhere near “prescient” though it was certainly murderous: all evidence points to the lies, not the bombings, being responsible for changing the government.
But even after the fact, AQ is sophisticated enough to note the continuing presence of Spanish troops in Afghanistan.
**RTFirefly ** got it first, I should add that Osama is likely in or around there (or in Pakistan) and since the Taliban that protected AQ is acting up in Afghanistan, that Spain is doing more for TWAT than before it helped to open the unnecessary second front in Iraq.
Also, Spain killed or captured the perpetrators of the bombings of Madrid, those who say Spain gave up are ignorants or demagogues.
yes, but there is one huge difference between the KKK and AlQaida:
All the leaders of the KKK accepted the authority of the US government in Washington and the US Supreme Court. When 9 old men in black robes ordered them to act like decent human beings, they obeyed the court orders.
With all due respect, when did this ever happen, in a manner that would apply to “all the leaders of the KKK”? Lynchings went on for roughly a century; were the Supremes slow in ordering the KKK to act like decent human beings, or did the KKK leaders regard lynching as within the bounds of decency?
Well either Al-Qaida or you are completely wrong.
England isn’t in Iraq.