Spare the pompousness. You should know better than to post opinion in GD.
What is the point? Does this somewho change things?
Are you implying that our government is to blame because of this?
You might as well blame the airlines for making planes available for hijacking. Blame New York for building the targets. Blame the victims for dying.
You are correct that the USA unofficially backed Bin Laden when Osama BL was helping fight against a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. My impression was that the US backed OBL more or less circumstantially in the course of backing ALL Afghan rebels against the Soviet invasion. In the '80s, the US may have supplied money, training, and weapons to Afghan rebels led by Bin Laden.
However, IMHO, the US can still take a less-than-legitimte moral “high ground” in going after Bin Laden. If I were evaluating possible countermeasures for the US, I would discard at hand Bin Laden’s past links to the US intelligence community.
Ok. Personally, I feel the “judicial model” will not work. There is no way that we can capture, extradite, depose, try, convict, and sentence 99% of these people. Especially considering that they don’t live in the United States, and they don’t live in countries friendly to the United States.
This is not a criminal act, and treating it like a criminal act will be counterproductive. Did we capture, try, and convict German soldiers in WWII? Did we capture, try, and convict Viet Cong troops in the Vietnam War? No, we attacked them and killed them.
This is not a fight against criminals, it is a fight against enemy soldiers. The soldiers may not wear a uniform, but they are enemy soldiers nonetheless. They should fall under military rules of engagement, not police rules. If German soldiers in WWII had removed their uniforms but continued fighting, would that have stopped us from shooting at them? “Oh, there’s a bunch of german citizens coming our way in a couple of trucks. To bad we don’t have probable cause to stop them, the judge would throw out the evidence if we searched their vehicle.”
Of course, military rules prohibit killing civilians unneccesarily. But our soldiers in Desert Storm didn’t have to get a warrant to drop bombs on Iraqi bunkers or to take Iraqi soldiers prisoner. They didn’t have to go through an eminent domain lawsuit in order to destroy a bridge that the Iraqis were using. We didn’t get permission from a judge to bomb the training camps in Afganistan last year.
Judicial oversight is used because it guarantees our freedoms and protects us from government abuse. But the Constitution is not a suicide pact. We are not on a hunt for criminals, we are at war.
You heard it here first. And this isn’t just heated, patriotic rhetoric. Think about it.
What happened yesterday is unprecedented. It is the worst atrocity in U.S. history. If you haven’t figured that out yet, you will, when the body count of innocent civilians tops 30,000 at least.
The U.S. government will see a need for an unprecedented, historic, unequivocal response as well. A plain-old, vanilla missile strike isn’t going to cut it this time. And a ground war would be ineffective and prolonged.
Why were the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945? Because Truman wanted to avoid a ground war in and around Japan in which the number of American soldiers that would die is comparable to the number of civilians that died in NYC - in an act of war on American soil - yesterday.
Prepare yourself for the idea that we will be dropping a nuclear bomb, or firing a nuclear missile, upon the capital city of any country found to have aided and abetted this.
And let me launch a preemptive strike of my own. If you paint this as a “Bush thing” or a “Republican thing,” you are a fool. What do you think a Democratic president would do? Strong words of condemnation? Sanctions?
And do you think the Congressional Democrats in leadership, intel and armed services at the very least will not be consulted on, and give their support to, such an action?
And, FWIW, it’s my understanding that the NATO nations today pledged their full support, militarily and otherwise, to any action the U.S. takes in light of the act of war against it.
For all of you asserting ‘this is war’:
I understand your position. however, exactly how do you wage a ‘war’ against terrorists? This is not a cohesive, indentification card carrying, passport indigenous, geographically identifiable, wearing-the-same-uniform group of people.
There are several identifiable terrorist organizations. Their members, however, don’t always even live in the same city.
One can wage war against another nation/city etc. But in order to identify and isolate these specific folks, either you do the ‘carpetnuking’ of an entire region and accept that you will be responsible for the decimation of innocents, just as surely as those you abhored, OR you work with all nations to identify, locate and secure those responsible.
Little roving bands of assassins is not the answer. carpet bombing regions of real estate is not the answer. Let us not become that which we condemn.
And for all of you asserting, “Let us not become that which we condemn …”
(With respect, wring. Because I have heard this sentiment from many others here, not just you.)
Your assessment that this is an enemy that poses unique, unprecedented challenges is right on the money. But that we are at war with whomever was involved in this is a fact, cemented by the words of our president and our Congress Wednesday.
I think you are not paying enough attention to our nation’s priorities - it’s Prime Directive. Preserving our safety, borders, government and way of life is Number 1. Everything else is Number 2.
As we learned in Iraq, our military doctrine now is to be ruthless until the job is done.*
I think the idea of killing innocent people is deplorable, too. It’s also been proven historically to be impossible to avoid in a time of war.
And I don’t think it will prevent our government from doing what it feels it needs to militarily to protect the citizens and borders of the United States.
If the perpetrators of this hide like cowards among civilians, civilians are going to die. As regrettable as that is.
Perhaps the horror of this, AND the horror of our almost inevitable response, will bring about a new attitude in the Middle East (or anywhere where this is a problem):
If your government and citizens don’t work diligently to denounce and eradicate terrorists and enemies of our country, and they harm us or pose a threat to us, we cannot and will not be responsible for your well-being, in doing what we have to do to protect ourselves.
[sub]* It can most certainly be argued that the job was not finished in Iraq, but that was a political decision; not a military one. I am referring to the overwhelming military onslaught up to the end of the war.[/sub]
But the problem with Desert Storm was, we didn’t finish the job. Now, at the time, I was firmly against that war. My politics have changed somewhat since then, due to making an effort to be better informed. But even back then, I was of the opinion that if you’re going to do it, do it right. We soundly defeated the Iraqi military, but left the government in place. Hopefully we won’t make that mistake again.
Did I SAY that? No. I’m simply stating a fact-that the US HAS used terrorist tactics in the past.
That does NOT justify what happened. Not one bit. Violence begats violence. What happened was horrible, hideous and disgusting.
My point is to Bill and others-not all terrorists are from the Mid East.
Please Milo exactly what does the declaration of war on terrorists mean in practical terms?
Let me put it this way, what I hope happens (and what I see Powell’s words to mean) is that we work collectively with all official sources to track these folks down. Identify them. locate them. And, if we’ve done that, we would therefore be able to secure them.
Look at the manhunt for Sloty (sp? - the guy who killed his family). Did we firebomb all of his relatives houses? no. Did we use artillery on all cars remotely matching the description of what he drove? no. We searched and located him. Now, had he holed himself up in a house, then you’d have the same sort of scene that sometimes happens.
And, if it is to be done correctly (and half measures will do nothing positive), you must identify all of them and correctly. For if you misidentify one and kill him, you’ve just created the next one (in that man’s brother/son whatever) Remember Tim McVeigh grew his plot over the botched raids of Ruby Ridge and Waco. Let us please learn from the past.
and, as far as holding Afghanistan responsible and invading etc - as folks have been pointing out in another GD thread - we’ve been searching for Rudolph (the guy we want for the Olympic bombings) for years and he’s here.
Again - my point is if you can identify and locate those responsible then you seize them. If you cannot identify and locate them you should not use mass destruction on the theory that maybe they’re there. It would only breed the next wave of Bin Ladens.
Hibbins wrote:
Stupid victims, it’s all their fault. Hmph.
Bin Ladin has been wanted by the US for a number of years now. We pretty much know where he is (Afghanistan). Yet he is not in custody. Why is that? Because a Government deems it a worthy cause to protect him. Whoever the evidence implies is behind this, will likely be in a similar situation. You’ll never have enough hard evidence to convince one of these protector states to give them up, and even if you did they still wouldn’t do it.
It’s a pure fallacy to believe you can combat this kind of disregard for life, with laws and gentlemenly actions.
And we (the US) have been looking for Rudolph (the Olympic bomber) for years, know he’s in the US and yet he’s not in custody. Why is that??? It isn’t 'cause the government deems it a worthy cause to protect him.
Your thinking of this as a group of criminals that needs to be arrested, wring.
I will be amazed if at least one, if not two or three, governments did not have some level of complicity in this. At the very least, turning a blind eye while known terrorists were organizing it on their country’s soil.
It was far too complex, sophisticated and coordinated for there to be any other answer.
What happens in this scenario? Our intelligence people come back to us and say, “We have confirmed evidence that it involved radical individuals in a few militant Islamic groups, (say) bin Laden’s, Hamas and Hezbollah. But we can’t pin it down any more definitely than that. The individuals seemed to be very fluid in their movements and actions, operating out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon.”
So, what do we do? Shrug? Work diligently to more finely identify who did what, and just attempt to “arrest” those individual terrorists?
Tens of thousands of people are dead in New York City. We have absolutely no assurances that this is over.
There is one response - defending our nation and our allies against further harm, by annihilating any group involved in any way; and attacking any government that chronically harbors these people.
Period.
I should add, in case it isn’t clear from my last post, that because we (and NATO) are at war, protecting the lives of innocent civilians in the nations harboring these deadly enemies of ours will be secondary to eliminating the aforementioned threat against us and our allies, if it comes to that.
and Milo you are assuming (stating) that some government has some complicancy. If so, it can be found out. and then dealt with.
But at this point, there is no evidence to suggest that.
If information comes to light, then status can change. If Germany had demanded we extradite Rudolph to them (since wasn’t it a German tourist who was killed in Atlanta?), should Germany now look at us as an enemy since we haven’t turned him over?
So far, what ‘everybody knows’ is that it was a Palestinian - except that it appears to be Egyptian/Saudi nationals
see why I’m suggesting that 'afore we send out the bombers we make some attempt to know what we’re doing first?
Hardly an equal comparison. If he were granting interviews and publishing a paper do you think we would locate him? He’d be in custody in no time.
So why with Bin Laden being something less than hermit like has he not been taken into custody? Because he is being protected by the government of the country in which he is hiding. Even if we knew for a fact that he were at 123 Whatever Street, we still wouldn’t be able to take him into custody. At least not without violating his rights in your eyes. Do you think we haven’t asked Afghanistan nicely and not so nicely to please hand him over?
wring,
Please take a step back and look at what you are saying.
You are comparing a “known” or at least highly suspected terrorist “hiding” (hardly) in a country that supports his actions, provides him sanctuary, and promotes his innocence.
To:
A known or at least highly suspected terrorist/criminal hiding (literally) in a country that is actively searching for and wishes to prosecute him.
If we were protecting Rudolph and telling the world that it was good that a German was killed, I think Germany certainly would have a right to be pissed.
Hibbens and we ‘know’ this How??? Since this is GD, how about if you demonstrate proof that the Taliban knows where Bin Laden is right now. In the meantime:
we don’t know where Bin Laden is. We don’t have any way to prove that the Taliban knows right now, either. All the intellegence we have suggests that he is hiding in extremely remote areas, moving several times a week, under disguise, and that very very few folks know where he is at any given point in time.
What you **may ** be able to do is suggest (not prove) that the Afghani government hasn’t made finding Bin Laden the only thing on their mind right now. Perhaps it should be. Perhaps it will. But before you condemn a country filled with folks (many of whom seem to oppose their leaders) to die in a halocaust, perhaps you could offer up a bit more than ‘we know’ ?
[quote]
So far, what ‘everybody knows’ is that it was a Palestinian - except that it appears to be
Egyptian/Saudi nationals
see why I’m suggesting that 'afore we send out the bombers we make some attempt to know what we’re doing first?
[quote]
See, if you read what I have said carefully I have not laid the blame at anyone’s feet as of yet.
Yes, before we send out the bombers we do need to have a reasonable idea of who is to blame. But no, we don’t need and likely will never get good solid court of law, permissible evidence linking this act directly to its sponsors.