AMERICA'S REVENGE HAS STARTED!

by nicolaou 85 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  jelly

  "[5] You have not responded to my assertion that to allow atrocities to occur and not do ever thing in you power to stop them, while hiding under the guise of pacifism, is cowardice, dishonest, immature, and ignorant."

  I think that is arrogant. To assume that pacifism is "cowardice, dishonest, immature, and ignorant" is just throwing meaningless insults at someone who has had the temerity to disagree with you, which is, as you so nicely put it "immature, and ignorant". If you can construct a sentence without stooping to that level it might be worth replying to.

  Were my words too harsh? Maybe. I will stick by dishonest and immature however. To do nothing, or to do something that has proven not to work is morally bankrupt. It will result in more Americans being murdered and make the world worse off. It is a weakness.

  However I want to thank you for responding to my arguments. Even when you took exception to [5] it was done in a way conducive to communication.

  I really don’t think my thinking is black and white. I stand by my assertion/argument that limited strikes are ineffective. Once again however I find myself defending what I never said. Who said anything about a land war? At this moment there is already a civil war in Afghanistan lets just support him. Any way you can cripple a countries ability to govern with bombs. You can destroy the power grid, transportation and communication hub and bring the country to a stand still. When the rebuild it destroy it again. Also the American military often finds itself restrained when on missions, you can’t bomb here, etc, etc. We could, literally level their military bases and destroy a large part of their army and equipment if these limitations were lifted.

  Once again I believe a precedent must be set.

  Jelly
• 

  jelly

  Well, that's not obvious to small people like me. Care to elaborate without calling me stupid? You know, I wasted some two or three sentences to elaborate my point.

  Have I once called you stupid? I took exception to you and Comf impling I was blood thirsty. I intentionally brought up Harry Truman to show that some times people are forced to do what they hate because the situation demands it.

  Why they needed a large network of support:

  [1] Faked papers
  [2] Money to live
  [3] Money for flight training

  This is not an exhaustive list; I could search CNN for articles detailing why the commentators (many former intelligence experts) feel that they had a large network, but why should I. If you are curious do it for your self.

  The situation is much different yes, but is the enemy? Japan at that time basically had a cult of Emperor worship, they were as warlike and homicidal as any county in the world then or now. I suggest you read ‘the rape of Nanking’. What is Japan like now?

  Is it going to be difficult to find Bin Laden? Yes. It will not however be difficult to find the countries that support him, with his support removed he will be ineffective.

  Jelly

  P.S. To me attempting solutions that have proven to be ineffective is the same as appeasement.
• 

  fodeja

  Why they needed a large network of support:

  I agree with most of your points (though I'm not sure why they would necessarily need fake IDs). My original statement wasn't worded clearly enough. As I said, they do need money, people, and a plan, and all of these travel easily. A network of supporters is very helpful and maybe even necessary, but a network is exactly that: a network. It's not a base or headquarters like, a couple of bunkers somewhere that you can drop a bomb on. It consists of supporters who may be dispersed all over the globe. They may be living in a students' dorm in Hamburg, with a criminal record white as snow, and not so much as a breadknife for a weapon. They may be living in a hut somewhere in the Afghan mountains toting old AK-47s. You can nuke away a couple of nodes of that network, but can you tear it all down that way? I doubt it.

  You can (and should, IMO) set a precedent by removing top figures, you can try to pinch them wherever they are and make them keep moving. But I believe large scale operations with huge civilian losses will only serve to reinforce the network, at the additional cost of destabilising entire regions of the world even more than they are now.

  The situation is much different yes, but is the enemy?

  Yes, radically. Their mode of operation is completely different. The war against Japan or Germany had armies and front lines. Where are the armies and front lines in this conflict? If there is any similarity to conflicts of the past, it may be Vietnam or the USSR's Afghanistan trauma, only less localized. Or maybe the ongoing, neverending fight against the drug cartels, which have globalized their operations just as these terrorists seem to have. I see absolutely no analogy to WWII, unless you count the resolve that something has to happen.

  It will not however be difficult to find the countries that support him, with his support removed he will be ineffective.

  Others will follow. As I stated, there is a good supply of hate available, and I doubt that the money supply can easily be shut off (that's why I'm bringing in the drug cartel example).

  f.
• 

  Abaddon

  jelly, we seem to agree on a precedent being set.

  I am not advocating doing nothing; I was criticising your condemnation of pacifism.

  I agree to do nothing would result in more Western deaths (they are quoting about five hundred British casualties, plus other Westerners, so this is not just about the USA)

  As to whether limited strikes are useless or not, it depends on the limited strike, but maybe we'll just have to differ...

  As regards the method of war, well, maybe you weren't supporting a land war (unless it's fought by Afghans), but given the area, that's far too slow. We end up with "Any way you can cripple a countries ability to govern with bombs."

  This is normally true, and I would support a slow, rolling destruction of what is left of Afghansitans infrastructure if the Taliban did not give the guy up, announced in advance to minimise casualties (as the Afghani military knowing there was going to be an attack would not make a major difference to their defensive capabilities, and the minimisation of civilian casualties is paramount to keep some sort of moral high ground).

  BUT Afghanistan IS a bomb site, and has probably the poorest infrastructure of any country in the world, after a decade and a half of war.

  The most striking thing you could do would be to STOP bombings (from the civil war), as the Afghani people are so ennured to the fall of munitions silence is probably more shocking to them than explosions.

  As the Taliban reigeme can maintain themselves in a country with virtually no infrastructure, they're not going to throw up their hands in horror at a few targeted bomb raids. And as for bombing their army camps, well, if you like killing boy soldiers, it's a good idea, and I don't imagine you would support that. I doubt there is really that much in the way of heavy equipment, and if you check the terrain it would require huge operations with vast numbers of helicopters to find the majority of it.

  As we can't expect the anti-Taliban reigeme to fly the copters, again we are talking about commiting the West to a protracted land war, unless all copters are based outside of Afghanistan and re-fueled every mission. I don't think the prime battlefield copters CAN be refueled in flight, although I would be happy to be corrected

  It's a very, very tricky problem.
• 

  Gimme3steps

  First of all, .....remember this.... the Taliban is shakin in their boots....they have been able, thus far, to get away with their..
  "sharia".."experiment". You dont approach, the problem, without committing yourself, to givin them, a "attitude adjustment"..strate off the bat, and permanent. The key, is to put troops on the ground, and seal Afghanistan, to hell with cruise missiles,...take over, invade and encounter, and defeat, and seal.It can dam sure be done, when you got a good reson to. You dont nuke nothin, u do it the ol fashioned way, and you own that place, and then......you declare the terms.
• 

  fodeja

  You dont nuke nothin, u do it the ol fashioned way, and you own that place, and then......you declare the terms.

  Like, "keep still or we're gonna kill you all"? Right.

  Even if possible, how is that going to keep a group of determined people to go aboard a 767 in, say, Los Angeles, kill the crew with boxknives and ram the plane into the ground? Heck, they don't even have to know anything about flying unless they want to go for some high-profile target. They don't need Osama Bin Laden or anyone else for that, let alone any sort of support network. It doesn't take much to kill hundreds of Americans in a spectacular way.

  How many Vietnams and Afghanistans should be invested in a useless effort? That's just more of the same. More young boys returning home in zipped-up bags, to be specific. I'm fairly confident that the US leadership has learned that lesson by now: you don't just walk into Afghanistan and "declare the terms".

  f.

  p.s.: I have just caught myself being active part of a discussion about HOW a specific country should be punished. Not WHY, not WHO, not what other alternatives there are. It's creepy how these events are transforming us; and I thought to be at least somewhat conscious and 'above' that. Another comforting illusion gone.
• 

  Gimme3steps

  I wonder, Fodeja, how much you've studied, the plight, of the average Afghan citizen. Or, Afghan politics, and the surrounding neighbors. I advocate a return, of the ousted-by-force, resistance movement. I also advocate, rather than, a scorched earth act,.. to invade, and seal, this country, and exterminate, all known to have associated with Bin Laden, and he himself. The will to remove him, exists, globally. Including, in the majority of the minds, of bordering nations. Make Afghanistan un-fit , for the furtherance of the Taliban's , and the Al Queda organizations, goals. To do that, requires take over, and removal, of these elements, then, a return, of the government, into the hands of the globally recognized , yet exiled , currently, leader. This would be a blessing, for the average, suffering, Afghan citizen. And it's a start, to the task, that lies ahead, removal, of radical, terrorist-supporting, state governments.
• 

  fodeja

  bttt, although I didn't want to post anymore on this subject

  Reason: many of you have expressed the idea that some sort of strike against a specific country or area (be it "nuke them" or "occupy") is a possible solution. As in my last postings here, I would like to hear some ideas how, exactly, this is going to prevent anti-American (or anti-"Western") terrorism in any reliable way?

  I'm explicitly leaving out questions of humanity here, for those of you who deem them irrelevant because the magic formula "we are at war" has been spoken.

  Thank you.

  f.
• 

  Gimme3steps

  In, and of itself, rooting out terrorist elements, in Afghanistan, will not halt international terrorism, admitted. That's going to require global co-operation, and resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which motivates the terrorist. However, Bin Laden has been allowed to systematically train and assign, terrorists,..from his location, he has become the West Point Academy, for terror. It's time to shut that academy down.
• 

  mike

  jelly,
  I don't say that you're not making several reasonable points, you are. I was simply making an attempt to show that under the skin the drives, attitudes, intolerances, fears and pride of people are basically the same.

  Mainstream Christians, JW's, Muslims, Hindus, Jews and atheists. We all have the same failings and virtues.

  Muslims are in danger of being demonised now but that is just not reasonable. I live in a country (UK) that was subjected to 30 years of terrorist death and destruction at the hands of the IRA.
  Would it be fair of me to make assumptions based on my experiences that all Irishmen are terrorists? Of course not!

  Wanting to go and make a 'glass car park' out of Afganhistan is understandable for those who've suffered terrible loss but let's face it, we all know that such violence will reap a sure and violent reward.

  Punishment MUST be meted out but an indiscriminate slaughter of Muslim civilians will surely raise up 10,000 more 'Osama bin Ladens'.

  ..............

  btw
  If I shouldn't have used quotation marks that was merely a technical mistake, I stated quite clearly.....

  The following is one of Jelly's posts adapted

  to read as if presented by one of Tuesday's terrorist aggressors. See how little editing is required then re-read some of the posts in this thread.

  "Doubt is not a pleasant mental state but certainty is a ridiculous one." --Voltaire