Ten oz

How many tens of thousands of families won't get the opportunity to go Christmas tree shopping together next year if we do as you advocate and put our young men and women on the ground in Syria? Whether we do or do not puts our forces on the ground in Syria I think it is a safe bet you'll still be tree shopping next year. Which begs to question why it is worth doing. It won't actually change the average American's life.

We ignore plenty on threats. Our Military leadership has indentified climate change as a major national security threat and as a country we mostly ignore it. We have more mass shootings a year than hit movies or PPV sporting events yet we do nothing about guns. A threat is only meaningful as we choose to acknowledge it. We ignore plenty of risks/threats; driving a car is one of the most dangerous things the average person does. We smoke, drink, use drugs, and do many dangerous things that are a greater threat to average American than Terrorism. We have the apacity to control how we respond to threat, how we prioritize, and minimumize threats. We are not coupled to some sort of natural automatic response.

Terrorist want attention, they want to be treated like the big bad threat they actually lack the resources to ever be, they want there message heard by the world, they want infamy, they want to matter, and jumping to attention everytime they say go gives them all those things.

Climate change can make storms stronger, cold spells longer and water supplies drier. But can it cause war? A new study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says drought in Syria, exacerbated to record levels by global warming, pushed social unrest in that nation across a line into an open uprising in 2011. The conflict has since become a major civil war with international involvement. Drying and drought in Syria from 2006 to 2011—the worst on record there—destroyed agriculture, causing many farm families to migrate to cities. The influx added to social stresses already created by refugees pouring in from the war in Iraq, explains Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who co-authored the study. The drought also pushed up food prices, aggravating poverty. “We’re not saying the drought caused the war,” Seager said. “We’re saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.” http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-hastened-the-syrian-war/ How about we invest some time and energy on Syria's drought which added fuel to the unrest rather than simply looking for the right combination of bad guys to kill. There will only be more situations like Syria if we can't get beyond the superficial excuses for war.

Yes I use plastic products that contribute to polluting our planet same as you use crude oil products that contribute to terrorism. Difference is you advocate for our government to spend trillions of our tax dollars and put hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens in Syria to kill people while I don't. I rather see that level of man power and treasure applied to cleaning up our ocean or combating climate change. As for your tree anology; yes, you can't make an omlet without breaking a few eggs but you also don't always have to eat omlets. We don't have to put boots on the ground in Syria or starve. Armed U.S. citizen (not Muslim) kills people at a Planned Parenthood or in an elamentary school, movie theater, college, church, highway, etc and it is a tragedy we offer prays for but requires ZERO policy change or actions. We mourn but the status qou remains. Armed citizen who is Muslim kills any group of people anywhere and it is not just a tragedy it is terrorism and requires MASSIVE policy change. We mourn and the status qou becomes a sign of weakness. What is the difference? Military leaders have identified climate change as a major national security concern. Many armed conflicts will arise and many refugees will be created yet climate change as an issue is a non-starter. We openly discuss full scale invasions of counrties like Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Syria yet half of our government won't even acknowledge that climate change is real. We have to start looking at the whole pick picture. Stop looking at the world through the scope of a rifle. National security issues should not be treated a la carte. http://time.com/4101903/climate-change-national-security/

TAR, if your last post existed in a vacuum some of it would make sense. However you have repeated supported boots on the ground in Syria to kill ISIS members "face to face". So you are basically establishing an excuse for divisive behavior by implying it not only natural but helpful to survival. If you understand that people generally cast themselves as the hero than why is it so difficult to understand that the more people we kill the more terrorists we will create? Just as people strive to get wins they tend to avoid admitting when they lose. Osama Bin Laden never planned to move into the White House. ISIS doesn't expect to have their flag flying above the Eiffel Tower. Terrorist are angry violent anarchist that simple want to make life bad for others. The more cynical, suspicious, racist, partisan, scared, etc they can make us the more they are winning. We can not beat groups like ISIS in a fight. They are willing to sacrifice so much more. Sure we have drones, stealth bombers, submarines, and etc but we also have normal lives. We have black Friday to participate in, Star Wars to watch, homes to sink our savings into, video games to play, and etc. For ISIS the battle is a full time job and death is the obvious conclusions. For us this battle is a nuisance preventing us from being comfortable. Our level of commitment will never match theirs and if it ever even came close they will have won. Don't you understand that? The cold war, the war on drugs, the war on terror, there is always a boogie man. Always something society collectively fears. I am sure you remember duck and cover drills as a child. A generation conditioned to fear communism. It is nonsense. Fast food, plastic in the ocean, carbon being released, rain forests being burned, etc, etc, etc are hurting us (people in the western world) so much more directly than the desperate acts of ISIS. If we are going to put a hundred thousand boots on the ground and spend another trillion dollars wouldn't that effort be better focused on climate change? Seriously, there is a patch of the pacific ocean the size of Texas covered in plastic and other pollutants we are doing absolutely nothing about but you think our attention, man power, and wealth is best served focused on killing ISIS supporters. Not me! ISIS is merely a symptom. They are not the disease.

I am not going to go point by point here but will get too far off track with regards to terror. What I will say is that the United States is a uniquely violent country. When you compare us to other first world nations with similar economies we have greater levels of rape, murder, suicide, police killing citizens, execution, mass shootings, and etc, etc. All of those things do not fit neatly into a single racial or economic group. The whole country experiences this extra violence. It is a huge public policy issue. We will need to change many things to resolve it: mental healthcare, education, gun control, policing procedures, drug laws, infastructure, etc, etc, etc. lots of individuals battle to be had. First step is admitting that we have a problem. Admitting that violence in our society is a problem. Assad would be the person we'd be breaking bread with and not ISIS members. ISIS are anarchists with no true leadership structure. Had we bothered to actually sit down with Assad in 2000 when he came into power we aren't in this place today. Who knows what 15yrs of dialogue may have accomplished. BTW speaking to our enemies is something Obama campaigned on and then failed to broadly do once elected. As a president with strong partisan opposition I suppose he hasn't able to do everything he wanted (like closing Gitmo) but I wish that he would have had the courage to push harder. Though it may have meant losing re-election. I did not say hand over control of our military. What makes you think that in working with the global community military action would always be agreed upon solution? In friendship, business, or politics you can not build partnerships unless everyone has a vested interested. There has to be something in it for everyone otherwise everyone won't be on board and you can't dictate to others what their interest are or should be. I am referencing the rhetoric. U.S. Presidents fly the Saudi Arabia and visit the King at his home for lunch. Then turn are and complain about the lack of women rights in Iran or the lack of real democracy in Syria. It is hypocritical. Saudi Arabia has oppressive laws against women and is not a democracy. Better to drop the rhetoric than to be so comically contradictory. I am not saying we should stop working with Saudi Arabia. I am saying we need to start be more honest about the nature of what are actually conflicts are with other nations. Instead we just pile on. We just complain about every bad thing we can.

We should do a few things:First - focus on our domestic security. The motivation for the California mass shooting and the Planned Parenthood mass shooting may have been different but in execution they we very similar. We shouldn't behave as if each is entirely different. We should be as responsive to the action as we are to the motive. Put policies and messures in place to combat what is happening (the physical actions). Rather than spend billions buy police tanks and military grade equipment we need to invest in my health professionals in our public schools police departments. People on the street level whose good is to listen and talk. People with the education and training to notice potential problems. How many cities still even have polices that actually walk around rather than just drive around. At a local level we need to do a better job fostering a commitment to community. Have unarmed people who just walk a community asking people how they are doing. Security and law enforcement doesn't have to be intrusive and combative. Trust issues exist in many communities. It is hard for agencies to focus on the right suspects when everyone is a suspect. Second - Talk to our foreign adversaries. Lose this notion that it is weak or somehow a victory to our enemies to merely speak to them. It is rather childish that we do not have formal relations with every country. We don't have to like them but we should at least talk to them. Police talk to the people they arrest. Talking doesn't automatically equally support but refusal to talk does automatically create conflict. The world some know that the United States is always prepared to meet at a table and break bread. The conflict resolution is always on the table. Third - Work with our allies rather than just trying to organize and lead them. If there are global interests in Syria than there should be a collective. We should not unilaterally decide what we want and them go around the world twisting arms and bending ears until we gin up enough support. Using the ideas of others has a way of spreading around the ownership of a decision. People are less personally invested when they are just along for the ride. Lastly - stop being hypocritical on human rights. If public beheadings, mistreatment of women, mistreatment of homosexuals, and etc truly offend us than we should be against all nations who practice those things. We can't use the treatment of women as an excuse to oust Assad while at the same time consider Suadi Arabia and Qatar allies. We need to drop the rhetoric or be consistant with it. Women and child living the war zones of Syria and Iraq do not instant the nuance why one country gets shamed and another does not. If a women in hijab offends us than we should take issue everywhere hijab is mandated. Otherwise we should keep our traps closed about hijab.

ISIS does not have a capital any more than it has a singular leadership structure. ISIS can be in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, and the United States at at the same time. so invade Syria to send a message; to intimidate other countries around world. That will weaken terrorism and foster peace in your opinion? Syria is the third. The justifications for Afghanistan and Iraq were to defeat Islamic Terrorism as well. Syria will be the third and no notable improvements were achieved by the first and second. Wasn't Osama the embodiment of evil, wasn't Saddam and Baghdad obvious targets, and wasn't/isn't Assad our enemy? These labels are nonsense. We need to make intelligent choices. As the strongest military power in the world killing people has become our crutch for conflict resolution. It hasn't been working against Islamic Terrorism. The Middle East is less stable and more dangerous today than it was sept. 10th 2001. When an approach isn't working over time an itelligent person changes their approach. Are we intelligent people?

Why boots on the ground in Syria specifically? That isn't going to stop the terrorists who are radicalizing people in Saudi Arabia. We put boot on the ground in Iraq and Afghanastan and what happen; the bad guys put their guns down and bled into the population. Our troops won't be able to " decide who is innocent and who is a combatant, and shoot only the combatant". ISIS is going to meet us face to face with a standing army on some battle field. We put boots on the ground in Syria and they will just bled back into the population and wait for a chance to move into Turkey and start back up again. We have already seen this play out elsewhere. "Boots on the ground, because if we are not there, somebody is going to be somebody else's sex slave, get tossed off the roof of a building, get whipped for wearing makeup, and stoned for infidelity or perhaps get their head cut off for speaking against the prophet(pbuh)".......do you think this is only happening in Syria?

Specific types of crime but not all crime broadly.

@ Tar, nothing in that response explains how boots on the ground in Syria will help defeat terrorism. You advocated for boot on the boot in Syria surely you have a logical reason for it?

The last 3 presidents of the United States all have admitted to past drug use yet none are considered criminals because they were not caught. Many rape victims do not report it, spouses are abused and do not report, children are molested and no one finds out, relative steal from relatives and don't report it, etc, etc, etc. Who is a criminal is generally a matter of who is caught. Drugs flow openly on most college campus yet police do not raid colleges and turn students into criminals. Poor people are arrested at higher rates but that do not mean they necessarily commit more crime.

Why must we go into Syria and fight? Which terrorist attack on U.S. was carried out by Syrian citizens? On 9/11 they were mostly all Saudi Arabian and according to your previous post Syed Farook was radicalized while visiting Saudi Arabia (by his wife) yet you believe the answer is boots on the ground in Syria? Imagine what the country would be like today if Martin Luther King's message was an eye for an eye rather than nonviolence. If he implored people to strike back against brutality with armed strength. How bloody would things have become and wouldn't that have only manufactured more hatred and division. Instead King asked people to turn the other check. When men were lynched, volunteers registering folks to vote murdered, when the dogs were let loose of protestors, when the fire hoses came out, and etc, etc, etc, King asked everyone to stay calm. Even when King himself was killed the movement did not resort to violence. Do you believe Martin Luther King showed strength or weakness? Rather than armed boots on the ground meant to kill people perhaps leaders like Obama should board their planes and actually fly to Syria and Iran and meant with leaders. I know there would be security concerns but would that show courage and a true desire for resolution. Imagine that, actually being in the same room with someone you how to resolve a dispute with. Obama actually taking to Assad face to face. If we were honest in an attempt to resolve this conflict maybe we'd be able to recognize that Saudi Arabia is a problem too. That Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar are not doing their part. They are all very wealthy nations yet they have oppressive foriegn worker camps, are terrible on women's rights, and bleed money into terrorist organizations. Why should we put boots on the ground in Syria killing people while ignoring Saudi Arabia? We can not kill our way to peace. This is bigger than Syria. we can not win hearts and mind or change the dialogue by continuing to ignore play favorites. If we are honestly going to confront everyone that harbor terrorist than Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and etc deserve a lot of attention. Instead we seem to focus on the poor nations with governments we never cared much for anyway. Many of the ISIS member fighting in Syria previous fled our troops in Iraq. If we push into Syria what stops them from fleeing into Iran or Turkey and begin destabilizing those countries? Borders contain our troop movements but do not contain terrorists.

Your response here has nothing to do with anything I posted. She radicalized him and sewed the hatred...how do you know this? They both may have been radicalized in Saudi Arabia and/or Pakistan? I thought you said the wife radicalized him? So add Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to list with Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran for our war against ISIS? So drugs and gangs are domestic issues? None of the gangs and drugs on our streets have associations from beyond our borders? Right, because more violence is the answer. How many Jihadi John's have we killed since 9/11? What has it accomplished? Where is any post that I have made in this thread did I advocate for gun control? The Farook's lived in the united states. No amount of killing people in Syria would have stopped the Farook's or people like them. Neither had even visited Syria either. Al Quada, ISIS, Hezbollah; there will alway be a group to label as the centeral figure for Islamic Terror. We will never invade enough shores to eradicate terrorism. Rhetoric matters. How often have you left a forum discussion when it becomes obvious that those you were chatting with were immovable from there thinking? When we label, ignore, and demagogue people they abondon attempts at resolution. How often do protests turn into riots only after officials attempt to shut protest down? You don't think all things being equal terrorists would prefer a life? You think suicide is born into them? It is a desperate act. They clearly hold no hope for any resolution. Changing our response and our actions over time could change that desperation. Change that abondonment of hope for a resolution. Less you believe they are all just natural born killers who would prefer blowing themselves up? If that is the case than it appears you too have abandoned hope for a resolution.

Gun control is a huge politically partisan issue. Many align their support for either side of it as a matter of sport. Losing the gun control debate has larger party and cultural implications. People do not easily admit to be on the wrong team. Rather they just hustle harder to ensure their team wins. A major political party can not afford to lose on established wedge issues. People rather keep fighting than to lose. Than to be wrong. The Gun Control debate in the United States is not actually about guns for the majority of those who pretend guns are a symbol of freedom. It is about not losing, not being wrong, not acknowledging that the other side is right. We see the samething with Climate change. People are just stubborn and proud.

Well Tar here we are; another few days have past and there has been another mass shooting. This time the shoot may have been a Islamic Terrorist sympathizer. The media seems to be twisting itself into knots trying to figure out if what happened in San Bernardino should be filed under "mass shooting" or "terrorism". A dog whisper distinction that transforms the significance of the attack in the eyes of many. One label makes it meaningful and impacts foriegn policy while the other label makes it a domestic issue that was resolved when the police killed to assailants. Was the San Bernardino shooting an internal or external event? Possibly inspired by Islamic terrorism but Syed Farook was born and raised in the United States. Just as Nidal Hasan (fort hood shooter) had Islamic terror sympathies but was born and raised in the United States. What foriegn regime shall we support or supply arms to in order to prevent future Syed Farook's? Which international partners do we need? Or perhaps this isn't really an internal vs external issue, isn't us vs them, it is something more holistic. Syed Farook and Hasan Nidal crimes were actually carried out the way most mass shooting are. They went to a place there were familiar with, where they possibly held grudges, and shot the place up. They were not suicide bombers. They did not attack strangers, they did not attack somewhere to maximize fatalities. They both behaved in a way that is becoming frightenly too common for disgruntled U.S. citizens. I don't see how our drone killing people on the other side of the world is effective in preventing people like Hasan Nidal or Syed Farood. We are willing to strip naked to board planes to throttle terrorism but aren't willing to change our gun laws. Syed Farook's arsenal of weapons did not make him suspicious in the United States yet being Muslim in many peoples opinion did. Clearly we are not being rational about these issues domestically. I think we need to clean our own home before we blow up anyone else's.

I referenced mass shootings in general (even got a bit of a warning from a moderator not to turn the debate into a gun control debate) along with narco terrorism and other various types of terror not associated with Islam. I do not see an obvious connections between what I have posted and the KKK, Tea Party, Republicans, and etc. You are doing something of a bait and switch. I have yet to see you respond directly to much of what I have posted. Rather you are conflating multiple conversations you are having with multiple posters and using various unrelated ideas to string together a singular partisan narrative. It is not fair of you to twist things up to the point we are now having to debate what has already been posted and can be easily reviewed.

What is this? Allow me to summarize our conversation for you: I referenced massed shootings, planned parenthood attacks, Oklahoma city bombing and etc and asked why Islamic terror demanded such a greater response than other types of terror. Your answer was to create a dichotomy between internal and external threats. I then challanged that by pointing out the terror attacks like Tsarnaev brothers, hasan nidal, and etc were internal Islamic terrorists and also compared your dichotomy against the way we handle the war on drugs. Nothing about Republicans vs democrats in any of my posts.

What are you and Tar carrying on about? Please provide a the post were I made this about Democrats and Republicans. Both of you are aragruing against points of view I do not hold and at no point in this thread have expressed.

That is sort of my point; none of it worked. The war on drugs accomplished little and today we take more of a domestic enforcement approach. Drugs may be external but we are realizing over time it is better dealt with internally. Which is an example of why your dichotomy isn't accurate. ISIL is part of the War on Terror we leaped into post 9/11 and not some new affirmation of evil in the world. We did not conquer Al Quada, then conquer Saddam, and now must conquer ISIL. This is part of the same battle and thus far there doesn't to have been any victories. Reflecting upon Iraq in the same terms as we reflect on WW2 is nonsensical. WW2 is concluded while nothing we've engaged in post 9/11 is yet. Afghanastan, Iraq, and Syria are all still day to day.Should we have let The Soviet Union have Afghanastan? That question assumes only two possible outcomes existed: what we did or the Soviet Union controlling Afghanastan. Many other possibilities existed. Creating one vs the other, this vs that, good vs evil, us vs them, option restricted choices is generally how propaganda works.

This is about Paris and how we all should respond; ironically the French were against the U.S. led invasion of Iraq which played a role in destabilizing the region which is partly responsible for ISIL. Look at the average age of an ISIL member/supporter. Many were merely young boys when 9/11 happened. We went hard at Al Quada and the Taliban and accomplished little. A whole generation raised during our prosecution of the war on terror grew up and became ISIL. Obviously something something we are doing doesn't work. As for not causing war with Russia....isn't that part of the foundation for all this as well? The U.S. giving the Taliban and Al Quada money, weapons, and training over our concerns about the Soviet Union. One reaction to perceived threat creating endless negative outcomes that perpetuate more threats. Do you believe this finishes in Syria? That ISIL is the last head of the Hydra? Well, we have many more countries to invade than Syria to rid the world of masaginistic violence and abuse against women. You ignored the challange to you rather black and white external vs internal responses to threats. Replace Islamic terror with Drugs. Many organizations external to the United States are directly responsible for the flow of drugs and associated violence in the United States. Far more U.S. citizens die as a result of drug related crime than Islamic Terror. Yet we do not invade countries in an attempt to destory these external organizations. We primarily prosecute the war on drugs with domestic law enforcement assets and even with that a healthy percentage of the country feels we go too far.

The distinction between internal and external is seldom clear as you are describing it. Which category do terrorists like the Tsarnaev brothers, Nidal Hassan, and Mohammed Abdulezeez fall in? Our own law enforcement is the front line vs all terrorism regardless or what label you give it. TSA are our airports, Coast Guard in our Harbors, Local PD in our neighborhoods, and etc. The preverbial "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here" often fails on two fronts: who "them" are is tends to be poorly defined and prejudical actions often create sympathizers. Why the KKK and republicans? How about narco-terrorism vs Islamic terrorism? Lost of people killed on the streets of the U.S. as part of larger drug cartel battles. Whom shall we invade to deal with the violence?

Where did I say we should do nothing or excuse terrorism? When Timothy Mcveigh dropped a building killing hundreds simply arresting all those directly involved was a reasonable response. Yet when Islamic terrorists are involved merely catching those responsible is treated as akin to doing nothing. The United States and Europe are majority White Christian. We all understand White Christian culture, its attitudes, and beliefs. When White Christians do terrible things we intrinsically know that all White Christians aren't bad, that all are not a threat. Our familiarity with it provides comfort. Same is not true for Arab Muslims. We do not understand the culture, attitudes, and beliefs. So when Arab Muslims do terrible things we error on the side that all may be a threat. We do not trust ourselves to tell the good from the bad. As a result we respond far more heavy handed. As I asked before; can you name something we (USA) have done in response to Islamic terror that has been beneficial? We have created the Department of Homeland security, passed the patriot act, Tortured, invaded two countries, armed rebels in Syria, and etc, etc, etc. What can you point to and say "that has work, that needed to be done"? You can't provide such an example yet argue that action is needed. What action? Which country can we bomb or leader can we dispose that will guarantee no more Islamic terror? If we turn all the refugees away and put boots on the ground in Syria will that do the trick; will terrorism be defeated?

Yes, he was a crazy man however aren't all terrorists by general societal standards? Many clinics dealing with women's reproductive rights have been attacked. For decades now doctors have been killed and facilities bombed. We responded to these acts of terror as simple legal matters. No change in the status quo. Despite the constancy and commonality of the attacks simply catching those responsible is generally considered enough. Meanwhile such any approach toward Islamic terror is viewed as doing nothing, why? Doesn't all that apply to all terrorist? Can you provide some explains of where rhetoric like "kill the bastards that break it in heinous ways" have led to successful policy? We have spent trillions and killed hundreds of thousands if not millions fighting Islamic terror. Surely you can definatively point to one indisputably useful or neccessary result of all that effort?