So much for John Edwards' take on terrorism

[bascule]

Uh, wt_ are you talking about? (by the way mods you gave me a penalty for that................)

 

Scotland - Airport attack

 

England - Car bombs

 

Edwards doesn't believe there is a global terror war.

 

In regard to that, I found Gwynne Dyer's take on the matter rather sobering:

 

http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Perspectives%20on%20Terrorism.txt

 

To boil it down: Americans have no real perspective on terrorism. Major US cities were not bombed in WWII the way they were in Europe, and Europeans have actually been dealing with terror for far longer.

[bombus]

ignore this

[Physia]

WHAT!!?? We were told we were supposed to bring PEACE between Shiites and Sunnis so they could establish a peaceful, united Iraq.

 

Peace between Sunnis and Shiites? I suggest you read some more about their history. They will never co-exist with each other, however the United States gave them the opportunity to start up a democratic government. It is their problem to accept it or decline it.

 

This contradicts the first. Why bother to referee if you want them to kill each other?

 

We are there as a referee because we benefit from being there. Oil is one reason as many of you like to describe the reason of this war. It's in our right to stop the emergence of new ideologies, isn't it?

 

If that is the case, then we should never have been in Iraq to begin with! They already had an "ideology" -- Hussein -- that opposed the ideologies of Khomeini and Qutb. And just what "ideology" do you see emerging? What ideology did we intend to emerge? Whatever it was, we ain't getting it.

 

The ideology that is emerging is the advanced ideology of Bin Ladin. It's not hard to see that. To be simple, these ideologies that are fighting each other, yet achieving similar goals are a resume for the ancient fight between Sunnis and Shiites. We are there to build as many democratic countries as possible, through different initiatives. Our main goal is "terrorism" and the Bush administration believes that terrorism can only be crushed by the "increase" of democratic governments around the globe, and by the belief that people should live free and not under tyranny.

 

LOL! Al Qaeda wouldn't even BE in Iraq if we hadn't invaded! Great! We invade a country we didn't have to, start a civil war, and then declare that having 2 of the factions fight each other is a "good" thing. Also, the Irano-Syrian axis would not exist if it were not for us. So we cause something, then declare it is "good" to find evidence of what we caused?

 

Al Qaeda was in Iraq before we went there. I guess you have not heard of the arm smuggling that happened in there, between Saddam and Al Qaeda militants. We invaded a country that is a stronghold for radical Islamist militants and are going towards achieving a democratic government, because that way we will be 1 step closer to decreasing terrorism. The fight between those two fractions that we're arguing about (Sunni and Shiite) is an ancient one and can't be solved, especially not by the United States. The Irano-Syrian axis is there long before we went to Iraq. They are fighting Americans long before Iraq. The bombing of the American ambassy in Beirut in the early 1980's is a great proof.

 

The premise here is that it is "cleanable". At least you are admitting we made the crap. However, many of us disagree that it is "cleanable". We screwed up too badly to fix.

 

We didn't screw up to clean up in the first place. We can't withdraw and leave our main goal, that is treated as crap by most.

 

And sorry for replying late, I check more intense international political forums than this one, as this is mainly a science forum. I'm happy to be here however :wink:.

 

If we wanted to destroy Islamic extremists, and Al Qaeda, we should have given Saddam more support, not deposed him. He killed more Al Qaeda operatives, and Islamic extremists that anyone. He was our best defence against them! As they say, he was a bastard, but he was our bastard.

 

He disagreed with our politics and threatened us. It was in our best to remove him from power.

 

You are still not getting my main point.

[Pangloss]

Peace between Sunnis and Shiites? I suggest you read some more about their history. They will never co-exist with each other, however the United States gave them the opportunity to start up a democratic government. It is their problem to accept it or decline it.

 

I think they can get along just fine. I saw a great story a couple of days ago about unity on the Iraqi national football team as it participates in the Asian Cup. That unity goes beyond the team, too -- they're celebrating each victory right alongside one another in the streets.

 

Human behavior is just human behavior, nothing more, nothing less. There's no fundamental difference between millenia-long standing religious fueds and the Hatfields and the McCoys of the Wild West. It's all a bunch of hooey, they know it's a bunch of hooey, and they want to put it aside just as much as you and I want them to.

 

I agree that we're attempting to give them an opportunity. I'm not sure that the window we're giving them is going to be large enough, given that our presence gives the instigators more fuel to work with. At some point it's going to be a better idea not to be there than it is to be there. (Some would argue that point has already passed, but I don't feel qualified to say one way or the other.)

[Reaper]

and they want to put it aside just as much as you and I want them to.

 

Well, not all of them. Some, especially the leaders of these extremists, are quite content in their belief that the other side should die.

[Physia]

I think they can get along just fine. I saw a great story a couple of days ago about unity on the Iraqi national football team as it participates in the Asian Cup. That unity goes beyond the team, too -- they're celebrating each victory right alongside one another in the streets.

 

Human behavior is just human behavior, nothing more, nothing less. There's no fundamental difference between millenia-long standing religious fueds and the Hatfields and the McCoys of the Wild West. It's all a bunch of hooey, they know it's a bunch of hooey, and they want to put it aside just as much as you and I want them to.

 

I agree that we're attempting to give them an opportunity. I'm not sure that the window we're giving them is going to be large enough, given that our presence gives the instigators more fuel to work with. At some point it's going to be a better idea not to be there than it is to be there. (Some would argue that point has already passed, but I don't feel qualified to say one way or the other.)

 

Not the radical Islamists, no.

[bombus]

He disagreed with our politics and threatened us. It was in our best to remove him from power.

 

What politics were they then? Isn't destroying Al Qaeda in our best interests?

[thraxed1]

Sorry for the bump, but there are no terrorists. Technically there are but they are being funded by the CIA/whitehouse or whatever you like to call it. They are being funded by the CIA to go into iraq to keep the war going, trust me, over 70% of the insurgens are saudi, sent from the saudi goverment. Now the US have just sent something like $20billion worth of arms to saudi arabia, yeah for the insurgents they are sending there. They are going to make the war go on for years so they can profit while occupieing the country.

 

(sorry about the spelling mistakes)

[Pangloss]

Technically there are but they are being funded by the CIA/whitehouse or whatever you like to call it. They are being funded by the CIA to go into iraq to keep the war going' date=' [b']trust me[/b], over 70% of the insurgens are saudi, sent from the saudi goverment. Now the US have just sent something like $20billion worth of arms to saudi arabia, yeah for the insurgents they are sending there. They are going to make the war go on for years so they can profit while occupieing the country.

Thraxed1, if you want anybody to accept that kind of tin-foil-hat analysis as fact (which is how you stated it, rather than being clear that it's just your opinion) you're going to have to source it, and the sources are going to have to be acceptably objective/non-partisan (or I will delete them, along with consistently unsupported opinions stated as if they're facts).

 

(The bit about terrorists often being Saudis is well-documented and commonly accepted, so you can skip that part. But I'll need you to back up the bits about CIA wanting to keep the Iraq war going, and the Saudi government being being the insurgency in Iraq. Let's see your evidence.)

 

There's no "trust me" in science, so why should there be "trust me" in politics?

[Physia]

What politics were they then? Isn't destroying Al Qaeda in our best interests?

 

We are fighting world wide terror and not just Al Qaeda. Say Bin Laden was caught tomorrow, does that mean terrorism will end? I highly doubt it. His ideology remains and so do his terrorist groups. The only way to end them is by increasing democratic governments around the world, which in turn will fill in the gap and give very little space for terrorists to operate.

 

Sorry for the bump, but there are no terrorists. Technically there are but they are being funded by the CIA/whitehouse or whatever you like to call it. They are being funded by the CIA to go into iraq to keep the war going, trust me, over 70% of the insurgens are saudi, sent from the saudi goverment. Now the US have just sent something like $20billion worth of arms to saudi arabia, yeah for the insurgents they are sending there. They are going to make the war go on for years so they can profit while occupieing the country.

 

(sorry about the spelling mistakes)

 

If we're going to say that 9/11 was made by the American government, I highly doubt that and here's the reason: There are 3500+ American lives of many different origins and faiths, and the government would not play with those lives for the sake of entering "Iraq." Look at Pearl Harbor and what happened to Japan and the Japanese, rings a bell?

The Saudi terrorists part is right, but there are other terrorists than Saudis, and the government (the same one that is working with the United States and the same one negotiating with Israel) are not the ones necessarily building up or sending those terrorists. There are many people over there that are brainwashed and follow the nihilistic ideologies of Bin Laden and such. The thing you need to trust me on and can actually be trusted, is that Saudi Arabia is the most Arab country that worked against terrorists, alongside a western nation who is highly believed to be the "big Satan" by many Islamist extremists.

[Genecks]

How can you fight 'terror'? How can you fight 'terrorism', which is an abstract noun? It's not a War as it doesn't meet the definition of a war. It's the same as saying War on Want. or War on Drugs. Its just stupid sloganeering.

 

An optimistic look on life, megalomania, a pack of cigarettes, a senile smile, and a good knowledge of various sciences.