Paris attacks

[tar]

Overtone,

 

absolutely not agreed

you give them no credence at all

they responded to things the way I wanted to respond to things

They were my leaders, as Obama and Biden now are.

They were my protectors and my voice in the world. Bush was my head of state at the time. What he did I did.

 

You know I read the whole thing differently than you did. Why would I see it differently now?

 

Now what Obama does I do. He is my head of state.

 

What he should do as our collective leader and representative to the world is what is important here.

 

Forget the election. Give me your wisdom as to what we should do now.

 

See if you can put together a sentence without the words "the republicans s**k" in it.

 

Something that would help us plot a path forward.

 

Regards, TAR

maybe you have never been in the military and pledged the oath of enlistment

 

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).​

 

Carter was my commander in chief, and then Reagan.

 

I followed the orders of my commanders as was my duty.

i

I am not so closely held to things now, but I still respect the office. No matter who voted the person in. And no matter if I agree with them or not. Still my president.

[iNow]

Again, that's all largely tangential to the actual points being made.

[tar]

iNow,-

 

No, the points being made are largely tangential to the OP. I am just responding to anti-American and anti-republican propaganda and rhetoric as I do not think it true or helpful in defeating ISIS.

 

Regards, TAR

[iNow]

ISIS wants to gain control of territory so as to spread their fundamentalist reading of the Quran and impose Sharia law across the globe, transforming it into an Islamic state by cleansing it of infidels and eliminating anyone who has even a slightly different view or perspective in preparation for the judgment that they believe will arrive with the coming apocalypse.

 

There are other items they seek like the desire to control oil and resources like water, incite fear into secular democracies so they restrict freedoms on their own and take isolationist/jingoistic steps that will ease their recruitment efforts, and to draw the US and the West into a full scale war to provide further legitimacy to their cause, but these are all peripheral to and in direct support of the core motivations cited in my first paragraph above.

 

We defeat them by not repeating the mistakes of the past. We defeat them by avoiding hollow platitudes and revisionist history. We defeat them by understanding our values, calling out propaganda when we see it, and by advocating fiercely for better ideas, then in parallel putting bullets through the faces of those who continue to coordinate atrocities (while obsessively avoiding collateral death). We defeat them by maintaining perspective and by not exaggerating them into some super threat which they simply aren't.

 

Again Tar, I know you mean well, but your view of history and the current state of affairs is more "truthy" than true. It seems you'd rather equivocate than educate and you seem consistently unwilling to let the facts get in the way of your preferred narrative. That (along with your predilection for unfocused, stream of consciousness, unclear ambiguous points and tangential response style) is where people continue calling you out. Recommend you make a thoughtful on-topic point and support it. I ask this of you because I know you can and I've seen you do it before.

Edited December 1, 2015 by iNow

[overtone]

 

 

You know I read the whole thing differently than you did. Why would I see it differently now?

Because you learned from disaster, from collapse, from the cowardice and panic of the reaction to 9/11, from the torture prisons and the surveillance State that cowardice motivated, from the incompetence and venality and strutting clueless arrogance of the Iraq War http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?military_analysts_tmln_general_events=military_analysts_tmln__mission_accomplished_&timeline=military_analysts_tmln, from the flailing Federal confusion and drowned, stinking corpses of Katrina, from the rise and spread of Islamic jihad everywhere the boots of American fascism left their prints in Middle Eastern sand;

 

from the betrayal of your country and degradation of everything you value.

 

But you didn't.

[tar]

Overtone,

 

Stop right at your first phrase.

 

You call our reaction to 9/11 cowardice and panic?

 

Some evil thing flew planes full of people into buildings. One missile did not hit its mark because some few brave men took the plane down, for us. For the living. Love for the living.

We found out who did it and went after them. We had to go through the Taliban. We had to do a lot of things to protect our way of life, against an enemy that would kill us.

 

Paris did the same thing after the attacks. It is normal, wonderful strength and resolve that she showed. The people bound together, and said we will not stop living, we will not be afraid, but we will seek out the perpetrators and arrest them or kill them if they resist.

 

The first responders to the World trade ran toward the towers to save people. They died when the towers came down. Many many hundreds of brave men and women. People from my town, my county, my state died that day. Not running away from. Running toward danger.

 

I have sacrificed none of my values. I stand with those in my family and those of my friends and co-workers who sacrified in Afghanistan and in Iraq and here at home, to protect my way of life.

 

I went to the movies on Sunday at a theatre at a regional mall. It was the Sunday between black Friday and Cyber Monday. I was surprised at how few people were there. The parking lots were only about 1/4 full. Maybe they were eating a Sunday roast after church. Maybe people, knowing they could buy on line the next day, stayed home. Maybe they were worried a little about being in crowds, and stayed home and ordered on line.

 

I don't characterize our reaction to 9/11 as cowardice, nor would you, I think, characterize France's reaction that way.

 

Regards, TAR

I have never broken faith with my government, nor my neighbors, nor my country's NATO allies. My values are intact.

On September 11th as I stood at Port Imperial watching the incredibly huge and ominous pillar of black smoke coming from where the towers once stood, I knew there was evil in the world. I did not know who, but someone was my enemy. Mortal enemy. Either I would die, or he would die. My world was changed. I didn't make that choice, I made that realization.

If we feel it safe now, to go to the mall, it is not because we don't have enemies that would kill us, but that we have fellow citizens that would search the world, and our cities and find them and neutralize them. The CIA and the military and Bush and Cheney have been building the intelligence and the infrastructure to find the people and make it so that they can not launch the second wave. You know they have been wanting to. The first wave was in 2001 it is now 2015 and Bin Laden is dead. I would say we have not been cowards, and I know we have stopped plots. France almost immediately stopped a cell from launching a second wave. There are more plots in the works, we are sure. There are sleeper cells and lone actors commanded to kill us any way they can. We have every right to be vigilant and protect ourselves. It is not cowardice to wear a helmet into battle.

My fault you know, the Paris Attacks. Jihadi John cut off the head of a U.S. Citizen from Indiana. I called for Jihadi John to be hunted down and killed, to stop his terror. He and I could not share the same world. My CIA hunted him down, found him separate from innocents in a vehicle with others of his gang and my President ordered a drone strike that blew up the vehicle, the fighters with him, and Jihadi John. Immediately came the Paris attacks, and the Russian Flight, Beirut and Mali. Not unlikely his death was a trigger for these planned plots to take place.

 

But knowing that death of innocents might well occur and signing the order anyway is a courageous act, and I applaud my president for taking the action. An evil actor, that publically killed an American citizen was brought to justice.

The president did his duty as my commander in chief.

Edited December 1, 2015 by tar

[John Cuthber]

 

You call our reaction to 9/11 cowardice and panic?

 

 

The president did his duty as my commander in chief.

Specifically, he continued to read a book about a goat, then he invaded the wrong country (on the basis of a lot of made up stuff).

I'm not sure if that's "cowardice and panic" but it's plumb stupid.

 

The vast majority of the people in America responded to the attack in an understandable, if perhaps not entirely rational, way.

The last one I'd cite as an example of someone "doing their duty" was Bush.

Edited December 1, 2015 by John Cuthber

[zapatos]

Specifically, he continued to read a book a bout a goat, then he invaded the wrong country (on the basis of a lot of made up stuff).

I'm not sure if that's "cowardice and panic"but it's plumb stupid.

He also invaded Afghanistan which I believe most would consider to be the "right" country.

Edited December 1, 2015 by zapatos

[John Cuthber]

He also invaded Afghanistan which I believe most would consider to be the "right" country.

You think a 50 50 hit rate is good enough for this sort of thing?

 

 

And, of course, there's the interesting question of whether Afghanistan would have been the "right" country if he hadn't invaded it.

They weren't the "right" target in terms of the 9/11 atrocity.

"The hijackers in the September 11 attacks were 19 men affiliated with al-Qaeda. 15 of the 19 were citizens of Saudi Arabia.^[1] The others were from the United Arab Emirates (2), Egypt and Lebanon. 2

[waitforufo]

You think a 50 50 hit rate is good enough for this sort of thing?

 

Lets not forget that the US was in a continuous state of war with Iraq since they invaded Kuwait in 1990 up to the W Bush invasion in 2003. In fact Bill Clinton maintained this war throughout his entire presidency firing cruse missiles into Iraq whenever he needed a Monica distraction. Sure, Hans Blix was busy writing stern letters the entire time and was always months away from getting to the bottom of Iraq's chemical weapons but could never get there. There comes a point when patience wears thin.

Edited December 1, 2015 by waitforufo

[tar]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iraqi-shiite-militias-pledge-to-fight-us-forces-if-deployed/ar-AAfTNvM?ocid=spartandhp

 

S​eems that other than the Kurds, we might not have any friends left in Iraq. Do we? Or don't we?

​

Yemen has about as many factions fighting for control as Sryria. The Saudi Sunni, the Iranian Shia​, United States hitting AQSA with drone strikes. Strategically important to many as much of the world's oil passes through the straight.

 

It is not a black and white choice as to who it is in our best interest to support and help win the day. Speaking of principles that is, what principles are the most important here. World peace speaking?

[waitforufo]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iraqi-shiite-militias-pledge-to-fight-us-forces-if-deployed/ar-AAfTNvM?ocid=spartandhp

 

S​eems that other than the Kurds, we might not have any friends left in Iraq. Do we? Or don't we?

​

This alleged deployment of additional US forces to Iraq must be some kind of joke. Obama declared victory in Iraq.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/14/barack-obama-iraq-war-success

 

Look how happy Obama is in the video.

 

Also his vice president said it was Obama's greatest achievement. Here it is.

 

 

So Ash Carter must be talking out his ass. There is no need for troops in Iraq. Obama the magnificent took care of that problem.

[John Cuthber]

Lets not forget that the US was in a continuous state of war with Iraq since they invaded Kuwait in 1990 up to the W Bush invasion in 2003.

 

Sure, Hans Blix was busy writing stern letters the entire time and was always months away from getting to the bottom of Iraq's chemical weapons but could never get there.

 

So, started by Bush 1, not extinguished by Clinton (though, at least it calmed down a bit) then restarted by Bush 2.

Best blame Clinton, and then muddy the waters by bringing Monica into it (Though, her fling with Bill was half a decade earlier and the story didn't break until 1998 so she can hardly have been a factor ). It's as if you think it's relevant.

Is that the best you can do?

 

Blix found no chemical weapons , mainly because there were none. do you remember that bit?

It is the sort of thing I meant when I said he " invaded the wrong country (on the basis of a lot of made up stuff)".

There were no WMD.

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

I think Jihadi John was a British citizen. You think perhaps we should have targeted the Queen instead of his vehicle?

 

Most of the Paris Attackers were French Nationals. Should France commit suicide?

 

We are fighting a foe that has no state. And I think it would be best to defeat them, before they turn somebody else's state into their own.

 

 

 

Regards, TAR

[John Cuthber]

John Cuthber,

 

I think Jihadi John was a British citizen. You think perhaps we should have targeted the Queen instead of his vehicle?

 

Most of the Paris Attackers were French Nationals. Should France commit suicide?

 

We are fighting a foe that has no state. And I think it would be best to defeat them, before they turn somebody else's state into their own.

 

 

 

Regards, TAR

Setting aside the fact that you seem instead to advocate bombing Ireland and Germany because they are the countries next door to the ones who provided the attackers...

 

OK, so the relevant question is what turned a bunch of British and French citizens into criminals?

Do you think it might have anything to do with seeing bunch of people, whom they saw as brothers, being butchered by an invasion of, let's face it, the wrong country?

 

We are indeed fighting a foe with no state.

So, calling it a war is a bit silly.

And, perhaps more importantly, the enemy is an ideology. The enemy is the belief that "the West is evil".

How do you bomb that into non-existence when every stray bullet or child caught in the crossfire and (what a charming term) "collateral damage" creates another bunch of converts- all the more convinced of the justice of their cause because they know who the enemy is- it's the bastard who keeps bombing their country.

 

Bombing for peace makes as much sense as screwing for virginity.

[overtone]

You call our reaction to 9/11 cowardice and panic?

"Our?" If you mean the country's, overall, especially the Federal government's, yes. Pee in the pants, incoherent, useless, flailing. With lots of screaming and shouting and waving of flags for accompaniment. The kind of reaction you see when a non-swimmer falls out of a boat. The only possible description of the Patriot Act, the long lines of the shoeless at every airport for years now, the hoopla around "Mission Accomplished", all because you and yours didn't have the simple courage to face terrorism as a possibility without going spla and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people halfway around the planet.

 

 

I have sacrificed none of my values.

Really? You now live in a United States in which almost every stricture in the Bill of Rights has been and can be at government (or even corporate) will violated with impunity by your consent, torture prisons and assassination programs have been set up and run openly under your flag with your agreement, your government can snoop into your neighbor's mail and phone calls because you allowed it to, the poor are taxed more heavily than the rich while your government falls ever deeper into debt because that's what you said you wanted, your government and military have brought all the horrors and miseries of full scale war to people who never did you any harm while you cheered, your voting districts have been gerrymandered and your vote counting rigged to take advantage of your known gullibility to fearmongering and lies, and thousands of children die every year because your chosen government acting on your expressed preferences refuses to provide modern medical care and other social services to ordinary citizens of your country.

 

What values do you have left? Business? Charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, your business. You sent the army, instead. Because you were in a panic after 9/11, willing to do anything out of fear.

Edited December 1, 2015 by overtone

[waitforufo]

 

So, started by Bush 1, not extinguished by Clinton (though, at least it calmed down a bit) then restarted by Bush 2.

Best blame Clinton, and then muddy the waters by bringing Monica into it (Though, her fling with Bill was half a decade earlier and the story didn't break until 1998 so she can hardly have been a factor ). It's as if you think it's relevant.

Is that the best you can do?

 

Blix found no chemical weapons , mainly because there were none. do you remember that bit?

It is the sort of thing I meant when I said he " invaded the wrong country (on the basis of a lot of made up stuff)".

There were no WMD.

It was more than not extinguished by Clinton. Eight years of no fly zones, bombings, and cruse missile attacks. All of this by the way would have stopped if Saddam would have let Hans Blix verify that Iraq had no weapons. Did Blix ever verify that to be true? No.

 

Clinton had his bimbo problems but all in all he wasn't that bad of a president. At least he signed welfare reform, balance budgets, and maintained prosperity in the country. More than Obama could do.

 

Setting aside the fact that you seem instead to advocate bombing Ireland and Germany because they are the countries next door to the ones who provided the attackers...

 

OK, so the relevant question is what turned a bunch of British and French citizens into criminals?

Do you think it might have anything to do with seeing bunch of people, whom they saw as brothers, being butchered by an invasion of, let's face it, the wrong country?

 

We are indeed fighting a foe with no state.

So, calling it a war is a bit silly.

And, perhaps more importantly, the enemy is an ideology. The enemy is the belief that "the West is evil".

How do you bomb that into non-existence when every stray bullet or child caught in the crossfire and (what a charming term) "collateral damage" creates another bunch of converts- all the more convinced of the justice of their cause because they know who the enemy is- it's the bastard who keeps bombing their country.

 

Bombing for peace makes as much sense as screwing for virginity.

Well ISIS certainly controls territory. They also have weapons because Obama abandoned those weapons in Iraq. They also have oil exports. We could bomb or strafe those oil trucks but we can't hurt the drivers because of a constant fear of "collateral damage." Obama says ISIS is contained. Contained where? Not in a state according to you. Too bad Obama's general Joseph Dunford doesn't agree about this containment. General Dunford made Obama look quite the fool today when he testified to the House Armed Services Committee.

 

I seem to remember Obama running for president when Bush was in office. I seem to remember him having full knowledge of the wars he was about to inherit. He wanted the job. Campaigned to attain it. Stood on his stage of Greek Columns and assured us that he was going to make it all better. The economy would prosper, wars would end, and the sea level would fall. Well are things better now?

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

Well of course you are right. But where is the answer?

 

We bombed Germany and got peace. We bombed Japan and got peace.

 

I am not trying to use 1984 doublespeak, I am trying to learn from the past, that there are times you need to defeat tyrants to defeat tyranny and a tyrant rarely will go without a fight.

 

Yes we "chose" to go into Iraq, but in some ways it was a continuation of kicking Saddam out of Kuwait. That the Shia did not throw flowers at our feet might have something to do with Iran. That the Sunni did not throw flowers at our feet might have something to do with the Soviet Union, and the Baathists and our breaking faith with Saddam and dropping devastating bombs slaughtering his Guard. They had to be somebody's brothers and sons. And our feet were probably not the place for their flowers.

 

We have pissed off a lot of Arabs supporting Israel in her fight to survive. We have been pissing off Arabs since the Crusade. We didn't want Iran to have nuclear weapons that would threaten Israel when perhaps she just wanted to have equal power with the other nuclear powers. To have the ability to control her own destiny.

 

Iraq does not want to be occupied again. It is humiliating to be occupied. Assad wants his country back, it is humiliating to be the head of a state, and be talked to like a child.

 

Yes, the West is not done with our Imperialist nature. Our authoritarian attitude that people would be better off, if they were like us. With civil liberties, rule of law, tolerance and inclusion, great education, wealth and the other indications that a country is first world.

 

Its a hard choice to know when to declare war. It is always the wrong decision. And always the proper choice.

 

Regards, TAR

and we have pissed of Persians as well

 

Not really proper since the Tigris and Euphrates is thought to be our collective womb. The Ottoman Empire certainly a first world type of civilization. The Arabs responsible for our numerals and all sorts of other indications that Egyptian Culture and Turkish culture and the other cultures that sprang forth from the Middle East are indeed first world civilizations.

 

I think perhaps I need to get the idea that I live in civilization and dessert nomads and muslims circling the stone are anachronisms, out of my head. I suppose to avoid a clash of civilizations one has to recognize that we are more like each other and have more common roots than we are different from each other.

 

And killing your brother is a bad idea.

 

Perhaps we should not continue to fight the crusades. Perhaps we have to.

 

I really am not sure.

 

Sort of feeling we have an intractable situation here. Damned if we do. Damned if we don't.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited December 1, 2015 by tar

[overtone]

 

 

That the Shia did not throw flowers at our feet might have something to do with Iran. That the Sunni did not throw flowers at our feet might have something to do with the Soviet Union, and the Baathists and our breaking faith with Saddam and dropping devastating bombs slaughtering his Guard.

Or it might have something to do with decades of tyranny under Saddam, a US installed and Western allied tyrant, and oppression of the neighboring and co-religionist Iran, a country that had managed to throw off its Western installed tyrant, and decades of suffering under Western imposed sanctions with the Western installed Saddam as pretext, followed by high-handed attempted imposition of strongman rule and an unleashing of sectarian ethnic cleansing on people made vulnerable by Western violence.

 

And it might have had something to do with the situation of the Palestinians, under Western imposed oppression for decades with no relief in sight - the apparent future of Muslims ruled by the US.

 

 

 

I seem to remember Obama running for president when Bush was in office. I seem to remember him having full knowledge of the wars he was about to inherit. He wanted the job. Campaigned to attain it. Stood on his stage of Greek Columns and assured us that he was going to make it all better. The economy would prosper, wars would end, and the sea level would fall. Well are things better now?

Yes, they are. And no thanks to the people who fought against every single improvement and step of progress he did manage to achieve. Not only are things much better now, but every single scrap of credit for that is due to Obama and his Congressional allies. His opposition did nothing - absolutely not one single thing - of any benefit to the United States or its citizens, for the entire time.

 

And now they are hot after yet more war, yet more military killing of bad guys on the other side of the world, yet more of the stuff that didn't work the first time, or the second, or the third, or the fourth. And these the screwups and ideologues and nastyboys and religious whackos who dug this pit and threw this country into it.

 

The French, now, we are going to kill to protect. How about we wait until the French ask for this favor. Let's take the French advice, this time - we sure wish we had before, right?

[zapatos]

You think a 50 50 hit rate is good enough for this sort of thing?

 

 

No, I think that you should have been able to name both countries that were invaded.

[tar]

Overtone,

 

Well yes, perhaps we should go with what the French feel is appropriate. But they used to be an imperial power themselves and have a bit of the same problem we in the U.S. have in feeling responsible for the place.

 

I have a feeling that our state department, for instance, had something to do with the Arab Spring. I don't think all the social media sights and bloggers were spontaneous, home grown things.

 

We have a tendency to be in everybody's business, at all levels from all directions, covertly and openly. Some well received and some not asked for.

 

Maybe just waiting for someone to ask us to the party will leave us standing outside a party we really need to attend. And are already so closely involved with so many nations in terms of commerce and banking and law enforcement and anti-terrorism efforts and such, there are obligations and agreements that you and I don't know about.

 

That is why we have state departments. And currently the state departments are under the control of our head of state, and he is not of the party which shall not be named.

 

Public opinion though, like you said, should not be the guiding factor. We don't need blood for bloods sake. The cycle of violence is for France's sake right now. That is, they are the ones that need the justice. We took a good measure already. We should follow their lead.

 

And maybe the Arab spring was not so well planned. The people overestimated the goodness of freedom from authoritative rule, when they woke up and found there were no systems in place to get anything done.

 

Regards, TAR

notice for instance how we had special forces in place to help with the Mali hostage situation

 

we are all over the world

 

We have interests everywhere.

On another note, having to do with striking ISIS leadership, I saw where extensive underground tunnels were found in one of the retaken Iraqi cities where ISIL had been and munitions and medical supplies were found, with pain pills strewn on the floor. These were tunnels carved into the bedrock, safe from airstrikes.

 

I would guess that every city that ISIL holds is thusly outfitted. Drone strikes might not do the trick...but then I should probably leave the details up to the pros.

John Cuthber,

 

"And, perhaps more importantly, the enemy is an ideology. The enemy is the belief that "the West is evil".​"

 

Well there is the 64 thousand dollar question. How do you talk somebody into not hating you. How do you talk a person who is "justified" in their beliefs, whether its Overtone against the party that shall not be named, or the Palestinians or the Ukranians, or the Iranians or the Baathists or the Iranians into swallowing their pride, and yielding the point to the other side.

 

It can't really be done in any sustainable way, unless both parties in the situation bury the hatchet.

 

Nations can have peace talks, and make agreements on behalf of their citizens.

 

Stateless terrorists are difficult to talk to. You just have to absorb their hatred and kill them back. They don't really give you much choice. It is like dealing with a rabid animal.

 

And you are right, it doesn't really make sense to declare war on an animal. You just kill him or let him alone, or capture him or tranquilize him, but you don't need to talk.

Regards, TAR

[Willie71]

Overtone,

 

Stop right at your first phrase.

 

You call our reaction to 9/11 cowardice and panic?

 

Some evil thing flew planes full of people into buildings. One missile did not hit its mark because some few brave men took the plane down, for us. For the living. Love for the living.

We found out who did it and went after them. We had to go through the Taliban. We had to do a lot of things to protect our way of life, against an enemy that would kill us.

 

Paris did the same thing after the attacks. It is normal, wonderful strength and resolve that she showed. The people bound together, and said we will not stop living, we will not be afraid, but we will seek out the perpetrators and arrest them or kill them if they resist.

 

The first responders to the World trade ran toward the towers to save people. They died when the towers came down. Many many hundreds of brave men and women. People from my town, my county, my state died that day. Not running away from. Running toward danger.

 

I have sacrificed none of my values. I stand with those in my family and those of my friends and co-workers who sacrified in Afghanistan and in Iraq and here at home, to protect my way of life.

 

I went to the movies on Sunday at a theatre at a regional mall. It was the Sunday between black Friday and Cyber Monday. I was surprised at how few people were there. The parking lots were only about 1/4 full. Maybe they were eating a Sunday roast after church. Maybe people, knowing they could buy on line the next day, stayed home. Maybe they were worried a little about being in crowds, and stayed home and ordered on line.

 

I don't characterize our reaction to 9/11 as cowardice, nor would you, I think, characterize France's reaction that way.

 

Regards, TAR

I have never broken faith with my government, nor my neighbors, nor my country's NATO allies. My values are intact.

On September 11th as I stood at Port Imperial watching the incredibly huge and ominous pillar of black smoke coming from where the towers once stood, I knew there was evil in the world. I did not know who, but someone was my enemy. Mortal enemy. Either I would die, or he would die. My world was changed. I didn't make that choice, I made that realization.

If we feel it safe now, to go to the mall, it is not because we don't have enemies that would kill us, but that we have fellow citizens that would search the world, and our cities and find them and neutralize them. The CIA and the military and Bush and Cheney have been building the intelligence and the infrastructure to find the people and make it so that they can not launch the second wave. You know they have been wanting to. The first wave was in 2001 it is now 2015 and Bin Laden is dead. I would say we have not been cowards, and I know we have stopped plots. France almost immediately stopped a cell from launching a second wave. There are more plots in the works, we are sure. There are sleeper cells and lone actors commanded to kill us any way they can. We have every right to be vigilant and protect ourselves. It is not cowardice to wear a helmet into battle.

My fault you know, the Paris Attacks. Jihadi John cut off the head of a U.S. Citizen from Indiana. I called for Jihadi John to be hunted down and killed, to stop his terror. He and I could not share the same world. My CIA hunted him down, found him separate from innocents in a vehicle with others of his gang and my President ordered a drone strike that blew up the vehicle, the fighters with him, and Jihadi John. Immediately came the Paris attacks, and the Russian Flight, Beirut and Mali. Not unlikely his death was a trigger for these planned plots to take place.

 

But knowing that death of innocents might well occur and signing the order anyway is a courageous act, and I applaud my president for taking the action. An evil actor, that publically killed an American citizen was brought to justice.

The president did his duty as my commander in chief.

It was clearly cowardice. It was also misinformed, jingoistic, nationalistic, xenophobic, and theocratic. In other words, there was no hint of reality, and the tyrants pushing for war, ie. Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld et.al capitalized on fear and panic. You must realize that the death toll from 9-11 was about the same as the monthly death toll in Iraq for years? You wonder why they hate you? It's not hard to Understand why, unless one tries to maintain willful ignorance.

John Cuthber,

 

Well of course you are right. But where is the answer?

 

We bombed Germany and got peace. We bombed Japan and got peace.

 

I am not trying to use 1984 doublespeak, I am trying to learn from the past, that there are times you need to defeat tyrants to defeat tyranny and a tyrant rarely will go without a fight.

 

Yes we "chose" to go into Iraq, but in some ways it was a continuation of kicking Saddam out of Kuwait. That the Shia did not throw flowers at our feet might have something to do with Iran. That the Sunni did not throw flowers at our feet might have something to do with the Soviet Union, and the Baathists and our breaking faith with Saddam and dropping devastating bombs slaughtering his Guard. They had to be somebody's brothers and sons. And our feet were probably not the place for their flowers.

 

We have pissed off a lot of Arabs supporting Israel in her fight to survive. We have been pissing off Arabs since the Crusade. We didn't want Iran to have nuclear weapons that would threaten Israel when perhaps she just wanted to have equal power with the other nuclear powers. To have the ability to control her own destiny.

 

Iraq does not want to be occupied again. It is humiliating to be occupied. Assad wants his country back, it is humiliating to be the head of a state, and be talked to like a child.

 

Yes, the West is not done with our Imperialist nature. Our authoritarian attitude that people would be better off, if they were like us. With civil liberties, rule of law, tolerance and inclusion, great education, wealth and the other indications that a country is first world.

 

Its a hard choice to know when to declare war. It is always the wrong decision. And always the proper choice.

 

Regards, TAR

and we have pissed of Persians as well

 

Not really proper since the Tigris and Euphrates is thought to be our collective womb. The Ottoman Empire certainly a first world type of civilization. The Arabs responsible for our numerals and all sorts of other indications that Egyptian Culture and Turkish culture and the other cultures that sprang forth from the Middle East are indeed first world civilizations.

 

I think perhaps I need to get the idea that I live in civilization and dessert nomads and muslims circling the stone are anachronisms, out of my head. I suppose to avoid a clash of civilizations one has to recognize that we are more like each other and have more common roots than we are different from each other.

 

And killing your brother is a bad idea.

 

Perhaps we should not continue to fight the crusades. Perhaps we have to.

 

I really am not sure.

 

Sort of feeling we have an intractable situation here. Damned if we do. Damned if we don't.

 

Regards, TAR

How about stopping being allies with Saudi Arabia and Israel, two major human rights violators. Saudi Arabia is one of the hubs of radical Islamic ideation, yet we pretend they are the good guys.

 

Stop klling civillians en masse,

 

Stop proving that we hate them, over and over, whether it's refugees, civillian "collateral damage" or supporting tyrants for cheap oil.

 

Stop arming both sides.

 

Stop electing leaders with delusions of an impending apcalypse, or leaders in the pockets of the military industrial complex.

 

 

Now that the maintenance of the problem is stopped, maybe so,utions could be found. Remember the Marshal Plan? That was more important foe peace than the bombing. Revisionist history ignores that part.

[iNow]

John Cuthber,

 

"And, perhaps more importantly, the enemy is an ideology. The enemy is the belief that "the West is evil".​"

 

Well there is the 64 thousand dollar question. How do you talk somebody into not hating you. How do you talk a person who is "justified" in their beliefs into swallowing their pride, and yielding the point to the other side.

 

It can't really be done in any sustainable way, unless both parties in the situation bury the hatchet.

 

Nations can have peace talks, and make agreements on behalf of their citizens.

 

Stateless terrorists are difficult to talk to. You just have to absorb their hatred and kill them back. They don't really give you much choice. It is like dealing with a rabid animal.

Do you not realize that we're also talking to the fence sitters, to those with existing doubts, to those whose innate values already largely align with ours, but whose experience of the world has been tightly restricted and narrowly limited so much that they don't even realize there are others like them "out there" in the world?

 

Do you not realize that there are people in tiny remote villages struggling just to survive and facing the impossible choice of "Join or Die," weighing a set of bad options merely to survive and not be massacred, people (today and in future generations) who will only be more likely to join the ranks of Daesh if for some blindingly stupid reason we voluntarily go mute or use only weapons and not words?

 

More to the point, and one I feel you and many out there may be missing, this battle is being fought among a far greater population than just those actively carrying AKs and posting propaganda vids on YT.

 

As you yourself have repeatedly argued here and elsewhere, it's hardly all black and white / good and evil / heroes and villains. It saddens me too that the Ben Carson campaign rhetoric seems to have so deeply permeated your thoughts, but I can promise you that calling them all "rabid animals" will do much more to worsen than it will to improve our situation. Your apparent need to force simplistic generalities on to this inherently complex and nuanced situation may, in fact, be part of the true problem and I vehemently and vociferously reject your false dichotomy and explicitly defeatist attitude above.

 

They're not mutually exclusive and there is clearly a critical place in this world for both, but encourage you to start thinking more about hearts and minds, Tar, than about bombs and bullets.

 

You don't defeat ideas with incendiaries nor do you defeat mindsets with munitions, and IMO a huge part of "winning" is for more of us on a vast scale to internalize and evangelize this core truth.

Edited December 2, 2015 by iNow

[overtone]

 

 

How do you talk somebody into not hating you. How do you talk a person who is "justified" in their beliefs, whether its Overtone against the party that shall not be named, or the Palestinians or the Ukranians, or the Iranians or the Baathists or the Iranians into swallowing their pride,

Try introspection. How do we talk you out of your reason-destroying fear, your willingness to treat people like rabid animals, your continual resort to violence against people who have never done you any harm and live on the other side of the world, simply on the basis that you in your ignorance can't tell one from another and some might be threats to you in the future?

 

How do we persuade you to behave with courage and dignity and honor in the face of the threat of terrorism, and cease shaming and degrading your country and your neighbors and your fellow citizens?

 

We have gained peace with some people we have mistreated and invaded and abused as we did the Iraqis - the Vietnamese. How about using our methods there - in the first place, leaving, and not coming back until invited - in the Middle East.

[John Cuthber]

 

We bombed Germany and got peace. We bombed Japan and got peace.

 

Actually, we got peace when we stopped bombing.

And, more importantly, we bombed countries.

If we bomb Afghanistan, the enemy moves to Syria.

They don't mind because they are stateless.

But we piss off the other, legitimate, residents of Syria while we are at it, and the enemy laughs at our foolishness.