Paris attacks

[tar]

Good point MigL. Forgot about that. We could easily have introduced the Uranium into Fallujah. It did not have to be an experimental bomb delivered by the U.S. or Uranium owned by Saddam.

[overtone]

You can't split the American personality and take just the half you want.

I can certainly oppose the plans and schemes of American political factions who are setting out to do very bad, wrong, and damaging things. I can also attempt to hold them to account, and refuse to allow them to pretend otherwise, when they succeed in doing those things and the predicted consequences are consequent. In fact, as a citizen of a democracy that is my duty as an adult.

 

It's like when your mother's a drunk. Sure she's your mother, but even so she crashed the family car because she was drunk. If you can, you should try to stop her from getting drunk and driving around like that. Right?

 

 

But if we as a country are to stick our nose into other people's affairs, it is probably because we have reason to do so

Sure. In this case, bad and ignorant reasons used to justify horrible crimes. Let's not do that any more.

 

Our state department and our president and the majority of our population was in spirit on the side of the Arab Spring.

But not in practice. The wonderfulness of the spiritual qualities of the W&Cheney administration and its political base is of course assumed and undeniable, because how could they possibly be otherwise, but what they actually said and did was by turns depraved, disgraceful, ugly, murderous, and stupid.

 

That is, if you wish to make the situation work and be consistent in your approach

Our approach so far has not worked. Spectacularly not worked. Not worked for thirty or forty years. Not worked to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dead people, millions of refugees, the economic crippling of our entire economy, and the rise of Islamic jihad against us.

 

So being consistent with that approach, and making the situation work, appear to be conflicting goals.

 

Good point MigL. Forgot about that. We could easily have introduced the Uranium into Fallujah. It did not have to be an experimental bomb delivered by the U.S. or Uranium owned by Saddam.

Depleted uranium munitions was a major topic of the link I provided you on the subject - which you responded to, and claimed to have read. It was also mentioned in my posting, which granted you often don't read before posting your opinions on it,

 

but still: every opinion you have about "left-leaning" stuff, or even my posting, seems to be based on a strange inability to register what some people are saying.

 

Why does your reading comprehension go to goofy when you think the source is "leftwing" or whatever?

Edited December 12, 2015 by overtone

[tar]

Overtone,

 

Yeah I was drawn off by the experimental bomb thing.

 

I always thought of depleted uranium as being near inert, not really enough radiation to cause burns or injury. I read past it.

 

Didn't sink in 'til MigL mentioned it again. And I looked it up and read the pulverized uranium after impact could become airborne and inhaled.

 

So I apologize for not hearing what you were saying.

 

So yes, I would like to keep my Mom from driving drunk.

 

Regards, TAR

sorry I go goofy and defensive when ever any anti-Zionist propaganda talking points or Marxist propaganda talking points are raised

 

I guess its because I am pro Israel and pro capitalism and get defensive when someone talks bad about my mother. I don't want to believe anything bad about her.

and pro military having been either active army or reserve for 6 of my 62 years

 

I don't accept that I lack the right, obligation and power to stop those girls from getting whipped for wearing make-up.

If the people in my country are my family, the people in Syria are the family down the street. I would like to prevent them from driving drunk as well.

[overtone]

sorry I go goofy and defensive when ever any anti-Zionist propaganda talking points or Marxist propaganda talking points are raised

You are unable to make that assessment.

 

 

I don't accept that I lack the right, obligation and power to stop those girls from getting whipped for wearing make-up.

What you lack is the knowledge, understanding, and capability.

 

Look: Your team is allied, politically, with Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Kuwait, a long list of the worst offenders in the whipping girls category - and then your team invades, of all places, Iraq. You destroy the government and civilization's infrastructure of one of the most Westernized of the major Islamic States, and you turn the place over to the girl-whipping Wahabis and Islamic jihadists and medieval imams. Which then export their crazy to neighboring Syria - something like Iran and Lebanon in the '80s, only worse (Iran being a more reasonable place than Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, or Yemen, or Kuwait). Every country you've influenced now looks a lot more like the rest of your allies in the region than it used to, in other words. Do you think that is a coincidence?

 

If you want to reduce the abuse of women under Islamic authority, and curb the spread of Saudi-style Islam and sharia law and all that, try getting your team to sit on its hands for a few years. You couldn't do any worse than you have.

Edited December 12, 2015 by overtone

[Ophiolite]

tar,

I have little doubt that you are a sincere, well-meaning, decent human being. As I have followed your dialogue with overtone three cliches keep coming to mind; three statements that I have come to believe would sit comfortably with you.

 

1. My country right or wrong.

2. If you are not with me, you are against me.

3. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

 

These seem to be axiomatic for you and you seem unable to look past them. This is why overtone's extensive (and sometimes overstated) attempts to get you to look past them are doomed to failure. It is not that your eyes are closed, it is that you are focused on a single distance.

 

Forum etiquette requires that we address the argument and not the person, but in this instance the counter-argument will remain unheard unless the person changes.

[tar]

Ophiolite,

 

I am conflicted on a number of things. Same as everybody else. Overtone acts like she is not conflicted.

 

I do believe my country right or wrong, because its the only one I have. If you are in another country and would like my support, then talk nice about me. Don't find all my faults and conflictions and rub them in my face, at the same time as you are looking for my support. Especially if you have the same conflicts going on in your individual mind, and in the collective mind of your country.

 

I don't mind at all you attacking me personally, or using me as an example. I do it to myself all the time. Self inspection is fine with me. I like using myself as an example, because I have a little bit of everybody in my past. Friends that are on each side of most of the big debates that are raging across the globe.

 

There is NO debate were one side has the "no-brainer" position, or else there would not be any debate. We would not be conflicted.

 

And since I believe this, and I find such a complete no-brainer situation, as fighting the people that ordered the attack in Paris, I am steadfast in my support for France in her endeavors, and feel I need to be there helping to defeat Daesh. At the same time I would like to defeat Assad and Putin and keep Iran from having nuclear capability, and keep girls from getting whipped in the square, anywhere, and shun the Turks for chanting Alahku-Akbar at the soccer game during the moment of silence for the victims in Paris.

 

That I can't do all that at once, is the reason why I have to take first things first.

 

Defeat Daesh.

 

Regards, TAR

wait...do they get whipped in the square, or in private? Just remembered in that article I posted that the girl got taken into another room to be whipped and when her covering was taken off, she was found to have makeup on and more lashes were dealt

 

There might be an element of domination and submission that we are dealing with here. Perhaps in many of our debates both individually and in groups and organizations and counties. Who has control? Who should have control?

Edited December 12, 2015 by tar

[MigL]

On that note, lets try shifting gears...

 

There was a Star Trek episode ( original series) where two worlds had been at war for 800 yrs. the attacks on each other were computer simulated and the ( computer selected ) affected people reported to disintegration chambers as 'casualties'.

War had been "sanitized' to the point of being part of everyday life.

There was no need to avoid it or end it.

 

In C. Nolan's 'The Dark Knight', Batman captures the Joker and has him hanging upside down at a building construction site. The Joker tells Batman he can never win, because the rules he lives by bind him, while he, the Joker, has no rules. The only way he can 'win' is by stooping to the Joker's level. This sentiment is previously expressed by F. Miller in book 3 of the Dark Knight graphic novel.

 

Now I know some people don't like my pop entertainment references, but maybe this warrants discussion.

Is war supposed to be messy and brutal ?

Overtone is right, when was the last time the US 'won' a war ?

It hasn't happened since we started televising the actual brutality of war on the evening news ( Vietnam ), so even having the largest, best equipped armed forces in the world is useless when the people at home have no stomach for what they see on TV.

 

We have come to the point where we try to sanitize war ( long range missiles and munitions, UCAVs ), so we start wars at the drop of a hat. Would the US have gone into Iraq if it was going to be another 'Omaha Beach' ?

That is why 50 yrs of détente worked between two superpowers. the retribution for a foolhardy attack would have been terrible.

You don't start sh*t if you're afraid of the outcome. And that's why North Korea gets left alone.

 

I often have a problem when people mention proportional response ( usually in the case of Israel ), because a response HAS to be worse to prevent the incident from happening in the first place. That is the meaning of 'deterrence'.

 

Anyway, just so I don't make this a 'wall of text' post like I've accused others of doing...

I consider myself a pacifist and will walk away from a fight ( have no need/use for pride ), but I will not tolerate harm to people I care about, and will defend them with whatever means at my disposal, so...

If we are going to start wars for a 'justifiable' reason, should we be 'all in', and do whatever needs to be done to win, even to the point of using nukes ?

And if not justifiable ( or winnable ),refrain from starting sh*t.

[dimreepr]

Overtone is right, when was the last time the US 'won' a war ?

 

 

When was the last time any nation ‘won’ a war?

 

You can win a game because that game stops when the winner is declared.

 

A war is just part of the continuum that is life and so can only stop when life does, which is why ‘Tar’ you can never defeat ‘Daesh/Nazi’s/British/Mongols/Romans’ etc. unless the concept of revenge/hate is as foreign to us as the concept of immortality.

Edited December 12, 2015 by dimreepr

[Ten oz]

@ MigL, are you saying that media has made war too sanitized and that has prevented the U.S. from doing what needs to be done to win? If so I completely disagree. Only two things can be accomplished through war: people can be killed and property (land, technology, historical sites, etc) can be obtained. Any other reason or justification for war will ultimately fail. For example the United States can force the Iraqi military out of Kuwait (land) but can not change Iraqis hearts and minds. The differences between the first and second gulf wars boils down to one having an achievable goal and the other not. Getting Germany out of France was achievable with our military but it took another few decades to reunite the Germany people. The sanitized fashion of the way people are killed isn't the issue. In Syria we can kill Assad and kill ISIS members but we can not determine the political philosophy of those who rise up in the power vacuum that will be created. It doesn't matter how brutal we allow ourselves to be.

 

On The Origin of Species was published in 1859. Evolution was broadly taught in universities there after. Evolution has been part of our public school curriculum for a hundred years and yet today half of the people in the united States do not understand or believe in evolution. Beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in society are terribly difficult things to change. From slavery, to segregation, to the state of affairs today this country has struggled with race for hundreds of years. Each generation improving but many lingering issues remain. Trump is basically running his whole campiagn on throw out the Mexicans, Muslims, control the Chineses, and restore the US to being a white Christian nation and millions (not the majority) stand behind that sort of rhetoric. Whether it is Abortion, Global Warming, taxes, gun rights, healthcare, Social Security, or etc, etc, etc, I have not seen a single political arguement legitametly die off and go away in my lifetime. The same idelogical battles rage for decades. Nixon's Healthcare plan was more progressive than Obama's. So many of today's political debates are more than a half century in the making. A nation can not be changed quickly.

 

Our military is not designed to move millions of troops into a region and operate as that regions interim government for 50-100 years while political and religious ideology get ironed out. In the United States we went from the war for independence, to the Quasi war, to the war of 1812, to the Mexican American war, then into the Civil War. It took about 80 years of fighting battles on our own soil before the United States ironed out a national identity. Iraq, Syria, Afghanastan, and Pakistan have decades to go before they become stable. No amount of brutality in war will speed that timeline along.

[tar]

ten oz,

 

I believe you are thinking along the right lines. And here I would add, continuing the thought of control and who should be in it, that we want to be in control of how things are done in a country. Like we know better than the populace, how they want to be.

 

Maybe there is a place for this type of thinking, maybe there are problems with it. Imperialist thinking often causes problems. In Ukraine a large portion of the population was leaning toward the West, and a large portion of the population was leaning toward mother Russia. But it takes two to tango. Yet neither side could let the other side have their way...

 

I always wonder why we are made guilty when a person starves in another household, or another state, or another country. Are there not people living there, with good judgement and intelligence and capability. Do they not have parents, to show them how to survive?

 

Why do we feel that others should be our wards? Is that perhaps not a dominance thing?

 

In the debates I had on Guardian talk after 9/11, against the Anti-Zionists, two dominance ideas were evident, and hard to combat, in terms of establishing equality, and not a master slave relationship.

 

Palestinians didn't want to be second class citizens to Jews as first class.

And Iran and Arabs in general did not want to be second class world citizens to the West as First class.

 

 

"I wouldn't have to beat my wife, if she would just do what I tell her"

Edited December 13, 2015 by tar

[dimreepr]

Control, as a concept, is very similar to revenge; after all what else can you do when they don’t do as you demand?

 

If you want a horse to drink, just wait till it’s thirsty.

[DevilSolution]

 

 

When was the last time any nation ‘won’ a war?

 

You can win a game because that game stops when the winner is declared.

 

A war is just part of the continuum that is life and so can only stop when life does, which is why ‘Tar’ you can never defeat ‘Daesh/Nazi’s/British/Mongols/Romans’ etc. unless the concept of revenge/hate is as foreign to us as the concept of immortality.

 

It's true you cant defeat the British, dno about the rest though.

[dimreepr]

Have fun trying...

[MigL]

Both of you have misunderstood the point Dimreepr and Ten oz.

My post was not about winning, nor was I trying to justify anything.

 

I simply stated that IF THERE IS JUSTIFICATION, such as if Canada were to invade the US and England tomorrow with the express purpose of killing all your men and taking all your women ( HaHa ),you would both be justified in going to war against Canada.

And IF THERE IS JUSTIFICATION, you shouldn't go about it half-as*ed with a 'proportional' response, fighting limited to air attacks with unmanned vehicles and PGMs, or computer simulations of damage and reporting to disintegration chambers.

These are the things that sanitize war, make it seem like a good idea, and make it last a long time.

The best argument against war is that it is brutal and brings everyone down to an 'animal' level.

One has a good argument that the allies were justified in going to war against Hitler's aggression in WW2.

How long do you think the war would have lasted if we had only targeted his war factories, munition storage, airfields, etc, and tried to avoid casualties at all costs.

It is interesting that the Russian forces, which were the most brutal towards the Reich's forces, almost defeated them singlehandedly.

 

On the other hand, IF THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION ( like the argument could be made for Iraq ), we shouldn't start sh*t, and shouldn't be there

[CharonY]

Both of you have misunderstood the point Dimreepr and Ten oz.

My post was not about winning, nor was I trying to justify anything.

 

I simply stated that IF THERE IS JUSTIFICATION, such as if Canada were to invade the US and England tomorrow with the express purpose of killing all your men and taking all your women ( HaHa ),you would both be justified in going to war against Canada.

And IF THERE IS JUSTIFICATION, you shouldn't go about it half-as*ed with a 'proportional' response, fighting limited to air attacks with unmanned vehicles and PGMs, or computer simulations of damage and reporting to disintegration chambers.

These are the things that sanitize war, make it seem like a good idea, and make it last a long time.

The best argument against war is that it is brutal and brings everyone down to an 'animal' level.

One has a good argument that the allies were justified in going to war against Hitler's aggression in WW2.

How long do you think the war would have lasted if we had only targeted his war factories, munition storage, airfields, etc, and tried to avoid casualties at all costs.

It is interesting that the Russian forces, which were the most brutal towards the Reich's forces, almost defeated them singlehandedly.

 

On the other hand, IF THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION ( like the argument could be made for Iraq ), we shouldn't start sh*t, and shouldn't be there

 

I have a bit of a problem with that. There is no hard way to measure levels of justification and invariably standards will change over time. Thus, using such a mushy concept to allow civilian deaths is not something that I can easily agree with. For example, if a state sponsors terrorism resulting in a few deaths per year, does that justify military action? What if the a state does not sponsor it, but is just corrupt? Do economic interests justify war? How about human rights abuse and if so at what level (the latter would almost be quite an ironic casus bellli, if at the same time we would allow these abuses to happen in a military context). Also, this is without touching legal issues, which may be at conflict with ethical considerations.

 

 

The WWII argument would require a lengthy post from someone far more knowledgeable than me, However, there have been a number of articles based on military records that have looked into the effects of e.g. operation Gomorrah or other large scale destruction of civilian structures. While there are very different nuances the general consensus (again, based on the little I had read) is that a) the value was in the destruction of the militarily usable structures (i.e. infrastructure and logistics) whereas b) the civilian deaths had no favorable influence on the war outcome and c) to some degree the large destruction was due to the limits of the military technology as high-precision bombing was simply not feasible.

 

It would also be a mistake to attribute the effectiveness of the Soviets to brutality. After all they invested the largest amount of man-power into the conflict. Also, it is hard to see how brutality toward the civilian population would actually helped their effectiveness.

Edited December 14, 2015 by CharonY

[dimreepr]

I simply stated that IF THERE IS JUSTIFICATION, such as if Canada were to invade the US and England tomorrow with the express purpose of killing all your men and taking all your women ( HaHa ),you would both be justified in going to war against Canada.

This sounds like the “ticking time bomb” argument used to justify torture, an oversimplification that doesn't occur in reality.

[Ten oz]

Both of you have misunderstood the point Dimreepr and Ten oz.

My post was not about winning, nor was I trying to justify anything.

 

I simply stated that IF THERE IS JUSTIFICATION, such as if Canada were to invade the US and England tomorrow with the express purpose of killing all your men and taking all your women ( HaHa ),you would both be justified in going to war against Canada.

Every major cities police department in the United States, alone, could repell an invasion from the Canadians. LAPD, NYPD, CPD, or etc all could make Canada regret to day it ever even thought about stepping south across the border.....hahaha

 

And IF THERE IS JUSTIFICATION, you shouldn't go about it half-as*ed with a 'proportional' response, fighting limited to air attacks with unmanned vehicles and PGMs, or computer simulations of damage and reporting to disintegration chambers.

These are the things that sanitize war, make it seem like a good idea, and make it last a long time.

The best argument against war is that it is brutal and brings everyone down to an 'animal' level.

One has a good argument that the allies were justified in going to war against Hitler's aggression in WW2.

How long do you think the war would have lasted if we had only targeted his war factories, munition storage, airfields, etc, and tried to avoid casualties at all costs.

It is interesting that the Russian forces, which were the most brutal towards the Reich's forces, almost defeated them singlehandedly.

 

On the other hand, IF THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION ( like the argument could be made for Iraq ), we shouldn't start sh*t, and shouldn't be there

As I pointed in in my last post war can accomplish two things: killing people and taking property (land, tech, prizes, etc). Forcing Germany out of France, Austria, Holland, and etc was achieviable through war because taking land is one of the things which can be accomplished by war. Similarly that is why the first gulf war was a success. We took back Kuwait. Land can be won or lost whether there is a proper justification or not.

 

I think your point plays on a political myth. We have all heard the complaints about how the rules of engagement have put soldiers lives at risk or prevented them from taking out military targets. Most often it is brought in arguments about Vietnam. The argument defies the reality of that war. There was nothing sanitized or kids gloves about Agent Orange and Napalm. A copious amount of people were killed. The only thing we didn't do is use nuclear weapons. Same goes for the War on Terror: we have tortured, put people in prison with no formal charges, illegally wire taped, use drone to execute fleeing suspects, invaded two countries and disposed their entire governments, and etc, etc, etc. Is that not brutal enough? Only reason we haven't brought back the napalm to fight terror is because there is nothing to burn to the ground in deserts. Please provide some examples of where you feel our actions have not been brutal as they may have been if not for the sanitizing of war? We don't use drones as a means of playing nice. We use drones because they can stay over target 24/7 without needing to rest or changing out of their crews. Drones extend our use of force capability not handicap it.

[tar]

CharonY,

 

But justification in retrospect and justification now, are two different notions.

 

Like you said, when you use terrible means to stop terror, it seems as if you are just being terrible, and you forget you stopped the other terror.

 

When Jihadi John chopped off the head of an American, I stood powerless to stop him. None of us could bear the sight. I actually never watched it happen, but I am pretty sure he did what he said he was going to do. It is imperative, in society, to not let people do things like that. You have to storm the theatre, and kill the hostage takers, there is not another way.

 

I was reading the account of a shooter in America that was walking down the street, shooting people. Mostly black people were getting shot. The shooter would smile as he shot. The first policeman on the scene recounted that he looked the shooter in the eye and every human impulse he had was to run away. He thought "this has got to end" and instead of running, emptied his shotgun at the man.

 

Regards, TAR

Was talking to a gentleman over the weekend, whose uncle (I met the uncle,now departed) survived storming the beach at Normandy. Impossible situation, people drowning, being raked by machine gun from the high ground, seeking cover behind sand bags that turned out to be corpses...why did we do that?

[Ten oz]

CharonY,But justification in retrospect and justification now, are two different notions.Like you said, when you use terrible means to stop terror, it seems as if you are just being terrible, and you forget you stopped the other terror.When Jihadi John chopped off the head of an American, I stood powerless to stop him. None of us could bear the sight. I actually never watched it happen, but I am pretty sure he did what he said he was going to do. It is imperative, in society, to not let people do things like that. You have to storm the theatre, and kill the hostage takers, there is not another way.I was reading the account of a shooter in America that was walking down the street, shooting people. Mostly black people were getting shot. The shooter would smile as he shot. The first policeman on the scene recounted that he looked the shooter in the eye and every human impulse he had was to run away. He thought "this has got to end" and instead of running, emptied his shotgun at the man.Regards, TAR

These individual examples are not useful to a discussion about War. There are over 300 million people in the United States. When our government chooses to spend over a trillion dollars and invest a decade into a war that has an effect on the whole country. It impacts the economy, impacts policy, taxes, and etc. Making a decision about things that will change the lives of hundreds of millions of people takes far more deliberation than does the choice to shoot a single gun man. The question is not whether terrorists like Jihadi John should be killed rather it is whether or not investing a trillion dollars into war in Syria will improve your children and grand children's lives more than that trillion dollars being put someplace else.

[tar]

Another in the same conversation, that was a young boy during WWII had a father that was drafted a couple weeks before a rule came down that people his age with children should not be drafted. His father served in the Navy and was stationed off the coast of Japan, in an invasion fleet that would have invaded Japan had Japan not surrendered. Japan might not have surrendered had there not been Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The sailor's wife died of cancer while he was gone. Why did we do that?

 

I think it was because we thought "this has got to end" and emptied our shotgun into the shooter.

I don't think we should have a war with Syria, Ten Oz. I am suggesting we suspend the Arab Spring, and help Assad get his country back together, by with him, liberating Raqqa, from the Daesh.

My thinking being, after 240,000 lives, "this has got to end".

 

We need to admit our mistake in backing the rebels against Assad, drop our desire to have everybody live by our rules, and let them come out of the 6th century at the speed that making such a transition might take (without revolution). I am thinking Assad is more likely to understand the situation in his country than I am. If Assad could promise to not kill in reprisal, I see no good reason, other than saving face, for not volunteering our support in taking Raqqa back from Daesh.

If on the other hand, we decide after deliberation, that Assad is really bad, and we need regime change, then the proper thing to do would be to spend our own blood and money to get the job done.

This might involve going to war with Russia however, so we would have to be really sure that Assad needed to go.

 

So is it better to go in in person, with Hezbullah and Iran and Russia and lose some lives and break some stuff, but defeat Daesh. Or is it better to have a World War against our ideological foes?

Edited December 14, 2015 by tar

[dimreepr]

CharonY,

 

But justification in retrospect and justification now, are two different notions.

 

 

No, they are just two sides of a coin called revenge; the only caveat being that justification now can be construed as defence.

 

When one or ones family is attacked it’s perfectly justifiable to kill rather than be killed; retrospectively it becomes revenge.

Edited December 14, 2015 by dimreepr

[Ten oz]

Another in the same conversation, that was a young boy during WWII had a father that was drafted a couple weeks before a rule came down that people his age with children should not be drafted. His father served in the Navy and was stationed off the coast of Japan, in an invasion fleet that would have invaded Japan had Japan not surrendered. Japan might not have surrendered had there not been Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The sailor's wife died of cancer while he was gone. Why did we do that?

 

I think it was because we thought "this has got to end" and emptied our shotgun into the shooter.

I don't think we should have a war with Syria, Ten Oz. I am suggesting we suspend the Arab Spring, and help Assad get his country back together, by with him, liberating Raqqa, from the Daesh.

My thinking being, after 240,000 lives, "this has got to end".

 

We need to admit our mistake in backing the rebels against Assad, drop our desire to have everybody live by our rules, and let them come out of the 6th century at the speed that making such a transition might take (without revolution). I am thinking Assad is more likely to understand the situation in his country than I am. If Assad could promise to not kill in reprisal, I see no good reason, other than saving face, for not volunteering our support in taking Raqqa back from Daesh.

If we put American lives in Syria to accomplish what you suggest than "war" in Syria fits. I am going to ignore your comments about Japan because that deserves its own discussion and there are other threads for that.

 

We can help Assad get his country back but that won't end anything. You do realize that? Terrorist groups like ISIS are not bound by borders. They will simply move into Iran and Turkey just as Al Quada moved into Pakistan when we put troops in Afghanistan. This could get worse.

 

Do you feel the Middle East is a safer place today than it was before 9/11? No rhetorical pontifications about what may or may not have been. Lets deal with what is. Do you believe it is more safe yes or no? For me it is a no. Iraq, Syria, Afghanastan, and Pakistan are all obviously far less stable and competely volunerable to groups like Al Quada and ISIS. Meanwhile I wouldn't be surprised to see Iran, Turkey, or Jordan fall in to choas next. "This has got to end" is an understandable feeling but Syria is not an island out in the Pacific Ocean. "This has got to end" is how we felt about Saddam and here we are a decade later thinking perhaps we were better off with Saddam.

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

No the Middle East is not a safe place, and it is more vulnerable to groups like Al Qaeda and Daesh, because it is unstable, but consider the reasons it is unstable. The Jews are afraid of the Palestinians and the Iranians, Hezbullah is afraid of the Jews, the Kurds are afraid of the Sunni, the Shia are afraid of...but the reprisals that keep this fear going, are not all, indeed not really that many, that are the fault of the U.S...except that in we emptied our shotgun at Saddam.

 

I am not trying to Pontificate, I just have my feelings about how things went down, and are going down, and feel that people have been demonizing the U.s. and making us look like the evil one, even in situations where we were not.

 

In looking back on the invasion of Iraq, I think the incident that started the Shia resistance against the U.S. was one I mentioned before in theory, and do not remember well enough to cite. A mortar shell landed in a marketplace. The U.S. was blamed. We know we didn't do it, but the parties interested in having us look bad, that were blaming us, might have even done it. So after the invasion many things happened. We hunted down Saddam, an interim government was cobbled together with our help and U.N. help and coalition help. We were hopeful that the Kurds and Sunni and the Shia could govern each other together. Sure we wanted some control over the oil and American companies like Halliburton gained wealth and contracts, but the people that wanted us out, fermented the vitriol.

 

Regards, TAR

These bombings and shootings like the one in Paris are done by people who want us out. Out of the Middle East, into the Sea, off the planet, I am not sure where it is they want us to go. I just know I am not leaving.

[iNow]

These bombings and shootings like the one in Paris are done by people who want us out. Out of the Middle East...

Perhaps in the long-term, but in the immediate term they actually want nothing more than to draw us INTO the middle east to help legitimize them.

[tar]

iNow,

 

So its just a child misbehaving, for attention?

 

I am thinking the opposite.

 

It is the 18 year old rebelling against the parents.

 

We have to remember that the area is no longer under British rule.

 

Consider the way the U.N. and the world monitored Saddam. In his business big time. The U.S. provided the muscle, but the world bullied Saddam, as the world is bullying Assad, today.

 

I am thinking that while we are debating proper parenting style, we are missing the point, that we should probably not be of the mind that things will only be right, when we have control of the world.

 

I am forwarding the idea here, that there is a certain lack of respect shown, when we, as the West, feel that things will not be right until the rest of the world catches up to us. I think things will be better when Muslims work their way out of the 6th century, you feel things will be better when people stop believing in angels, gays feel things will be better when people stop listening to the Old Testament, Muslims feel things will be better when Christians stop associating Mary and Jesus with Allah and Jews stop charging interest.

 

The reality of the situation is that "we" are all those things. Like the "Blind Men and the Elephant" each of us is partly right and partly wrong.

 

We are certainly wrong to think that carpet bombing "those people" into the stone age, is going to solve any problems.

And they are certainly wrong to strive against those in error, the disbelievers 'til all the world is for Allah and everybody lives like the Prophet (pbuh), lived.

 

Somebody once posted a saying on another thread, said by a great thinker, that I don't remember the words of, but that had the idea that an intelligent mind, was one that could hold two conflicting ideas at the same time. I would extend that to also apply to an intelligent world.

 

And the people of the mid East are grown ups. We should remember that.

 

We are not their parents.

 

Regards, TAR

As far as Daesh goes though, I don't pretend to be either their child or parent, I am just their enemy, pure and simple. They go, or I go.

I heard on the internet the other day that ISIS is telling their recruits to come to Libya, because getting to Syria is too difficult. Another place where the father of the house has been removed by the West.

And I reserve the right to feel the parent of the recruits and protect them from the abusive parent, AND arrest the wife beater.