Why They Hate US

[hortysir]

Since our invasion in March of 2003, one in four Iraqis has become
1. dead
2. displaced
3. maimed
4. incarcerated

Link?

Antiwar.com

Yea. They don't have an agenda.

And disregard the Pos-Rep you got, ass-licker.
It's just that I'm so unaccustomed to giving Neg-Rep I didn't check the "Disapprove" bubble.

You're a piece of shit that I'm ashamed to have defended

 

[dblack]

From an American point of view, it does not greatly matter, whether their hatred for us is driven by real grievances or imagined ones. Let's be very clear on this, THERE IS NO NEGOTIATING WITH THESE PEOPLE.

Ok... It's frustrating to point out what is obvious if you only read my posts, but I'M NOT SUGGESTING NEGOTIATING WITH ANYONE. Nor am I suggesting "sympathizing" with them, or that their attacks are justified, or that we should simply ignore them or any of the other BS accusations that warmongers always seem to reach for when their polices are questioned. What I'm suggestion is that think about what's going on. It's not simply a matter of tough-guy posturing.

What we're facing in the terrorist problem is the frustrating realization that military supremacy will only buy us so much. It doesn't mean we get to rule the world, it doesn't mean we get our way in every single situation. It doesn't mean we can go wherever we want and do whatever we want. Facing that fact and dealing with it is crucial. If we don't get it figured out, we're going to do our selves in via our own hubris.

America is NOT going to stop supporting Israel

Why NOT? Seriously, why is our support of Israel unquestionable? Our relationships with other nations should always be open to re-examination, to confirm that they are still in our best interests and to adjust them if necessary.

APPEASEMENT NEVER WORKS, not in the long run; never has, and never will; history is replete with examples of those who preferred to give in rather than fight. All of them eventually either lost, or had to fight a long hard war to survive. Had Chamberlain remained as Britain's leader, the Nazis would have won WW II!

Sorry, but this is more bullshit. I'm not suggesting APPEASEMENT. And comparing the terrorism threat to the Nazi's is laughable. The Nazis were a genuine military threat. Islamic fundamentalists are overwhelmingly outclassed militarily - thus terrorism. Terrorism is the tool of the powerless. It's attractive only to the truly desperate - those who have no chance of challenging us through military campaigns.

Aside from that, the fact is that our enemies just happen to be sitting on top of half the world's oil. Whatever we think about weaning ourselves off the stuff, for the foreseeable future, we will at least need access to that oil, or we will no longer have a first-world economy, or a first-world country. That means that we cannot just disengage with that part of the world to make our enemies like us better (it's not clear that they would, anyway).

This gets closer to the truth. They have oil and we want it.

Now, for whatever reason, these sonsofbitches attacked our nation on 9/11.

You seem to be arguing against the very thought of investigating those reasons, or to consider how our policies may have contributed. And I don't get that. Are we that insecure? Are we that afraid to admit to mistakes and correct them?

And, because it's where the gung-ho folks always go, I'll reiterate - I'm not suggesting they were 'justified' or that they had 'good' reasons. But they had reasons. And a lot those reasons had to do with our foreign policy. It's flat-out foolish to pretend otherwise.

... this American has absolutely ZERO interest, in asking them why they did it. I DO NOT CARE WHY. THEY wanted this war

if you're not interested in understanding what happened and why, that's your business. But I don't understand why you want to grant the terrorist their wishes. OBL was more or less a disgraced rabble rouser by the end of the nineties. He'd been rejected by mainstream Muslims throughout the Middle East. That's why he ended up a refugee in a third world shithole. Everyone else had grown tired of his rhetoric - his tiresome predictions that the west, and in particular America, was an imperial force intent on dominating them and taking their wealth. Even after 9/11, the vast majority of mainstream Muslims were on our side. It wasn't until we granted OBL his dearest wish by invading Iraq, that they began to think that maybe he was right. Since then, we've done pretty much everything imaginable to prove OBL's dire predictions. That was entirely unnecessary, and in doing so we're basically following OBL's script. This is a mistake.

THEY started this war, and America had damn well better finish this war, no matter how long it takes, how much it costs, or what the damn body count is, or how we achieve it!

Even if it bankrupts our nation?

You can't defeat terrorism with military force. Overbearing military dominance is what creates terrorism in the first place and will never be able to eliminate it. In fact, it only creates more.

This is not just about sacrifice (though we will have to make some). This is not about conscience (lose this war, and your "conscience" won't mean a damn thing!). This is not about being popular, or loved (I don't know why liberals are so obsessed with the idea-personally I'd rather be hated, and feared for being tough, than be liked because I made myself a doormat that someone else can wipe his feet on feet on).

Again, you're misinterpreting those of us who are questioning our policy. It's not about some peacenik, hippie ethic. It's about intelligently defending our country. Right now, we're not doing that.

So, now that I've (hopefully) made it clear to you that I'm not some hippie preaching peace and love, will you actually consider my previous question? Will you try to imagine how it must look from their view? If you place yourself in their shoes - would an overwhelming invading military encourage you to give up, realizing that the invaders were simply trying to give you a better life? Or would it inspire you to fight even harder, through whatever means were available to you?

 

[The Gadfly]

DB,
That's in so many pieces, that if you don't mind, I'm not going to try to quote it. Instead, I'm going to state your points as I understand them. If I get any f them wrong, fell free to correct me.

Now then, first of all, let's assume that dropping our support of Israel, because Islam doesn't like it, is possible. Let's further assume that we do exactly that (I think that precisely amounts to "negotiating" with them, but let that pass, for now. What would the geopolitical consequences of that move be? Think it all the way through, before you answer. Bear in mind, that your "mainstream" Islamic friends still fully wish to destroy Israel, and would gladly proceed to do so, were it not for the threat of American action. They want us to remove that threat, and I want you, to ponder the morality of doing that.

Second, just which nations in the Muslim world are our allies, and to what extent Which ones among them can we truly depend on (assuming Israel is out of the picture)?

You don't think you can defeat terror through military force? Why not?To be sure, it's difficult to totally eliminate a band of religious fanatics. However, even they have two limitations-manpower, and whatever they value enough to fight us in the first place. Eliminate the first, and destroy enough of the second, and you'll eventually defeat it. Note that I do not rule out destroying a sufficient part of the population which shelters,, feeds, hides, arms, and otherwise supplies the terrorists, to make them decide that resistance is absolutely futile.

Please explain how you believe fighting a bunch of essentially third-world countries will "bankrupt our nation ". The last time I checked, the entire Cold War did not "bankrupt" America. Neither did WWII. This is not nearly so expensive an enterprise as either of those.

Please explain who, or what (other than our own dithering population), is going to stop us from doing essentially whatever we really want to do? Please tell me what nation or nations is/are willing to commit national suicide by opposing us. (I am not talking about threats, and squealing like a stuck pig; who is going to do anything about it, militarily, and how?)

I'll grant, that Saddam's distasteful regime was not a high-value target (I'd have gone straight after Iran, for one thing). However, there was one useful side effect; it brought in so many terrorist fighters, that it gave us the opportunity to eliminate a good bit of their better trained manpower. We did get a fairly large number of them there, before we wound up dealing with at least some of them here. We kill them where we find them; it does not greatly matter for us where that is.

I await your response, after which I have some ideas on how to expeditiously deal with this mess. You won't like them, but they are relatively cheap (if messy), fairly easy to implement, and demonstrate to the world as a whole, and Islam in particular, that this is a fight to the finish, should they elect to pursue it.

 

[georgephillip]

From an American point of view, it does not greatly matter, whether their hatred for us is driven by real grievances or imagined ones. Let's be very clear on this, THERE IS NO NEGOTIATING WITH THESE PEOPLE.

Ok... It's frustrating to point out what is obvious if you only read my posts, but I'M NOT SUGGESTING NEGOTIATING WITH ANYONE. Nor am I suggesting "sympathizing" with them, or that their attacks are justified, or that we should simply ignore them or any of the other BS accusations that warmongers always seem to reach for when their polices are questioned. What I'm suggestion is that think about what's going on. It's not simply a matter of tough-guy posturing.

What we're facing in the terrorist problem is the frustrating realization that military supremacy will only buy us so much. It doesn't mean we get to rule the world, it doesn't mean we get our way in every single situation. It doesn't mean we can go wherever we want and do whatever we want. Facing that fact and dealing with it is crucial. If we don't get it figured out, we're going to do our selves in via our own hubris.

America is NOT going to stop supporting Israel

Why NOT? Seriously, why is our support of Israel unquestionable? Our relationships with other nations should always be open to re-examination, to confirm that they are still in our best interests and to adjust them if necessary.



Sorry, but this is more bullshit. I'm not suggesting APPEASEMENT. And comparing the terrorism threat to the Nazi's is laughable. The Nazis were a genuine military threat. Islamic fundamentalists are overwhelmingly outclassed militarily - thus terrorism. Terrorism is the tool of the powerless. It's attractive only to the truly desperate - those who have no chance of challenging us through military campaigns.



This gets closer to the truth. They have oil and we want it.



You seem to be arguing against the very thought of investigating those reasons, or to consider how our policies may have contributed. And I don't get that. Are we that insecure? Are we that afraid to admit to mistakes and correct them?

And, because it's where the gung-ho folks always go, I'll reiterate - I'm not suggesting they were 'justified' or that they had 'good' reasons. But they had reasons. And a lot those reasons had to do with our foreign policy. It's flat-out foolish to pretend otherwise.




if you're not interested in understanding what happened and why, that's your business. But I don't understand why you want to grant the terrorist their wishes. OBL was more or less a disgraced rabble rouser by the end of the nineties. He'd been rejected by mainstream Muslims throughout the Middle East. That's why he ended up a refugee in a third world shithole. Everyone else had grown tired of his rhetoric - his tiresome predictions that the west, and in particular America, was an imperial force intent on dominating them and taking their wealth. Even after 9/11, the vast majority of mainstream Muslims were on our side. It wasn't until we granted OBL his dearest wish by invading Iraq, that they began to think that maybe he was right. Since then, we've done pretty much everything imaginable to prove OBL's dire predictions. That was entirely unnecessary, and in doing so we're basically following OBL's script. This is a mistake.

THEY started this war, and America had damn well better finish this war, no matter how long it takes, how much it costs, or what the damn body count is, or how we achieve it!

Even if it bankrupts our nation?

You can't defeat terrorism with military force. Overbearing military dominance is what creates terrorism in the first place and will never be able to eliminate it. In fact, it only creates more.

This is not just about sacrifice (though we will have to make some). This is not about conscience (lose this war, and your "conscience" won't mean a damn thing!). This is not about being popular, or loved (I don't know why liberals are so obsessed with the idea-personally I'd rather be hated, and feared for being tough, than be liked because I made myself a doormat that someone else can wipe his feet on feet on).

Again, you're misinterpreting those of us who are questioning our policy. It's not about some peacenik, hippie ethic. It's about intelligently defending our country. Right now, we're not doing that.

So, now that I've (hopefully) made it clear to you that I'm not some hippie preaching peace and love, will you actually consider my previous question? Will you try to imagine how it must look from their view? If you place yourself in their shoes - would an overwhelming invading military encourage you to give up, realizing that the invaders were simply trying to give you a better life? Or would it inspire you to fight even harder, through whatever means were available to you?

Israel is a big part of Why They Hate US.

"Sir Ronald Storrs, the first Governor of Jerusalem, certainly had no illusions about what a 'Jewish homeland' in Palestine meant for the British Empire: 'It will form for England,' he said, 'a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.'

Storrs’ analogy was no accident. Ireland was where the English invented the tactic of divide and conquer, and where the devastating effectiveness of using foreign settlers to drive a wedge between the colonial rulers and the colonized made it a template for worldwide imperial rule."

Arms sales and oil sales about says it all when it comes to US support for the current Jewish state.
That was the thin edge of OBL's wedge and US elites welcomed it.
After all, when you get rich from war, what's the one thing you can't afford to run short off?

Enemies.

Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules - IPS

 

[georgephillip]

You're the longest-winded baby killer I've come across.

Were you drafted, or did you "volunteer" to travel thousands of miles from your stye and kill human beings ("gooks" to you) who posed no threat to your family?

'Still confusing yourself with a good guy?
Good guys don't kill because their government tells them to.
Hitler had an abundance of those.
Shit like you would have fit in well with the fuhrer.

Your crime, again, was being too stupid/lazy/indifferent and ignorant to question those who gave you orders that turned you into war criminal.

You were already a slave.
"Thanks for you service."
Slave.

PS Your "maker" is another lie the rich tell to convince their slaves to serve.

No one had to "force" me to serve my country, George. I volunteered, and I would do it again. As I see it, wearing America's uniform is an honor and a privilege, one I am both proud and humbled to have been granted. You may think "Duty, Honor, Country" is just a corny slogan; to me, it is what I live by.

By the way, I didn't and don't call them "gooks", I call them Vietnamese, except for the "Montagnards", who I call "Dega" (their name for themselves). I speak their language (rather rusty, now), and I actually liked the ones who weren't trying to kill us. I went there at least in part to protect the innocent from those murdering, torturing, communist scum known as the VC, and I did not need my government to tell me what the VC were or did, because I saw their atrocities for myself. You want baby killers? Go shake hands with the VC, and meet the REAL baby killers, rapists and murderers of Vietnam.

I was not and am not a "slave"; I was an officer of the United States Army, following my oath. It does not become an officer to question the lawful orders of his superior officers, or of the National Command Authority, and I did not. I really do not care what Hitler had or did not have; I fought for Uncle Sam, NOT Uncle Adolf.


I am neither stupid nor lazy. YOU, on the other hand, are too stupid and too lazy to locate your own arse, much less remove your head from it long enough to appreciate the extent of your own hypocrisy, ingratitude, and mean-spirited venality. God, what a sorry disgrace to American manhood you are, you who take everything America has given you, and abuse it; you, who who deride "privilege" at every turn, yet are more than willing to accept the benefits of the freedom you never so much as lifted a finger to earn.

P.S. Why don't you read Theodore Roosevelt's "The Man In The Arena"-it's an excellent description of what armchair critics like you are actually worth.

Here's a book you can read online.

Written by someone whose combat credentials aren't nearly as suspect as yours.

THREE TITLES [3] for the PRICE OF ONE.

Assuming you're not just another psychotic redneck with a rich fantasy life, tell me about honor.

Where's the honor in killing innocent human beings for money?

Particularly when they are on the opposite side of the globe from your home?

What threat did the Vietnamese pose to the US Homeland?

Are you educated enough to know the VC would not have been killing collaborators if the US had not invaded and occupied South Vietnam?

By what moral authority did that invasion and occupation take place?
Think it had anything to do with arms sales?
Or culling the herd of baby boomers?

I've certainly engaged in my share of behavior which could charitably be called stupid and lazy.
But I've never killed another human for money.
You have.

Take your honor and locate your arse with it.
Freedom will thank you.

 

[dblack]

You don't think you can defeat terror through military force? Why not?

Because military force will only dominate people physically. It won't dominate their souls. You're still avoiding answering my question - how would we react under similar circumstances? I wouldn't give up. Would you?

I await your response, after which I have some ideas on how to expeditiously deal with this mess. You won't like them, but they are relatively cheap (if messy), fairly easy to implement, and demonstrate to the world as a whole, and Islam in particular, that this is a fight to the finish, should they elect to pursue it.

Not sure what you're referring to, but I can guess. If it was up to me, we'd do the following: We'd announce to the Middle East that we were going to quit fucking with them. We'd pull out our military completely, cut off all foreign aid to the region, and let our oil companies fend for themselves. Then, at the very first provocation - at the very first attack, we'd blow them to bits.

 

[The Gadfly]

You don't think you can defeat terror through military force? Why not?

Because military force will only dominate people physically. It won't dominate their souls. You're still avoiding answering my question - how would we react under similar circumstances? I wouldn't give up. Would you?

I await your response, after which I have some ideas on how to expeditiously deal with this mess. You won't like them, but they are relatively cheap (if messy), fairly easy to implement, and demonstrate to the world as a whole, and Islam in particular, that this is a fight to the finish, should they elect to pursue it.

Not sure what you're referring to, but I can guess. If it was up to me, we'd do the following: We'd announce to the Middle East that we were going to quit fucking with them. We'd pull out our military completely, cut off all foreign aid to the region, and let our oil companies fend for themselves. Then, at the very first provocation - at the very first attack, we'd blow them to bits.

DB, You're partially right, in that you an't kill an idea with military force. What can be done with force, is to greatly diminish the incentive to act on that idea.. Now then, if the opponent is a relatively developed nation (one which has a considerable amount to lose, economically and in terms of infrastructure) that's comparatively simple. The problem here of course, is that most of the people and countries we are discussing don't have that. There is also a second component to the problem; they believe, based on our recent history, that all they really have to do, is wait us out until we grow impatient and leave. They also believe, as I indicated earlier, that we will not attack the civilian population which supports and shelters them, or their religious sites, which just happen to be the things they actually place some value on. Now, to answer your question directly, if I were them, and if I believed that my adversary would behave as I just indicated, I'd keep fighting them; there's really very little disincentive to my doing so, under those circumstances. As long as my opponent thus handicaps himself, my only real problem is keeping enough of a force-in-bing in the field to harass him, and inflict casualties on him, until he gives up and simply quits out of frustration. That is, in fact, precisely the blueprint for asymmetric warfare against America our enemies currently employ. Our policy of civilized restraint is simply used against us. What's needed, is a new paradigm for conducting such actions. Our problem therefore, is changing the enemy's assumptions about how our forces will operate.
There are solutions to that, some less unpleasant than others. I'll take that up later.

Other options can be summed up as follows:

(1) Completely disengage from that part of the world. We can call that the hands-off approach. That's not likely to work, for several reasons. First, that would leave a power vacuum in the area, into which countries with interests inimical to our would promptly move. That is in fact what happened after the breakup of the former European colonial empires; in that instance it was the Soviets who saw an opportunity to exploit. the situation. The resulting Soviet-sponsored "wars of national liberation" are still reverberating through the third world to this day. Today, the most likely players would be Iran, China, or possibly fundamentalist Islam itself. That's at least as chaotic, potentially, as the current situation, with no guarantee of stopping radical Islamic aggression in the bargain. I don't see what positives that buys us.

(2) Abandon Israel. That may look like a solution; ostensibly, that is what our Islamic enemies want most, so it should placate them, or so the theory goes. There are other consequences to consider. Several possible scenarios are possible. The Islamic world gangs up on Israel, and the mother of all Arab-Israeli wars erupts.This is fairly likely. The potential consequences are (a) Israel is literally driven into the sea and destroyed. We then have no dependable ally in the region, the credibility of our treaty commitments is instantly suspect across the globe, and Iran and/or China now have what amounts to a free hand to operate as they choose in the area, or (b) A desperate Israel uses nukes (it has them) nuclear armed Pakistan and Iran respond in kind. At the least, you now have a regional nuclear war in the Middle East that could spread, and quickly. Not such a good prospect, either.

Now, tell me why you believe none of those things will happen.

 

[California Girl]

Unfortunately, for the idiotic OP, the Iraqis don't 'hate' us.

 

[georgephillip]

Which Iraqis don't hate us?

Among the millions of:

Dead?
Displaced?
Maimed?
Or imprisoned?

 

[westwall]

You don't think you can defeat terror through military force? Why not?

Because military force will only dominate people physically. It won't dominate their souls. You're still avoiding answering my question - how would we react under similar circumstances? I wouldn't give up. Would you?

I await your response, after which I have some ideas on how to expeditiously deal with this mess. You won't like them, but they are relatively cheap (if messy), fairly easy to implement, and demonstrate to the world as a whole, and Islam in particular, that this is a fight to the finish, should they elect to pursue it.

Not sure what you're referring to, but I can guess. If it was up to me, we'd do the following: We'd announce to the Middle East that we were going to quit fucking with them. We'd pull out our military completely, cut off all foreign aid to the region, and let our oil companies fend for themselves. Then, at the very first provocation - at the very first attack, we'd blow them to bits.

You are partially correct. Military force by itself can not defeat terrorism. Neither can pure politics. It takes a combination of the two and it is a "war" that will take generations to accomplish. If you choose to fight it. The prime assault would be through the hearts and minds approach while developing intel sources on the ground. Then when you know who the bad guys are for sure you go in and kill them. Period, no arrests no BS like that just kill them. At the same time you MUST provide a secure area for those who have decided to join your side. If the terrorists are allowed to continually prey on your allies the allies will eventually quit.

Obviously there is a great amount of money that would have to be spent on a long term program like this. The educational level of the women MUST be raised as they are ultimately the group that will bring the terrorists under control by basically breeding them out of existence. Right now the choices for a poor Muslim are very limited. They get educated in terrorist schools so obviously they become terrorists. There must be alternatives.

 

[westwall]

Which Iraqis don't hate us?

Among the millions of:

Dead?
Displaced?
Maimed?
Or imprisoned?

How about the 300,000 that are still alive who otherwise would ahve been killed by Saddam and company? You seem to ignore the 30,000 or so his regime murdered evey year...I guess they don't count huh?

 

[daveman]

Which Iraqis don't hate us?

Among the millions of:

Dead?
Displaced?
Maimed?
Or imprisoned?

How about the 300,000 that are still alive who otherwise would ahve been killed by Saddam and company? You seem to ignore the 30,000 or so his regime murdered evey year...I guess they don't count huh?

George doesn't give a shit about them. He'd have gladly sacrificed any number of Iraqis as long as Bush was thwarted.

 

[georgephillip]

Which Iraqis don't hate us?

Among the millions of:

Dead?
Displaced?
Maimed?
Or imprisoned?

How about the 300,000 that are still alive who otherwise would ahve been killed by Saddam and company? You seem to ignore the 30,000 or so his regime murdered evey year...I guess they don't count huh?

Saddam was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, some with weapons supplied by US taxpayers. Even at his worse he didn't drive 1.68 million of his countrymen from their homes or bestow the Biblical level of destruction that we visited upon Fallujah.

"The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.

According to the authors of a new study, 'Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009, the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945."

U.S. War Crimes: Cancer Rate in Fallujah Worse than Hiroshima - BlackListedNews.com

 

[georgephillip]

Which Iraqis don't hate us?

Among the millions of:

Dead?
Displaced?
Maimed?
Or imprisoned?

How about the 300,000 that are still alive who otherwise would ahve been killed by Saddam and company? You seem to ignore the 30,000 or so his regime murdered evey year...I guess they don't count huh?

George doesn't give a shit about them. He'd have gladly sacrificed any number of Iraqis as long as Bush was thwarted.

I'm not the one who devoted my labor to killing Iraqis.

If it was up to me, Bush I and II, Cheney, Clinton and Gore would have been first to die in Iraq.

And all war profits would have been paid to surviving Iraqis.

Do you think it's possible to tax war into extinction, Dave?

 

[westwall]

Which Iraqis don't hate us?

Among the millions of:

Dead?
Displaced?
Maimed?
Or imprisoned?

How about the 300,000 that are still alive who otherwise would ahve been killed by Saddam and company? You seem to ignore the 30,000 or so his regime murdered evey year...I guess they don't count huh?

Saddam was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, some with weapons supplied by US taxpayers. Even at his worse he didn't drive 1.68 million of his countrymen from their homes or bestow the Biblical level of destruction that we visited upon Fallujah.

"The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.

According to the authors of a new study, 'Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009, the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945."

U.S. War Crimes: Cancer Rate in Fallujah Worse than Hiroshima - BlackListedNews.com

Biblical level of destruction? Go to Detroit sometime...that liberal nirvana is collapsing into ruin at a much grander scale than Fallujah. You've clearly never left your block so have no clue how the Iraquis were treated. They would have left if they could....Saddam made that impossible, just like it was impossible for Soviet's to leave. Which is why those who could defected to the west. Your source material is typical leftist propaganda. Try coming up with something real.

And yes I have been to Iraq.

 

[daveman]

How about the 300,000 that are still alive who otherwise would ahve been killed by Saddam and company? You seem to ignore the 30,000 or so his regime murdered evey year...I guess they don't count huh?

George doesn't give a shit about them. He'd have gladly sacrificed any number of Iraqis as long as Bush was thwarted.

I'm not the one who devoted my labor to killing Iraqis.

Saddam did. And you'd have been tickled pink to let him go on killing them.

Hey -- they're just brown people, right? The world's not gonna run out. They're not as important to the world as, say, chronic loser white leftists.

If it was up to me, Bush I and II, Cheney, Clinton and Gore would have been first to die in Iraq.

And all war profits would have been paid to surviving Iraqis.

Do you think it's possible to tax war into extinction, Dave?

You know something retarded hippies like yourself fail to understand?

If the entire world but one man forswears violence, that one man will enslave the world if he wants to.

Then what will you do, George?

Oh, yeah, I forgot -- you think it's better to live on your knees than die on your feet. Well, luckily for you, there are men and women willing to do what you're too chickenshit to do. So you can take a moment during this nation's 235th birthday to hate it and call for the destruction of the Constitution while hiding behind its protections, because men and women better than you have made it safe for you to do so.

 

[The Gadfly]

You don't think you can defeat terror through military force? Why not?

Because military force will only dominate people physically. It won't dominate their souls. You're still avoiding answering my question - how would we react under similar circumstances? I wouldn't give up. Would you?

I await your response, after which I have some ideas on how to expeditiously deal with this mess. You won't like them, but they are relatively cheap (if messy), fairly easy to implement, and demonstrate to the world as a whole, and Islam in particular, that this is a fight to the finish, should they elect to pursue it.

Not sure what you're referring to, but I can guess. If it was up to me, we'd do the following: We'd announce to the Middle East that we were going to quit fucking with them. We'd pull out our military completely, cut off all foreign aid to the region, and let our oil companies fend for themselves. Then, at the very first provocation - at the very first attack, we'd blow them to bits.

You are partially correct. Military force by itself can not defeat terrorism. Neither can pure politics. It takes a combination of the two and it is a "war" that will take generations to accomplish. If you choose to fight it. The prime assault would be through the hearts and minds approach while developing intel sources on the ground. Then when you know who the bad guys are for sure you go in and kill them. Period, no arrests no BS like that just kill them. At the same time you MUST provide a secure area for those who have decided to join your side. If the terrorists are allowed to continually prey on your allies the allies will eventually quit.

Obviously there is a great amount of money that would have to be spent on a long term program like this. The educational level of the women MUST be raised as they are ultimately the group that will bring the terrorists under control by basically breeding them out of existence. Right now the choices for a poor Muslim are very limited. They get educated in terrorist schools so obviously they become terrorists. There must be alternatives.

This is a good part of the answer. Not to belabor the lessons learned in Vietnam, but there are two which have a direct bearing on developing a suitable counterinsurgency/counterterror paradigm for the current situation. One is that the "hearts and minds" approach DOES work, given enough time, patience, and properly trained personnel. One thing we have a history of not doing particularly well, is Humint-gathering ground truth intelligence from local sources. We generally do a superb job at Elint-electronic intelligence, including signals intelligence, decryption, traffic analysis, data mining, etc.. Unfortunately, that's less than ideal when dealing with a low-tech enemy. You get the human intelligence from locals by gaining their trust, not by slapping them around. They have to be convinced you can and will protect them, even if you have to relocate them to "safe areas" to do that. You also have to convince them that you will not abandon them, something our recent history is not helpful in doing. Enemy propaganda is going to emphasize to them repeatedly that America has "cut and run" before; we have to show enough patience and staying power to overcome that perception.

Another prong in that approach, is that once we have identified enemy leadership targets, we have to eliminate them, and Westwall is correct, that means killing them. That's what the Phoenix program was designed to do in Vietnam, and it turned out to be one of the more effective things we did there. The bad guys, can, of course, regenerate leadership to some degree, but over time, repeated elimination of their leadership degrades the quality of that leadership a bit more each time. To state the obvious, leaders are harder to replace than mere foot soldiers; the replacements get less experienced and adaptable with each loss of cadre.The results of Phoenix weakened the VC significantly, and eventually, seriously degraded their operational efficiency. That will work in this situation too, as it in fact has, with respect to Al Quaeda in Iraq. (I can hear the howls from some here about "running an assassination program", but the fact is, it works).

This side of the method can be summed up as "Protect the innocent, convince the undecided, and kill the rest". This is not a quick fix; it is slow, and requires patience, but it is very effective over time. It does run against the grain of that desire for instant gratification which has become so significant a part of our current popular culture, but in the absence of a wealth of high-value material target (of which there are not many in the current situation) it's far more effective than "shock and awe", if considerably less spectacular.

I get the impression that George, and to some extent, DB, would prefer that we just stick our heads in the sand, and pretend that if we just leave the terrorists to their own devices, they will eventually go away. Well, the ostrich approach is arguably easier, and requires less thought and commitment, let alone funding; the problem is, as I tried to explain to DB in my last reply to him, is that just as actions have consequences, so do inactions., and it's folly to ignore that. Just because a particular approach might be simpler and easier for us, does not mean it's the best approach, even for our own self-interest. We used to have a saying, that , "Anything you do can get you killed, including doing nothing." That applies to countries, as well as individuals; sometimes, the path of least resistance is simply lined with too many unacceptable risks.

 

[daveman]

Which Iraqis don't hate us?

Among the millions of:

Dead?
Displaced?
Maimed?
Or imprisoned?

How about the 300,000 that are still alive who otherwise would ahve been killed by Saddam and company? You seem to ignore the 30,000 or so his regime murdered evey year...I guess they don't count huh?

Saddam was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, some with weapons supplied by US taxpayers. Even at his worse he didn't drive 1.68 million of his countrymen from their homes or bestow the Biblical level of destruction that we visited upon Fallujah.

"The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.

According to the authors of a new study, 'Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009, the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945."

U.S. War Crimes: Cancer Rate in Fallujah Worse than Hiroshima - BlackListedNews.com

Idiot leftists want to blame that on America...but the truth is, it's Saddam's fault.

Claims and evaluations of Iraq's proscribed weapons

(a) Fallujah II (100 km north-west of Baghdad), in al-Saqlawiyya area of al-Anbar province

UK dossier, 24 September 2002, p.20: "plants formerly associated with the chemical warfare programme have been rebuilt. These include the chlorine and phenol plant at Fallujah 2 near Habbaniyah. In addition to their civilian uses, chlorine and phenol are used for precursor chemicals which contribute to the production of chemical agents."

State Department, 12 September 2002, p.9: "Iraq is seeking to purchase chemical weapons agent precursors and applicable production equipment, and is making an effort to hide activities at the Fallujah plant, which was one of Iraq's chemical weapons production facilities before the Gulf War. At Fallujah and three other plants, Iraq now has chlorine production capacity far higher than any civilian need for water treatment, and the evidence indicates that some of its chlorine imports are being diverted for military purposes."

CIA, October 2002, pp.10-11: "Baghdad continues to rebuild and expand dual-use infrastructure that it could divert quickly to CW production. The best examples are the chlorine and phenol plants at the Fallujah II facility. Both chemicals have legitimate civilian uses but also are raw materials for the synthesis of precursor chemicals used to produce blister and nerve agents. Iraq has three other chlorine plants that have much higher capacity for civilian production; these plants and Iraqi imports are more than sufficient to meet Iraq's civilian needs for water treatment. Of the 15 million kg of chlorine imported under the UN Oil-for-Food Program since 1997, Baghdad used only 10 million kg and has 5 million kg in stock, suggesting that some domestically produced chlorine has been diverted to such proscribed activities as CW agent production.

Fallujah II was one of Iraq's principal CW precursor production facilities before the Gulf war. In the last two years the Iraqis have upgraded the facility and brought in new chemical reactor vessels and shipping containers with a large amount of production equipment. They have expanded chlorine output far beyond pre-Gulf war production levels - capabilities that can be diverted quickly to CW production. Iraq is seeking to purchase CW agent precursors and applicable production equipment and is trying to hide the activities of the Fallujah plant."​

Industrial pollution from Saddam's chemical weapon's facilities in Fallujah is causing their health problems.

 

[georgephillip]

How about the 300,000 that are still alive who otherwise would ahve been killed by Saddam and company? You seem to ignore the 30,000 or so his regime murdered evey year...I guess they don't count huh?

Saddam was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, some with weapons supplied by US taxpayers. Even at his worse he didn't drive 1.68 million of his countrymen from their homes or bestow the Biblical level of destruction that we visited upon Fallujah.

"The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.

According to the authors of a new study, 'Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009, the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945."

U.S. War Crimes: Cancer Rate in Fallujah Worse than Hiroshima - BlackListedNews.com

Biblical level of destruction? Go to Detroit sometime...that liberal nirvana is collapsing into ruin at a much grander scale than Fallujah. You've clearly never left your block so have no clue how the Iraquis were treated. They would have left if they could....Saddam made that impossible, just like it was impossible for Soviet's to leave. Which is why those who could defected to the west. Your source material is typical leftist propaganda. Try coming up with something real.

And yes I have been to Iraq.

Any recent spikes in cancer and leukemia levels in Detroit?
How about infant mortality?

"In Fallujah the rate of leukemia is 38 times higher, the childhood cancer rate is 12 times higher, and breast cancer is 10 times more common than in populations in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait.

"Heightened levels of adult lymphoma and brain tumors were also reported. At 80 deaths out of every 1,000 births, the infant mortality rate in Fallujah is more than five times higher than in Egypt and Jordan, and eight times higher than in Kuwait."

And, no,I haven't been to Auschwitz or Hiroshima.

Maybe you should get a clue about generic war criminals?
Stuck on slave.

U.S. War Crimes: Cancer Rate in Fallujah Worse than Hiroshima - BlackListedNews.com