Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: grampster on November 29, 2010, 08:25:51 PM
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So, at the risk of an internal civil war here in Political, how many of you would just pack up our warriors and pull out of Afghanistan and leave those folks to their own devices. Maybe vaporize a mountain top somewhere incountry as a stern warning of bad things to follow if they export any terrorism. In other words, since it appears that America is not much different than anyone else over the last couple thousand years when it comes to civilizing the uncivilized in that region, why should we bother. A'stan is rich in resources, but who cares?
I base my sentiments upon the fact that there are enough resources in the western hemisphere that could be exploited for the benefit of the western hemisphere to be concerned about those who are only a threat because we enrich them by purchasing their resources. Let those in the east wallow in their own dung, ramp up our strategic protective abilities and go happily about our business.
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A'stan is rich in resources, but who cares?
The US cares, that's who. A'stan is a Disneyland of minerals which both the Ruskies and US have known about for quite a while. A'stan in the west provides a convenient land route for an oil pipeline out of the various Stans to the north. A really heavy percentage of the world's supply of opium comes out of A'stan. And lastly, A'stan borders Pakistan and the US has strong interest in controlling Pakistan. In a nutshell the US is in A'stan for reasons of power projection and control over natural resources. It has nothing to do with nation building and the spread of democracy (whatever that means).
As a backgrounder, google up "silk road strategy"
Cynical enough?
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If A'stan is that valuable why are we fighting the war there in small-scale skirmishes and preparing to turn over the fighting to the natives? It sounds, if you are right, that we should get real, as in realpolitik, and demand national mobilization to make sure we survive and prevail as a society. It's okay to be "cynical" but then we have to be pragmatic with the follow-up.
I'm cynical too, but my view is we are fighting a war of attrition, but who's being attrited isn't clear yet, nor is who exactly is going to be benefiting from all the minerals and poppies? One thing we don't need is more trickle-down cynicism.
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So, I peruse "A Modern Silk Road Strategy" by Star and Kuchins. Marvelous paper. Great ideas. hey, spell it out to the American people. Let us invest in the strategy inter alia. Let's go to town.
Who could want otherwise? Taliban and other radical, extremist, religous fanatic backward Muslim tribalists who have no interest in modernism who posess modern weapons and have no fear of death or deprivation of the citizenry. The situation on the ground is such that modern warfare of limited engagement, piddling around and being careful not to harm anyone will not create a situation like Europe or Japan where we leveled the continent and then picked up the pieces and whatever people were left were just glad the killing and destruction were over so they could help pick up the pieces. A'stan ain't like that and no one has ever learned that lesson since Alexander.
The liberal intellectuals on the left and the right forbid war on the scale of what is necessary to get the job done and implement the great plan of the silk road. The only way it works is the civilized or nearly civilized entities in the region recognize the value of the Silk Road and join together and get the job done right. Ain't gonna happen in my view, so why bother when we could be implementing the same type of plan here in the Western hemisphere where the players are or could be amenable with less trouble and close to home. Let those in the East sort out their own deal. Then we'd have a tripartate situation with Europe and China and the West facing off and protecting their own bailiwicks and not having much need to get in a pissing contest about it. Might even find down he road that there is much to be gained in trading rather than fighting.
Instead of destroying ourselves from within as we are currently doing, why not act like the Empire we are and do stuff that makes us bigger and better and do it closer to home while reminding folks about the big stick, and maybe make an example if we have to. As for shock and awe, I'm shocked and awed by what a bunch of wimps we've become when opportunity abounds. We are embarrasing ourselves as a nation and a people by allowing the frickin' wimps we have elected to continue to muddle around in their shortsighted idiotic, apolgetic nittwittery. Giuliani said it best a couple of years ago..."We don't want to fight with you, we'd rather trade with you." America has he opportunity to be modern day Phoenicians and we're letting it slide.
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On this topic: what do Americans think about the recent agreements between Russia and America on the subject of Afghanistan, especially Russia agreeing to let American aircraft through her airspace and the like?
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Same Russia that's doing deals with Iran, cooperating with China? I imagine Russia is pleased, for obvious reasons, to see America spinning its wheels in Afghanistan, expending blood and treasure for dubious returns. Afghanistan was a bitter pill for them, and they know we subverted their efforts there. The worm's turned, and the worm's speaking Russian. They probably figure they'll get their share of the goodies in A'stan if they're patient.
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So, at the risk of an internal civil war here in Political, how many of you would just pack up our warriors and pull out of Afghanistan and leave those folks to their own devices. Maybe vaporize a mountain top somewhere incountry as a stern warning of bad things to follow if they export any terrorism. In other words, since it appears that America is not much different than anyone else over the last couple thousand years when it comes to civilizing the uncivilized in that region, why should we bother. A'stan is rich in resources, but who cares?
I base my sentiments upon the fact that there are enough resources in the western hemisphere that could be exploited for the benefit of the western hemisphere to be concerned about those who are only a threat because we enrich them by purchasing their resources. Let those in the east wallow in their own dung, ramp up our strategic protective abilities and go happily about our business.
So, what exactly are we over there for?
We'd have to kill them all, or convert them all, to make a difference. Heck, the Russkies were right there, in driving distance, and couldn't pull it off.
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On this topic: what do Americans think about the recent agreements between Russia and America on the subject of Afghanistan, especially Russia agreeing to let American aircraft through her airspace and the like?
Better them than Pakistan.
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So, what exactly are we over there for?
We'd have to kill them all, or convert them all, to make a difference. Heck, the Russkies were right there, in driving distance, and couldn't pull it off.
Western civilization has always sought to convert and civilize.
Oh, and I'm of the "pull out now, scorch the earth on the way out" crowd.
We should be no better friend, and no worse enemy. Send terrorists to our country and kill us? Good luck digging yourselves out of whats left of your country when we're done with it.
I'm sick of modern politicans that are scared to fight, bunch of namby pambys, and scared to stand up and say "Look, we have no reason nor right to build democracies in this thirdworldistans. They screwed with us, ok.
KILL
THEM
ALL."
Instead we get all this soft "hearts and minds" crap. Lotta good thats doing us.
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There's a violent druglord living at the end of the block who's wreaking hell on the neighborhood...and we're dealing with him by killing his dogs.
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In a nutshell the US is in A'stan for reasons of power projection and control over natural resources. It has nothing to do with nation building and the spread of democracy (whatever that means).
And therefore nothing to do with 9-11-01. which was the supposed reason for invading.
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I think we should be dropping canned sunshine on them. Seriously.
Twice as often on days that the prevailing winds will push the fallout into northwest Pakistan.
Use up some of the old warheads out of our current allotment of 5113 devices. If we wind up with a mere 5084 nukes afterwards, that's okay. It's still enough of a deterrent for Russia/China.
Make the uncontrollable regions, uninhabitable.
Burn the poppy fields. As a warning. Nuke them if they grow back next year. As a warning. MIRV the entire country if they grow back a third time.
Leave.
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I think we should be dropping canned sunshine on them. Seriously.
Twice as often on days that the prevailing winds will push the fallout into northwest Pakistan.
Use up some of the old warheads out of our current allotment of 5113 devices. If we wind up with a mere 5084 nukes afterwards, that's okay. It's still enough of a deterrent for Russia/China.
Make the uncontrollable regions, uninhabitable.
Burn the poppy fields. As a warning. Nuke them if they grow back next year. As a warning. MIRV the entire country if they grow back a third time.
Leave.
Problem with a strategy like this is:
How many (in percentage, and in real numbers) of the 28 million people in Afghanistan have taken action out of a desire to damage the US (or western society, or whatever), and how many of them don't actually care one way or the other, or would support us if they dared?
Roughly 50% of the population there is going to be women. How many women join the terrorist jihad? (I seem to recall that there have been some, but they're a vanishingly small number).
So what's an acceptable level of innocent casualties as collateral damage? 30%? 10%? Or in real numbers, 10 million? 1 million? If we assume that half of the women alone are jihadis, that's 7 million women who are not. How many of them is it ok to kill?
Killing innocents over there is going to do nothing to deter the bad guys that remain; if they cared about the innocents in their own country, chances are they wouldn't be the sort to have the ideologies that have led to this.
Whenever the death penalty thread comes up here on APS, even the people who are for it usually have a "better that a criminal should go free than an innocent person be executed" view.
How can we be any less conservative at the idea of dealing out death to entire regions of a country?
Even if we count as "working for the terrorists" those whose labor in some way aids them (growing food, for instance), how many of those workers do what they do with the intent to harm the West, versus how many are just trying to work to feed their children? We don't execute as an accessory the guy who sold a burger to the mass murderer the day before the mass murder; how then can we condemn the people who exist at a subsistence level and produce food that happens to end up on a terrorist's plate?
We dehumanize the innocent and uninvolved people of the region at the peril of our moral high ground. They killed what, less than 4000 Americans on 9/11. Nuking even a small section of Afghanistan would kill or devastate a far greater number of innocents, and would only galvanize the remaining Jihadis plus give them an American atrocity to legitimately trot out for propaganda.
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BP: The Japanese killed fewer Americans on December 7th.
We then engaged in a tit-for-tat war with them, chasing them back to their home islands. When they refused to surrender, we nuked them.
We nuked their minor population centers as an example of our resolve. We didn't hit Kyoto/Tokyo because they would have been next if the Emperor didn't take the hint of the first two hits down south (and because the air defenses were weaker down there).
We've done the tit-for-tat. We've chased them back to their homes. They refuse to surrender.
If we glass/glow/irradiate a couple dozen canyons and make 10% of the brokeback country of A-stan unliveable, that's okay. I'm okay with civilian casualties as we do this. Lord knows that our enemies are okay with civilian casualties against us.
So, yes: I'm okay with innocent deaths to end the GWoT. (Not that I think our government will end the GWoT if all our enemies in A-stan were reduced to atomic rubble... but that's a different thread.)
We have to defeat our enemies.
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There is one glaring problem with this tack: Afghanistan is not the source of the real trouble. Perhaps some re-targeting is called for...?
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Fighting terrorism is a whole new ballgame. I't's not difficult to understand why fighting radical, extreme religous fanatic tribalists choose the backwoods to forment their horror. Places where these radicals hold sway are usually 3 and 4th world muck holes where the people are easily controlled and rooting them out is more difficult because those same people are not only hiding them because they are terrorized by them, but they are also used as shields. They are getting their weapons from somewhere, probably from those who we supplied them with weapons for to use against them. I'm not sure that making an extreme example would work. I once thought the destruction of a holy place or two might be the answer, but I now think that Muslim extremists, the bosses that is, are only using the religion as a straw man and they are happy that the deluded young men and women who carry out many of their deeds are willing.
Someone needs to decide how to stop this and conventional stuff is never gonna work, ever. I don't have any solution as many or all of us don't because we don't know the situation well enough. But the only solution I can think of is finding a way that these evil men are unable to export their world view. Probably the answer is keeping them contained. That also means the innocents where they are contained are condemned to a life in thrall to these sub humans, and our young men and women are destined to become world policemen forever.
Maybe the guys that wrote the Silk Road paper have it right. If civilized nations can keep killing the BG's long enough to crank up the money machine the people will then begin to stand against the BG's. shrug.
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We have to defeat our enemies.
There is one glaring problem with this tack: Afghanistan is not the source of the real trouble. Perhaps some re-targeting is called for...?
Washington, DC ...?
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Whenever the death penalty thread comes up here on APS, even the people who are for it usually have a "better that a criminal should go free than an innocent person be executed" view.
How can we be any less conservative at the idea of dealing out death to entire regions of a country?
The USA is a civilized nation with traditions of morality that date back to Biblical times. When dealing with issues within the USA, it is appropriate to call on that morality and civilizational capital when making life & death decisions for particular individuals residing in the USA. Toss in the idea that the USA is a nation of laws, and we can see how we could make determination of guilt and subsequent punishment a long, drawn-out, and meticulous affair.
This is in contrast with the Hobbesian state of nature that exists between most nations, where the only real law is the law of the jungle. "International Law" is a fiction over most the world, save a few of the civilized nations. None of America's opponents since the end of WWII have felt bound by such international covenants and made the treatment of our boys by Nazi Germany look good in comparison.
To sum up, applying individual morality, developed over thousands of years in a particular Western milieu, to relations between nations is as inappropriate as insisting one's outdoor cats practice vegetarianism or clothing up swine in cocktail dresses.
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BP: The Japanese killed fewer Americans on December 7th.
Yes, they did. But then we went back after them militarily, and (as you say) chased them back to their island. And their cultural will of devotion to their emperor was such that as long as he stood firm, they stood firm; all we had to do was break the will of one man. So yes, we did drop atom bombs on two of their cities. Was that the right thing to do? Perhaps. Certainly it was the expedient thing to do. And we broke the emperor's will.
Not so in the Middle East. Even if we found and killed Osama Bin Laden, or broke his will today, the rest of the fanatics would go on and rise up with him as a martyr.
The world is different now. We cannot annihilate a people because a relatively small percentage of that people are fanatics.
Just because something has been done before, and just because it has worked, it does not make it right.
So, yes: I'm okay with innocent deaths to end the GWoT. (Not that I think our government will end the GWoT if all our enemies in A-stan were reduced to atomic rubble... but that's a different thread.)
If you don't think that annihilating an entire country will end the war, then you think we should do it....why?
We have to defeat our enemies.
We do.
I do not believe this is the way to defeat them. It seems we disagree.
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The alternative to full-out warfare is to hope for or engineer a Muslim "reformation." Perhaps we will sap their will with video games, porn, iPads, or Keynesian economics. Don't hold your breath. Long before Islam mellows we can expect unleashed hell that will only escalate the problem.
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We didn't such qualms when dealing with European totalitarian fanatics with an anti-semetic streak (who were but a fraction of the total population):
"You cannot be objective about an aerial torpedo. And the horror we feel of these things has led to this conclusion: if someone drops a bomb on your mother, go and drop two bombs on his mother. The only apparent alternatives are to smash dwelling houses to powder, blow out human entrails and burn holes in children with thermite, or to be enslaved by people who are more ready to do these things than you are yourself; as yet no one has suggested a practicable way out."
----George Orwell, reviewing Arthur Koestler's Spanish Testament for the magazine Time and Tide, Feb. 5, 1938
Why should stone-aged populations of goat-humpers get a pass?
Not endorsing some of the previous views, but I'd like to know.
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Why should stone-aged populations of goat-humpers get a pass?
Not endorsing some of the previous views, but I'd like to know.
Because they don't care and don't have anything to lose. If you nuked Somecrapistan, jihadis would pop up elsewhere to take up the fight. How many nations should we destroy? What if the Nations and most of the civilians are sympathetic to our cause and hate the jihadis?
They're willing to escalate till everything around them is reduced to rubble. They're willing to give their own lives. We have no leverage over them short of killing them to make the individuals stop. How do you do that without creating so much collateral damage that we become just as evil as them?
Honestly, I'm wondering if pulling out of the ME and buying their oil via the market would make more sense. Nine years of this hasn't done anything but turn our nation into a police state.
Chris
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They have resources the modern world needs. Our military action seems to be geared toward killing terrorist rabble rouser's and attempting to drag these nations a rung or two up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
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How many nations should we destroy?
How many you got?
We are worried about becoming as evil as they are? By defending ourselves against the destruction of our civilization? If we believe in our civilization we will do what it takes to stop the threat. Whatever it takes. This debate will change when London, Paris, Rome, or New York disappears in a flash one day.
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How many nations should we destroy?
How many you got?
We are worried about becoming as evil as they are? By defending ourselves against the destruction of our civilization? If we believe in our civilization we will do what it takes to stop the threat. Whatever it takes. This debate will change when London, Paris, Rome, or New York disappears in a flash one day.
The problem is these people don't have ties to any one nation. Destroying a nation does nothing to stop them, but will contribute towards having more Jihadis to fight. To an extent, we're causing our own problems.
Chris
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If you become a monster to destroy a monster, what have you accomplished?
More people die in car accidents each month than died on 9/11. Considering all of the other things that people here die from every day, terrorism is so statistically minimal that it can, for all intents and purposes, be ignored as a threat. The only reason it registers on our collective radar at all is because it's high-profile (People are safer in planes than in cars, too, but more people fear flying than driving. Why? Because only one two of the many accidents that happen every day makes it onto the local news. But when a plane crashes, the news of it is everywhere. Same thing with terrorism). So how much of why we're over there is simply because they gave us a very public black eye?
Are we stopping them by being over there? No; if anything the reason no other attacks have succeeded over here has more to do with intel and prevention. Will we ever be able to burn out their ideology? No, and especially not if we take the actions to become the Great Satan they accuse us of being.
Turn a village to glass, and see whether it causes more of them to become peaceful out of fear than it causes to become belligerents out of rage.
If we pull out, let them go back to stone-age squabbling amongst themselves, and put the effort that we're wasting over there into real security measures here (rather than the TSA security theatre), we could be as safe as we are today, or safer, and not have to become indiscriminate mass murderers to do it.
Let them sit in their desert and eat their natural resources until they figure out that they're better off shutting up, making nice, and selling them.
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If we pull out, let them go back to stone-age squabbling amongst themselves, and put the effort that we're wasting over there into real security measures here (rather than the TSA security theatre), we could be as safe as we are today, or safer, and not have to become indiscriminate mass murderers to do it.
This.
Chris
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The problem is these people don't have ties to any one nation. Destroying a nation does nothing to stop them, but will contribute towards having more Jihadis to fight. To an extent, we're causing our own problems.
Chris
I am not advocating destroying them, but ....
I occasionally ...no, often, find these types of debates either incoherent or circular, defeatist, or just plain frustrating.
"Destroying a nation does nothing to stop them, but will contribute towards having more Jihadis to fight. To an extent, we're causing our own problems." Okay, without trying to read too much into this (which may be impossible from my position) my thoughts on reading this become; "OK. What do we do. We can kill them....and that stops them, but apparantly it only creates more of them. So do we stop? I don't think they're going to stop then, I think they'll continue their jihad very happily. Someone has to oppose them & stop them because they aren't going STOP by themselves."
I am struck by the fact that we have a lot of people on our side who keep saying that we shouldn't do A, B. C, or --whatever-- because it will only be used by the Jihadis to encourage others into the fight on their side.
You NEVER of any argument being made on the other side (or if it is I am blissfully ignorant of it) that goes; "we better not send terrorists to America and better not commandeer four aircraft and better NOT kill 2973 human beings because it will only swell the ranks of the 101st airborne, create more U.S. Navy Seal Teams, create a larger Infantry, cause the Americans to build more bombers, cause American citizens to buy guns and ammo and other supplies for responding to local attacks ...."
Why?
Are we caught in some nightmare where winning is impossible? What gives?
During WW2 many thought the Wehrmacht were ten feet tall. They weren't. The Germans were scary. They initially had more experience than we did, had better equipment. But we outfought and outproduced them. We marched toward Berlin; and as the Nazis faced obliteration they forcibly recruited children and old men and hand them a rifle and told them to "kill an American" or a panzerfaust and told them "blow upo an American tank." We didn't whine and yell "we're only creating more nazis!!!!" we just killed them, blew them up, and marched on toward Berlin again. And we won.
What the $%$%^#%^#))(#&#%# HAS HAPPENED TO US!!!!!!!!!!
Or have I lost my mind? Or am I missing something? I don't know; I don't think so as I haven't really seen it articulated well.
Do we throw in the towel, or fight?
Maybe I should be concerned about what Obama thinks is going on. We're now down to "man-caused disasters." They're not "terrorist attacks" anymore.
[tinfoil] [tinfoil] [tinfoil] [tinfoil] [tinfoil]
If we hadn't fought the war in such a dastardly PC way, we might have been through by now, and maybe half the civil rights abridgements would never have had time to be implemented. But no, we accidently bomb an Afghani wedding and wring our wrists and apologize and whine....some scumbag soldiers do **** at Abu Ghraib and we whine about civil rights, and Julien Assange publishes his maniacal diatribe and we find out how many innocent Iraqis actually were killed .... or so we're supposed to believe .....
Yet we bombed the TURKEY GIZZARDS out of Dresden Germany and Curtis LeMay bombed Tokyo into a cinder and thousands of "innocent civilians" died....and yet that was part of war.
???
Sorry about the rant. But sometimes I wonder what people think war is. I sometimes wonder if anyone really believes we can lose this war. Lose against a bunch of terrorists? Hey, the Vietnamese weren't a world power in the 1960s-70s and we lost against them, BECAUSE WE LOST THE WAR HERE, AT HOME.
Yes, history can repeat itself.
But, it will be more expensive the next time....................................... :'(
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Or am I missing something?
yes
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Or am I missing something?
yes
Oh friggin' please elaborate, I'm not smart (like you are) and I cannot divine it out of your short witticisms.
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What the $%$%^#%^#))(#&#%# HAS HAPPENED TO US!!!!!!!!!!
^^This.
War is war.
Or else it ain't war.
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Oh friggin' please elaborate, I'm not smart (like you are) and I cannot divine it out of your short witticisms.
You're comparing the actions of peoples united by a common homeland or nationality to those spread, more or less, over the entire planet. You can't just bomb a city or nation and expect them to capitulate.
I'm not saying we should roll over and give into them, but maybe the strategy of occupying entire nations and/or destroying those nations (ie nuking them) might not be too bright.
Chris
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You're comparing the actions of peoples united by a common homeland or nationality to those spread, more or less, over the entire planet. You can't just bomb a city or nation and expect them to capitulate.
I'm not saying we should roll over and give into them, but maybe the strategy of occupying entire nations and/or destroying those nations (ie nuking them) might not be too bright.
Chris
Certainly not; as I said I am not advocating deleting an entire nation off the globe. Even that isn't as easy as it sounds if you take the idea literally. In terms of occupying A'stan, yea. What do you do? Kill a few bad guys, remove the Taliban, and leave? Leaving behind a power vacuum which will inevitably be filled by -- guess who?
The bad guys. All we did was to shove the Taliban into Pakistan. But we "can't go there" because they have "nukes" and "it's complicated-- you know." [tinfoil] ???
Now obviously as a general strategy we can't occupy everywhere the Taliban & their followers would go.
But we tie up our own hands with this garbage (and frankly at this point Iraq was a BIG dumbass blunder even if remoiving Saddam was a good thing; it only drained our resources) and we're so "timid" we're beginning to fight our own shadow.
I am all in favour of doing things surgically. NOT using nukes. But even a surgeon has to cut into a body and do some damage when he removes the tumor. We Whine and we shrink when it comes to it.
And we're not even doing that!
It's not happening.
Predator strikes in Pakistan (sounds like the title to a rock video) are great. But it isn't enough to be effective!
And what the ** is going on in Indonesia; the Jihadis are there. Are we doing anything?
Blame it on Iraq again, I guess.
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Oh friggin' please elaborate, I'm not smart (like you are) and I cannot divine it out of your short witticisms.
its been elaborated on several times by several folks
"its the internet facts don't matter" apparently
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You're comparing the actions of peoples united by a common homeland or nationality to those spread, more or less, over the entire planet. You can't just bomb a city or nation and expect them to capitulate.
I'm not saying we should roll over and give into them, but maybe the strategy of occupying entire nations and/or destroying those nations (ie nuking them) might not be too bright.
Chris
And you're trying to insinuate something along the lines of:
"If there's a rapist in New York, your argument is we should nuke all of New York."
A deliberate attempt at reductio ad absurdum.
New York is a city with police, and overwhelmingly sympathetic population. Or Jakarta. Or Baghdad.
I agree that nuking any city/country with "a terrorist" in it is a bad solution. Especially if that city/country is working to root out the terrorist cells.
A-stan is a place with an actively hostile organized militia on par with Viet Cong efficiency and a significant portion of its population in sympathy with that militia. Furthermore, the enemy-sympathetic population is highly concentrated into tribalized and regionalized centers.
A-stan doesn't have "a terrorist." They have self-replicating cells of terrorists that are fed by the tribes of sympathizers, and recruit from the tribes of sympathizers. Walling them into a US-created 12th century lifestyle where they are cut off from the rest of the world is exactly the same as nuking them out of existence, IMO. They'll never assimilate after being sequestered for an entire generation.
Especially if we capitulate to Islamofascist demands to be allowed to participate in The Hajj or other major pilgrimages.
There's just no point to it.
All that will happen is the US will lose thousands (10's of thousands) of soldiers trying to do this for 10-20-30 years, we'll end up exactly where we started, we'll lose/expend hardware on it that make the cost of a couple dozen nukes into chump-change. Our soldiers will kill 100's of thousands of insurgents over that generation with bullets, whereas if we killed about 10-25k with a week's worth of nuke strikes the core of the insurgency would be decimated and the training grounds and caves they hide in would be so radioactive and uninhabitable that this last mountainous refuge for evil will be completely useless.
In fact:
I advocate that we change the intended storage location of US nuclear waste from Yucca Mountain to all the armpits in A-stan that we find terrorists hiding in. Just dump the crap in there, no cannisters, no lead reinforced concrete. Puddles of glowing ooze in the back of the caves. Collapse the cave and then have satellite monitoring of the hillsides around there to make sure no one ever digs it back up.
I don't want to see this next generation of kids get tied up into building a fence with rifles/mortars/etc to cage some Islamic hillbillies up that will never reconcile with a modern world. Especially since our "allies" won't cage them from the East (Pakistan).
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its been elaborated on several times by several folks
They don't speak for you, though, do they? Or do they?
"its the internet facts don't matter" apparently
Let's keep the barbs firmly attached to their respective threads, please. [tinfoil]
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Don't make me break out the lock.
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I am not a fan of occupying all hte smelly orifices of hte Earth, of which Astan is one.
I am much more a "Rain hell down on them, kill a bunch of them, knock over their venerated sites, make an example, and move on. Repeat as necessary." This does not necessarily mean "nuke them till they glow," but it surely means we don't forgo servicing targets because they are located in a holy place and then stick around trying to teach them not to urinate in the stream from which they get their drinking water.
But, America and hte West has "developed" to the point it can not bring itself to ruthlessly deal with folks to whom "nuance" and "measured response" are synonyms for "lack of will." IOW, we are no longer willing to do what it takes to survive in a world where the law of he jungle prevails.
Instead we richard around in these bung holes and impose restrictions on liberties and erect a surveillance state at home...because we are not willing to inspire fear in our enemies and stop them at the borders.
Let me be clear:
I'd rather see 10,000 dead in Farawayistan than 1 dead in the USA.
I'd rather see 100,000 dead in Farawayistan than lose some liberty in the USA.
We all get the government we deserve, they no less than we. Let the consequences of their choices be on their heads. We will be hated either way. It is our choice to be hated and feared or hated and despised.
Also, the moral equivalence card is frayed with overuse and false, to boot. AQ & the Taliban plotted in Astan, a country we hadn't bothered with except to send them aid in fighting a totalitarian regime. Then, we helped their brother muslims in Yugoslavia avert the just anger of ethnicities they had lorded over and persecuted for hundreds of years. Real appreciative, aren't they?
Posing moral equivalence is akin to saying the burglar/rapist who breaks into your home with a .38spl ought not be shot with a 12ga shotgun, lest you become a murderous monster like him.
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Let the consequences of their choices be on their heads.
And if we could do it in such a manner that only those who made those choices were the ones affected by them, I would be right there pulling the trigger.
But what some are espousing in this thread is more along the lines of "Let the consequences of the choices of a few be upon the heads of the innocent people of an entire region."
Different.
By the standards some have proposed here, England should have nuked Ireland to eradicate the IRA.
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and it should be observed that what england did was what fired many a republican sympathizer in both ireland and the usa
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The IRA fought for independence.
AQ and Taliban fight for the eradication of The West and creation of the Caliphate. Those goals equal enslavement of you and me.
The IRA did not fight to create a Papal State of the world, subject to the Vatican.
The comparison doesn't hold water.
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And if we could do it in such a manner that only those who made those choices were the ones affected by them, I would be right there pulling the trigger.
But what some are espousing in this thread is more along the lines of "Let the consequences of the choices of a few be upon the heads of the innocent people of an entire region."
Different.
By the standards some have proposed here, England should have nuked Ireland to eradicate the IRA.
Yeah, loose nuke talk is not my bag.
OTOH, my point in that little bit is that, yes, they are culpable.
* Our ancestors threw off hte yoke of the Old World and we live with those happy consequences, despite only ~1/3 of the population being pro-revolution. That generation deserved liberty.
* We ALL get to take it in the jimmy WRT Obamacare, despite a minority of the country voting for him (majority of voters & electoral college, but minority of total electorate and citizenry). Our generation deserves statism, for a while at least.
* Only a minority of Germans were members of the Nazi Party. Still, they deserved what I quoted from Orwell--pretty much everything LeMay could toss at them.
* Astan's population was willing to rally and fight off the Russians, but not the Taliban & AQ, who had lesser capabilities. One would think they didn't much mind being ruled by savages, as long as those savages were muslims. They deserve the consequences of those choices.
AQ & the Taliban will hide in the population and that population will hide them and act as a shield. If we are willing to pull the trigger on only those 100% identified as goblins and insist that not a one of the folks who allow them to swim amongst them are harmed, we might as well surrender now, go home, and make our decision to convert, live as dhimmi (Jews and Christian), or be killed (pagans unwilling to convert). No conflict will every be that clean cut.
WRT the IRA:
* Most post-1960 IRA-types were Marxists who wanted a united marxist Ireland
* They fought against the Brits, who could be counted on to capitulate (more or less) after a time, as they did in all their colonies post-1945.
* If the IRA were fighting against someone like the Nazis or Stalinists, they would not have fared so well.
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The IRA fought for independence.
AQ and Taliban fight for the eradication of The West and creation of the Caliphate. Those goals equal enslavement of you and me.
The IRA did not fight to create a Papal State of the world, subject to the Vatican.
The comparison doesn't hold water.
Regardless of what the IRA fought for, they were a terrorist organization whose active members were a relatively small percentage of an otherwise innocent regional population, so the comparison does hold water.
Heck, nuking Ireland might have been more justifiable than nuking someplace like Afghanistan, because at least if you turned Eire into an island of emerald glass, everyone with a vested interest in the fight would be dead, and the war would be over, innocent casualties and all.
This simply cannot be done with radical muslim terror. There is no one place where all of them are, that could be targeted, even if such a thing were possible to do without killing the innocent.
So what would be the point, again? We cannot eradicate muslim terrorists from the world. So going over there and rearranging the rubble in their stone-age world does nothing more than give them targets to shoot at and propaganda to use.
What's the upside of poking that hornets' nest?
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WRT the IRA:
* Most post-1960 IRA-types were Marxists who wanted a united marxist Ireland
* They fought against the Brits, who could be counted on to capitulate (more or less) after a time, as they did in all their colonies post-1945.
* If the IRA were fighting against someone like the Nazis or Stalinists, they would not have fared so well.
yes at least at the leadership level
they fought for 400 years before they folded
the ira allied itself with those forces along with the plo
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In some ways, I'm sorry I started this thread. The frustration of hearing about American kids being continually murdered by stone age scum dressed up like A'stan military or police has got my dander up.
Politicians and historians tell us isolationism is bad. Well, maybe so, or maybe only under the circumstances that existed at the time that pardigm was coined. The circumstances today are markedly different. Maybe we ought to begin divorcing ourselves from the part of the globe that embraces A'stan and the peoples of the entire region.
Mods, my bad in starting this thing. I shoulda known better. As the OPer, I request you shut it down.
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I wholeheartedly agree that the better solution is to embargo the entire ME until they get their own heads out of their azzes and enter the global community in a peaceful manner.
That goes for Saudi Arabia, included.
But that solution isn't on the table any more than nukes are, unfortunately.
Even if it were on America's table, it wouldn't matter because the Chinese would just buy oil from the ME. And Europe probably would, too. And other countries would, too.
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The IRA fought for independence.
AQ and Taliban fight for the eradication of The West and creation of the Caliphate. Those goals equal enslavement of you and me.
the taliban was started to help kick the ruskies out they were freedom fighters then we helped them
and then there is this
http://www.speroforum.com/a/44123/Indonesia---Young-Indonesians-mission-to-spread-the-catechism
as a catholic and someone 1/2 irish i see real parallels between my indoctrination about the "one true faith" and some of what the hardline muslims peddle.
and the goal in ireland was to unify and spread what is indeed a form of papal law .
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There's not need to shut it down, as its been mostly civil. I was just giving a warning to keep it so.
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The problem is these people don't have ties to any one nation. Destroying a nation does nothing to stop them, but will contribute towards having more Jihadis to fight. To an extent, we're causing our own problems.
Damned if we fight 'em, damned if we don't, eh? Revolting predicament we've gotten ourselves into.
I don't counsel destroying nations, I counsel demoralizing them by a) making the price of continuing the war higher than even they, allegedly suicidal as they are, will be willing to pay. They are men, not demons, angels, or insects; there are things they don't want to lose; b) attacking the font of their spiritual energy, which last time I checked resided in Mecca...
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Curtis LeMay bombed Tokyo into a cinder and thousands of "innocent civilians" died
My understanding is that LeMay also wanted to launch a nuclear first strike against the USSR.
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There's not need to shut it down, as its been mostly civil. I was just giving a warning to keep it so.
Yes, but you have no idea what sort of language I was using with my ACME Mind Ray Projector.
My understanding is that LeMay also wanted to launch a nuclear first strike against the USSR.
Would have been no need if we followed Patton's advice and took care of the other totalitarian regime that needed eradicating in Europe. As it was, we fought a war and lost hundreds of thousands of men to preserve Russian communism.
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Would have been no need if we followed Patton's advice and took care of the other totalitarian regime that needed eradicating in Europe. As it was, we fought a war and lost hundreds of thousands of men to preserve Russian communism.
I have to agree with you there.
Of course, Russsia was our "ally" ;/
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My understanding is that LeMay also wanted to launch a nuclear first strike against the USSR.
I am not sure exactly what you are refering to....
As I recall, during the Cuban Missile Crisis under JFK's watch, LeMay wanted a full blown out assault against Cuba. Kennedy, while he'd blundered badly at the Bay of Pigs fiasco, was a little more seasoned and realized that Lemay's suggestion was far too aggressive a stand and would mean nuclear war.
Is this what you mean?
Anyhow, LeMay served well during WW2 and later took charge of the Strategic Air Command as I recall. It does seem almost axiomatic, however, that just because a well respected military officer achieves a position of command and leadership, that does not necessarily mean he will offer sane, well reasoned advice to a president during a boiling-hot international crisis .... unfortunatly.....
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Sure nuke a bunch of civilians to show the terrorists how big and bad we are :O
Its not like that's what the terrorists have been goading us into killing civilians the entire war to maintain their PR war that we are the "great satan". We should play right into there hand! Piss off the ENTIRE ME by contaminating it with fallout, there's no possible way pissing off Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the other dozen or some countries around there would end up bad for us ;/
It's not like that's exactly the recruiting tool jihadist's everywhere would love to have.
Do you guys consider Mai Lai as a great victory against the VC?
We defeat terrorism by killing terrorists. Killing civilians creates terrorists.
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the diplomatic strategic version of "the ugly american"
just because you can do something does NOT mean you should or need to
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I am not sure exactly what you are refering to....
As I recall, during the Cuban Missile Crisis under JFK's watch, LeMay wanted a full blown out assault against Cuba.
You know, I read a lot of stuff, and I don't keep a stack of note cards at my elbow to refence every tidbit of information that I come across, so I can't quote you a source.
But my recollection is that I read that LeMay wanted to beat Russia to the draw as well as take care of the Cuban Problem.
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i remember it that way too. though unlike you i was VERY VERY young back then >:D >:D
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You know, I read a lot of stuff, and I don't keep a stack of note cards at my elbow to refence every tidbit of information that I come across, so I can't quote you a source.
But my recollection is that I read that LeMay wanted to beat Russia to the draw as well as take care of the Cuban Problem.
Tallpine, you may very well be correct....
For a few years after WW2 there existed a time when WE had the BOMB and the Soviets didn't. In this period there was a discussion about whether we should put an end to the threat of communism via the USSR. The threat of communist expansion was understood even then. Recall the Soviets moved into eastern europe in WW2 and did not leave; even Patton wanted to shove 'em back but our political leaders said no.
Curtis LeMay may very well have been amongst those agitating to use the bomb on Moscow. It would be like him from what I recall, as he was a very aggressive fighter as witnessed by his Pacific Theater service. As I intimated in my last post, this aggressive stance may work very well in an actual war, but in a peacetime circumstance it may also prove to be the wrong type of action.
In the debate on how to deal with the communist threat, it was eventually determined by heads more sober that from a moral point of view we had no right to nuke the USSR pre-emptively, so, for better or worse, we chose a path of containment and mutual co-existance ... as well as the much vilified "mutual-assured-destruction" theory, AKA "M.A.D."
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In the debate on how to deal with the communist threat, it was eventually determined by heads more sober that from a moral point of view we had no right to nuke the USSR pre-emptively, so, for better or worse, we chose a path of containment and mutual co-existance ... as well as the much vilified "mutual-assured-destruction" theory, AKA "M.A.D."
Well, as they say, "an armed society is a polite society".
Should work for a society of nations as well.