[Issue Discussions Group] - Terrorism
|
|
| Also listed in: Issue Discussions |
It has often been said that U.S. foriegn policies are responsible for "creating more terrorists".
What do you think?
I don't really know if I believe that. Though I am clearly not an expert. The only information I have is what comes through various news organizations, and I imagine that might be limited or biased.
To my thinking, the MOST offensive thing that Americans do globally have the worst affect on people who could not possibly take any action against us - the poorest and the weakest in the world. As consumers we support corporations who run sweatshops staffed by children... we support corporations who "buy" water rights in South American countries and then deny water to the indigenous people...
None of those people are becoming terrorists - they are simply dying.
What do you think?
I don't really know if I believe that. Though I am clearly not an expert. The only information I have is what comes through various news organizations, and I imagine that might be limited or biased.
To my thinking, the MOST offensive thing that Americans do globally have the worst affect on people who could not possibly take any action against us - the poorest and the weakest in the world. As consumers we support corporations who run sweatshops staffed by children... we support corporations who "buy" water rights in South American countries and then deny water to the indigenous people...
None of those people are becoming terrorists - they are simply dying.
Stalin
Mao
Pol Pot
come immediately to mind. Bush has killed, what, (using the most obscene estimates) 1 million people? Those three killed more than that. And not out of uncaring and unfeeling empire-building (if that's what Bush is doing) but they did it intentionally. They WANTED to kill people.
Are you excusing George Bush for his lies? Are you excusing him for OKing the torture of thousands of people?
You think that perhaps because Bush didn't "want" to kill these people that makes it ok?
As for Bush not wanting to kill people I doubt that. he is a governor who until the current governor of TExas presided over more executions than any governor in the state of TExas.
AND AS FOR HIS INTENTIONS. Bush is such a scumbag that he mocked one of the prisoners on death row when she begged for clemency.
BUSH IS A MONSTER WHO RANKS WITH THE WORST OF THEM.
Murder is NOT murder.
Stalin intentionally starved to death 10,000,000 Ukrainians. That was his job BEFORE he became the dictator of the Soviet Union.
Sorry, I'll take a dozen Bush's over one Stalin.
The same holds true for prisoners executed in Texas. THEY committed crimes for which the punishment is death. THEY did wrong and wrong so bad the only justice was the forfeiture of their lives. THEY made the choice to do those things, not the governor or the state. Do you see the difference?
Are you referring to forcing prisoners to wear panties on their heads? I'm sure our guys who are captured are afforded such "torture". Oh, wait, they are simply beheaded, or set on fire and dragged down the street, or something similar. Can you not see evil?
-snakelips
Mind you, that doesn't absolve Bush. I think it was the duty of the public to vote him out of office simply because he turned out to be wrong, in order to hedge against future presidents intentionally lying (even if this one didn't).
I agree that responsibility is entirely at Bush's feet. "The Buck Stops Here" and no one else can be blamed for the decisions only he could make.
Not only that, but remember: Bush et al also thought they would be greeted as liberators. As a result, they did not expect hardly any collateral damage.
It's not UNAVOIDABLE violence, but unintentional. Bush did not intend to get into an endless insurgency with hundreds of thousands of civilian dead.
In conclusion, it's not STUPIDITY that makes a terrorist, not even CALLOUSNESS, but overt intent to kill civilians. If Bush could have killed every Iraqi soldier plus Saddam, and not killed a single Iraqi civilian, he would have done it in a heartbeat.
-snakelips
Are we upsetting people with our policies? Sure. If you want to call that creating more terrorists, fine. But the point is that the people with that mindset exist and want to kill us. And we must resist, and that involves killing them. Which, it stands to reason would tend to upset them. I know it does me when someone is trying to kill me.
-snakelips
As a nation, We the people (those of us who earn uner $150,000 a year) are the ones who, like Atlas, are holding up this nation on our backs with our taxes. People earning $150,000 and less on the average pay anywhere from 10 to 20% more of our incomes in taxes to the government than do those who earn more.
We need to stop begging from these people and take back control. We need to stop buying into the Republican BS that we are somehow "poor" or not doing our part or asking for welfare.
THEY are the ones who are not doing THEIR part--the upper 10% who do nothing but take. They are the true welfare recipients.
THEY are the takers (the CEO and the shareholders of privately held businesses that are "government" backed like the Federal Reserve, Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae.
These kinds of arrangements need to end. This is nothing less than welfare for the rich. The CEO's and the shareholders get all the profits and the assests in these kinds of arrangements while we the people get to pay for the operation expenses and make up the difference on any losses with our tax dollars.
Phaq that.
Besides, who do you think runs most of the business in the United States? The people with money don't just stuff it under a huge mattress, they open new business which employ people and they buy things which employs people.
You have the power to vote with your dollar. Don't spend it if you don't like a business or their CEO. Someone else will fill the void [if the gov't allows the free market to work].
The fact that some people earn more and some people earn less is just the differential that keeps this market going. Cash FLOW is the key. And flowing freely with little gov't intervention. People really are smart enough to make their own choices without gov't telling them what they can do or not do. I'm surprised you guys have so little faith in people.
-snakelips
Come on, Snake, you have got to know that it misleading.
Tell you what: define the salary range for middle-class. Then we can discuss how much the middle-class pays. Remember, the bottom 50% includes people in poverty.
The top 5% make $200,000 a year or more. So I think it's safe to say that it's not the rich that pay most of the taxes.
Actually, the top 5% pays 53.25%, so yes, they do pay most of the taxes.
Look, I think it's completely unfair and unreasonable to expect someone who earns more to pay more. It punishes success and is a disincentive to earn more. At the same time, the loopholes and shelters are crazy, and need to disappear. I don't want anyone, rich or poor, taking advantage of the system. If we are equal under the law, then that should apply to taxes as well.
-snakelips
Proof: If the US is invaded and taken over, who loses the most: the homeless guy, or the rich capitalist? So: who gets the most out of our military? Who loses the most if law and order breaks down? The rich. Who loses the least? Gun owners. And the poor. So who gets the most out of the police? The rich non-gun owners.
ergo, the rich better damn well pay for it, because just like government rules by the consent of the masses, the rich are only rich by the consent of the poor. Think of it as a bribe to keep the masses from rising up and taking all their shit and giving them a blindfold and a fucking Marlboro Light in exchange.
Good or bad, that's just the way it is. Frankly, I see no reason not to be generous. The tax burden here is so damn light, and it's not like I see Bill Gates deciding it's not worth being successful.
I'm wondering if people still have an instinctive understanding that rising up and offering a final smoke doesn't necessarily guarantee a life of leisure and bliss. Being rich has its problems too (I'm told. LOL).
About Bill Gates deciding it's not worth it, I think there's a threshold. At some point in wealth creation, it's well worth it, but under that point, it's a difficult struggle. I'd like to keep that bar as low as possible.
-snakelips
-snakelips
So we must define it so that it may be applied subjectively. Let me offer the following:
Terrorism is intentionally attacking civilians rather than attacking the enemy's military. A terrorist is someone who favors terrorism to engaging his enemy's military.
Under that definition:
-The USS Cole was not a terrorist act. It was an act of War.
-My Lai WAS a terrorist act.
Note that a terrorist can launch attacks that are not terrorist acts. Militaries can launch attacks that are. Accidents are not terrorist attacks. If someone is building a suicide vest so that he could bomb a military installation, if it goes off on his way to attack and instead kills some people around him, it wasn't a terrorist attack. Collateral damage is not a terrorist attack, unless the collateral damage was reasonably avoidable. eg, Clinton cruise-missiled Sudan at night so fewer people would be at the targets.
-snakelips
When they attack Israeli soldiers, it's not terrorism. When they attacked and captured two Israeli soldiers, which prompted Israel's attack on Lebanon recently, the act was not terrorism.
When they launch Katyusha rockets randomly, however, it is.
When they bomb buses, it is, unless the bus was a military one.
For the Israeli's part, when they hit a car being driven by a Palestinian bomb-maker with a rocket, it is not terrorism. When they bull-doze houses with old invalid women still inside, it is.
-snakelips
I'm all in favor of losing FICA and MEDicare! Unconstitutional federal gov't spending on something that should be a states' right AT MOST.
-snakelips
we must always remind ourselves, that when we are fighting terrorism, we are fighting an idea, and one cannot simply "hunt down and kill" an idea. Ideas spread, and can only be effectively battled by using other "ideas."
picture it his way: your house just go blown up because a bomb targeted your neighbor for his association with Al Qeada. Your mother and father were killed in the resulting "collateral damage." You are a young and pissed off, now homeless and shell-shocked young man. AlQeada comes around recruiting people just like you - and you are mad at the people who accidentally killed your parents... what do you do?
Alternatively, think about the - literally - millions of Iraqis living without steady electricity and sewer after 5 years!
this story is being replicated across Iraq, and it is NOT a good thing. It is simply and investment in our own downfall, and it MUST be brought to an end.
-snakelips
that goes for anyone in the act of mortally attacking civilians etc...
HOWEVER, another part of me thinks about OBL and would rather see him rot in a jail cell for the rest of his life, rather than becoming the prophet/martyr his followers will make him is we kill him.
indeed, we should use all tools.
Would we all agree that something close to 600 Billion has been spent on the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Give or take a couple of Billion.
Let's be conservative (for a second) and suggest that 5,000 american troops, 6 or 700,000 Iraqi's and a couple of hundred coalition troops have died. Sound fair?
Someone tell me that it couldn't have been done by training, conditioning and financing the finest special OP's outfit, ever imagined, to go into Afghanistan/Pakistan to root out OBL and AQ Headquarters. Their efforts supported by the combined strength of a coalition intelligence and covert op's.
Why hasn't that happened?
Because the goal is not the terrorist. They are the distraction. They are the illusion.
So class, what's the goal?
The Johns Hopkins study estimated that, as of July 2006, 655,000 Iraqis had been killed, about 600,000 of them violently and at least 30 percent directly by coalition forces. It updated an earlier study (Lancet, 10/29/04) that estimated that 100,000 Iraqis had died during the first year of the war. An extrapolation of the Johns Hopkins estimate of violent deaths done by Just Foreign Policy (9/18/07) currently stands at over 1.1 million.
The Lancet study doesn't even pass a sniff-test. If those numbers are correct, you were better off as a British soldier charging over-the-top into machine-gun fire in WWI than you are as an Iraqi civilian, because the Brits lost fewer people in the same time-period. Does that even remotely sound likely?
The Lancet study's error margin was from 8,000-198,000 with a 95% confidence in the 100k figure. It turns out that there's a reason they thought they might be wrong: they were.
FWIW, Bush and DoD have a much lower figure than 100k. The 100k figure is from IraqBodyCount.org, and anti-war website started back in the first Gulf War specifically to report on deaths the government was not reporting, and they can hardly be considered cronies of the Bush administration.
I'm assuming that a strategy of blowing up innocent civilians, in foreign countries and labeling them collateral damage to you...is as you say, a valuable tool or necessary.
If that is the case, how long and how many civilians, have to die as part of the valuable tool or strategy?
Do we just simply keep going until every single terrorist is dead? When does it occur to supporters of this strategy that there is no end to it? That as you pursue this strategy that if becomes a perpetual breeding program for the creation of more terrorist.
As was mentioned before...kill my innocent parents, with your strategy and call them collateral damage, I'm coming to get you.
An Ooooops, wrong house, street or target apology, just ain't gonna get it.
Mine would be stronger.
In the other scenario and using Iraq as an example, I almost think that I would have a stronger resolve particulary if I am being told that I am not a target and neither is my family. If my understanding is that I am being liberated, that a dictator is the target and the liberators are my friends and then they blow my parents up...by mistake. On top of my loss, I would feel guilt for not protecting them and being used.
I'd really be pissed.
Being on the right side of things usually, I want to see us swing even HARDER than we've already have. To crush any and all enemies who threaten us. They threw the first punch, but I want to finish the fight. Not because I monger for war, but rather because I LOVE the peace and the trade and I understand that simply sitting passively by guarantees I'll be slaughtered rather than at least going down swinging.
Undoubtedly we are going to make people mad, but we are doing the best we can and you've got to see the forest for the trees. We are peaceful because we are strong. We have the moral high ground. We are a good and civil people. We set the example for others to follow and they do. If we fall, so falls western civilization as we know it, and that's an awful lot of good to see washed down the drain of history.
-snakelips
I would hope that my moral compass would lead me to condemn as terrorists people fighting ostensibly for my country's freedom who primarily target only enemy civilians. As someone whose home-country was occupied by the Soviets, I would have rejected those kinds of "freedom fighters", and so I see a difference.
Our current foreign policy is lopsided in regards to Israel and Palestine. We need an even-handed approach if we are ever to even begin to make progress towards true peace for the people of the region.
In order to solve the deplorable state of the Palestinians two things must happen, and each causes pain to be implemented.
First, Israel must unconditionally abandon the settlements are re-settle the residents inside Israel (or the USA). Second, Palestine must relinquish its insistence on the right of return for displaced Palestinians from 60 years ago.
As long as Palestine is victimized by the USA and Israel, it will be a clarion call to arms for young people in the Arab states. I agree with Liz, the current foreign policy smacks of terrorism. The civilians of Iraq have suffered gravely under the occupation. If a partial definition of terrorism is that it targets civilians then the USA in Iraq and Israel in Palestine are certainly terrorists.
I think the National Guard should be guarding the nation. Number one spot should be our southern border. We are being invaded every day by thousands. Another failing of Bush. But would a Democrat do any different? I doubt it.
-snakelips
From what I have seen, enforcement of illegal immigration laws goes DOWN under republican administrations and UP under democrat ones.
the reason may have to do with the fact the GOP tends to think punishing businesses for breaking the law (whether its mercury in the water or immigration enforcement) is *always* bad.
unfortunately, it doesn't make that much sense as a philosophy because businesses need to be held accountable just like a citizen would be: and because you can't jail a business for breaking the law, you have to punish them in another way... by hitting them in the pocket book.
i often wonder why conservatives are so adamant about things like this, perhaps you can shed some light on it Snake.
I can't speak to that conservative viewpoint. I don't share it. And it's funny, I don't know many other conservatives who do either. I'm all in favor of hitting business in the purse for breaking the law. I'll be consistent there. If it's illegal to dump mercury (but it's so much fun to play with), hit 'em hard. If they hire illegals, hit 'em hard. But I also want the illegals gone too. They're here illegally.
I am against hitting businesses for just doing business though.
I wonder why liberals are so much for illegals. I mean, it's practically slavery. And I hear the same argument now that was used by the South to justify slavery - We need them to do these jobs or our economy will collapse. You all are promoting slavery, in effect! How about we just pay a little more for lettuce and not have these poor folks living 20 to a room and making peanuts?
-snakelips
Suicide bombers are so often misguided youths. But despite that caveat, they are terrorists. They attack civillians.
Corruption always develops out of poverty, it's a given.
We can push the terrorist out of an area, but they will gather elsewhere and more of them, as people in these groups are killed.
To think we could eradicate terrorism is like saying we'll never see a criminal again, ever. Not going to happen, we can only makes strict laws and sanction governments that turn a blind eye or support it.