What IS it?...

ROXRAN, just because you hate america does not mean you have to bring your pro moo ham ed crap in here. PLEASE. Let us have some peace. THX in advance.

 

your america hating chorus disgusts me and all the rest who suffered.

Thank you for insulting an entire city. Disgusting.

 

I don't think its a matter of disagreeing that there is a war on terror but a disagreement on how it is being fought and who we are fighting.

I believe almost everyone in the world wants a war on terror the question though is how do you win a war against a tactic?

 

I supposed if we can have a war on drugs that we can have a war on terror.

 

i had to sound that out like the:

"i'm sofa king we todd ed"

 

That's the point though, terror is a tactic, its not a movement or a people.

"War on terror" is a bumper sticker slogan. Its either a code word for something else or so vague that every movement can use it. Israelis can say they are fighting the war on terror since they are terrorized by suicide bombers and Palestinians can say they are fighting the war on terror since they are terrorized by having their homes bulldozed.

 

Do you really not understand what Edwards is saying? He is saying, basically, that there is a war on Al Queda, a war on extremists, etc. But it's not a war on "terror". It's a war against specific groups of people. We're not trying to eliminate terror in the world - it's not even possible as it is simply an idea, and one that is hard to define at that. His point is that the Bush Administration rambles on about this conceptual war as a method to justify whatever it is they would like to do.

Let's say there IS a war on terror. Who are we fighting? What is the goal? How do you measure success? What do you have to accomplish to win? Can you answer any of those?

There's no more a war on terror as there is a "war on drugs" which also is a political slogan meant to generate support. There might be a war against drug dealers or drug users or what not, but there's not a war on drugs themselves.

 

I can infer it because he is not the first person to argue that there is no war on terror. It's not a new idea - it's been repeated over and over for years now that it's a dumb Bush slogan.

Again, if you believe that we're waging a war on tactics, explain the following:

1. How do you measure success?
2. How do you "win"?
3. What is a battle?

A suicide bombing is a terror tactic. Attacking a civilian is a terror tactic. How do you defeat the idea of attacking a civilian?

You don't. You defeat the people that are doing it. And then in the next war, it happens again. Just as it has in all of human history.

 

Well, if you insist on using a soundbite as your guide, you'll misunderstand a lot of things. Or you can try brushing up on reality. But I suspect you prefer to just not. It's much easier to launch silly criticism that way.

Oh - and good job avoiding my questions twice. It's pretty clear you have no clue what a war on terror is either.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1616724,00.html

Try reading up a bit. Here's some nice stuff:


This political language has created a frame that is not accurate and that Bush and his gang have used to justify anything they want to do," Edwards said in a phone interview from Everett, Wash. "It's been used to justify a whole series of things that are not justifiable, ranging from the war in Iraq, to torture, to violation of the civil liberties of Americans, to illegal spying on Americans. Anyone who speaks out against these things is treated as unpatriotic. I also think it suggests that there's a fixed enemy that we can defeat with just a military campaign. I just don't think that's true."

Republicans, too, are trying alternate formulations. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tells TIME that the phrase "served its purpose for awhile" but should now be superseded. "I have been referring to it for quite some time as 'the terrorist war against us' - not just America, but people who think like we do, basically the ideas of modern democracy," Giuliani said. "In order to deal with the terrorists' global war on us, we have to be on offense."

Even Bush has nodded to shifting nomenclature, telling students and business leaders last month at Tippecanoe High School in Tipp City, Ohio: "Now we're involved in a — I call it a global war against terror. You can call it a global war against extremists, a global war against radicals, a global war against people who want to hurt America. You can call it whatever you want, but it is a global effort." The president, who has been using the phrase since at least June 2002, drew laughter in 2004 when he told a convention of UNITY: Journalists of Color Inc.: "We actually misnamed the war on terror. It ought to be: 'the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.' "

A White House official who has been intimately involved in shaping Bush's war dialectic said the president will continue to talk about the "global war on the terror," even if it "doesn't fit a political science definition."

 

Nice. Complete and utter nonsense.

So you've defeated the concept of killing a civilian if you stop a particular enemy from doing it? When it happens somewhere else in the world, what happens? Did you un-win the war?

What you're describing is defeating the people doing it - ie, fighting and beating Al Queda.