http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...788&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724 But these fundamentalists can be dealt with diplomatically right? Schoolchildren and women aid workers...sad.
I hope nobody is proposing to deal with them diplomatically. I'm glad that NEITHER candidate for president has proposed such a horrible thing.
honestly, FB...i'm not sure extremists understand diplomacy. it's not on their radar screens. they have a goal, and they seek to accomplish it through terror and fear. if you say, "ok...when you kidnap someone, we'll cave," then you open the door for everyone of these jackasses to embrace this in an even larger fashion.
I'm agreeing that diplomacy with terrorists shouldn't be our plan. I was just pointing out that neither Kerry nor Bush want to be diplomatic with terrorists. It seemed that half's post was insinuating that somebody felt we should talk to the terrorists, have diplomacy, and play nice. I don't favor that tactic. I haven't seen anyone on this board favor that tactic, nor have either Kerry or Bush suggested that as a tactic we use. I believe our diplomacy should change in order to fight the war on terror. But I don't believe we should engage in diplomacy with terrorists.
Yeah, um, could you show us where people say we need to deal with terrorists diplomatically, halfbreed? Oh, my bad, was that a straw man fallacy? People say we should be more diplomatic with our allies and you turn it into being diplomatic with terrorists. Good one, I can see you will fit right in around here. I'm going to try and raise an intelligent question and see if civil debate still exists around here. Ok, these guys who kidnapped these two women are extremists because of their tactics. Kidnapping people and threatening their deaths to achieve a goal is an extreme measure. But what is the goal of these guys? Most likely, these guys are Iraqi insurgents. Their demands have been for us and our allies to leave Iraq. Can we lump these guys in the same group as Al Queda? Would these guys be kidnapping and murdering people if our militaries weren't in their country? It's all about perception. A lot of people in Iraq see these guys are heroes. I don't know if that will change. For example, here in the US, after the Civil War, there were roaming bands of rebels who committed horrible acts against freedmen and union sympathizers. A good example is Bob Lee in North East Texas. He and his fellow bandits murdered people, did terrible things like killing a pregnant black women and cutting her fetus out and dismembering it. Despite such terrible acts, to this day, people still romanticize these men's actions and passionately defend them as heroes who stood up to Northern opression. If in a civilized country like ours, people in 2004 can still do that, imagine the view held in Iraq where children happily dismember burnt bodies? Fighting terrorism isn't easy, but you can produce results. You can kill or capture leaders, you can eradicate cells, you can dismantle the framework, you can stop their funding, etc. People are going to always hate us, but you can make it so that they don't have the means and orginization to pose a serious threat. How do you gain results in Iraq? We're viewed as occupiers. We can get justice and kill the kidnappers, but it won't stop future kidnappers. Here in the US, the death penalty is supposed to deter murder, but it doesn't because people don't consider the possible results. In Iraq, they know they could die and they don't care, they are ready for death. We can find a group of insurgents and take them out, but as long as we're there, more people will become insurgents. We're not fighting terrorists in Iraq, we're fighting the people we saved from Saddam. Diplomacy can't combat terrorism, but it can prevent it. If by a miracle, we can get the Palestinians to accept a compromise that is fair to them and Israel, then there's one big cause of terrorism out of the way. If we can get our military out of Saudi Arabia, there's another cause out of the way. Something that I read here that doesn't seem to be discussed anymore was that we could remove our base in Saudi Arabia and move it to Iraq. Though, regardless of where we are, as long as we're in the ME, there will always be people there who resort to terrorism to try and force us to leave.
