The Al Qaeda Myth

it's so funny wnes, you went from not even knowing that there was a Chinese crackdown on "Al Qaeda" to becoming it's biggest spokesman and cheerleader in a few posts.

Can't refute the truth, bash the source. Too bad most of this stuff is fact.

Read the report yourself, hosted by the Chinese Embassy.

http://www.chinaembassy.org.tr/eng/zt/zgfk/t162009.htm

China has not been quiet about this subject and has been particularly vocal about it since 2001. Search the archives of the Renmin Ribao for more.

What the hell are you even talking about? Do I say that I endorse "terrorist bus bombing"? I don't endorse terrorist bus-bombing by criticizing the Chinese Government any more than you posting the article that started this thread means that you endorse the September 11 attacks.

China doesn't have a Patriot Act because it's a totalitarian state - how does this help your cause there, de Tocqueville?

And it's been quite up front about fighting a war on terror and has tried mightily to cast its crackdown in Xinjiang in those terms and associate it with Al Qaeda.

Of course none of this makes a difference to the point of this thread, or my post: Governments abuse the threat of terrorism and distort it for political ends - in this case to crack down on peaceful dissidents and critics as well as hardened terrorists, just like the US governemtn does with its own war on terror.

This post is SO HILARIOUS. When you look up "hypocrite" or "glass house" in the dictionary, here is what it says:

wnes

Here you do EXACTLY what you criticize the US and others for doing: label anybody who dissents from the party line as a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer.

I don't support terrorists, I support the Uighurs who want a measure of autonomy and the ones who have peaceful protests and get harassed or imprisoned or discriminated agaisnt by the Chinese instead. Just like I support Tibetans who have the same thing happen, or Hans who get screwed over by corrupt party officials.

I support the friendly Uighur people I met in Kashgar, who welcomed me into their homes and treated me like a guest of honor simply for being there. I support the kids who I taught English to in a dank basement. None of them are big fans of the Chinese government, and neither am I. But they're not terrorists. If you met them you'd say the same thing.

Well at least you admitted that the PRC wasn't perfect for once....which is progress I suppose.

 

i still haven't seen any proof or evidence that hezbollah has ever been involved in act of terrorism

all i've seen is speculation

what i do know is that lebanese in general, whether they are shi'i, sunni, druze, or christian, view hezbollah in a positive light, because of the role they played in driving israel and their terrorist proxy, the sla, out of southern lebanon in may 2000 after over 20 years of yet another illegal israeli occupation

we also know that hezbollah has around 20 seats in the lebanese parliament, the energy minister of lebanon is a member of hezbollah, and provide a vast array of social services where the state has failed, and have lifted the historically downtrodden shi'is in lebanon into a place of prominence

any armed or active resistance they have committed was in response to israeli aggression and to liberate their land.

and nothing they have done compares to the abductions, kidnappings, terrorism, and murders committed by the israelis

arab and muslim people have the right to fight for their freedom too

 

I know who you're talking about. he is the ugly overwheight dude with the glasses. one day he is the maggets (MEK) spokes person, the next fox political anyliast. FOX IS HARBOURING TERRORISTS. I SAY WE INVADE FOX NEWS. HAHA..

 

Uh, I think this part may refer to it:

The "East Turkistan" terrorist organization based in South Asia has the unstinting support of Osama bin Laden, and is an important part of his terrorist forces.


Which forces are they referring to? His JV basketball team? LOL.

First off, it was a girl, not a guy.

Second off, see above.

You mean a dubious source such as a policy piece listed on a US Navy by a policy expert who has apparently taught in Beijing, among other places?

Yup. Dubious.

I'm citing the piece for the factual context, which is a matter of public record.

Read the report, or any various backlogged issues of China Daily, Xinhua, whatever.

Ah, so sorry, I once again forgot the importance of semantics in Chinese politics. "It's not an invasion, it's just a bunch of tanks and soldiers hanging out for 50 years..."

Again, you're dead wrong.

dead wrong.

dead. wrong.

Read the newspaper.

what does this have to do with anything in this thread? NOTHING.

what does this have to do with anything in this thread? NOTHING.

what does this have to do with anything in this thread? NOTHING.

what does this have to do with anything in this thread? NOTHING....oh wait, it's you calling me a terrorist sympathizer again. Well, as long as we're flinging dum insults then you're a sino-supremacist genocide promoting flunky....honestly wnes, the chip you have on your shoulder is amazing sometimes.

Ha ha, yes, I am a master of manipulating Chinese -- none more so than you , as I certainly know how to get your juices flowing. Simply sneeze eastwards and -- BANG -- there goes wnes, snarling and foaming as usual.

 

I wonder if you read your own link...I have highlighted the key passages for you in case you missed it:

"Alleged", "accused", "no evidence", and "denial"...so where's the evidence again beyond mere accusations and circumstantial 'evidence' (if it can even be called that?)

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are terrorists and they're the first to claim credit for attacks, so that's a given. Al-Qaeda members proudly proclaim their responsibility behind their attacks against civilians and non-civilians.

Hezbollah has neither admitted responsibility nor has evidence been provided to prove their guilt of terrorism (which they very well could've been involved in).

 

Yes.

No I didn't. StupidMoniker misinterpretted me as saying such.

I asked what Iraq has to do with 9/11 particularly since we have yet to catch Bin Laden or secure Afghanistan.

How can we justify expanding our war on AQ into Iraq, or globally, when we never finished the 1st job.

That's what I said.

No I didn't. See above.

So rather than finishing the fight against the ones that attacked us, it's okay to attack every terrorist in the world? That's just silly.

That is EXACTLY the question posed by the article ...that the AQ myth is blown out of proportion and we used AQ to parlay a war on Iraq. So if you can't prove AQ was in Iraq prior to invasion, then our justification for war is thin.

Sorry of the truth is getting in your way.

How does that prevent us from going after him? And what does that have to do with us subsequently invading Iraq?

Except that Afghanistan still isn't stable (US soldiers still dying there) and it is now the #1 opium producer in the world. Sounds like a great time to 'cut and run' and start another war?

 

'Peacekeepers' is merely a spin word, it doesn't change reality, which is this: those 'peacekeepers' are uniformed soldiers and they're present in a warzone, which means they're a target as much as anyone else. Those soldiers are not innocent bystanders or civilian targets, they're soldiers. That is NOT terrorism, it would be quiet a spin to claim so.

Again, where's the evidence? It's merely accusations and circumstantial 'evidence' that's being provided, but that doesn't mean that these allegations are true.

 

I wonder if you read my post...I will repeat it in case you missed it:

 

Lol, do a search. There have been plenty of threads here on it already. It is an established fact. The article doesn't show there is NO AQ in Iraq.

Hmmm. This is your passage I first replied to:

Call me crazy but I'm pretty sure those are your words.

First, see above. Second - whether or not we have bin laden or Afghanistan is secure is completely irrelevant to a whether or not there is a connection between 9/11 and Iraq.

Well, if AQ is operating in multiple places then you'd want to operate against them in multiple places. But all other operations don't stop because AQ is on the agenda. It would be silly to assume that AQ is the totality of the terrorism problem.

Yes, actually - you did. I posted it above.

Er, no - it makes a lot of sense. You make a comprehensive policy to reject terrorist organizations whereever they are. In addition you start to address the root causes of that terrorism. Your view that we concentrate 100% of our resources on Al Quaeda and ignore everything else does nothing to address the root causes of terrorism, nor would it address the other concerns involved in the intervention in Iraq. The idea that the US government would drop everything and only do ONE thing IS silly.

You are taking an assertion that the reports of AQ in Iraq are exaggerated and parlaying that into 'AQ is not in Iraq.' That too big a jump and simply untrue. The article talks about the London bombings, which were post Iraq, not pre Iraq. You've got your timeline mixed up. If your argument is that the administration justified the intervention in Iraq poorly - I agree. If it is that the intervention in Iraq is not justified, then I disagree.

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth.

It doesn't and it doesn't. Thank you.

Again this is totally irrelevant to the prior discussion, but I'll bite. If you just want to get into yet another discussion about why it was good to intervene in Iraq, we can do that. Because containment was causing blowback (9/11, embassy bombings, USS Cole) and a never ending cycle of antiamericanism because of the sanctions on Iraq, because Saddam was a genocidal dictator, because addressing terrorism means addressing the alienation of the masses in the ME - the overthrow of the despot Saddam was the first of that effort, because Saddam openly supported terrorism...there are more but that's a start. There is no reason that the US cannot engage in two simultaneous conflicts - that's been the doctrine for quite awhile. That operational mistakes have strained the military is a result of bad subsequent decisionmaking, not of the original decision. You've just taken the article and spun it off into your own little Iraq diatribe.

 

You are making this way too easy.

EDIT:I think the problem you are having, krosfyah, is that you are confusing the War on Terror with a war on Al Queda. We are not just fighting Al Queda, and there is no reason that we should limit the scope of the War on Terror to one terrorist organization.

As for CreepyFloyd's argument that Hizballah is not a terrorist organization, I defer to the US State Department:

link

EDIT 2:I found the current list which also includes Hizballah, I will just include the link.
Foreign Terrorist Organizations

 

That's crazy. Peacekeepers are not combatants. They are there to keep the peace not fight in a war. Its not quite a spin at all. The relevant literature almost universally recognizes attacks on peacekeepers as such. The whole idea of peacekeepers is to put a multinational force in place so the fighting will cease. That is a radically different function that say, the UN forces that kicked Saddam out of Kuwait.

C'mon, you're being silly. Circumstantial evidence is perfectly legitimate and there is a long trail of it connecting to Hezbollah. But let me look around a little bit - I'm sure I can find the Head of Hezbollah saying 'oh yeah, we're mucho terroristos.'

 

the us military doesnt even view this incident (marines being killed in the 1980s in Beirut) as terrorism....the US govt even had to go in and change their law after the fact and it went something like attacks against military personnel that are sleeping or off-duty is considered terrorism (again this was done after the fact)...the target was military and it wasn't an act of terrorism

 

there is no proof what so ever that hezbollah did this....this is merely an accusation that has been repeated so many times by the us that people believe it's automatically true

 

Hayes,

I am not arguing what their function is, I am stating a fact: they're UNIFORMED SOLDIERS! How is targeting a uniformed soldier "terrorism"?

Not being silly at all, I do lean towards them having carried out terrorist activities in the past, I am just wondering if you or someone else has come across actual evidence that proves, and not mere allegations.

That would do

 

Come on, wnes. With all the goodwill in the world, I ask you... how on earth can you be so filled with paranoia? You think Sam is some agent provocateur, hell-bent on stirring up trouble in China? Seriously? Because he loves to travel, meet the local people, have genuine experiences, instead of the canned tours so many take instead? Good grief, next you'll be accusing someone like me of trying to stir up trouble in Yugoslavia, because I stayed with a local family in Belgrade for a time, during the Cold War.

Oh, wait... that mission was successful. I've blown my cover!!!
I've been Roved and Plamed, soon to be sliced and diced with Hayesian scissors!



Come on... relax. China is becoming more important in the world. No one seriously thinks China is going to give meaningful autonomy to any of the ethnic groups that have lived in some of these areas since time out of mind. As China becomes more important, it is going to get criticism about all sorts of things. Just like the US, some of it will be deserved, and some of it may not be, but getting freaked out whenever anyone makes a criticism isn't doing China any good, and isn't good for one's blood pressure.

One reaches a point where the reactions do more harm than good, and more harm than whatever percieved "outrage" may have caused the response. We're taken seriously here by what we type on our keyboards, and ridiculed, marginalized, or laughed at the same way. You see it happen all the time. Take me, for example. No one takes me seriously... how could they? I'm having too much fun.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

Was the attack on the USS Cole terrorism? The Marines killed when the embassies were attacked, were they victims of terrorism? We any uniformed servicemen killed in 9/11 a victim of something other than terrorism? Plus Hezbollah is NOT uniformed, are NOT a representative of a state, but an intrastate organization having committed violence against another state and UN peacekeeping forces - at a minimum, and including civilian targets according to circumstantial evidence. I don't think its a stretch to say they're a terrorist organization, or at least that they have an arm that is such.

Since we're talking about circumstantial evidence I think the trial on the subject is relevant:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/05/30/iran.barracks.bombing/

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said the suicide truck bombing was carried out by the group Hezbollah with the approval and funding of Iran's senior government officials.

Lamberth ordered that the plaintiffs in the case -- the servicemen wounded in that bombing and the families of those killed -- have a "right to obtain judicial relief" from Iran. The judge called the October 23, 1983 bombing "the most deadly state-sponsored terrorist attack made against United States citizens before September 11, 2001."

A key point in determining the plaintiffs' eligibility to recover damages was the issue of whether the Marines were engaged in combat in their mission to Lebanon. Lamberth said the bulk of the evidence pointed clearly to a peacekeeping mission operating on stringent peacetime rules of engagement. "As pointed out during trial, the (Marines) were more restricted in their use of force than an ordinary U.S. citizen walking down a street in Washington, D.C.," the judge wrote.

Again I'm not sure what meets your threshold. I think its pretty apparent that they were connected to operations against more than Israel. They aren't a state actor. They attack targets other than their military opposition. There is a substantial body of evidence that they are a terrorist organization. If you and creepyfloyd want to hold out for the leader's confession that's your perogative.

 

You did WHAT?!?

I use a blade, thank you. I'm not a freakin' hairdresser (not that there is anything wrong with that).

 

Watch it... you're stepping into my bailiwick!






Keep D&D Civil.