Good post,...Batman Jones, I clearly don't always agree with you... but what you show is a better (quality) choice of wording in your debate threads that exudes thinking about the subject and it's particulars while making attempts to be as fair as possible...I wish other posters on the left-side would take note,...leave crappy soundbites, and wayward political glees to themselves... As far as this incident, I feel for the situation, his family,...and I hope we take these damn terrorist thugs out where it truly hurts!
I heard somewhere over the net; they pay $150K/year for an ordinary truck driver and $400K/year for a civil engineer. That's a hell lot of money but I still won't take that job, it simply not worth my life.
Guys you all know that I stay out of D&D. Hell I don't even read it. Every time I start talking politics or any of that level of stuff I end up putting my foot in my mouth or I end up unnecessarily disliking a fellow poster simply because we don't agree on something. So I stay in the safe comfort of The Hangout oblivious of who is a liberal and who is a conservative. For those of you that do not know me I like to consider myself a hypocritical Republican. I vote straight down the conservative line because I feel like that will help my kids lives in the future. What I do in my time is my business. This whole thing just makes me utterly sick. I am once again filled with hatred that is not normal in a person. I cried. I don't cry much. The stupid **** our soldier's pulled with the Iraqi prisoners was embarrassing. Shame on them and shame on their commanders for not training them better. Shame on the society that created soldiers that would get a sadistic kick out of 4ucking with those prisoners. I hope they are tried for treason after the headache they have put this country through. But to see an innocent dude get his head cut off... Damn. Crying again. You don't say shame on the animals that did that. You don't hunt them down individually and "bring them to justice" as the guy I voted for said. You don't turn it into a political battle for leverage. You don't continue on with the existing "exit strategy". What do you do? You kill them. You punish the entire environment that allowed those people to turn into what they are. You make them live like us or you don't let them live. The people in power right now are trying to stop this type of **** from happening. I truly believe that. Does anyone not believe that? It would have come here eventually and they (we) are trying to stop it before it does. Maybe AQ was not specifically in Iraq. I don't care. They represent the same evil. I pray that our leaders have the guts to not stop slaying the fundamentalists AND the apologists for them until they are extinct. I am so sad
Chance: I hear you and understand your response entirely. But... If killing solved the thing all by itself, it'd be over already. We'd also have won Vietnam and Israel would be living in peace free from interference from those pesky Palestinians. If we had every guy who ever wanted to inflict harm on Americans in a room, and knew for sure we had the right guys, I'd say go ahead and kill them. And the problem would just continue from there. Because, as long as we address terror solely by killing everyone we can get our hands on, there will always be more of them. Again, I understand where you're coming from but if you can't understand that the current kill-em-all policy is severely wanting, you're in the same boat the White House is in -- you've lost the fight before it was even over. The latest, most accurate knock on the Bush admin is not that their hearts aren't in the right place -- it's that they have shown a remarkable inability to grasp the situation. The latest knock isn't necessarily that they're wrong (though many of us think they are for reasons explained too many times to repeat), it's that they're incompetent. Thanks for the words ROXRAN and Cohen. For more evidence of me seeing both sides (though I am a proud, unabashed liberal), go to the Zogby/Kerry thread.
What is it about the situation that they don't grasp? Or do they grasp it but feel that their hands are tied because of this election year? I honestly think if all of this had gone down in Bush's second term that they would have dropped the hammer a lot harder by now. It shouldn't be that way but it is.
Faos, thank you for the link. Even if you can't bring yourself to watch it, I appreciate the fact that you supplied it for me. I'm about to watch...
Dropping the hammer harder would only serve as further proof they fail to understand the situation on anything more the most simple level. Chance's post, which for all its understandable angst, boils down to, 'here's an idea: let's start killing people.' Outrageously, that is exactly the White House's response to the complex issue of terrorism. Never mind the fact that we can't really "drop the hammer" any harder on our enemies than we have. Maybe you mean we should be harsher in Iraq, which, of course, only raises the inconvenient fact that Iraq made no sense as a battleground in the war on terror until we made it one. There have been countless articles from the left and right over the last weeks pointing out one of this admin's fatal flaws: they do not listen to what they don't want to hear. It was true of WMD's, it was true of the cost of the war (in dollars and soldiers -- remember the guy who told us we'd need as many troops as we have in Iraq now was fired for saying so), it was true of us being greeted as liberators, it was true of oil revenues paying for the war effort and on and on and on. In each of these cases, they were warned by their own people and chose to ignore the warnings. And, of course, they chose again to ignore the warnings (over the course of months and months) about the prison abuse scandal, which is this administration's greatest failure, bar none, in the war on terror. Even Karl Rove recently opined it would likely be a full generation before American-Arab relations recovered from the scandal. This administration employs two weapons in the 'war on terror': big ass guns and denial. Both are failing.
If those guys had made him dance around naked, made him act like he was having sex, kicked him around...but then later released him and apoligized, then I could forgive them, and my American-arab relations would be all right. Especially if they were sorry and they were punished. But they didn't do that...they cut his freaking head off with a knife while he screamed for mercy...then they chanted God is Great like some kind of crazy cultists. I don't want any kind of American-Arab relationship with those kind of people in my lifetime, or the people that support these kind of people, or the people that cheer these kind of people, or the people that think that guy deserved it. Those guys were cowards. They wouldn't even show their faces because they were cowards. They are animals. Why should we try to make peace with people that are capable of doing that?
We aren't trying to make peace with the terrorists that did this awful act. we are trying to instead finish them off, which is almost as impossible as going after all the mosquito's in the world. No matter how many you kill, more will spring up. the best way to do it is to cut them off at the legs. In a way I do agree that democracy is a great start, but just the thought of making another group of people think the way we do is enough to start another battle cry. Showing the people of Arabia/Asia that we aren't bad people, instead just want peace is the way to solve all these problems, but prisoner getting tortured sure as hell doesn't help our cause...
I didn't watch the video and I hope I never have to see that sick stuff. One of the reasons though that I decided not to watch it (aside from not wanting to see real live snuff films) is because that is exactly what those bastards want. They want us to watch it, they want us to get upset, they want us to get angry and retaliate (preferably indiscriminately, callously, or stupidly), and escalate, good for their recruiting and good for realizing their sick goal of broad based unending jihads and crusades between the West and Islam. Now, I'm not saying the criminals that did this shouldn't be arrested or preferably elminated, they should. But in order to do so, blowing up a family of four by accident is something that should be avoided at all costs; because it is exactly what they want - more escalation, more war, more death, and most of all, more emotional extremism, they want us to hate all arabs, so that all arabs will hate us in return. That's good for business if you're an f'd up jihadist. If you haven't watched this video yet, I really wish you wouldn't. Nothing good can come of it. This is somewhat ridiculous, but it's like what Yoda says about the dark side of the force: fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.
What again did we do exactly to deserve the 9/11 attacks? I don't think we were torturing anyone (at that time).
Supermac: I'm not aware of anyone suggesting we try and make peace with Al Qaeda. I haven't met an American yet who doesn't believe they're our blood enemies. I would suggest though that you try and recognize the distinction between "Al Qaeda" and "Arabs." It's not clear to me, from your post at least, that you know the difference. I'm also unaware of anyone who's trying to make any sort of point by a relative value comparison of ass rape and decapitation. For myself, I think they're both heinous and I'm against them both -- even in the case of guilty people, which it's far from clear we're dealing with here on either side. To the best of our knowledge the American was only guilty of being American. To the best of our knowledge so far, up to 90% of the abused Iraqis were not engaged in bad behavior against US forces. Some of them, according to the Taguba report, were likely only guilty of having been born Iraqi. Is it okay with you if I oppose both bad acts? Or should my outrage about an American being executed for being American make me want to kill Iraqis just for being Iraqi? If that's the new standard, I guess it turns out I'm not a patriot. I always thought I was. I'm sorry if I'm reading you wrong, but it seems like you're suggesting that the acts of one Arab justifies the abuse and torture of another -- even if he's never met the first one and is, in fact, from another country. Maybe this is what was meant by 'bringing down the hammer' in the war on terror. Maybe you're for genocide against Arabs as revenge against Al Qaeda. I really hope you're not.
2 things ultimately come to mind after contemplation. 1) This is war. AQ (regardless of the Iraq connections or no connections) is at war with us, and we must therefore be at war with them. They are evil. We can all take a step back from the realm of moral relatavism and say that these actions are out and out evil. Now, I remember a post from the B-Bobster back in the first thread about not knowing the circumstances of what the soldiers were facing, maybe they saw some of their friends treated this way, etc. etc. And I have to agree with that to an extent. IT helps me understand how Americans could get carried away and do hideous things to innocent people, just looking for someone to get revenge on, whether it be for 9/11, Saddam's criminal ways, or whatever perceptions/misperceptions. But humiliation and the atrocities of the Americans do not equal justice. We do not live in a eye for an eye society. CS Lewis' Theory on Humanitarian Punishment is a wonderful place to look for insight in to this matter. That said. We must fight. We might not win or defeat terrorism at length, but the War on Terror is nothing like the Drug War, and it must be fought. This is a real battle with sinister foes who hate freedom and liberty and do not respect life. 2) From a different viewpoint, my Christian upbringing teaches me to love my enemy. This is hard to do in this case. What does loving your enemy mean in this instance? I approach it from two angles. 1, these people have grown up in a society and religion of hate. Radical Islam is based on hate and destruction. How can I blame someone who has been promised eternal life and thousands of virgins if they slay the infidels? Do they know better? No. They have been taught this like we have been taught to love freedom. But they are still wrong, and part of loving thy enemy (this is part 2) is that you instruct them when they err from the path of truth and love. Why can we say truth and love are better than the ideals of radical Islam? That's a question for another thread because I could pretty much write a small dissertation on the topic. Let's just start with the lack of dignity for what it means to be human shown by the tenets of radical Islam. To an extent we all err (as evidenced by the prison abuse scandal) when striving towards these things; we just don't include it as part of our tenents like they do. And they need to change this. Its a hard war to fight, but its one that must be done. It simply must.
twhy: I agree with pretty much everything you said but that was easy since you left out the number one, number ONLY really, sticking point. Iraq does not equal Al Qaeda. I don't know a single person who opposes war with Al Qaeda. So your call for us to fight this necessary war is an exceptionally unbitter pill. Every American's been taking daily doses of it since 9/11. This is not a case of whether or not someone is in favor of an eye for an eye. This is a case of a guy putting out your eye and, since he's hard to find, you put out the eye of his neighbor's uncle. Why? I don't know. I guess cause your neighbor's dog crapped in your lawn ten years ago. That said, I agree with your post. I just don't have the first idea what it has to do with Iraq -- which has been my beef with this war since the very beginning.
I have to stop you right there.....you're comparing western/christian society to "the tenets of radical islam". Regular islam doesn't advocate that kind of violence (yes, I know, you can fine some not so nice qu'ran passages, you can find not so nice OT passages too so its a wash) That's not really a fair comparison. A fairer comparison would be radical islam vs. radical Christianity, say Eric Robert Rudolph, who has murdered various individuals by bombing abortion clinics and the 1996 Olympics. Or even Hitler, he was ostensibly christian, as were millions of Germans; didn't stop them from trying to commit genocide on a particular religion. Looking at psychos like that and psychos like those guys today makes things pretty clear...same violent, extremist message, different words.
its a build up of hatred... anyone that thinks that it is due to their jealousy of our lives here is duly mistaken. Its straight up anger built up from many different things... ex. Palestine, many join extremist groups just to justify the wrongdoings that are going on towards palestinian citizens...
