WSJ(Op-ed): Was Osama Right?

[AsburySkinsFan]

IF you don't know or can't tell, it's probably beyond my ability to clue you in

Oh, go ahead Sarge try me, I'm sure a brilliant rational person such as yourself can break it down enough for a simpleton like me to understand.

[sacase]

Nukes would work great in Afghanistan. They would work much better than in Japan in 1940 cause the nukes we have today are about 10,000 times more powerful and about 40,000x more plentiful.

No they wouldn't the terrain would limit their effectivenes.

And if you are now changing your tune and saying you don't want to nuke Afghanistan or Pakistan for humanistic grounds cause you would be killing innocents on the magnitude of 30 - 40,000 to one Al Quda. Good for you, welcome back to the human race.

Nukes are to take out a large threat, not 1 guy. Wouldn't make strategic sense. Get a lot more where it would make sense then go for it.

If you are arguing we put more boots on the ground and get them with extreme prejudice now you are coming into conflict with the administration. You see we may have 160,000 guys in Iraq, but sadly that only leaves us 16,000 guys for the war on terror in Afghanistan. That's not enough guys to effectively battle the Taliban and or Al Quda.

Who is Al Quda?

More guys in Afghanistan would be meaningless unless we can go into the tribal regions of Pakistan. That is where all the really bad guys are hanging out.

Are you advocating we draw down in Iraq to fight the real war in Afghanistan?

Well that depends on your definition of Broke is. Did McCain give the N. Vietnamese useful information. Yes he did. Did he continue to struggle against the N. Vietnamese throughout his captivity. Yes he did.

General Stockdale, one of the most decorated soldiers ever to have lived also broke under N. Vietnamese torture. I don't think that's any slight on either of them. When faced with death, it is permissible to give up information so you can continue to live. Stockdale rewrote the military code of conduct to include that perversion after Vietnam.

As for Torture being useful. I disagree with you. I don't think it is. Sure given half a decade you can break anybody, but how good is the information after half a decade. Also the cost is high. Not only are you torturing innocents, because you really can't tell who the bad guys are no matter what they say in the movies; but you also harden your opponents and weekend your allies by such radical behavior.

Never said anything bad about McCain, people break under torture. Every man has his limit.

Most people will break in minutes, especially Arabs.

Spoken as someone who advocates the gutter. No thank you. I'll take the advice of our military generals who were pretty uniformly against torture. You can go with the chicken hawks like Cheney and Bush who had no real experience in the army to bolster they advocating torture.

How many Generals do you know well enough to hear their personal feelings on the matter?

[AsburySkinsFan]

That was kind of my point. It isn't much of a problem though because we have eliminated the resources of the country of Germany to support them, greatly diminishing them of their ability to spread their message, and we put them in jail (and Europe does it faster than us) if they go over the line in spreading their message.

But you see the idea of Nazism isn't dead even though most of the original Nazis are dead and gone, its just that most everyone realizes that its a wrong-headed idea and work to stop it. We are fighting an idea in the Middle East but we are using the same tactics of our enemies (i.e. violence) and yet we are expecting them to think that somehow we are different.

[AsburySkinsFan]

I don't think you'll find I said that anywhere. What I do support is going there if need be and not getting friggin Court Marshalled over it. And don't fool yourself into thinking it hasn't gone on in the past or is not going on today

If you don't see how you just contradicted yourself then this is hopeless. Because you presented the mouthful of scrotum thing as if it were something we ought to be doing, and now you are trying to back away from it, but still allowing for us to use those techniques if need be? what the heck....

[PeterMP]

How many Generals do you know well enough to hear their personal feelings on the matter?

There is no good reason to believe that most of the ex-Generals that have come out againt torture are lying for any reason. If they wanted to support it, but were scared to they could have stayed silent on the matter. Instead people like Colin Powell have been voluntarily very vocal in their stand against torture.

[PeterMP]

But you see the idea of Nazism isn't dead even though most of the original Nazis are dead and gone, its just that most everyone realizes that its a wrong-headed idea and work to stop it. We are fighting an idea in the Middle East but we are using the same tactics of our enemies (i.e. violence) and yet we are expecting them to think that somehow we are different.

But first we waged a brutal war where most of the people supporting the idea were killed, and then we left thousands of troops in the regions where it sprung up for generations. You seem to be against us doing both of those things w/ respect to the ideas that have resulted in terrorism.

[AsburySkinsFan]

What we also did in Europe was work to ensure that the conditions that caused the rise of Nazism ceased to exist. The Nazis did not come to power because their message was so great. They came to power because Weimar Germany was a total disaster of embarrassment' date=' lawlessness, unemployment, and hyper-inflation.[/quote']

All due to the Versailles Treaty that ended WWI, without the massive economic punishments that were leveled against Germany at the end of WWI Hitler would have never come to power, what's more is that France and England were warned about punishing Germany so harshly. So in essence WWII was blowback from the Versailles Treaty. Just like Middle Eastern terrorism is blowback from US policies and involvement in the Middle East.

[sacase]

Ah, so now you are raging against consumer states? Have you checked the United States trade imbalance with the rest of the world lately? Checking GM and Ford's bottom line the middle east isn't the only country which shortly won't be producing "even cars".

The fact is we still produce products, if it came down to it we will have an industrial base we can fall back on. The trade deficit means nothing. How many Americans work in plants across the country.

But let's not let pesky facts get in the way of a good rant. Not historical reality. Not present day reality either.

you mean like your half truths and failure to answer questions directly?

Actually Algebra is an Arab word, not a Persian word. Al means "the" in Arabic. Algorithm is also Arabic. Zero is also an Arab concept. All Greek knowledge and much of Roman knowledge comes down to us from the Arabs. Cause our European ancestors of antiquity were burning these pagan texts as fast as they could find them, It was the religiously tolerant middle east where these concepts survived until they could be re-introduced to the west.

The word may be Arabic, but the creator was Persian and Persians are NOT Arab. Again you spout a half truth. Actually Zero came from Sanskrit not arabic and was invented by the Babylonians. So once again, what modern invention have Muslim countries produced? What have they contributed to the modern world?

If you want to knock them cause they don't produce good cars then you could justify taking out 6 of the 7 continents including North America.

Once again they don't produce ANYTHING good or bad.

[AsburySkinsFan]

But first we waged a brutal war where most of the people supporting the idea were killed, and then we left thousands of troops in the regions where it sprung up for generations. You seem to be against us doing both of those things w/ respect to the ideas that have resulted in terrorism.

I am against waging war and I am advocating doing those things that diffuse the sorces of war, because those evil voices that come up in the world do not gain an audience in a vacuum, there is something that those voices feed upon and all too often that something has been our foreign policy.

[AsburySkinsFan]

There is no good reason to believe that most of the ex-Generals that have come out againt torture are lying for any reason. If they wanted to support it, but were scared to they could have stayed silent on the matter. Instead people like Colin Powell have been voluntarily very vocal in their stand against torture.

Well then they're just unpatriotic paper tigers then, after all any good soldier worth his salt should be all for winning at all costs, right John McCain. oh, what's that you say, you don't like torture...well why is that? Oooohhhh, because you were tortured and you didn't like it very much. Wow, what a startling revelation.

[PeterMP]

I am against waging war and I am advocating doing those things that diffuse the sorces of war, because those evil voices that come up in the world do not gain an audience in a vacuum, there is something that those voices feed upon and all too often that something has been our foreign policy.

And the major foreign policy decisions that resulted in Bin Laden being against us was the protection of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from Saddam. Yet I don't think anybody thinks we made the wrong choice there.

In general, we've discussed this before, and you seemed to agree that as long as their are evil people, there will be people that are wronged and even then sometimes good people make mistakes that end up wronging people. There is no way to prevent that, and in some cases the wronged will strike out, at the people that they think are cause of their being wronged. Your beliefs seem to give you no practical way for dealing w/ those situations other than to wait until a major conflict breaks out, which themselves result in people being wronged so unless you can point out where my flaw is your policy would put us in a cycle of some peace followed by building resentment, leading eventually to essentially a WW. As imperfect the current situation is, I'll take it over that.

[PeterMP]

Well then they're just unpatriotic paper tigers then, after all any good soldier worth his salt should be all for winning at all costs, right John McCain. oh, what's that you say, you don't like torture...well why is that? Oooohhhh, because you were tortured and you didn't like it very much. Wow, what a startling revelation.

It seems to me we agree on this issue. Was your post suppossed to make a relevant point?

[AsburySkinsFan]

It seems to me we agree on this issue. Was your post suppossed to make a relevant point?

No, I was just doing a little satire.

[AsburySkinsFan]

And the major foreign policy decisions that resulted in Bin Laden being against us was the protection of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from Saddam. Yet I don't think anybody thinks we made the wrong choice there.

Kuwait did not happen in a vacuum, and even if Bin Laden starts his criticism there, the seeds have been sown in that region by the West for 30 years or more.

Your beliefs seem to give you no practical way for dealing w/ those situations other than to wait until a major conflict breaks out, which themselves result in people being wronged so unless you can point out where my flaw is your policy would put us in a cycle of some peace followed by building resentment, leading eventually to essentially a WW. As imperfect the current situation is, I'll take it over that.

I've advocated a police force that is governed by similar rules of engagement that govern our domestic police forces, and that strive to protect all lives to the furthest extent possible, just like our police do. What I find interesting is that our police force is good enough for us yet not good enough to be used in situations around the globe.

See I believe the problem lies in the fact that our military was not built for police action, instead it was built for offensive action against the Soviet Union, and to expect it to be used in other ways is like trying to hammer a nail with a saw.

I am also against maintaining a standing Army like we have the same way the founding fathers were, and that was maintained after WWII in preparation for a war with the Soviets. Now all we have is a rifle when we need handcuffs.

[Mad Mike]

The article is pure propaganda nonsense.

Really? Then explain the bin Laden quote in my sig. :laugh:

And BTW. The Russians Were not the victim of 9/11 despite their years of war in the middle east. Again, proving just how wrong you are and how correct the author is.

[PeterMP]

Kuwait did not happen in a vacuum, and even if Bin Laden starts his criticism there, the seeds have been sown in that region by the West for 30 years or more.

That's the point. We are in the hole, but there is no practical way out of it as long as their are evil people and people make mistakes. And neither one of those is going to happen any time soon.

I've advocated a police force that is governed by similar rules of engagement that govern our domestic police forces, and that strive to protect all lives to the furthest extent possible, just like our police do. What I find interesting is that our police force is good enough for us yet not good enough to be used in situations around the globe.

See I believe the problem lies in the fact that our military was not built for police action, instead it was built for offensive action against the Soviet Union, and to expect it to be used in other ways is like trying to hammer a nail with a saw.

I am also against maintaining a standing Army like we have the same way the founding fathers were, and that was maintained after WWII in preparation for a war with the Soviets. Now all we have is a rifle when we need handcuffs.

And people like Hitler, Emperor Hirohito, Saddam, and Bin Laden would happily kill of your "police force" troops on the way thier way to their objectives, and then you'd have to raise a large army to defeat them, allowing them to strengthen their positions, causing a MAJOR conflict (especially w/ nuclear weapons these days) to defeat them, which would almost certainly result in some people being wronged, which would build into the next conflict.

[AsburySkinsFan]

And BTW. The Russians Were not the victim of 9/11 despite their years of war in the middle east. Again, proving just how wrong you are and how correct the author is.

Really, so because Russia was not attacked on 9/11 that means that Al Qaeda fears them? Hmm, how come they didn't attack France, or Britian on 9/11 then? Are they so big and tough that Bin Laden was afraid of them? Oh, and would you care to explain Chechnya where the Russians are fighting Al Qaeda and other Islamic radicals? Interesting logic, too bad its got a hole right in the middle of it.

[AsburySkinsFan]

That's the point. We are in the hole, but there is no practical way out of it as long as their are evil people and people make mistakes. And neither one of those is going to happen any time soon.

And people like Hitler, Emperor Hirohito, Saddam, and Bin Laden would happily kill of your "police force" troops on the way thier way to their objectives, and then you'd have to raise a large army to defeat them, allowing them to strengthen their positions, causing a MAJOR conflict (especially w/ nuclear weapons these days) to defeat them, which would almost certainly result in some people being wronged, which would build into the next conflict.

So basically, were screwed and we might as well kill 'em all?

Sorry, but I refuse to take such a fatalistic position.

[PeterMP]

So basically, were screwed and we might as well kill 'em all?

Sorry, but I refuse to take such a fatalistic position.

No! We should attempt to manage the situation as best we can using ALL of the resources at our disposal. Interestingly, that same approach has resulted in peaceful stable democracies in Germany, Japan, and S. Korea, and possibly Panama (they aren't as old as the others so I won't put them in the same category yet).

[Art]

What some of the innocent here fail to grasp is, where we recommend, rightly, you beat back brutality with greater levels of brutality, not weakness, questions about targets, fear of the Islamic world rising up against us or any of the rest, and you ask us what the difference, then, between us and them is, you don't see how clearly it demonstrates just how far gone you all are.

The difference is we would do what we'd do for freedom and our ideals which are vastly superior than those of our enemy. That's the difference. When America fights a war, it does so, in every case, with the moral advantage of freedom, equality and just goals. We are, as a nation, better than any other. We are, as a people, better than any other. We have, superior to all others, guiding principles none can compare to.

What America has lost, and why it will never win another war until it finds it, is everything I said is true and national pride in our case, or pride generally for the goals you fight for, is what set us apart. It's now what makes us lose. We feel some compulsive need to reject our superiority. We feel we must apologize for wanting the world to be better than it is, meaning, more like us.

Our greatest source of pride taken from us from within. The enemy is in the mirror.

[Predicto]

What some of the innocent here fail to grasp is, where we recommend, rightly, you beat back brutality with greater levels of brutality, not weakness, questions about targets, fear of the Islamic world rising up against us or any of the rest, and you ask us what the difference, then, between us and them is, you don't see how clearly it demonstrates just how far gone you all are.

The difference is we would do what we'd do for freedom and our ideals which are vastly superior than those of our enemy. That's the difference. When America fights a war, it does so, in every case, with the moral advantage of freedom, equality and just goals. We are, as a nation, better than any other. We are, as a people, better than any other. We have, superior to all others, guiding principles none can compare to.

What America has lost, and why it will never win another war until it finds it, is everything I said is true and national pride in our case, or pride generally for the goals you fight for, is what set us apart. It's now what makes us lose. We feel some compulsive need to reject our superiority. We feel we must apologize for wanting the world to be better than it is, meaning, more like us.

Our greatest source of pride taken from us from within. The enemy is in the mirror.

What does this post even mean? You make no sense at all. It is like a small portion of a longer speech taken entirely out of context.

If I understand you right, we innocents are "far gone" because we don't want America to stand for indiscriminate brutality and thuggery?

Sorry, but we innocents DO consider our system superior to theirs. We want it to STAY superior. We don't want to sell out our wonderful guiding constitutional principles for a momentary advantage. We don't want to cheapen what America stands for.

You don't have true pride in America because your favorite colors are red, white and blue and you have an eagle decal on your car. You have true pride in America because you believe in what America STANDS FOR.

Freedom and democracy and rule of law are not just empty words to us. We actually want the US to exemplify those ideals as best as possible.

Cutting off the ballsacks of innocent relatives of bad guys to send a message is not American. Waving the flag in my face and shouting the Pledge of Allegance really loud doesn't make it any more American.

[Art]

The post means exactly what it says. And your post confirms the worst of what some of you have become. In war there is no freedom. There is no democracy. There is no rule of law. There's destruction and horror. That you think you can accomplish both is the poison of this culture. The belief war can be clean is why we will always lose when it is dirty, and war is always dirty. We have never lost a war on the battlefield. We have lost in your house.

When you restrict even naming the enemy, much less fighting them where you know they are, you don't actually believe in the ideals behind the fight. You hate them and know you can never admit it, so you attempt to suggest restricting the power we bring to a fight is a sign of our ideals when the only evidence you have of such behavior is defeat. If you believed in them, you'd believe we should actually do what is required to WIN and when there are deaths involved, winning is a simple matter of demoralizing the enemy beyond their capacity to continue fighting.

Our enemies are better at this than we are anymore because they actually believe strongly enough in the cause they fight for to do everything possible to win knowing we won't. The difference is they correctly see that horrible weakness in us and know they can't lose. You don't see that weakness, and seek answers as to why we didn't win, without ever realizing YOU are the reason.

[AsburySkinsFan]

No! We should attempt to manage the situation as best we can using ALL of the resources at our disposal.

The problem is that we don't have the right tool for the job, our military is geared for offensive operations, and not management or police actions which is what really is required, and our soldiers are not trained to do the job that needs to be done. So you say use all our resources, but I see that as pounding a nail with a saw, its just the wrong tool.

Interestingly, that same approach has resulted in peaceful stable democracies in Germany, Japan, and S. Korea, and possibly Panama (they aren't as old as the others so I won't put them in the same category yet).

Well, we were in South Korea prior to the Korean War as a result of the end of WWII, so they don't really count.

As for the others what was being dealt with were proper nation states, Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups are not nation states, and they do not have proper militaries, thus we they cannot be dealt with in the same manner.

This supposed "war on terror" is a fight against people who use a particular tactic, not a governmental system and honestly this is why this "war" is unwinable by any standard, because there will always be another small militant group that takes up arms and uses the tactic. Just look at all the groups that use these tactics; IRA (formerly), Basque Sepratists (Spain), Chechnyan rebels, Hamas, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah. Not to mention the National Liberation Army (ELN), and other South American groups. We cannot possibly think that we can kill them all, so what do we do? My belief is that we should be limiting the potential pool of recruits by limiting those things that make people open to recruitment by these groups.

In other words our foreign policies should be such that we are not in essence repeating the failures of Versailles. Sure mistakes will be made and there is always the rule of unintened consequences, but once we realize that something is creating harm and a population of disgruntled people then we need to own up to it and make those changes that seek to correct the past mistakes. But, what happens today is that politicians won't own the mistakes of the past because they feel it makes us look weak, for a pure example of this watch Rudy Giuliani's response to Ron Paul's notion of blowback. Not to mention many of the reactions around here.

[AsburySkinsFan]

The post means exactly what it says. And your post confirms the worst of what some of you have become. In war there is no freedom. There is no democracy. There is no rule of law. There's destruction and horror. That you think you can accomplish both is the poison of this culture. The belief war can be clean is why we will always lose when it is dirty, and war is always dirty. We have never lost a war on the battlefield. We have lost in your house.

When you restrict even naming the enemy, much less fighting them where you know they are, you don't actually believe in the ideals behind the fight. You hate them and know you can never admit it, so you attempt to suggest restricting the power we bring to a fight is a sign of our ideals when the only evidence you have of such behavior is defeat. If you believed in them, you'd believe we should actually do what is required to WIN and when there are deaths involved, winning is a simple matter of demoralizing the enemy beyond their capacity to continue fighting.

Our enemies are better at this than we are anymore because they actually believe strongly enough in the cause they fight for to do everything possible to win knowing we won't. The difference is they correctly see that horrible weakness in us and know they can't lose. You don't see that weakness, and seek answers as to why we didn't win, without ever realizing YOU are the reason.

But what you don't understand is that by winning in the way that you and others suggest we in the process sell our soul and become what we were supposedly fighting against.

[PeterMP]

The problem is that we don't have the right tool for the job, our military is geared for offensive operations, and not management or police actions which is what really is required, and our soldiers are not trained to do the job that needs to be done. So you say use all our resources, but I see that as pounding a nail with a saw, its just the wrong tool.

We can retrain them can't we? We have been doing more and more of this sort of stuff over the years. There are a number of military people that views on how to get this done. Try reading the book by General Anthony Zinni.

Well, we were in South Korea prior to the Korean War as a result of the end of WWII, so they don't really count.

As for the others what was being dealt with were proper nation states, Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups are not nation states, and they do not have proper militaries, thus we they cannot be dealt with in the same manner.

Why don't they count? They were a non-democratic regime that w/ the aid of the US, including the use of the US military transitioned to a democracy.

This supposed "war on terror" is a fight against people who use a particular tactic, not a governmental system and honestly this is why this "war" is unwinable by any standard, because there will always be another small militant group that takes up arms and uses the tactic. Just look at all the groups that use these tactics; IRA (formerly), Basque Sepratists (Spain), Chechnyan rebels, Hamas, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah. Not to mention the National Liberation Army (ELN), and other South American groups. We cannot possibly think that we can kill them all, so what do we do? My belief is that we should be limiting the potential pool of recruits by limiting those things that make people open to recruitment by these groups.

We aren't practically fighting most of these groups. We have invaded two COUNTRIES. Again, I'll come back to the comparision w/ Nazism. The way to defeat it is to not allow those that want to spread this message the ability to do so. One way to do that is to have goverments there that recognize that it has a responsibility to ALL the people.

I've also stated that I don't like the "war on terror" because you do force groups that otherwise might not be related to look at each other as allies.

In other words our foreign policies should be such that we are not in essence repeating the failures of Versailles. Sure mistakes will be made and there is always the rule of unintened consequences, but once we realize that something is creating harm and a population of disgruntled people then we need to own up to it and make those changes that seek to correct the past mistakes. But, what happens today is that politicians won't own the mistakes of the past because they feel it makes us look weak, for a pure example of this watch Rudy Giuliani's response to Ron Paul's notion of blowback. Not to mention many of the reactions around here.

Ron Paul was wrong. 911 did not happen because we were dropping bombs on Iraq as he originally stated, and Guiliani called him in on it, and then rather admit that HE (PAUL) was wrong, he started talking about blowback and the Iran hostage situation, which had NOTHING to do w/ us dropping bombs on Iraq. Paul did not say anything about blowback in his original comment.

Go watch the video on YouTube. I've never seen somebody say something so patently wrong and then try to so obviously cover up that he made a mistake become such a hero.