riiiiiight, because the US was non-violent until 9/11… ook dude, sure. What I think you meant was, The US only HALF ASSED invasions and funded/aided other nations in violent endeavours until 9-11, then we decided to go full-blown imperialist.
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They weren’t half assed. In Vietnam we had 550,000 troops on the ground the ground, ships, and all the airpower you could want. And we couldn’t win.
America is now an imperialistic country, that is true. When 9/11 happened, there was an immediate excuse to do what they had wanted to do for years…bad news.
I’m not trying to draw any such correlation - I’m merely trying to point out that the only functional response to violence that history has shown is non-violence. Responding to violence with MORE violence simply perpetuates the problem.
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What history books are you reading? Wars are wars. The guy with the most troops and most firepower wins. Thats it. For every time non-violence has worked, there are a thousand wars where it didn’t.
I do agree that the terrorists should be shown no mercy.
My problem still remains with how we are going about it, and the lies behind the administration.
heh, sheesh, can’t a guy play devil’s advocate (or in this case, goody-two-shoes buddha boy advocate)?
I certainly AM a proponent of a non-violent solution, but I DO AGREE that there are situations where war is inevitable, and must be used to stop great injustice. WWII was certianly such a situation, as were the Napoleonic wars. Vietnam was NOT (and true, we didn’t half ass that attempt, but we have of everything since, until the second Iraq war).
My point was that the War on Terror could probably have been avoided if our standard policy was to use violence and the encouragement of violence as an ABSOLUTE LAST RESORT. Now that it’s on, well, it’s going to be blood and guts until someone gives up. And no, not every war has shown that the side with more firepower, more troops, and more money wins. Who beat Napoleon at Waterloo? The British, and with an inferior number of ships, that were in poor condition. In fact, the British Navy drasticaly weakened the French empire and managed to keep them at bay, despite poorer economic conditions, fewer ships and having to fight the USA at one point as well (war of 1810). They did this through incredible tenacity and courage, and I believe that it is just those two qualities that can push the balance of war in one direction or another.
If I was on the battlefield and it came down to me or my comrades or the enemy (terrorists, nazis, whatever), there would BE no thought process as to what had to happen. I would kill them. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do everything in our power to avoid putting people into that exact situation.
[quote]Mr. Push Ups wrote:
Have some respect for those that died before you. And those that are dying for you right now. Fuck the terrorist. Either join em’ or kill em’. Whats it gonna be.[/quote]
I have LOTS of respect for those in the armed forces, as well as the innocents who have died in terrorist attacks. I ALSO, however, have respect for the innocent Iraqis and Afghanis who have died in our quest for vengeance, and I feel a great deal of sadness that humanity resorts to this. Like I said - we need to try our damndest to PREVENT this sort of thing, and being thoughtless and vengeful doesn’t prevent ANYTHING.
The US has always used violence(every country does - other countries arent as good at it), it just hasnt always used the best planning and propaganda to back it up.
In the end it’s the ideology behind the violence that wins or loses support for the violence itself…
The “us or them” ultimatum is really an oversimplification, so is the idea of a clash of civilizations, and so is the allegory of the beta male wolf.
First of all, if in this world there WAS a beta male, it’d be China. Al Qaeda would be closer to the omega, and therefore ruins all wolf-pack analogies.
YES, humans are animals, and behave in an animalistic fashion, but that doesn’t mean that we should simply revert to barbarism.
The fact of the matter is that the majority of the people in Middle Eastern society have no wish to see our society destroyed, and I belive that the same goes for the feelings of the peoples of Western civilization. When extremism fuels large scale action, a large scale response to that action is triggered, and things quickly snowball to potentially catastrophic proportion.
With the increased availability of technology that can kill large numbers of people EASILY (WMD, airplanes, etc), we must be exraordinarily careful not to allow conflicts to grow beyond a reasonable level, and to do our utmost to handle conflicts with extremists in as direct a manner as we can without inflicting unintentional casualties and causing MORE innocent people to die. The moment we kill indescriminately, we become terrorists ourselves.
we must be exraordinarily careful not to allow conflicts to grow beyond a reasonable level, and to do our utmost to handle conflicts with extremists in as direct a manner as we can without inflicting unintentional casualties and causing MORE innocent people to die.[/quote]
This is quite a bit more tolerant of violence on our part (I added emphasis to the parts that indicate, IMO, we should be killing people). Are you changing your mind?
we must be exraordinarily careful not to allow conflicts to grow beyond a reasonable level, and to do our utmost to handle conflicts with extremists in as direct a manner as we can without inflicting unintentional casualties and causing MORE innocent people to die.
This is quite a bit more tolerant of violence on our part (I added emphasis to the parts that indicate, IMO, we should be killing people). Are you changing your mind?[/quote]
What part of “absolute last resort” didn’t you get? Obviously ignoring conflict isn’t going to get us anywhere, and neither is appeasement - we need to be as non-violent as we can without succumbing to inaction.
[quote]MODOK wrote:
…we must show ourselves as both a strong nation, and one which will not take advances on our freedom from other countries lightly. [/quote]
…we must also however, take advances on our freedom from domestic sources with greater capacity to do so even more seriously.
This is quite a bit more tolerant of violence on our part (I added emphasis to the parts that indicate, IMO, we should be killing people). Are you changing your mind?
What part of “absolute last resort” didn’t you get? Obviously ignoring conflict isn’t going to get us anywhere, and neither is appeasement - we need to be as non-violent as we can without succumbing to inaction.[/quote]
You went from:
“The only way we can defeat them is with compassion and non-violence.”
to:
“handle conflicts with extremists in as direct a manner as we can without inflicting unintentional casualties”.
Just sounds like you changed your mind to me. I’m not condoning the killing of families of bombers. I am in favor of more liberally drawing lines as to who is and who is not a terrorist and how they should be dealt with.
I don’t think the issue is “should we kill the terrorists” but whether or not we should be “killing the terrorists’ families (or any other family that we think might be related somewhat to the terrorist)”
I don’t think anyone is against killing the terrorist. The actual terrorist, ie the one committing the act, not some alleged so-called terrorist or someone grabbed off the street with a beard or funny hat.
If there was a smart bomb that could seek out and kill all current and future terrorists, who wouldn’t push that button?
But there isn’t.
by the way, China is the Alpha Male - you just haven’t realised it yet. I say, you want to stop terrorism, just say to China “here, you can have the middle east” - watch what happens.
There are plenty of other countries willing to move in and be a lot bigger bastards than the USA ever has been, even though the US has done some misguided, ill-intended and downright shonky things, it could have been a lot worse.
Anyway, my point is ther terrorists techniques of terror only makes the west real mad, not “real scared”. You can’t stop them by trying to make them scared. If you could kill them (the terrorists) that is fine, but you can’t find them for a start. And it certainly isn’t advised to start killing innocents (even if they aren’t that innocent, and even support the terrorists ideals) because that just makes things worse.
Guess what - THERE IS NO SOLUTION.
It won’t be resolved, it will continue, there is nothing you can do, not now, not ever, and you have to live with the situation.