[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
[quote]kilpaba wrote:
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]kilpaba wrote:
Maybe this is the wrong place for a sober assessment, but it was all that came up on my hub. I don’t mourn the man’s death, because I don’t believe all people are worthwhile having on this earth. He was certainly a net-negative addition to the human race.
But all that said, surely everyone can concede that in order to kill this man THOUSANDS of people, including many innocent people, were killed by both AQ and the US. To bring this one man to justice we had to kill thousands of innocents including women and children. We also engaged in multiple wars, violated other nations sovereignty and have taxed our children and grand children with our deficit war spending to finance it all. This is also excluding possible ‘blow-back’ future generations will have to deal with (refer to the success of Israeli operations on dampening terrorist activity and zeal).
Yes his particular death is a good thing, but this is at best a somber occasion recognizing that justice, in his case, has been served. As moral agents, though, we cannot in good conscious ignore all the collateral damage that went into bringing his death to pass. Was it worth it? Perhaps so, I honestly don’t know, but to paraphrase an old phrase ‘There is no such thing as a good or just war’.[/quote]
Then the alternative is to allow those like Bin Laden a free reign to kill when and as they see fit. Of course there will always be collateral damage in war. Look at World War Two. Many innocent people died when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the result was no more American lives had to be sacrificed in order to end that war.
It’s true that war should be a last result when all else fails. But I see no alternative when we were attacked on our own shores. People like Bin Laden must be destroyed so that, in the long run there will be less killing.[/quote]
Perhaps it is the economist in me, but I can’t help looking at the CBA of our actions. As has been posted it certainly doesn’t mean multiple wars and bombing strikes were necessitated to track down Osama. Counter terrorism doesn’t have to mean large scale intractable wars that include nation building. I don’t have the figures in front of me, but if you total up all the people killed in 9/11 and then compare all the people killed in our war effort not counting the displaced, financially maligned, etc. it becomes a hard question to answer whether our actions were justified. We probably lost more Americans in the fight than in all the terrorist attacks in our nation’s history combined by some margin. [/quote]
we should be comparing the deaths that resulted by our invasion of the middle east with the deaths that would have occurred if we did not invade the middle east.[/quote]
The latter number is unknowable, because it doesn’t exist, and therefore it cannot be used in a comparison.
If one were to forced to make an educated guess, however, it would be hard to dream up a scenario in which more people would have died in the absence of the wars.[/quote]
If you don’t think the number can be estimated, that doesn’t make the earlier comparison any more useful.
That being said, I think our presence over there as well as the intelligence we gained made a significant difference in the # of attempts and success rates of terrorist attacks on US soil.
And besides, the alternative action of doing nothing is unacceptable once we’ve been attacked.[/quote]
No one ever suggested that we do nothing. Invasions and occupations are not the only means to intelligence gathering, and they not necessarily the best way to deal with a nationless enemy.
It doesn’t matter though because history is history. At least these past few days have had an air of hope to them.[/quote]
Agreed. Hindsight is 20/20 and there were definitely some fuck ups along the way.
Besides, the last thing I’m qualified to do is have meaningful opinions on foreign relations.[/quote]
If the truth be told that can be said about all of us. But we do have opinions (do we ever) and I’m sure many of these opinions are being expressed by those beyond T Nation.
I think the crux of it is if there is going to be an invasion of any kind, and there most certainly had to be, there are going to be innocent people harmed. That is just a sad reality of war.[/quote]
There had to be?
So I guess flying in a team of commandos and take him out would have been out of the question?
Oh, wait…
Are you still on parole for embezzling from your employer? The porn post is tongue-in-cheek. You “finding Christ” when you’ve stepped in your own shit is just calling for a lifeline.