In poor taste?
Yes.
[quote]orion wrote:
So apparently he had no weapon, did not use a woman as a shield, his wife was shot in the leg trying to defend him and the woman killed was someone else entirely.
Ahem.
Bonus points because he was killed “resisting arrest”.
Ah those weaponless diabetics, no choice but to put em down.
Any Navy Seal who can say that with a straight face deserves a medal just for that alone.
[/quote]
Dude, don’t you know all spec ops are sociopaths. Every single one of them.
They kill for a living. You think they cannot lie with a straight face?
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
So apparently he had no weapon, did not use a woman as a shield, his wife was shot in the leg trying to defend him and the woman killed was someone else entirely.
Ahem.
Bonus points because he was killed “resisting arrest”.
Ah those weaponless diabetics, no choice but to put em down.
Any Navy Seal who can say that with a straight face deserves a medal just for that alone.
[/quote]
And what should they have done, orion? [/quote]
Kick him in the fruits and take him with them?
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
So apparently he had no weapon, did not use a woman as a shield, his wife was shot in the leg trying to defend him and the woman killed was someone else entirely.
Ahem.
Bonus points because he was killed “resisting arrest”.
Ah those weaponless diabetics, no choice but to put em down.
Any Navy Seal who can say that with a straight face deserves a medal just for that alone.
[/quote]
Dude, don’t you know all spec ops are sociopaths. Every single one of them.
They kill for a living. You think they cannot lie with a straight face?[/quote]
I would practically expect it!
Nonetheless, some people are motivated by shiny stuff, so give him a medal!
And some colorful, um, ethnically diverse, ribbons too!
Just for the record, if he charged them with a scimitar he deserves at least 3 semi attractive virgins.
[quote]k-dingo wrote:
[quote]kilpaba wrote:
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 know that the Iraq war was not justified on the stated merits (WMD).
From the news reports I’ve heard, the intel on bin Laden’s couriers came from Guantanamo. Possible as a result of persons captured in Iraq. To that extent, the Iraq war may have helped. I don’t know.
I do agree that if the calculus is of those killed to the aim of simply capturing bin Laden, the numbers very simply don’t add up. The experience of the Arab Spring uprisings suggests that a peaceful, indiginous uprising could likely have occured with far fewer casualties (hundreds or possibly low thousands, but not tens to hundreds of thousands as in Iraq).
Israel’s methods may be brutal, but they’re also very targeted, very specific, and pretty effective. Their larger image problem comes from the less directed and indiscriminate repression and brutalization of a larger population (much as various US freedom takedowns and policies since 9/11 have tarnished the US’s image). The OBL take-down was specific, targeted, and surgical. It also relied on having a lot of intel, local assets: the strike force was launched in Afghanistan. Without ready local assets it would have been more difficult to launch and support such a mission.
How much of the current situation was helped or hurt by past actions? There’s little way of knowing now, though I suspect it’ll be the subject of policy debate for decades to come. Did US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan help or hurt the Arab Spring? How much of this is a fall out of economic pressures (particularly rising fuel and food prices)? What are the ideological motivations of the factions within the Arab uprising? Note that as with any group, especially a revolution, there are many diverse groups and interests represented.
To the first point, whether the Iraq war helped us get Osama or not I find unimportant. If Guantanamo was the cause of the information gathering I am even more disquieted. Here is my calculus for this event. In effect, we sold our soul and all of our principals and morality to capture one lone figure. We suspended habeas corpus, invaded two foreign countries, violated the sovereignty of others (Pakistan particularly), impoverished future generations of Americans with unprecedented debt and soon-to-be inflation, imprisoned men without hard evidence indefinitely, suspended man civil liberties (patriot act) and have resorted to torture in the name of what? Revenge? Killing a single, albeit important, terrorist? Preserving liberty?
Again I don’t deny I am relieved and somewhat cheered the man is finally dead, but when you stop to survey what all we did and sacrificed to kill one man I find it difficult to be more than slightly happy. Now that all of the preceding has been done, I’m glad he is at least dead at the end of it, but honestly I think it would have been better to have foregone most of that bullshit and still have a country I can respect at the end of it.
To your final point about the effectiveness of targeting leaders, I will try to dig up the paper, but this has been very well studied and to say that the results are mixed would be about the best you can claim. Only in extremely selective circumstances does it do any good at all and more often than not it has been shown to cause more problems than it solves. Depending on the structure of the organization (e.g. whether it has cells or not) it may or may not have any permanent effect at all. Egypt and Jordan are hardly terrorist organizations either. Hamas and a slew of other actual terrorists groups are alive and well. Is Israel partly to blame? Yes, and that is my point. Their policies are brutal and meant to intimidate and, wonder of wonders, they have only further entrenched their enemies and increased their resolve and hatred. To which I again reply, is this really the strategy we need to be taking? But without the paper this is all just my own opinions so I will try to find it and post it up.
EDIT: Link to the paper I referenced- http://cpost.uchicago.edu/pdf/Jordan.pdf
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
So apparently he had no weapon, did not use a woman as a shield, his wife was shot in the leg trying to defend him and the woman killed was someone else entirely.
Ahem.
Bonus points because he was killed “resisting arrest”.
Ah those weaponless diabetics, no choice but to put em down.
Any Navy Seal who can say that with a straight face deserves a medal just for that alone.
[/quote]
And what should they have done, orion? [/quote]
Waited to see if a suicide vest would be detonated. That’s what ole Barney Fife would’ve done, yessir.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
So apparently he had no weapon, did not use a woman as a shield, his wife was shot in the leg trying to defend him and the woman killed was someone else entirely.
Ahem.
Bonus points because he was killed “resisting arrest”.
Ah those weaponless diabetics, no choice but to put em down.
Any Navy Seal who can say that with a straight face deserves a medal just for that alone.
[/quote]
And what should they have done, orion? [/quote]
Waited to see if a suicide vest would be detonated. That’s what ole Barney Fife would’ve done, yessir.[/quote]
This post deserves a medal!
[quote]Chushin wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
So apparently he had no weapon, did not use a woman as a shield, his wife was shot in the leg trying to defend him and the woman killed was someone else entirely.
Ahem.
Bonus points because he was killed “resisting arrest”.
Ah those weaponless diabetics, no choice but to put em down.
Any Navy Seal who can say that with a straight face deserves a medal just for that alone.
[/quote]
And what should they have done, orion? [/quote]
Kick him in the fruits and take him with them?
[/quote]
Because he most certainly was not surrounded by armed men trying to protect him, and it’s just so damned easy to avoid hitting “innocents” (!) in a firefight.
Hell, Orion has done it several times in his commando career. Why can’t US Navy SEALS?
But then, if they HAD “kicked him in the fruits,” Orion would most certainly be bitching about how “he wasn’t even resisting!” Or maybe about how the SEALS “had no warrant, so the attack was illegal!!!”
Then again, any warrant would have come from a judiciary “tainted with stateism,” and therefore nothing more than an excuse to oppress…
As you can see, the US has to be VERY careful to not break Orion’s rules![/quote]
They do not even bother with their own rules, so why care about mine?
[quote]kilpaba wrote:
[quote]k-dingo wrote:
[quote]kilpaba wrote:
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 know that the Iraq war was not justified on the stated merits (WMD).
From the news reports I’ve heard, the intel on bin Laden’s couriers came from Guantanamo. Possible as a result of persons captured in Iraq. To that extent, the Iraq war may have helped. I don’t know.
I do agree that if the calculus is of those killed to the aim of simply capturing bin Laden, the numbers very simply don’t add up. The experience of the Arab Spring uprisings suggests that a peaceful, indiginous uprising could likely have occured with far fewer casualties (hundreds or possibly low thousands, but not tens to hundreds of thousands as in Iraq).
Israel’s methods may be brutal, but they’re also very targeted, very specific, and pretty effective. Their larger image problem comes from the less directed and indiscriminate repression and brutalization of a larger population (much as various US freedom takedowns and policies since 9/11 have tarnished the US’s image). The OBL take-down was specific, targeted, and surgical. It also relied on having a lot of intel, local assets: the strike force was launched in Afghanistan. Without ready local assets it would have been more difficult to launch and support such a mission.
How much of the current situation was helped or hurt by past actions? There’s little way of knowing now, though I suspect it’ll be the subject of policy debate for decades to come. Did US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan help or hurt the Arab Spring? How much of this is a fall out of economic pressures (particularly rising fuel and food prices)? What are the ideological motivations of the factions within the Arab uprising? Note that as with any group, especially a revolution, there are many diverse groups and interests represented.
To the first point, whether the Iraq war helped us get Osama or not I find unimportant. If Guantanamo was the cause of the information gathering I am even more disquieted. Here is my calculus for this event. In effect, we sold our soul and all of our principals and morality to capture one lone figure. We suspended habeas corpus, invaded two foreign countries, violated the sovereignty of others (Pakistan particularly), impoverished future generations of Americans with unprecedented debt and soon-to-be inflation, imprisoned men without hard evidence indefinitely, suspended man civil liberties (patriot act) and have resorted to torture in the name of what? Revenge? Killing a single, albeit important, terrorist? Preserving liberty?
Again I don’t deny I am relieved and somewhat cheered the man is finally dead, but when you stop to survey what all we did and sacrificed to kill one man I find it difficult to be more than slightly happy. Now that all of the preceding has been done, I’m glad he is at least dead at the end of it, but honestly I think it would have been better to have foregone most of that bullshit and still have a country I can respect at the end of it.
To your final point about the effectiveness of targeting leaders, I will try to dig up the paper, but this has been very well studied and to say that the results are mixed would be about the best you can claim. Only in extremely selective circumstances does it do any good at all and more often than not it has been shown to cause more problems than it solves. Depending on the structure of the organization (e.g. whether it has cells or not) it may or may not have any permanent effect at all. Egypt and Jordan are hardly terrorist organizations either. Hamas and a slew of other actual terrorists groups are alive and well. Is Israel partly to blame? Yes, and that is my point. Their policies are brutal and meant to intimidate and, wonder of wonders, they have only further entrenched their enemies and increased their resolve and hatred. To which I again reply, is this really the strategy we need to be taking? But without the paper this is all just my own opinions so I will try to find it and post it up.
EDIT: Link to the paper I referenced- http://cpost.uchicago.edu/pdf/Jordan.pdf[/quote]
The above is one giant strawman. Although we might have committed some or all of the acts in the first part of your post, we did not do it solely to capture bin Laden. I have no opinion on the targeting of leaders.
[quote]orion wrote:
So apparently he had no weapon, did not use a woman as a shield, his wife was shot in the leg trying to defend him and the woman killed was someone else entirely.
Ahem.
Bonus points because he was killed “resisting arrest”.
Ah those weaponless diabetics, no choice but to put em down.
Any Navy Seal who can say that with a straight face deserves a medal just for that alone.
[/quote]
I’m flabbergasted. Your trolling/baiting even extends to Bin Laden support/Seal team libels.
Seek help.
The problem is the Seal Team was American, thus they are wrong no matter what the did. Had a Pakistani special forces team done the same, Orion wouldn’t be complaining.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
The problem is the Seal Team was American, thus they are wrong no matter what the did. Had a Pakistani special forces team done the same, Orion wouldn’t be complaining.
[/quote]
A Pakistani force would have moved OBL into a fancier compound.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
The problem is the Seal Team was American, thus they are wrong no matter what the did. Had a Pakistani special forces team done the same, Orion wouldn’t be complaining.
[/quote]
A Pakistani force would have moved OBL into a fancier compound.[/quote]And gotten him a subscription to TIME magazine.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
So apparently he had no weapon, did not use a woman as a shield, his wife was shot in the leg trying to defend him and the woman killed was someone else entirely.
Ahem.
Bonus points because he was killed “resisting arrest”.
Ah those weaponless diabetics, no choice but to put em down.
Any Navy Seal who can say that with a straight face deserves a medal just for that alone.
[/quote]
Dude, don’t you know all spec ops are sociopaths. Every single one of them.
They kill for a living. You think they cannot lie with a straight face?[/quote]
clearly you’ve never met one.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
The problem is the Seal Team was American, thus they are wrong no matter what the did. Had a Pakistani special forces team done the same, Orion wouldn’t be complaining.
[/quote]
this is perfect.
[quote]PB Andy wrote:
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
The problem is the Seal Team was American, thus they are wrong no matter what the did. Had a Pakistani special forces team done the same, Orion wouldn’t be complaining.
[/quote]
this is perfect.[/quote]
No.
It is perfectly possible to convey the idea of stupidity more succinctly.
It does nor even rhyme.