So Not All Terrorists Are Bad?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
81

[quote]karva wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
If you go back far enough in history you will see that America was “discovered” by Europeans, because they needed spices and other things from Asia. The Asian silk road was occupied by the hostile Ottoman Empire which had it’s sites on Europe. The Europeans had to find another route to the east, and sailed to America by mistake.

The discovery of America was a direct result of hostile Muslims aggression toward the European nations.

Please, reductionism is necessary, but aren’t you overdoing it? Europeans didn’t need that stuff from the orient, they wanted it.[/quote]

Damn… haha. Europes imperial ways have little to do with the invading Ottomans. The Ottomans were just about as bad, but still…

Agreed. They didn’t need spices, they wanted them. They wanted silk. They wanted the land and wealth of the Orient. They pretty much raped the Americas of the same stuff they WANTED to suck out of the Orient; gold, spices, and land.

82

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Where do you get all this stuff? Bush showed the ‘Intelligence’ to our Congress, most of whom agreed that Iraq was a major threat. They then voted for Bush to hit Iraq.[/quote]

Mounted evidence to deceive a terrorized American public? That’s your intelligence?

You had to be really blind to avert yourselves and forget that Iraq endured “Desert storm”, more than a decade-long embargo and before that it had just came out of a lenghty and very destructive war against Iran. Saying Saddam was of any threat was either deceitful or dillusional.

I don’t think the CIA and other bodies of the world’s greatest country qualifies for the latter.

Probably not. But the reasons they give you are rarely of any relevance to

In excess of 30,000 people died in an attempt of the US to overthrow a legitimate government and reinstall a dictatorial dynasty in Nicaragua. What did congress do about the Contras affair?

Defending your interests is allowed, but using violence to do so is nothing short of terrorism. Pre-emptive attacks are extremely hard to justify. The sad truth is that the US population was so shaken by the horror of 9/11 that it couldn’t just sit there introspecting its government policies and how they led to the ever-increasing unpopularity of America on the world scene.

You felt helpless in the face of terrorism; I empathize with that. You chose to strike Iraq for no good reason and I highly condemn that.

83

[quote]lixy wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
This is complete horseshit. I have friends that served in that hellhole and they tell the opposite stories of men withholding fire when they should have fired.

I believe Brad61 served in said “hellhole”. Care to ask him his opinion?

[/quote]

I doubt it very much.

84

[quote]lixy wrote:
The sad truth is that the US population was so shaken by the horror of 9/11 that it couldn’t just sit there introspecting its government policies and how they led to the ever-increasing unpopularity of America on the world scene. [/quote]

The sad truth is that many will never be introspective of America, American government, or American policies in any way, shape, or form, because that would require actual responsibility.

Its much easier to believe that we have comic book villians who “hate freedom” and are trying to kill us.

85

“Use your brains: How the fuck would you like it if a militarily superior entity interfered with your domestic issues? Wouldn’t you resist it with all you got?”

I might if I was indoctrinated to hate this entity. There were people who voted in Iraq, why did they do this when they should have been resisting? Maybe they wanted change, change their fellow car-bombing, beheading muslim would never give them.

The article was written in 1998, not in 1979. It was written in hindsight and probably quoted out of context.

If you knew anything about the political climate back in the late 70’s you’d know that there was no reason to want the Russians in Afghanistan.

And you did not answer my question, how did we know the Russians would lose? What precedent did we have to assume this?

And you’re right, the west should not have meddled with the Muslims. It was a mistake to drill for oil anywhere in the middle east.

86

"lixy wrote:
The sad truth is that the US population was so shaken by the horror of 9/11 that it couldn’t just sit there introspecting its government policies and how they led to the ever-increasing unpopularity of America on the world scene.

The sad truth is that many will never be introspective of America, American government, or American policies in any way, shape, or form, because that would require actual responsibility.

Its much easier to believe that we have comic book villians who “hate freedom” and are trying to kill us."

So, what would your responce to 9-11 be? If you do not like our policies, what would you have done if you were in charge?

87

Now, if you’ll only want to fight the murderous bastards that are Ben-Laden and his crew, you’ll have my full support. Instead, what you’re doing is giving them more reasons to recruit others by radicalizing and alienating the global Muslim population.

So, Lixy, how would we do the first part without doing the second part, seeing how anti-american the muslim extremists are? Nothing we do is ever good or right, so fighting Bin laden’s crew would recuit the radical muslim population as well, don’t you agree?

88

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
The article was written in 1998, not in 1979. It was written in hindsight and probably quoted out of context.[/quote]

I never claimed it was written in '79. And how can you seriously think that it was quoted out-of-context? Read it again and you’ll see that there’s no ambiguity in what he asserted.

What kind of question is that? Do you often go on doing something without the slightest shred of faith in its successful outcome? Do you need evidence of a 100% success rate before engaging in something?

You probably didn’t think this thru. If not, then I misunderstood the question. Please rephrase it.

Go ask the multi-billionaires of Chevron about their opinion on the matter.

89

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
So, Lixy, how would we do the first part without doing the second part, seeing how anti-american the muslim extremists are? Nothing we do is ever good or right, so fighting Bin laden’s crew would recuit the radical muslim population as well, don’t you agree?[/quote]

Here’s what you need to understand: You are turning moderates who have nothing against the US into radical extremists and potential terrorists. The way Ben-Laden managed to radicalize the entire rationale population of a country and turn them into blood-thirsty “support the troops” crowd.

Would Bush have been re-elected without 9/11? I doubt that. Would Ben-Laden’s Jihad went global hitting a dozen countries, without the 2003 invasion of Iraq? I don’t think so.

90

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-17/brzezinski2.html

Lixy,
You said the US had trained the islamic freedom fighters in Afghanistan BEFORE the Russians invaded. Nowhere in this entire interview does it say that. It said they anticipated the invasion, and formulated a plan, but that plan did not go into effect until AFTER the Soviets invaded. Read the thing again
yourself.

You did not anwser my other question. Wouldn’t fighting just Bin laden’s crew recuit the radical muslim population against us as well? What would your responce to 9-11 have been? How to we take these bastards out without pissing off the rest of the muslims in the world?

As far as not drilling for oil goes, in hindsight, that is my opinion, not some CEO’s.

91

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-17/brzezinski2.html

Lixy,
You said the US had trained the islamic freedom fighters in Afghanistan BEFORE the Russians invaded. Nowhere in this entire interview does it say that. It said they anticipated the invasion, and formulated a plan, but that plan did not go into effect until AFTER the Soviets invaded. Read the thing again yourself. [/quote]

What you linked to is a totally different interview. For starters, it’s not with “Le nouvel observateur”. Plus, it’s from 1997 not 1998.

I know that it must be hard to swallow that such things are US policy and that most of the American public is unaware of them. As such, you seem to rationalize the administration actions believing that anything they did “must” be right, and anything that went wrong “must” be attributed to mistakes/accidents.

Please take the time to read this translation of the interview;

If, after that, any doubts subside in your mind, let me know.

Absolutely. Radical Muslims are just as much my enemies as yours. They want to plunge the Arab countries back in barbarism and give my persuasion a bad name. So, yes, fighting Ben-Laden will automatically imply fighting those scumbags.

What is obvious however - and it’s been pointed out ad nauseaum prior to the 2nd GW - is that invading Iraq will radicalize even the moderates and make the whole Muslim population, want to hurt you back or at least, hate your guts and condone those who blow themselves up.

It’s not very hard to conceive once you strip your mind of the propaganda. How hard is it to understand that people won’t sit back watching innocents getting killed or horrors such as Abu-Ghraib perpetrated.

92

[quote]JD430 wrote:
lixy wrote:

Oh, I should also add that threatening to use violence also qualifies as terrorism; That is, by US’ own definition. Bush sure used a lot of that in recent years.

Absurd. Utter, incomprehensible bullshit.
I don’t have the time to waste to explain to you how stupid a statement that is(not that you would listen). Yet again, I’m sorry I even looked at this forum. Let me suffice it to say that a good number of people in the world deserve to have violence visited upon them. Threatening them first actually gives them a chance to change their behavior.

Ah, forget it…

Go back to your relativist world…

[/quote]

OMG. It is you that is the relativist!

93

That is an anti-US site, so the information on there is highly in question. I went to their “war crimes” page and there was story after story of war crimes perpetrated by the US and Israel…and no other country.

Getting back to Afghanistan, so what?

Again, America: damned if ya do, damned if ya don’t.

Pure hate indoctrination, plain and simple.

94

[quote]karva wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
If you go back far enough in history you will see that America was “discovered” by Europeans, because they needed spices and other things from Asia. The Asian silk road was occupied by the hostile Ottoman Empire which had it’s sites on Europe. The Europeans had to find another route to the east, and sailed to America by mistake.

The discovery of America was a direct result of hostile Muslims aggression toward the European nations.

Please, reductionism is necessary, but aren’t you overdoing it? Europeans didn’t need that stuff from the orient, they wanted it.[/quote]

The Ottomans and Mamluks were perfectly happy to trade with Europeans and did so throughout the era. The drive for exploration from the Iberians, with Genoese backing, came for two reasons.

First, and most importantly, the Venetians were the dominant European trading state in the eastern Med by the 15th century. While they had frequent imperial spats with the Ottomans throughout the era, they maintained fairly solid monopoly on the Eastern trade well into the 16th century. That the Iberians and Genoese were cut out and forced to look for other routes was the fault of their fellow Europeans rather than any Muslim states.

The second reason was the Iberian’s pervasive crusader mentality. They were running out of places to conquer nearby and were not in the least over the loss of the Holy Land Crusades a few hundred years before. Much of the drive to explore was motivated by the search for the mythical “Prestor John” and his supposed Christain empire waiting on the other side of the Muslims. They were hoping to link up with John, cut the Muslims’ trading revenues and launch a grand Crusade from both sides in order to take the holy land and ultimately destroy Islam. Much of the thoroughly bizarre and self-defeating behavior of da Gama and the rest of the Portuguese who followed into the East resulted from this.

The actual discovery of the Americas came about because the Spaniards were a century behind their rival Portuguese in exploration and they needed a “hail Mary” to catch up. The Portuguese had been exploring progressively down the coast of Africa since the mid 14th century, colonizing the islands and setting up trading posts along the way. The Spanish were thus hemmed in by the Portuguese to the south and the Venetians east. The motivations of the Spaniards and Columbus were essentially the same as those of the Portuguese, namely profitable crusading with the added motivation of not letting the Portuguese win the race and economic dominance.

In short, the discovery of America wasn’t the result of Ottoman aggression, so much as it was the result of intra-European rivalries forcing the poor backwaters to get creative in their efforts to acquire revenue and religious prestige.

95

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
That is an anti-US site, so the information on there is highly in question. I went to their “war crimes” page and there was story after story of war crimes perpetrated by the US and Israel…and no other country.

Getting back to Afghanistan, so what?

Again, America: damned if ya do, damned if ya don’t.

Pure hate indoctrination, plain and simple.[/quote]

…
You do realize that the indoctrination of US hating is only really accepted by the MASSES after we fuck up somehow right? Iraqis didn’t particularly dislike us any more than we disliked them before we invaded. Before we invaded, did you hate Iraqis? If you “sort of” did, did you do it actively? Did you want them dead? Of course not. But if Iraqis then came here and started rearranging shit, you might start hating them actively.

And it is certainly not as simple as pure hate indoctrination. In fact, it can easily be said that the much of the anti-Islam feelings in the US are pure hate indoctrination if you want to simplify things that much.

A lot of people dislike the Muslim world. Did a lot of people want the Muslim world dead pre-9/11? I don’t think so. I’m not saying we’re doing a 9/11 in Iraq, but we are fucking up.

And America is certainly not damned if we do or don’t, even though it may seem that way. We just get looked at very critically, being the most powerful nation on the planet and all. We seem to be just as stupid at being a world power as Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and Germany all were in there heydays.

Thankfully, we’re doing some good in some places. Probably more than they did. Every major power will be bashed no matter what they do. But the super-high level of bashing that comes from the Iraq war and Bush in particular is just that. Higher than normal. We have screwed this war up. It was a mistake to go, and after we went we screwed up the post-war. We messed up a third world nation that was already pretty screwed.

Thankfully, we managed to topple a jackass of a dictator in the process, and set up a semi-bullshit democracy in which some people voted.

96

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
That is an anti-US site, so the information on there is highly in question. I went to their “war crimes” page and there was story after story of war crimes perpetrated by the US and Israel…and no other country. [/quote]

If you question the reliability of the source is another story. The magazine in question had two versions; one without the inteview for the US and one with it for the rest of the world. Like I said, I have a copy of the original French version at home (in Casablanca) and would be more than happy to scan it for you.

Nothing earth-shattering here. Just a decade-old story that should be known by most Americans had your media really be doing their job. The US started training the Mujahideens before the Soviets attacked, so what? Nothing!

What I found interesting is the conclusion of the interview:

[i]Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries. [/i]

That was in 1998, in a time where all Arab countries were scared shitless of the emergence of the Islamist movement, most of Europe concerned about it, after 200,000 people died in Algeria as a direct consequence of it and after the 1st WTC attack and other succesful ones by Al-Qaeda.

I think it’s very interesting.

I never condemned America for failing to act. With the trillion of dollars going to the military, chances are you’re very much likely to use it - and abuse it - around the world.

Yes, you saved some serious ass in WWII, and for that everybody is eternally grateful. But that’s no reason to go around screwing up countries just because you have military superiority.

97

[quote]lixy wrote:

Yes, you saved some serious ass in WWII, and for that everybody is eternally grateful. But that’s no reason to go around screwing up countries just because you have military superiority.

[/quote]

Yep, America is screwing up countries with using children as suicide bombers and blowing up markets filled with little old ladies.

How dare you have elections and voting, you filthy imperialists! Its against the will of Allah!!!

98

Yes, you saved some serious ass in WWII, and for that everybody is eternally grateful. But that’s no reason to go around screwing up countries just because you have military superiority.

Would you say the same thing about the Soviets after WWII?

I see nothing wrong with aiding the Afghans against Soviet aggression. So we blundered and aided people who turned around and stabbed us in the back.

The Soviets and Chinese aided the Vietnamese and afterwards, look what happened. The Vietnamese and Chinese got into a war, the Chinese invaded Hanoi and were handed their ass by the Vietnamese and now the Vietnamese are our friends.

Ya never can tell how things will turn out.

I will not deny that Afghanistan was a worthy cause, just like I won’t deny our presence there today is a worthy cause as well.

99

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
I see nothing wrong with aiding the Afghans against Soviet aggression. So we blundered and aided people who turned around and stabbed us in the back. [/quote]

Should I rehash all that talk about how US intervention in the US was prior to the Soviet invasion? Sigh…

I shall not, but comparing WWII to Afghanistan is a mistake because of the real threat Germans and Japanese represented. Soviets were doing very bad things to their own people, no denying that, but they were no threat to the world.

100

Shall I ask the question one more time and hope I get an anwser.

How is helping the Afghans battle the Soviet occupation of their homeland any different than helping the Palestinians battle the Israeli occupation of their homeland?

How is helping the Afghans …any different than helping the Muslims in Kosovo against the Serbs?

and the same goes for the situation in the O.P.

and what’s with this extremist point of view:

The use of terrorism and Proxy armies are only valid if they are used AGAINST THE GREAT SATAN, but if the US uses them, then you should condemn them and start a body count.

(since you brought up the contras, which predates the “WOT” don’t throw the “WOT” excuse back in my face.)