Lummox JR wrote:

Botman wrote:

Are you aware Bien Laden has been fucking you yanks over for over 2 decades? Not all people are so easily traced.

Most terrorists who are successful for any length of time succeed only because there are limited resources to go after them. Those resources will blossom in reaction to this morning's events, and our determination to find this one man--already quite strong--will grow even stronger. We were already at odds with the Taliban over him, but now the political pressure on them is even stronger to root him out. They now have an incentive to hand his butt over to us, or make a darned good effort at it.

Essentially a lot of our limits in this struggle come from respect for national borders and other nations' authority. But when those other nations allowed this attack to happen, they're culpable. And when the wrath of the United States has been raised, we will cross over whatever red tape we have to to deal it out. You forget that in wartime, courtesies like extradition vanish, and under urgent conditions the need to respect others' boundaries extends only so far.

Lummox JR

Bien Laden is in Afghanistan. Don't expect any help from the locals.

Botman wrote:

Well if your also going to include people who are soley needed for supplying the nessicary resources, you might as well include the workers who made the said resources etc.

Ah, but there's a big difference. The suppliers of those resources know they're obtaining them for terrorists; the makers do not. And if you knock out the suppliers, the plan is severely disrupted.

I'll admit, most suicide bombers would never work in a grounp of 2, I was meerely pointing out that anyway can do it.

Yes, it is potentially feasible that two could. However, the time involved would shoot up dramatically. In the strictest sense, a single person could do it if they had the time and the money to invest in their effort.

Lummox JR

Botman wrote:

Xzar wrote:

Please...they know where he is come on I can see my self from a slatlate on my comp. now think what our govments can do (exleny Candia,England,and the US who have a jont spy network).

Sadly yourve been mislead. Considering the damage he has and will continue to do, I assure you, If the Americans knew where he was, they would have done something by now.

I believe we have a rough idea where he is, but probably not exact enough to just send in missiles after him. We've already tried that, and it didn't succeed.

But the crucial difference here is urgency. Good intel gathering sometimes takes time. Think about the difference between an undercover police sting on a drug lord and a massive raid on a crack house. Depending on the urgency involved, it is sometimes preferable to allow for time to deliver the necessary info; it's cheaper, and effective. However, when a situation of this magnitude pops up, the wheels turn faster.

When you said "don't expect any help from the locals", I think you might have been right last week. Right now the Taliban is backpedaling fast to make sure they don't come under fire. We're already ticked off at them for persecuting some American citizens, which is to say nothing of their gross human rights violations, and they were pushing us with Bin Laden. Now that there's been an attack on US soil with civilian casualties very likely in the tens of thousands, the Taliban smells blood in the water and they know it's theirs. Ever play Hot Potato as a kid? Afghanistan is likely to drop this one as soon as they can.

Lummox JR

Xzar wrote:

I'm not pointing a finger. I am saying that the US has to do somthing. If we let japan go...after Prail Hobor. We wound not be here. If we let the brtish fend for them self in WII. they wound be gone also. just rememer you contry can be hit also. then what...im sure your next. becaue they will just stat to demend more. sure we cound say heres inseral but then after they get it im sure they will just demend more & more.

Again, the answer isnt that simple though. Japans attack of Pearl Harbour was a clearly defined act of agression by one country toward another. What happened today was not the actions of a country, but rather a ground of individuals.

You're speaking rhetoric and theory... in practice, we cannot go after Bin Laden without attacking Afghanistan. We attack Afghanistan, we attack their allies. We attack Afghanistan's allies, we attack their allies' allies, not all of whom like Afghanistan but still must present a united front for Islam.

This bull about cutting off the flow of supplies and capital... isn't that how we got rid of Castro and Saddam Hussein? We cut off trade with their countries, the leaders starved to death while the common folk went about with their lives, happy and free... right? What? That's not what happened? Oh, my!

You can say you're declaring war on a group or individual... but all you can do is harm the people who happen to be in the area you think the individual or group is hiding. All that does is prop up the cause you're trying to destroy. The people are suffering, who do they blame? The group causing the suffering. It's not the person they're harboring... in fact, that person is the enemy of the group that's harming them. You've turned a fugitive into a folk hero.

You can put whatever spin you want on that... but it's not surgical, it's not targeted, it's not justified, and in the long run, it's not helpful.

There's a difference between people with a little "p" (as in persons) and People with a capital "P" (as in "We The People".) Yes, the individuals who pulled this off belonged to a country... but that country doesn't belong to those individuals. It's full of people. Innocent people, just like the people on those planes and in those buildings.

Answer this, or shut the **** up: how is 1,000,000 dead people better than 50,000?

I wound rather 1,000,000 over 2,000,000 thats why! If we allow them to keep it up the death rate will increase over time and it "WILL" be more then 1,000,000.but be awhere they don't even have that many followers to Kill anyway. and all it will take is to take out there central command and the rest will fall there is only around 10,000 followers that will do what he wants and they are the target.

I never said anyting about the "unnecessary" war's im talkin about the "necessary" wars. WII for example.

Well, there are two major show-of-power issues associated with WWII; the Western allies' policy of appeasement, and the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While it's true that much of the destruction of WWII could have been averted if the Wester powers had called Hitler's early bluffs rather than letting him get away with his expansion, there's a difference between giving in to terroristic threats and bombing innocent people. Not to mention, although Hitler's rise to power was a major immediate catalyst, many of the underlying factors were caused by the inadequate peace negotiated at the end of WWI. The European Allies pursued an aggressive "show of power" policy that stripped Germany of most of its possessions, completely demilitarized it, and assigned it financially responsible for the Allies' costs of war, adding even more to the already-overburdened German war debt. The crushing weight of the Allies' demands on Germany caused the German public to suffer, making them easy targets for Hitler's propaganda when things got worse. The lesson to be drawn from this, then, is something of a "If you're going to do something that's wrong, do it RIGHT" philosophy; the Allies placed a massively unjustified burden on the German people in order to prevent German military aggression. This massive burden might have worked, but it created massive feelings of hatred and enmity. As the world slumped into depression and the governments of Europe shifted strategy, they began to let up on the restrictions they had imposed on Germany--they dropped large portions of the war debt, allowed Germany to renew its aggressive military buildup policy, and even let Hitler reclaim many of the possessions they had stripped from Germany without offering any resistance on their part. Basically, they let Germany undo all the provisions of the treaty of Versailles that had been imposed to prevent further German aggression, but still left Germany really, really pissed. And, as should be obvious, getting a country really pissed off and then allowing them to be aggressive is not a good idea.

In a sense, then, there's some truth in your statement. But generally, simply not pursuing an aggressive "show of power" policy would ease many international tensions, thus preventing or limiting the scope of foreign wars and improving peacetime relations greatly. Should the Allies have accepted Wilson's moderated peace, and would the optomistic Fourteen Points really have curtailed WWII? I don't know. No one could really know for certain. But acts of spite and aggression beget naught but spite and aggression--some historians will trace the causes of WWII not just back to WWI, but to the centuries of territorial rivalry between France and the various states that would come to be Germany. Case in point: The A-bombing of Japan. The military regime was on the verge of capitulation to begin with, and was definitely ready to surrender once the first bomb had been dropped. The necessity and value of the bombing is somewhat questionable in the first place; while certainly there would be losses in a full-scale land war, it's unlikely that such a war would have escalated to the worst-case-scenarios some military advisers were projecting. The end result is that, in terms of total loss of human life, the two A-bombs dropped on Japan were largely overkill--the U.S. didn't drop them because it needed to finish off the Japanese army, it dropped them in what was purely a show of power, which didn't end the war any significantly faster than it was likely to end anyways, led to reactions of horror worldwide, strained relations between U.S. and the countries of southeast Asia for decades, and added a terrifying new edge to the Cold War that came very close to annihilating life as we know it.

and war's never fail it depends which side your on.

Wars not only can fail, they often do. Countless wars throughout history have been "won" to gain a few tiny strips of territory at the cost of easily billions of dollars (in today's money) in war expenses, damage to private and public property and damage to foreign trade and many thousands of lives. And, through a lot of history, succeeding in a war only ensures that future wars will be fought over the same tiny strips of territory, at similar costs.

Xzar wrote:

LexyBitch wrote:

Yes, the Jews are 100% entitled to that land. You know what? So are the Palestinians. Both peoples need that land. Both of them deserve it. Both of them are willing to fight and die (and kill) to see that they get it. We in the global community have a responsibility to see that both of them have it.

(And before you say the Jews have a better claim on it, ask yourself... was it the Allies land to promise? Was it the U.N.'s place to give it to them?)
.

the UN offred them haif of the land the jews will also party live there as well accepted as so did Palestinians untill ban dlain came along.

Uh... no. I thought you said you loved history--"history is my life" or whatnot. In which case, you really need to get a life. The Jews and Palestinians were at each others' throats even before the split was officially made--the Palestinians felt that they weren't getting a fair deal and were prepared to take the Jews' territory. Expecting and recieving support from their Islamic brethren, they were shocked to find the efficient, powerful Jewish defense not only fend off their attacks but also conquer all of the Palestinian territory and establish the united, almost solely Jewish state of Israel. A series of Arab-Israelite wars through the following decades led Israel to conquer even more land from the surrounding Islamic states, which has just in this past decade been (mostly) given back to their original holders in the tenuous peace negotiation process.

You seem to be under the delusion that all military action is as imprecise as taking a gigantic sledgehammer to a country and pounding it flat, hoping we hit the bad guys. Because there's violence in war, and because civilians sometimes do die, it is perhaps easy to make such a mistake.

Look as Kosovo. We had this term "collateral damage," to describe when we blew the %*$# out of something that wasn't military-related. The civilian deaths were incredibly high. I need not mention the Chinese Embassy...
Since WWII (yes, it has 2 W's!) seems to be mentioned a lot in this thread, I'd like to point out Dresden. Check any history book: we levelled the entire city with fire-bombs. And we didn't need to, Germany was already in its death throes.

but history shows action works; it worked against Libya in 1986, and terrorism declined alarmingly.

If this were true, the US must have been getting bombed constantly during the early 80's. I can't seem to find any reference to this ever happening, though. Hmmm...
Yeah, we'll claim this sort of action has worked in the past. The US military has this image of itself as as holy crusader against terrorism, but in actuality that's a load of crap. Terrorism has never occured like it is has today. There's simply no precedent you can look back at and use say thats what we must do.

-AbyssDragon