It's a good thing this attack didnt happen under Bush, because then we'd be breeding more terrorism with our aggression!
Since 9/11, I've been advocating the complete isolation of terrorist-sponsoring countries, particularly in the Middle East. No political, economic or military relations. No immigration or tourism. Until these wackaloons can demonstrate that they can behave like civilized societies, fuck 'em. You cut off their oil money and access to Western markets and immigration and they're going to wake up pretty fucking quick. I might sound nuts, but better my strategy than dropping bombs and wasting money, resources and human life on a struggle that's just going to be perpetuated with the current way we're all doing business.
Define 'serious.' Because the Marines took it pretty seriously. From the Halls of Montezumaaa, to the shores of Tripoli... Indeed, the first battles the US fought after independence where against the pirate slavers out of the Barbary Coast. We also didn't have any serious issues with Islam during most of the Cold War. And when we did, it was most often geopolitical issues, not due to Israel and Islam. Indeed, our first armed incursion into the Middle East had nothing to do with Islam - in 1958 we intervened in Lebanon. There we protected a pro-Western Christian government from an armed insurrection led by Egypt - who at the time were socialists in the Soviet Union's camp. Most of the problems in the mid 20th century were due to Arab nationalism and the Cold War. Prior to that the vast majority of the Islamic world were colonial possessions of Britain or France, and in no position to engage in international relations. The Middle Eastern powers started using Islamic terrorists with the rise of Arab Nationalism, because they couldn't confront the great powers directly. The first even minor clash with anti-Israel Islam wasn't until nearly 40 years after the creation of Israel - the 1986 bombing of Libya in response to the terrorist attack on a Berlin discotheque that killed American servicemen. Israel is a real issue for many of the Islamic people of the Middle East, but its just as often a cat's paw issue for Arab leaders to use the terrorist networks to achieve their own political ends. For someone who claims to have lived through so much of history, you sure don't seem to know much about it.
Yes, I was sure it was Arabic music. I've heard it a million times. Yes, I was sure he was celebrating. The entire world knew what happened that day. Where we lived, we could see the smoke coming up from the Pentagon. No, he wasn't a Sikh, because he wasn't wearing the traditional turban, nor did he have facial hair. Not only that, most of the hijackers were associated with a mosque in Great Falls - about 2 miles from this store, which was in Fairfax. These were the ones that got on board American Airlines flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon. I worked security at Dulles Airport in college - that was a decade before the attacks though. But I knew people there, and I knew people at the Pentagon, and not all of them I had heard from at that time. Luckily, none of my friends died, but my friends knew people that did. So when I saw this asshole celebrating, I walked over toward him. He was celebrating just like the assholes in the West Bank were. The difference was, he lived here, and was happy that people here were dead. Any other stupid questions you want to ask? Or are you about done?
I'm glad you didn't go all the way back to the Crusades in your obvious attempt to obfuscate my point that the U.S. never had any serious problems with Islamic peoples before becoming involved with Israel. For example, I am quite familiar with our 1958 intervention in Lebanon because I missed by a few months being among the Marines who were sent there. On returning from an 18 month tour in the Far East I was assigned to a Second Division amphibious unit which had recently returned from the Beirut operation. What the Marines who participated had to say was the entire operation seemed redundant. They landed on a recreational beach which was filled with curious and mildly intimidated civilians who had been swimming and relaxing. One Marine said it was like doing a full-bore combat landing on Coney Island on the Fourth of July. So we can safely say that was not a serious engagement. But in 1983, when a multi-national force was sent to Lebanon to restore peace after an Israeli invasion in 1982 had destabilized most of that nation. As you know, the result of that effort was over 240 Americans, mostly Marines, were killed by a suicide bomber. That was the first serious martial encounter U.S. forces had with Islamic people and it came about as the direct consequence of Israel's destabilizing actions. But I don't intend to engage in a pedantic exchange intended to divert attention from the very simple point I've presented, which is U.S. protective relationship with Israel is and has been severely counterproductive. And the only evidence needed to irrefutably prove that point came right from the horse's mouth. I have already posted an excerpt elsewhere in this thread in which bin Laden plainly stated during a PBS Frontline interview that our support of Israel was a major provocation to the Islamic world. He said that in 1998. We ignored it. In 2001 he made good his threat and since then the very character of America has been gravely altered. If you need me to re-post that excerpt and URL, just let me know.
I don't need to obfuscate anything. Your initial statement was simply wrong. The first major armed confrontation the US engaged in was against the Islamic Barbary States who were seeking Christian slaves to sell in the Islamic slave markets - because they couldn't take Muslim slaves. That's nice. As opposed to the First Barbary War and the Second Barbary War 150 years before then? Those would be the first serious engagements. And what was the provocation? Oh, right - the Qu'ran. So I guess there was some issue on the matter of religion at the time. Qu'elle surprise. Except for the two wars fought 180 years before that, right? I'm sure it wasn't serious when the US government paid 20% of its revenue in tribute to the Barbary States for 15 years. The fact that the US navy and later the US marines were specifically created for the purpose of defeating an Islamic force that was targeting US citizens because they were Christian is pretty pertinent. I'd be more likely to consider your claims if they weren't immediately presented with 'facts' I know to be inaccurate. As it is, the US-Israel relationship is one that should be examined for the 21st century. Perhaps with the Arab Spring the other governments in the region will be less totalitarian and we can find more points in common. However, Israel itself has a right to exist, and that's one of the biggest sticking points - the US has supported Israel because of our own influential jewish community that is one of the most educated and enlightened sectors of our populace. No, the Terrorists didn't win. That meme is so played out as to be laugh worthy. I'd definitely prefer to see the TSA dismantled and many aspects of the Patriot Act voted down, but OBL's primary goal was not to increase my wait time at the airport or make my library viewing less private. The average American's life has not been substantially altered. The average follower of AQ or the Taliban have been more than mildly put out. No thanks, I was aware of it before you posted it.
Bottom line - who would you rather have living amongst you if you had to pick one - Jews or ME Muslims? I'm not talking a handful. I'm talking a neighborhood full. Which group has a culture more compatible with our values? Anyway, We Are Borg has it right. Completely cut ourselves off from the whole region (except Israel IMO). No tourism, no trade, no getting in bed when it's convenient. No love-hate relationship, just divorce and no, we cannot still be friends. That is our right as a consumer, to not patronize them. Then when they continue their terrorism nobody can blame us for instigating it - but you know people still will.
I'm just assuming you missed the parts about attacks on rescue workers. Because this kind of logic approaches the "anything goes" variety.
What does this have to do with the decision of your heroic military to prevent large numbers of people from fleeing your attacks when you do it? Is that an acceptable tactic? Maybe you should read it rather than asking me dumbshit questions that you should already know the answers to, babbling about Bosnia, and spewing forth all manner of platitudes about how humanitarian your killing is, evidence be damned?
Well allow me to retort: Was There Napalm in Fallujah? By CLARK HOYT On May 28, Jane Perlez reported from London on a play called “Fallujah,” which purported to tell the story of the November, 2004 assault by U.S. forces on the Iraqi city where four American contract workers had been killed the previous spring and hung from a bridge. The Perlez story set off a mini-storm of e-mails because of this paragraph: “The denunciations of the United States are severe, particularly in the scenes that deal with the use of napalm in Falluja, an allegation made by left-wing critics of the war but never substantiated.” (Times style is to spell the city’s name without the “h.”) A media watchdog group called Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), which describes itself as progressive, took Perlez to task in an “Action Alert,” declaring that “Incendiary Weapons Are No ‘Allegation.’” FAIR urged its readers to contact me to get The Times to set the record straight. I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking into this. Here’s what I found: Perlez was correct. There are no substantiated reports of the use of napalm — or a “napalm derivative,” as the play’s author and director said — in the battle of Fallujah. FAIR’s complaint started with the assertion that U.S. forces “did use the modern equivalent of napalm in Iraq.” Notice, that FAIR said “Iraq,” not “Fallujah.” That’s because the source for FAIR’s statement was an August, 2003 article in the San Diego Union-Tribune quoting a Marine colonel as saying that the successor weapon to napalm was used during the invasion of Iraq, as Marines battled toward Baghdad. The article was written more than a year before the battle of Fallujah. After discussing napalm, FAIR slid over to a discussion of white phosphorus (WP), a different incendiary weapon that the U.S. military first denied – and then admitted – using directly against insurgents in Fallujah. FAIR quoted accurately but selectively from an article in “Field Artillery,” the journal of the Army’s Field Artillery: WP was such “an effective and versatile munition” that U.S. forces “saved our WP for lethal missions.” Those quotes suggest the WP was dropped directly on Iraqis to kill them. But a close reading of the article indicates a different story: WP was used for screening missions and later “as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE (high explosives). We fired ‘shake and bake’ missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out.” Michael Stebbins, the director of biology policy at the Federation of American Scientists, a non-partisan, non-profit group that deals with national security issues, told me that napalm and white phosphorus are “very different.” He said, “No experienced military person would mistake one for the other.” Napalm and its successor use jellied petroleum products, require an ignition and often kill by suffocating their victims because the fire they create is so intense it uses up all the nearby oxygen. WP ignites on contact with the air and can inflict deep wounds because it burns as long as it has a supply of oxygen. These are weapons with horrible potential effects, and you might say, “What’s the difference, they both kill.” But, so do 500-pound bombs dropping on Iraq and all the other weaponry employed in a war that inspires strong passions. Calling what was used in Fallujah “napalm” may have greater emotional impact than calling it WP. Napalm raises images of Vietnam and, especially, that tragic 1972 photograph of a naked little girl, running down a street, screaming in agony from napalm burns. A playwright may take such license to achieve a dramatic effect. A journalist needs to deal precisely with facts, such as which weapons were actually used in a particular battle. The sub-text here comes from a 2005 documentary shown on Italian television. It charged that WP was used against civilians in Fallujah in November 2004, something that has also not been substantiated. Dexter Filkins of The Times, who accompanied the Marines who assaulted Fallujah, said in an e-mail that he doesn’t buy the charges of large numbers of civilian deaths, from whatever cause. “The city was a ghost town by the time the Marines went in, at least in the neighborhoods that I went through, and we traveled from one end of the city to the other on foot,” he said. Filkins did experience WP first hand. He said the unit with which he was traveling took friendly fire, and chunks of WP burned holes the size of fists through his backpack and sleeping bag. “But, honestly, I don’t know what that phosphorus was being used for. A flare? A weapon? I don’t know. We were under heavy fire, and it didn’t seem significant enough at the time to ask.”
Honestly, it depends on the outlook of both groups. Personally, I think it would be pretty fucking horrible to live in a settler village controlled by the ultra orthodoxed where they beat women on the streets or on public buses because they think she didn't "dress modestly enough" (I.E. completely covered from top of neck down), they throw rocks at people who drive cars or watch TV on Saturdays (have to observe that sabbath), and routinely do things like shoot the live stock of neighboring Christian villages (they don't like those pigs), just because they can. To compare Tehran-geles (the nick name for Little Iran in L.A.) is actually much, much better. It's population originally came from the educated elites, foreign educated, military, and professional classes of the Shah's government so we're talking one of the best educated and least religious sections of that country's population. Not to mention most of the people born post 1979 were born and raised in the US and so they have a very American outlook on life. Basically, it depends more on if the people are religious extremists or not because less religious = good in my book where as extremists almost always = bad in my book. It's the extremists who are the evil sons of bitches who cause all the problems.
BTW I don't expect the media to know the difference between WP and Napalm or their specific roles or uses (apples and oranges to say the least) thus I take every shrill claim with a grain of salt.
That article admits that white phosphorous was used as an anti-personnel weapon. Great refutation! Want to try again with any of the other crimes that I mentioned? How about attacking the hospital because it was reporting civilian casualties?
For certain rare but technically precise operations? I hope it was. As an anti civilian personnel weapon on a widespread indiscriminate basis? Not buying it.
What you "buy" is irrelevant. It was used against personnel in close proximity to civilian population. Despite initial denials (now why would they do that, I wonder?) they admitted it. That the best that you can do is a red herring about napalm, while completely ignoring the rest of the crimes that have been highlighted, speaks volumes.
Again, I'm saying that the media's job is to report what they think (or have heard) is happening, often misinterpreting or being misinformed or downright pulling facts out of their ass along the way. Sorry, but I've done interviews and have dealt with the media in action quite a few times up close and personal. And guess what? If they can only get their information from people that were really involved in it (or claim to be experts) then that information may not be accurate. And if the media cannot figure out what is going on and only trust their imaginations, all credibility is suspect. And imagine this - because of security reasons we cannot explain everything we do, or things other military members do. Despite what you may think, not everyone knows the "big picture" and those who do know (above my pay-grade) are generally tight lipped. Even when it's impartial with no agenda, they get things wrong - a lot. But I do know how most other military members think and act most of the time. And I'm quite familiar with (having a personal aversion to prison) the rules of warfare and military operations in general. Thus I'm going to take the word of other military people that I personally know over anything I hear from the media.
Yeah, I get it. You are unwilling to process information that comes from anywhere but the military propaganda echo-chamber. However in this case, they admitted it, you thick fuck. Both the white phosphorous and the attack on the hospital. This is wilful denial.
This may be true, but I'd like to see some data on it. I wasn't alive in the '50s, and most of the people here either weren't born yet or were kids. Without some kind of empirical data, the assertion that we were more well-liked in the '50s could easily just be the effect of rose-colored glasses.
Not denial as much as thinking that with all the credible witnesses from myriad nations ( and plenty of lawyers out there who could make names for themselves) why haven't they organized themselves better and brought the war criminals to justice? I would think an intentional massacre against non-combatants would be provable. By now many of the military witnesses have retired and have nothing to lose (can't be fired) by testifying against other military members. Time is wasting for credible experts who witnessed massive war crimes to prove their case. It might be tough, but it can be done - so they should pool their efforts and do so if their beliefs are that strong.
The U.S. of the 1950s was perceived by Europe and most of Asia as having prevented their enslavement. In addition to that, having defeated two imperious aggressors who undoubtedly would have enslaved us along with the rest of the world if they had prevailed in the War, rather than impose expectedly cruel retaliation upon those vanquished and destroyed enemy nations -- we helped to rebuild them. That fact, alone, established America in the eyes of the world's common people as a powerful but benevolent nation. Americans were generally thought of by most foreigners as the people who defended them against the demonstratedly cruel Japanese Empire and the German Third Reich. Of course there were exceptions, but if you talk with some older people they will tell you that world opinion of America and Americans back then was far more positive than it is today. I believe our actions during the past dozen years have caused a major decline in that opinion and I hold George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as being directly responsible for that damage. They are war criminals. And unless they are treated as such our entire Nation will bear that stigma forever.
Amazing with that terrible stigma hanging over us, foreigners are still leaving their shitholes to flock to the land of opportunity. Damn if we were well liked we'd be positively overrun with the buggers. Bet the immigrants don't give a shit about Bush and Cheney, or at least not enough to stay in their own countries. Remember jets travel both ways 24/7 - it's never too late to come here or leave in protest.
No, it's denial. You have effectively said that you won't countenance any claim that the US military committed war crimes unless it comes from the US military. Given that you casually dismiss the international bodies responsible for investigating war crimes as illegitimate or implicated in similar crimes themselves, it cannot be done to your satisfaction. Your position is non-falsifiable, equivalent in that respect to a religious faith.
Not what I said. I will accept evidence from a combined team of experts across the board (lawyers, military, doctors, witnesses, scientists, etc) in a formal court of law in a trial held right here in America. Bear in mind I'm not a lawyer (not even bird law) so for all I know this is not a legal scenario that even exists, but should be in this case. I do know once The UN or any other Euro-weenie organization takes control, it becomes a joke. Anyone can offer input, but we don't need a circus. Thus, trial held here in America under our laws and procedures. Legal teams must do all the legwork and assume all costs and risks rounding up witnesses and experts from wherever they may hail. Trial shown live on TV and internet to whatever countries allow such programming. This would put all claims and allegations to rest to my satisfaction.
Functionally equivalent. The charge here is not that some US soldiers committed crimes (where that approach might be acceptable). It is that the US state and military itself is criminal, at an institutional level. Thus you are relying on the criminal to indict and try himself. Ridiculous.
What part of a mixed bag of experts indicting the parties guilty of these acts did you not understand? No, I do not want the fox guarding the hen house. I just want the people who come from a society that has a strong current military involvement (thus an experienced talent pool who know more than just "guns go bang!") to run the trial. People who have a vested interest - that is the results of the trial will directly affect them in some way, not shrill cheerleaders/detractors or hangers-on. Anyway - if you're saying that the entire military institution itself is criminal just on general principles then we will ALWAYS BE and ARE ALREADY guilty of such a broad generalization as our existence/not behaving in a manner you see fit.
The only "foreigners" who are "flocking" to the U.S. are the dregs of Mexico, Africa and the bottom of the Chinese barrel. The vast majority of that category are illiterate, politically ignorant and destitute. Compared to them the welfare class of the South Bronx is living well. But if you ask the average working class citizens of any developed nation what they think of America today the responses will be vastly different from what they typically were in the past. And your oblique suggestion that anyone who isn't happy here is invited to leave is typical of the American neo-fascist mentality. For your information there are millions of ordinary Americans who were proud and contented ten years ago but who have little to be proud of today and would go elsewhere if it were that easy to do. The face of America is changing and it's getting ugly.
As if you'd consider it appropriate if a bunch of Iranian military and legal guys took the lead in consider charges against the Iranian military, in a trial held under the Iranian legal system. This is beyond absurd. And it all falls back on American exceptionalism, where it is axiomatic that the USA is better. Nope. There are lots of types of behaviour that I would not "see fit" that don't constitute war crimes. And I've been very specific in listing the crimes, your determination to fall back on banality and platitude notwithstanding.
