gitmo detainees plotted detroit
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Rob Roy
Well-Known Member
Big P. Sorry if it appeared I was trying to entrap you. I do tend to disagree with blanket statements such as "bomb them all" etc. I think that is a bit macho and fails to consider root causes.
I find it acceptable to defend oneself. However, I do not blindly award truth or right to any one country based on the color of their uniform. I don't approach the killing of people lightly or think of it as rooting for my favorite sports team. I try to examine the underlying causes of things rather than give kneejerk responses so I'll say that I often question alot of the United States military actions overseas. I don't believe they are all about defense. I think the Middle East has a shitload of oil and the reason the USA is there is to ensure access to it. Historically, it is hard to debate that the USA has intervened in the Middle East for a long time due to the oil.
I think it is natural for people not to want to be occupied or dictated to by a foreign power.
Do I think there are bad guys overseas? Sure, I do. Do I think by occupying other countries we encourage people to join their ranks? If we were occupied, wouldn't you want to join other "Patriots" and oust the foreign power?
I'm more from the Viet Nam era so perhaps I'm biased, but I "know" that war served very little purpose other than to kill over 50,000 young men from this country and countless innocent Viet Namese people that the military refers to as "collateral damage". Back then the big scare was "Communist expansion". Nowadays it's Islamo Facist Extremists.
I think history will show that killing people is a bad way to ensure prosperity and peace. I think there will always be people that do horrible things, but when a group of men, none of whom were from Iraq or Afghanistan fly planes into buildings we shouldn't automatically assume we have a "right" to occupy those countries.
I find it acceptable to defend oneself. However, I do not blindly award truth or right to any one country based on the color of their uniform. I don't approach the killing of people lightly or think of it as rooting for my favorite sports team. I try to examine the underlying causes of things rather than give kneejerk responses so I'll say that I often question alot of the United States military actions overseas. I don't believe they are all about defense. I think the Middle East has a shitload of oil and the reason the USA is there is to ensure access to it. Historically, it is hard to debate that the USA has intervened in the Middle East for a long time due to the oil.
I think it is natural for people not to want to be occupied or dictated to by a foreign power.
Do I think there are bad guys overseas? Sure, I do. Do I think by occupying other countries we encourage people to join their ranks? If we were occupied, wouldn't you want to join other "Patriots" and oust the foreign power?
I'm more from the Viet Nam era so perhaps I'm biased, but I "know" that war served very little purpose other than to kill over 50,000 young men from this country and countless innocent Viet Namese people that the military refers to as "collateral damage". Back then the big scare was "Communist expansion". Nowadays it's Islamo Facist Extremists.
I think history will show that killing people is a bad way to ensure prosperity and peace. I think there will always be people that do horrible things, but when a group of men, none of whom were from Iraq or Afghanistan fly planes into buildings we shouldn't automatically assume we have a "right" to occupy those countries.
Big P
Well-Known Member
i could respond to every point but it would take too long
the fact is if every oil producer stopped selling oil it would start a world war, so you can argue by bringing peace and democracy to oppressed citizens will ensure peace in the region
and you do have to kill people to ensure peace
we dont do it cuz its fun, and people are the ones who make war thereore you must kill them to have peace
are we biased ofcoarse no country is unbiased
are we the best hope out there
yes,
once we have another alternative we're all we've got
without the USA the world would have been held under the boot of tyrany collectivly many times over by now
i think this illistrates it best for me, america has been our most succesful employee if you will. lets just give him a raise instead of all thiese constant eployee reviews
Big P
Well-Known Member
and the plot thickens:
Flight 253 passenger Kurt Haskell: 'I was visited by the FBI'...
Fears cover-up
By Aaron Foley | MLive.com
December 31, 2009, 9:41AM
Courtesy photoLori and Kurt Haskell
Following up on a visit from FBI officials about an eyewitness account first described to MLive.com, Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell described the visit in comment sections across MLive on Wednesday.
Haskell and his wife, Lori, were aboard Flight 253 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to destroy the plane. They say another man tried to help Abdulmutallab board the plane in Amsterdam.
Haskell had two detailed posts in two different stories. Here is Part One, originally posted here:
"Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain.
Ever since I got off of Flight 253 I have been repeating what I saw in US Customs. Specifically, 1 hour after we left the plane, bomb sniffing dogs arrived. Up to this point, all of the passengers on Flight 253 stood in a small area in an evacuated luggage claim area of an airport terminal. During this time period, all of the passengers had their carry on bags with them. When the bomb sniffing dogs arrived, 1 dog found something in a carry on bag of a 30 ish Indian man. This is not the so called "Sharp Dressed" man. I will refer to this man as "The man in orange". The man in orange, who stood some 20ft away from me the entire time until he was taken away, was immediately taken away to be searched and interrogated in a nearby room. At this time he was not handcuffed. When he emerged from the room, he was then handcuffed and taken away. At this time an FBI agent came up to the rest of the passengers and said the following (approximate quote) "You all are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. I am sure many of you saw what just happened (Referring to the man in orange) and are smart enough to read between the lines and figure it out." We were then marched out of the baggage claim area and into a long hallway. This entire time period and until we left customs, no person that wasn't a law enforcement personnel or a
passenger on our flight was allowed anywhere on our floor of the terminal (or possibly the entire terminal) The FBI was so concerned during this time, that we were not allowed to use the bathroom unless we went alone with an FBI agent, we were not allowed to eat or drink, or text or call anyone. I have been repeating this same story over the last 5 days. The FBI has, since we landed, insisted that only one man was arrested for the airliner attack (contradicting my account). However, several of my fellow passengers have come over the past few days, backed up my claim, and put pressure on FBI/Customs to tell the truth. Early today, I heard from two different reporters that a federal agency (FBI or Customs) was now admitting that another man has been held (and will be held indefinitely) since our flight landed for "immigration reasons." Notice that this man was "being held" and not "arrested", which was a cute semantic ploy by the FBI to stretch the truth and not lie.
Just a question, could that mean that the man in orange had no passport?
However, a few hours later, Customs changed its story again. This time, Mr. Ron Smith of Customs, says the man that was detained "had been taken into custody, but today tells the news the person was a passenger on a different flight." Mr. Ron Smith, you are playing the American public for a fool. Lets take a look at how plausible this story is (After you've already changed it twice). For the story to be true, you have to believe, that:
1. FBI/Customs let passengers from another flight co-mingle with the passengers of flight 253 while the most important investigation in 8 years was pending. I have already stated that not one person who wasn't a passenger or law enforcement personnal was in our area the entire time we were detained by Customs.
2. FBI/Customs while detaining the flight 253 passengers in perhaps the most important investigation since the last terrorist attack, and despite not letting any flight 253 passenger drink, eat, make a call, or use the bathroom, let those of other flights trample through the area and possibly contaminate evidence.
3. You have to believe the above (1 and 2) despite the fact that no flights during this time allowed passengers to exit off of the planes at all and were detained on the runway during at least the first hour of our detention period.
4. You have to believe that the man that stood 20 feet from me since we entered customs came from a mysterious plane that never landed, let its passengers off the plane and let this man sneak into our passenger group despite having extremely tight security at this time (i.e. no drinking even).
5. FBI/Customs was hauling mysterious passengers from other flights through the area we were being held to possibly comtaminate evidence and allow discussions with suspects on Flight 253 or to possibly allow the exchange of bombs, weapons or other devices between the mysterious passengers from other flights and those on flight 253.
Seriously Mr. Ron Smith, how stupid do you think the American public is?
Mr. Ron Smith's third version of the story is an absolute inplausible joke. I encourage you, Mr. Ron Smith, to debate me anytime, anywhere, and anyplace in public to let the American people see who is credible and who is not.
I ask, isn't this the more plausible story:
1. Customs/FBI realized that they screwed up and don't want to admit that they left flight 253 passengers on a flight with a live bomb on the runway for 20 minutes.
2. Customs/FBI realized that they screwed up and don't want to admit that they left flight 253 passengers in customs for 1 hour with a live bomb in a carry on bag.
3. Customs/FBI realize that the man in orange points to a greater involvement then the lone wolf theory that they have been promoting.
Mr. Ron Smith I encourage you to come out of your cubicle and come up with a more plausible version number 4 of your story."
Haskell continued his comment in a different post on MLive.
"For the last five days I have been reporting my story of the so called "sharp dressed man." For those of you who haven't read my account, it involves a sharp dressed "Indian man" attempting to talk a ticket agent into letting a supposed "Sudanese refugee" (The terrorist) onto flight 253 without a passport. I have never had any idea how it played out except to note that the so called "Sudanese reefugee" later boarded my flight and attempted to blow it up and kill me. At no time did my story involve, or even find important whether the terrorist actually had a passport. The importance of my story was and always will be, the attempt with an accomplice (apparently succesful) of a terrorist with all sorts of prior terrorist warning signs to skirt the normal passport boarding procedures in Amsterdam. By the way, Amsterdam security did come out the other day and admit that the terrorist did not have to "Go through normal passport checking procedures".
Amsterdam security, please define to the American public "Normal passport boarding procedures".
You see the FBI would have the American public believe that what was important was whether the terrorist in fact had a passport.
Seriously think about this people. You have a suicide bomber who had recently been to Yemen to but a bomb, whose father had reported him as a terrorist, who supposedly was on some kind of U.S. terror watchlist, and most likely knew the U.S. was aware of these red flags. Yet, he didn't go through "Normal passport checking procedures." What does that mean? Maybe that he flashed a passport to some sort of sympathetic security manager in a backroom to avoid a closer look at the terrorist's "red flags"? What is important is that the terrorist avoided using normal passport checking procedures (apparently successfully) in order to avoid a closer look into his red flags. Who cares if he had a passport. The important thing is that he didn't want to show it and somehow avoided a closer inspection and "normal passport checking procedures." Each passport comes with a bar code on it that can be scanned to provide a wealth of information about the individual. I would bet that the passport checking procedures for the terrorist did not include a bar code scan of his passport (which could have revealed damning information about the terrorist).
Please note that there is a very easy way to verify the veracity of my prior "sharp dressed man" account. Dutch police have admitted that they have reviewed the video of the "sharp dressed man" that I referenced. Note that it has not been released anywhere, You see, if my eye witness account is false, it could easily be proven by releasing the video. However, the proof of my eyewitness account would also be verified if I am telling the truth and I am. There is a reason we have only heard of the video and not seen it. dutch authorities, "RELEASE THE VIDEO!" This is the most important video in 8 years and may be all of two minutes long. Show the entire video and "DO NOT EDIT IT"! The American public deserves its own chance to attempt to identify the "sharp dressed man". I have no doubt that if the video indicated that my account was wrong, that the video would have already swept over the entire world wide web.
Instead of the video, we get a statment that the video has been viewed and that the terrorist had a passport. Each of these statements made by the FBI is a self serving play on semantics and each misses the importance of my prior "sharp dressed man" account. The importance being that the man "Tried to board the plane with an accomplice and without a passort". The other significance is that only the airport security video can verify my eyewitness account and that it is not being released.
Who has the agenda here and who doesn't? Think about that for a minute."
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Posted by burgerwache
December 31, 2009, 10:41AM
Mr. Haskell, my hat is off to you and your wife. It is not often that an American citizen has the fortitude to stand up against government propaganda, and tell the truth to the People. You are a true, red-blooded American who deserves to have every man and woman backing you up. I can think of no reason why you would not be telling us the truth. I hope and pray that the news media takes their responsibility under the Federal Constitution Bill of Rights seriously, and that they continue to investigate and press for answers, until the truth is fully known, no matter how it may affect their favorite politicians. Thank you for what you are doing, Mr. Haskell, and for helping -if even just a little bit - to make this a Happy New Year. A year where men will be judged by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin. A year when Americans may have good reason to have renewed hope in the American ways of old, in our Constitution, in our courts, and in our political processes. Thank you, Kurt Haskell.
Flight 253 passenger Kurt Haskell: 'I was visited by the FBI'...
Fears cover-up
By Aaron Foley | MLive.com
December 31, 2009, 9:41AM
Following up on a visit from FBI officials about an eyewitness account first described to MLive.com, Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell described the visit in comment sections across MLive on Wednesday.
Haskell and his wife, Lori, were aboard Flight 253 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to destroy the plane. They say another man tried to help Abdulmutallab board the plane in Amsterdam.
Haskell had two detailed posts in two different stories. Here is Part One, originally posted here:
"Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain.
Ever since I got off of Flight 253 I have been repeating what I saw in US Customs. Specifically, 1 hour after we left the plane, bomb sniffing dogs arrived. Up to this point, all of the passengers on Flight 253 stood in a small area in an evacuated luggage claim area of an airport terminal. During this time period, all of the passengers had their carry on bags with them. When the bomb sniffing dogs arrived, 1 dog found something in a carry on bag of a 30 ish Indian man. This is not the so called "Sharp Dressed" man. I will refer to this man as "The man in orange". The man in orange, who stood some 20ft away from me the entire time until he was taken away, was immediately taken away to be searched and interrogated in a nearby room. At this time he was not handcuffed. When he emerged from the room, he was then handcuffed and taken away. At this time an FBI agent came up to the rest of the passengers and said the following (approximate quote) "You all are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. I am sure many of you saw what just happened (Referring to the man in orange) and are smart enough to read between the lines and figure it out." We were then marched out of the baggage claim area and into a long hallway. This entire time period and until we left customs, no person that wasn't a law enforcement personnel or a
passenger on our flight was allowed anywhere on our floor of the terminal (or possibly the entire terminal) The FBI was so concerned during this time, that we were not allowed to use the bathroom unless we went alone with an FBI agent, we were not allowed to eat or drink, or text or call anyone. I have been repeating this same story over the last 5 days. The FBI has, since we landed, insisted that only one man was arrested for the airliner attack (contradicting my account). However, several of my fellow passengers have come over the past few days, backed up my claim, and put pressure on FBI/Customs to tell the truth. Early today, I heard from two different reporters that a federal agency (FBI or Customs) was now admitting that another man has been held (and will be held indefinitely) since our flight landed for "immigration reasons." Notice that this man was "being held" and not "arrested", which was a cute semantic ploy by the FBI to stretch the truth and not lie.
Just a question, could that mean that the man in orange had no passport?
However, a few hours later, Customs changed its story again. This time, Mr. Ron Smith of Customs, says the man that was detained "had been taken into custody, but today tells the news the person was a passenger on a different flight." Mr. Ron Smith, you are playing the American public for a fool. Lets take a look at how plausible this story is (After you've already changed it twice). For the story to be true, you have to believe, that:
1. FBI/Customs let passengers from another flight co-mingle with the passengers of flight 253 while the most important investigation in 8 years was pending. I have already stated that not one person who wasn't a passenger or law enforcement personnal was in our area the entire time we were detained by Customs.
2. FBI/Customs while detaining the flight 253 passengers in perhaps the most important investigation since the last terrorist attack, and despite not letting any flight 253 passenger drink, eat, make a call, or use the bathroom, let those of other flights trample through the area and possibly contaminate evidence.
3. You have to believe the above (1 and 2) despite the fact that no flights during this time allowed passengers to exit off of the planes at all and were detained on the runway during at least the first hour of our detention period.
4. You have to believe that the man that stood 20 feet from me since we entered customs came from a mysterious plane that never landed, let its passengers off the plane and let this man sneak into our passenger group despite having extremely tight security at this time (i.e. no drinking even).
5. FBI/Customs was hauling mysterious passengers from other flights through the area we were being held to possibly comtaminate evidence and allow discussions with suspects on Flight 253 or to possibly allow the exchange of bombs, weapons or other devices between the mysterious passengers from other flights and those on flight 253.
Seriously Mr. Ron Smith, how stupid do you think the American public is?
Mr. Ron Smith's third version of the story is an absolute inplausible joke. I encourage you, Mr. Ron Smith, to debate me anytime, anywhere, and anyplace in public to let the American people see who is credible and who is not.
I ask, isn't this the more plausible story:
1. Customs/FBI realized that they screwed up and don't want to admit that they left flight 253 passengers on a flight with a live bomb on the runway for 20 minutes.
2. Customs/FBI realized that they screwed up and don't want to admit that they left flight 253 passengers in customs for 1 hour with a live bomb in a carry on bag.
3. Customs/FBI realize that the man in orange points to a greater involvement then the lone wolf theory that they have been promoting.
Mr. Ron Smith I encourage you to come out of your cubicle and come up with a more plausible version number 4 of your story."
Haskell continued his comment in a different post on MLive.
"For the last five days I have been reporting my story of the so called "sharp dressed man." For those of you who haven't read my account, it involves a sharp dressed "Indian man" attempting to talk a ticket agent into letting a supposed "Sudanese refugee" (The terrorist) onto flight 253 without a passport. I have never had any idea how it played out except to note that the so called "Sudanese reefugee" later boarded my flight and attempted to blow it up and kill me. At no time did my story involve, or even find important whether the terrorist actually had a passport. The importance of my story was and always will be, the attempt with an accomplice (apparently succesful) of a terrorist with all sorts of prior terrorist warning signs to skirt the normal passport boarding procedures in Amsterdam. By the way, Amsterdam security did come out the other day and admit that the terrorist did not have to "Go through normal passport checking procedures".
Amsterdam security, please define to the American public "Normal passport boarding procedures".
You see the FBI would have the American public believe that what was important was whether the terrorist in fact had a passport.
Seriously think about this people. You have a suicide bomber who had recently been to Yemen to but a bomb, whose father had reported him as a terrorist, who supposedly was on some kind of U.S. terror watchlist, and most likely knew the U.S. was aware of these red flags. Yet, he didn't go through "Normal passport checking procedures." What does that mean? Maybe that he flashed a passport to some sort of sympathetic security manager in a backroom to avoid a closer look at the terrorist's "red flags"? What is important is that the terrorist avoided using normal passport checking procedures (apparently successfully) in order to avoid a closer look into his red flags. Who cares if he had a passport. The important thing is that he didn't want to show it and somehow avoided a closer inspection and "normal passport checking procedures." Each passport comes with a bar code on it that can be scanned to provide a wealth of information about the individual. I would bet that the passport checking procedures for the terrorist did not include a bar code scan of his passport (which could have revealed damning information about the terrorist).
Please note that there is a very easy way to verify the veracity of my prior "sharp dressed man" account. Dutch police have admitted that they have reviewed the video of the "sharp dressed man" that I referenced. Note that it has not been released anywhere, You see, if my eye witness account is false, it could easily be proven by releasing the video. However, the proof of my eyewitness account would also be verified if I am telling the truth and I am. There is a reason we have only heard of the video and not seen it. dutch authorities, "RELEASE THE VIDEO!" This is the most important video in 8 years and may be all of two minutes long. Show the entire video and "DO NOT EDIT IT"! The American public deserves its own chance to attempt to identify the "sharp dressed man". I have no doubt that if the video indicated that my account was wrong, that the video would have already swept over the entire world wide web.
Instead of the video, we get a statment that the video has been viewed and that the terrorist had a passport. Each of these statements made by the FBI is a self serving play on semantics and each misses the importance of my prior "sharp dressed man" account. The importance being that the man "Tried to board the plane with an accomplice and without a passort". The other significance is that only the airport security video can verify my eyewitness account and that it is not being released.
Who has the agenda here and who doesn't? Think about that for a minute."
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Posted by burgerwache
December 31, 2009, 10:41AM
Mr. Haskell, my hat is off to you and your wife. It is not often that an American citizen has the fortitude to stand up against government propaganda, and tell the truth to the People. You are a true, red-blooded American who deserves to have every man and woman backing you up. I can think of no reason why you would not be telling us the truth. I hope and pray that the news media takes their responsibility under the Federal Constitution Bill of Rights seriously, and that they continue to investigate and press for answers, until the truth is fully known, no matter how it may affect their favorite politicians. Thank you for what you are doing, Mr. Haskell, and for helping -if even just a little bit - to make this a Happy New Year. A year where men will be judged by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin. A year when Americans may have good reason to have renewed hope in the American ways of old, in our Constitution, in our courts, and in our political processes. Thank you, Kurt Haskell.
Rob Roy
Well-Known Member
^^^ On your American freedom tour thingy...there's no Viet Nam. I guess that war was a mistake? Should we send flowers and a sympathy card to those who died there?
The boot of tyranny doesn't care who wears it. The shoe fits on anyone or any country that initiates and prolongs aggression.
Oil? World war? Well there's already been alot of war over oil in the middle east and there continues to be...not sure of your point. I agree oil as a resource has the capability to incite war, it already has and continues to. The USA is killing people over it now.
Killing people to ensure peace? Maybe, but I'd have to say as a blanket statement to use as cover to initiate war it fails. I don't disagree with defending yourself. Do the USA borders extend to the middle east? If a group of "crazy canadians" that had trained and gotten pilots licenses in the USA flew planes into buildings in China would that mean the Chinese should attack the USA and Mexico? Exactly why is the USA in Iraq and Afghanistan? I'd have to say to set up puppet governments to ensure access to oil. What do you say?
There are reasons I adamantly say the USA foreign policy in the middle east is based on oil, not human rights or "bringing freedom". If it were about bringing freedom we would not have supported the dictatorial monarch Saud family (Saudi Arabia) all these years. North Korea has no oil to speak of...so we stay out of there despite the lack of freedom those people have. Pick any country in Africa that seems to have internal strife, but no oil. Do we "free" them? Nope. Here's a bag of grain dropped from a helicopter, have a nice day and don't get whacked with a machete we tell them.
I won't even get into the domestic freedoms we don't have in THIS country.
The "bringing freedom" mantra is the false flag used to evoke nationalism and get people behind a war of aggression.
I'm not an "America" hater. I just don't think it's wise to dismiss all of the causes of events and maintain an attitude that we are always right. Wars cost lives and money and set the stage for future wars. A good bit of our military industrial complex economy is based on the machinations of war...that's sad don't you think?
Thanks for keeping our debate civil. Whether we agree on policy or not, I appreciate the ability to debate rather than insult.
The boot of tyranny doesn't care who wears it. The shoe fits on anyone or any country that initiates and prolongs aggression.
Oil? World war? Well there's already been alot of war over oil in the middle east and there continues to be...not sure of your point. I agree oil as a resource has the capability to incite war, it already has and continues to. The USA is killing people over it now.
Killing people to ensure peace? Maybe, but I'd have to say as a blanket statement to use as cover to initiate war it fails. I don't disagree with defending yourself. Do the USA borders extend to the middle east? If a group of "crazy canadians" that had trained and gotten pilots licenses in the USA flew planes into buildings in China would that mean the Chinese should attack the USA and Mexico? Exactly why is the USA in Iraq and Afghanistan? I'd have to say to set up puppet governments to ensure access to oil. What do you say?
There are reasons I adamantly say the USA foreign policy in the middle east is based on oil, not human rights or "bringing freedom". If it were about bringing freedom we would not have supported the dictatorial monarch Saud family (Saudi Arabia) all these years. North Korea has no oil to speak of...so we stay out of there despite the lack of freedom those people have. Pick any country in Africa that seems to have internal strife, but no oil. Do we "free" them? Nope. Here's a bag of grain dropped from a helicopter, have a nice day and don't get whacked with a machete we tell them.
I won't even get into the domestic freedoms we don't have in THIS country.
The "bringing freedom" mantra is the false flag used to evoke nationalism and get people behind a war of aggression.
I'm not an "America" hater. I just don't think it's wise to dismiss all of the causes of events and maintain an attitude that we are always right. Wars cost lives and money and set the stage for future wars. A good bit of our military industrial complex economy is based on the machinations of war...that's sad don't you think?
Thanks for keeping our debate civil. Whether we agree on policy or not, I appreciate the ability to debate rather than insult.
Big P
Well-Known Member
i guess we can agree to disagree like i said nothings perfect
it would be way worse if we sat on our hands and let truly evil people consolidate power to be come a world super power
i was born in the middle east and immigrated to the USA i fully suported the iraq war and still do
you know the reason we went to iraq and afghanistan.
everybody knows.
but i guess you think we deserved to get hit on 9/11 because we helped saudi arabia and kuwait from an iraq invasion?
and now you wanna make us look like beasts for hitting back?
but ayway smoke on bro, lets hope in 2010 there will be peace on earth
but until humans evolve into a different species there will always be sombody cuasing problems. you like to blame america first thats fine, I think you would think very differently if you were a citizen of this beautiful country and could see through the unfair propeganda that has assailed our country for the past 9 years
it would be way worse if we sat on our hands and let truly evil people consolidate power to be come a world super power
i was born in the middle east and immigrated to the USA i fully suported the iraq war and still do
you know the reason we went to iraq and afghanistan.
everybody knows.
but i guess you think we deserved to get hit on 9/11 because we helped saudi arabia and kuwait from an iraq invasion?
and now you wanna make us look like beasts for hitting back?
but ayway smoke on bro, lets hope in 2010 there will be peace on earth
but until humans evolve into a different species there will always be sombody cuasing problems. you like to blame america first thats fine, I think you would think very differently if you were a citizen of this beautiful country and could see through the unfair propeganda that has assailed our country for the past 9 years
jeff f
New Member
dont necessarily disagree wiht everything in your post but try this logic for a minute.
you have a family, three daughters. some guy breaks into your house when you are at work and rapes one of your daughters.
do you ask, "i wonder what made him rape my daughter?" not unless you are mike dukakis. otherwise you say to the police, "i dont care what it takes, find this motherfucker and lock him up or better yet, chain him to my fence outback and i will take care of him.
and if this guy gets caught and tells the police, "you may have got me but i have a whole bunch of friends that are planning on raping the other 2 girls". you know he is probably telling the truth because there have been a string of rapes in your town.
now what? me, i say lets investigate this rapist, and who his friends are and maybe pay them a visit to ask a couple questions. it may lead to the capture of other rapists.
bottom line is, you do what is necessary to protect your daughters. you dont sit up nights and dig for insight as to what caused him to do this, you lock his ass up forever.
and you CERTAINLY dont put up with your neighbors saying, "she had it coming" or "i am not surprised she got raped because she dressed like a slut". you dont put up with that, and neither do the rest of your neighbors.
why would we treat brutal muderers any better than a rapist?
personally, i dont give 2 shits why they are doing it. bottom line is they are doing it and we need to make it stop...whatever it takes and i really dont give a rats ass what the rest of the world says about us.
Rob Roy
Well-Known Member
The U.S. and western involvment in the middle east goes farther back than the first Bush war, as do the root causes of today's wars.
Iran had a DEMOCRATICALLY elected leader in the 1950s that dared to tell the western powers that were controlling the oil fields to take a hike. Guess what happened to him? Since he didn't play along, He was ousted and the Shah of Iran was installed as a puppet for the west. The Saud family was installed and aided by the west too. There's alot more history too, but the point is western powers held sway in the middle east and weren't going to go away. OIL was then and still remains the prize. Bringing freedom had nothing to do with it.
I never said the people that were killed in 9/11 deserved to be attacked. Please don't do the straw man thing.
I said it is not unreasonable to expect people to feel justified to strike out against foreign powers that have a history of intervention.
If you want peace, you don't achieve it by pretending certain events in history haven't taken place and failing to recognize that there may be consequences from occupying other countries.
I don't like to blame America first, actually it was Great Britain, France and to some extent the Soviet Union that intervened in the middle east before the USA.
Blindly supporting military action due to unyielding nationalism is exactly what people in power want you to do.
...it works in any country.
Rob Roy
Well-Known Member
Your somebody raped my daughter logic may get people's emotions going and cause them to agree with you, but it's really not a good example. First off before I explain...I'll agree with you, sure, if you rape my daughter, expect lethal retaliation.
But we're not talking about something that simplistic. Nobody raped my daughter or yours hopefully.
What DID happen, is a group of angry men from several different middle eastern countries felt justified in attacking a country, the USA, that had a history of intervening in the middle east.
That event was used to false flag the country into going head hunting and kicking some ass and occupying TWO different countries.
It was horrible that innocent people died in the 9/11 attacks. Unfortunately as long as other countries are occupied, I think more attacks will occur. It's only a matter of time.
The USA is in a catch 22...as Dick Cheney, the former V.POTUS and head cheese of Haliburton put it, "the American way of life is not negotiable". What he meant was, America was going to continue to consume oil at a prodigious rate and everybody else could like it or not.
And... Where's the oil?
If you don't give two shits WHY things occur, you may never understand what it might take to resolve the problem.
jeff f
New Member
okay, answer this, if we are being attacked because we meddled in their business, why arent germany and japan constantly attacking us? i think we "meddled" in their affairs....wouldnt ya say?
how about north korea? why arent they constantly sending terrorists to kill us.
why arent the former soviet satalite countries attacking us? we meddled there pretty good.
why isnt england consantly being terrorized by all the countrie they meddled in?
your logic, while it sound sophiticated and well thought out (not making fun of you or degrading your position, please dont misunderstand) it doesnt pass reality mustard.
the reason they are attacking us is because they are 6th century barbarians who refuse to live by the 21st century rules. they need to be destroyed or they need to change....i am good with either way. the choice really is, or should be, theirs
the only way to stop being attacked by barbarians is to demonstrate unbeatable, unstoppable, superior force and the will to carry it out to completion.
your oil analogy doesnt pass either. lots of these guy come from countrie that dont have oil. and we have our own oil. o if you really think it about oil, you should be shouting from the highet mountain for us to drill our own and be done with the savages.
ChChoda
Well-Known Member
Big P
Well-Known Member
your stereo type that i new you were trying to place me in is revealing
since we started this conversation you have had a presuposed stereo type of what i think and why i thik it
i think you are the one who is really blind, & predjudice to boot
i wasnt even born in america im a palistinian born in jordon but your right if you would rather convince yourself i have blind nationalism so you can avoid dealing with the issue thats fine but you are only fooling your own self.
Rob Roy
Well-Known Member
I won't go into a lengthy discussion of correlation and causation or logical fallacies, but sometime you may want to check that out.
I think the difference between U.S. policy in countries like Germany and Japan and the middle east is significant. For instance in the case of Germany and Japan, most people would accept that we helped them rebuild in the aftermath of World War II. Some might suggest we helped them TOO much.
Look at what happened in Japan, they didn't have to spend all their money on a military, because the Americans were there and still are. So what did they do? Focus on trade and manufacturing and they kicked ass. I don't think the USA went in to either country and insisted on
taking / controlling their natural resources or after the initial hostiity of WWII war off, set up puppet governments.
Different story in the middle east though.
England has been the target of terrorism...no?
North Korea? We're not in North Korea. But while we're in that part of the world, let's recognize that our continued occupation of South Korea (60 years) has cost alot of money. Maybe the guys that make Hyundai's could start protecting themselves? Where in the constitution does it say we will provide WORLD security?
Barbarians? I'll admit there are cultural differences, but I'm not ready to call ALL the people of the middle east barbarians, they're human beings, good, bad and everything in between. I'm not ready to support indiscriminate bombing either.
Oil? The USA IS a major oil producer, perhaps one of the top 5.
The problem is, the USA is also a much bigger oil CONSUMER. That means of our many millions of barrels consumed every day, over half must be imported. Our bought and paid for friends the Saudi's can only supply so much....where else we gonna get it? Mexico and Canada supply a great deal of oil to us. But the fact remains there's a shit load of oil in the middle east, that we'd like control of, especially Iran and Iraq and they're very aware of that.
To be clear, I am not anti-American. I'm just not willing to accept things at the surface level. The USA has an oil habit and is vulnerable in that regard, the foreign policy reflects that awareness of the vulnerability.
The scary thing is China is looking for more oil...and we know what happens to prices when supply remains the same and demand increases don't we? Wait and see how that ends. I'm dusting off the old 10 speed bike now.
Rob Roy
Well-Known Member
I'm not stereo typing YOU. I'm suggesting that alot of Americans have blind nationalism. For that matter alot of people through out the world do. How else could corrupt leaders get the average guy to travel to foreign lands and kill people ?
ChChoda
Well-Known Member
November 2009
Victor Davis Hanson
Distinguished Fellow in History
Hillsdale College
The Future of Western War
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, the Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of classics emeritus at California State University, Fresno. He earned his B.A. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University. He is a columnist for National Review Online and for Tribune Media Services, and has published in several journals and newspapers, including Commentary, the Claremont Review of Books, The New Criterion, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Hanson has written or edited numerous books, including The Soul of Battle, Carnage and Culture, and A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on October 1, 2009, during the author's four-week teaching residency.
I want to talk about the Western way of war and about the particular challenges that face the West today. But the first point I want to make is that war is a human enterprise that will always be with us. Unless we submit to genetic engineering, or unless video games have somehow reprogrammed our brains, or unless we are fundamentally changed by eating different nutrientsthese are possibilities brought up by so-called peace and conflict resolution theoristshuman nature will not change. And if human nature will not changeand I submit to you that human nature is a constantthen war will always be with us. Its methods or delivery systemswhich can be traced through time from clubs to catapults and from flintlocks to nuclear weaponswill of course change. In this sense war is like water. You can pump water at 60 gallons per minute with a small gasoline engine or at 5000 gallons per minute with a gigantic turbine pump. But water is waterthe same today as in 1880 or 500 B.C. Likewise war, because the essence of war is human nature.
Second, in talking about the Western way of war, what do we mean by the West? Roughly speaking, we refer to the culture that originated in Greece, spread to Rome, permeated Northern Europe, was incorporated by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, spread through British expansionism, and is associated today primarily with Europe, the United States, and the former commonwealth countries of Britainas well as, to some extent, nations like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, which have incorporated some Western ideas. And what are Western ideas? This question is disputed, but I think we know them when we see them. They include a commitment to constitutional or limited government, freedom of the individual, religious freedom in a sense that precludes religious tyranny, respect for property rights, faith in free markets, and an openness to rationalism or to the explanation of natural phenomena through reason. These ideas were combined in various ways through Western history, and eventually brought us to where we are today. The resultant system creates more prosperity and affluence than any other. And of course, I don't mean to suggest that there was Jeffersonian democracy in 13th century England or in the Swiss cantons. But the blueprint for free government always existed in the West, in a way that it didn't elsewhere.
Just as this system afforded more prosperity in times of peace, it led to a superior fighting and defense capability in times of war. This is what I call the Western way of war, and there are several factors at play.
First, constitutional government was conducive to civilian input when it came to war. We see this in ancient Athens, where civilians oversaw a board of generals, and we see it in civilian control of the military in the United States. And at crucial times in Western history, civilian overseers have enriched military planning.
Second, Western culture gave birth to a new definition of courage. In Hellenic culture, the prowess of a hero was not recognized by the number of heads on his belt. As Aristotle noted in the Politics, Greek warriors didn't wear trophies of individual killings. Likewise, Victoria Crosses and Medals of Honor are awarded today for deeds such as staying in rank, protecting the integrity of the line, advancing and retreating on orders, or rescuing a comrade. This reflects a quite different understanding of heroism.
A third factor underlies our association of Western war with advanced technology. When reason and capitalism are applied to the battlefield, powerful innovations come about. Flints, percussion caps, rifle barrels and mini balls, to cite just a few examples, were all Western inventions. Related to this, Western armiesgoing back to Alexander the Great's army at the Indushave a better logistics capability. A recent example is that the Americans invading Iraq were better supplied with water than the native Iraqis. This results from the application of capitalism to military affairsuniting private self-interest and patriotism to provide armies with food, supplies, and munitions in a way that is much more efficient than the state-run command-and-control alternatives.
Yet another factor is that Western armies are impatient. They tend to want to seek out and destroy the enemy quickly and then go home. Of course, this can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, as we see today in Afghanistan, where the enemy is not so eager for decisive battle. And connected to this tradition is dissent. Today the U.S. military is a completely volunteer force, and its members' behavior on the battlefield largely reflects how they conduct themselves in civil society. One can trace this characteristic of Western armies back to Xenophon's ten thousand, who marched from Northern Iraq to the Black Sea and behaved essentially as a traveling city-state, voting and arguing in a constitutional manner. And their ability to do that is what saved them, not just their traditional discipline.
Now, I would not want to suggest that the West has always been victorious in war. It hasn't. But consider the fact that Europe had a very small population and territory, and yet by 1870 the British Empire controlled 75 percent of the world. What the Western way of war achieved, on any given day, was to give its practitionerswhether Cortez in the Americas, the British in Zululand, or the Greeks in Thracea greater advantage over their enemies. There are occasional defeats such as the battles of Cannae, Isandlwana, and Little Big Horn. Over a long period of time, however, the Western way of war will lead us to where we are today.
But where exactly are we today? There have been two developments over the last 20 years that have placed the West in a new cycle. They have not marked the end of the Western way of war, but they have brought about a significant change. The first is the rapid electronic dissemination of knowledgesuch that someone in the Hindu Kush tonight can download a sophisticated article on how to make an IED. And the second is that non-Western nations now have leverage, given how global economies work today, through large quantities of strategic materials that Western societies need, such as natural gas, oil, uranium, and bauxite. Correspondingly, these materials produce tremendous amounts of unearned capital in non-Western countriesand by "unearned," I mean that the long process of civilization required to create, for example, a petroleum engineer has not occurred in these countries, yet they find themselves in possession of the monetary fruits of this process. So the West's enemies now have instant access to knowledge and tremendous capital.
In addition to these new developments, there are five traditional checks on the Western way of war that are intensified today. One of these checks is the Western tendency to limit the ferocity of war through rules and regulations. The Greeks tried to outlaw arrows and catapults. Romans had restrictions on the export of breast plates. In World War II, we had regulations against poison gas. Continuing this tradition today, we are trying to achieve nuclear non-proliferation. Unfortunately, the idea that Western countries can adjudicate how the rest of the world makes war isn't applicable anymore. As we see clearly in Iran, we are dealing with countries that have the wealth of Western nations (for the reasons just mentioned), but are anything but constitutional democracies. In fact, these nations find the idea of limiting their war-making capabilities laughable. Even more importantly, they know that many in the West sympathize with themthat many Westerners feel guilty about their wealth, prosperity, and leisure, and take psychological comfort in letting tyrants like Ahmadinejad provoke them.
The second check on the Western way of war is the fact that there is no monolithic West. For one thing, Western countries have frequently fought one another. Most people killed in war have been Europeans killing other Europeans, due to religious differences and political rivalries. And consider, in this light, how fractured the West is today. The U.S. and its allies can't even agree on sanctions against Iran. Everyone knows that once Iran obtains nuclear weaponsin addition to its intention to threaten Israel and to support terroristsit will begin to aim its rockets at Frankfurt, Munich, and Paris, and to ask for further trade concessions and seek regional hegemony. And in this case, unlike when we deterred Soviet leaders during the Cold War, Westerners will be dealing with theocratic zealots who claim that they do not care about living, making them all the more dangerous. Yet despite all this, to repeat, the Western democracies can't agree on sanctions or even on a prohibition against selling technology and arms.
The third check is what I call "parasitism." It is very difficult to invent and fabricate weapons, but it is very easy to use them. Looking back in history, we have examples of Aztecs killing Conquistadors using steel breast plates and crossbows and of Native Americans using rifles against the U.S. Cavalry. Similarly today, nobody in Hezbollah can manufacture an AK-47which is built by Russians and made possible by Western design principlesbut its members can make deadly use of them. Nor is there anything in the tradition of Shiite Islam that would allow a Shiite nation to create centrifuges, which require Western physics. Yet centrifuges are hard at work in Iran. And this parasitism has real consequences. When the Israelis went into Lebanon in 2006, they were surprised that young Hezbollah fighters had laptop computers with sophisticated intelligence programs; that Hezbollah intelligence agents were sending out doctored photos, making it seem as if Israel was targeting civilians, to Reuters and the AP; and that Hezbollah had obtained sophisticated anti-tank weapons on the international market using Iranian funds. At that point it didn't matter that the Israelis had a sophisticated Western culture, and so it could not win the war.
A fourth check is the ever-present anti-war movement in the West, stemming from the fact that Westerners are free to dissent. And by "ever-present" I mean that long before Michael Moore appeared on the scene, we had Euripides' Trojan Women and Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Of course, today's anti-war movement is much more virulent than in Euripides' and Aristophanes' time. This is in part because people like Michael Moore do not feel they are in any real danger from their countries' enemies. They know that if push comes to shove, the 101st Airborne will ultimately ensure their safety. That is why Moore can say right after 9/11 that Osama Bin Laden should have attacked a red state rather than a blue state. And since Western wars tend to be fought far from home, rather than as a defense against invasions, there is always the possibility that anti-war sentiment will win out and that armies will be called home. Our enemies know this, and often their words and actions are aimed at encouraging and aiding Western anti-war forces.
Finally and most seriously, I think, there is what I call, for want of a better term, "asymmetry." Western culture creates citizens who are affluent, leisured, free, and protected. Human nature being what it is, we citizens of the West often want to enjoy our bounty and retreat into private livesto go home, eat pizza, and watch television. This is nothing new. I would refer you to Petronius's Satyricon, a banquet scene written around 60 A.D. about affluent Romans who make fun of the soldiers who are up on the Rhine protecting them. This is what Rome had become. And it's not easy to convince someone who has the good life to fight against someone who doesn't.
To put this in contemporary terms, what we are asking today is for a young man with a $250,000 education from West Point to climb into an Apache helicopterafter emailing back and forth with his wife and kids about what went on at a PTA meeting back in Bethesda, Marylandand fly over Anbar province or up to the Hindu Kush and risk being shot down by a young man from a family of 15, none of whom will ever live nearly as well as the poorest citizens of the United States, using a weapon whose design he doesn't even understand. In a moral sense, the lives of these two young men are of equal value. But in reality, our society values the lives of our young men much more than Afghan societies value the lives of theirs. And it is very difficult to sustain a protracted war with asymmetrical losses under those conditions.
My point here is that all of the usual checks on the tradition of Western warfare are magnified in our time. And I will end with this disturbing thought: We who created the Western way of war are very reluctant to resort to it due to post-modern cynicism, while those who didn't create it are very eager to apply it due to pre-modern zealotry. And that's a very lethal combination.
Victor Davis Hanson
Distinguished Fellow in History
Hillsdale College
The Future of Western War
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, the Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of classics emeritus at California State University, Fresno. He earned his B.A. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University. He is a columnist for National Review Online and for Tribune Media Services, and has published in several journals and newspapers, including Commentary, the Claremont Review of Books, The New Criterion, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Hanson has written or edited numerous books, including The Soul of Battle, Carnage and Culture, and A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on October 1, 2009, during the author's four-week teaching residency.
I want to talk about the Western way of war and about the particular challenges that face the West today. But the first point I want to make is that war is a human enterprise that will always be with us. Unless we submit to genetic engineering, or unless video games have somehow reprogrammed our brains, or unless we are fundamentally changed by eating different nutrientsthese are possibilities brought up by so-called peace and conflict resolution theoristshuman nature will not change. And if human nature will not changeand I submit to you that human nature is a constantthen war will always be with us. Its methods or delivery systemswhich can be traced through time from clubs to catapults and from flintlocks to nuclear weaponswill of course change. In this sense war is like water. You can pump water at 60 gallons per minute with a small gasoline engine or at 5000 gallons per minute with a gigantic turbine pump. But water is waterthe same today as in 1880 or 500 B.C. Likewise war, because the essence of war is human nature.
Second, in talking about the Western way of war, what do we mean by the West? Roughly speaking, we refer to the culture that originated in Greece, spread to Rome, permeated Northern Europe, was incorporated by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, spread through British expansionism, and is associated today primarily with Europe, the United States, and the former commonwealth countries of Britainas well as, to some extent, nations like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, which have incorporated some Western ideas. And what are Western ideas? This question is disputed, but I think we know them when we see them. They include a commitment to constitutional or limited government, freedom of the individual, religious freedom in a sense that precludes religious tyranny, respect for property rights, faith in free markets, and an openness to rationalism or to the explanation of natural phenomena through reason. These ideas were combined in various ways through Western history, and eventually brought us to where we are today. The resultant system creates more prosperity and affluence than any other. And of course, I don't mean to suggest that there was Jeffersonian democracy in 13th century England or in the Swiss cantons. But the blueprint for free government always existed in the West, in a way that it didn't elsewhere.
Just as this system afforded more prosperity in times of peace, it led to a superior fighting and defense capability in times of war. This is what I call the Western way of war, and there are several factors at play.
First, constitutional government was conducive to civilian input when it came to war. We see this in ancient Athens, where civilians oversaw a board of generals, and we see it in civilian control of the military in the United States. And at crucial times in Western history, civilian overseers have enriched military planning.
Second, Western culture gave birth to a new definition of courage. In Hellenic culture, the prowess of a hero was not recognized by the number of heads on his belt. As Aristotle noted in the Politics, Greek warriors didn't wear trophies of individual killings. Likewise, Victoria Crosses and Medals of Honor are awarded today for deeds such as staying in rank, protecting the integrity of the line, advancing and retreating on orders, or rescuing a comrade. This reflects a quite different understanding of heroism.
A third factor underlies our association of Western war with advanced technology. When reason and capitalism are applied to the battlefield, powerful innovations come about. Flints, percussion caps, rifle barrels and mini balls, to cite just a few examples, were all Western inventions. Related to this, Western armiesgoing back to Alexander the Great's army at the Indushave a better logistics capability. A recent example is that the Americans invading Iraq were better supplied with water than the native Iraqis. This results from the application of capitalism to military affairsuniting private self-interest and patriotism to provide armies with food, supplies, and munitions in a way that is much more efficient than the state-run command-and-control alternatives.
Yet another factor is that Western armies are impatient. They tend to want to seek out and destroy the enemy quickly and then go home. Of course, this can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, as we see today in Afghanistan, where the enemy is not so eager for decisive battle. And connected to this tradition is dissent. Today the U.S. military is a completely volunteer force, and its members' behavior on the battlefield largely reflects how they conduct themselves in civil society. One can trace this characteristic of Western armies back to Xenophon's ten thousand, who marched from Northern Iraq to the Black Sea and behaved essentially as a traveling city-state, voting and arguing in a constitutional manner. And their ability to do that is what saved them, not just their traditional discipline.
Now, I would not want to suggest that the West has always been victorious in war. It hasn't. But consider the fact that Europe had a very small population and territory, and yet by 1870 the British Empire controlled 75 percent of the world. What the Western way of war achieved, on any given day, was to give its practitionerswhether Cortez in the Americas, the British in Zululand, or the Greeks in Thracea greater advantage over their enemies. There are occasional defeats such as the battles of Cannae, Isandlwana, and Little Big Horn. Over a long period of time, however, the Western way of war will lead us to where we are today.
But where exactly are we today? There have been two developments over the last 20 years that have placed the West in a new cycle. They have not marked the end of the Western way of war, but they have brought about a significant change. The first is the rapid electronic dissemination of knowledgesuch that someone in the Hindu Kush tonight can download a sophisticated article on how to make an IED. And the second is that non-Western nations now have leverage, given how global economies work today, through large quantities of strategic materials that Western societies need, such as natural gas, oil, uranium, and bauxite. Correspondingly, these materials produce tremendous amounts of unearned capital in non-Western countriesand by "unearned," I mean that the long process of civilization required to create, for example, a petroleum engineer has not occurred in these countries, yet they find themselves in possession of the monetary fruits of this process. So the West's enemies now have instant access to knowledge and tremendous capital.
In addition to these new developments, there are five traditional checks on the Western way of war that are intensified today. One of these checks is the Western tendency to limit the ferocity of war through rules and regulations. The Greeks tried to outlaw arrows and catapults. Romans had restrictions on the export of breast plates. In World War II, we had regulations against poison gas. Continuing this tradition today, we are trying to achieve nuclear non-proliferation. Unfortunately, the idea that Western countries can adjudicate how the rest of the world makes war isn't applicable anymore. As we see clearly in Iran, we are dealing with countries that have the wealth of Western nations (for the reasons just mentioned), but are anything but constitutional democracies. In fact, these nations find the idea of limiting their war-making capabilities laughable. Even more importantly, they know that many in the West sympathize with themthat many Westerners feel guilty about their wealth, prosperity, and leisure, and take psychological comfort in letting tyrants like Ahmadinejad provoke them.
The second check on the Western way of war is the fact that there is no monolithic West. For one thing, Western countries have frequently fought one another. Most people killed in war have been Europeans killing other Europeans, due to religious differences and political rivalries. And consider, in this light, how fractured the West is today. The U.S. and its allies can't even agree on sanctions against Iran. Everyone knows that once Iran obtains nuclear weaponsin addition to its intention to threaten Israel and to support terroristsit will begin to aim its rockets at Frankfurt, Munich, and Paris, and to ask for further trade concessions and seek regional hegemony. And in this case, unlike when we deterred Soviet leaders during the Cold War, Westerners will be dealing with theocratic zealots who claim that they do not care about living, making them all the more dangerous. Yet despite all this, to repeat, the Western democracies can't agree on sanctions or even on a prohibition against selling technology and arms.
The third check is what I call "parasitism." It is very difficult to invent and fabricate weapons, but it is very easy to use them. Looking back in history, we have examples of Aztecs killing Conquistadors using steel breast plates and crossbows and of Native Americans using rifles against the U.S. Cavalry. Similarly today, nobody in Hezbollah can manufacture an AK-47which is built by Russians and made possible by Western design principlesbut its members can make deadly use of them. Nor is there anything in the tradition of Shiite Islam that would allow a Shiite nation to create centrifuges, which require Western physics. Yet centrifuges are hard at work in Iran. And this parasitism has real consequences. When the Israelis went into Lebanon in 2006, they were surprised that young Hezbollah fighters had laptop computers with sophisticated intelligence programs; that Hezbollah intelligence agents were sending out doctored photos, making it seem as if Israel was targeting civilians, to Reuters and the AP; and that Hezbollah had obtained sophisticated anti-tank weapons on the international market using Iranian funds. At that point it didn't matter that the Israelis had a sophisticated Western culture, and so it could not win the war.
A fourth check is the ever-present anti-war movement in the West, stemming from the fact that Westerners are free to dissent. And by "ever-present" I mean that long before Michael Moore appeared on the scene, we had Euripides' Trojan Women and Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Of course, today's anti-war movement is much more virulent than in Euripides' and Aristophanes' time. This is in part because people like Michael Moore do not feel they are in any real danger from their countries' enemies. They know that if push comes to shove, the 101st Airborne will ultimately ensure their safety. That is why Moore can say right after 9/11 that Osama Bin Laden should have attacked a red state rather than a blue state. And since Western wars tend to be fought far from home, rather than as a defense against invasions, there is always the possibility that anti-war sentiment will win out and that armies will be called home. Our enemies know this, and often their words and actions are aimed at encouraging and aiding Western anti-war forces.
Finally and most seriously, I think, there is what I call, for want of a better term, "asymmetry." Western culture creates citizens who are affluent, leisured, free, and protected. Human nature being what it is, we citizens of the West often want to enjoy our bounty and retreat into private livesto go home, eat pizza, and watch television. This is nothing new. I would refer you to Petronius's Satyricon, a banquet scene written around 60 A.D. about affluent Romans who make fun of the soldiers who are up on the Rhine protecting them. This is what Rome had become. And it's not easy to convince someone who has the good life to fight against someone who doesn't.
To put this in contemporary terms, what we are asking today is for a young man with a $250,000 education from West Point to climb into an Apache helicopterafter emailing back and forth with his wife and kids about what went on at a PTA meeting back in Bethesda, Marylandand fly over Anbar province or up to the Hindu Kush and risk being shot down by a young man from a family of 15, none of whom will ever live nearly as well as the poorest citizens of the United States, using a weapon whose design he doesn't even understand. In a moral sense, the lives of these two young men are of equal value. But in reality, our society values the lives of our young men much more than Afghan societies value the lives of theirs. And it is very difficult to sustain a protracted war with asymmetrical losses under those conditions.
My point here is that all of the usual checks on the tradition of Western warfare are magnified in our time. And I will end with this disturbing thought: We who created the Western way of war are very reluctant to resort to it due to post-modern cynicism, while those who didn't create it are very eager to apply it due to pre-modern zealotry. And that's a very lethal combination.
jeff f
New Member
are you suggesting we didnt help iraq rebuild? wow.For instance in the case of Germany and Japan, most people would accept that we helped them rebuild in the aftermath of World War II. Some might suggest we helped them TOO much.
Look at what happened in Japan, they didn't have to spend all their money on a military, because the Americans were there and still areBarbarians? I'll admit there are cultural differences, but I'm not ready to call ALL the people of the middle east barbarians, they're human beings, good, bad and everything in between. I'm not ready to support indiscriminate bombing either.
japan? you should read more books. japan doenst have an army cuz we wouldnt let them because at the time, they were barbaric. and it worked...weird huh?
Rob Roy
Well-Known Member
No, I'm not suggesting that money wasn't awarded in no bid contracts to rebuild Iraq. I'm suggesting if we hadn't bombed the shit out of them the second time around we wouldn't have to rebuild them.
Japan? I'm aware of the eleventh article in the proposed terms of surrender to Japan for WWII that permitted them to rebuild their economy, but not their war machine. They did a heck of a job rebuilding their economy too. They did such a good job they kicked the US automakers butts.
My dad had actual photos of the signing ceremony aboard the USS Missouri. That was 65 years ago...should we occupy them another 65?
Barbaric? Some people consider dropping nuclear bombs barbaric, but let's not go there today okay?
jeff f
New Member
not to change the subject to economics but i would suggest that them kicking our ass is what saved our auto industry. if it wasnt for them pushing hard on the unions, we would still be building cars out of solid steel and installing all parts by hand.
God bless your dad for his service.