Seven Years
September 11th, 2008
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In the seven years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a lot of people have focused on the policies of the United States and the fact that they disagree with the war in Iraq, the provisions of the Patriot Act, the fact that politicians have used the attacks to bolster their poll numbers through fear or the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has not been very effective in general.
There is one thing which seems to have been getting lost: On September 11th 2001, the United States was attacked in a manner that was unjustified, terrorist, criminal by any and all definitions. Despite the fact that many will say the US was to blame for intervening in the affairs of the Middle East over the past twenty years or various foreign and domestic policies, this does not change the fact that thousands of people who were only looking to go to work that day were slaughtered out of the blue.
Many have said that the US was worse for Hiroshima, Nagasaki or Dresden. Even if it were the case, you cannot justifuy attrocities by pointing to others. This was not a state of “total war” and it was not part of a stratigic campaing. It was simply an act intended to kill as many as possible. The motivation was not based on any kind of honorable principle, but rather based entirely on the teachings of Islam, taken to the most fundimental and radical form. The US is primarily a non-muslim country and the superpower which was the most obvious target for an attack against non-muslims for the simple reason that they are “infidels” and thus as many should be killed as possible. The end goal is simply to slaughter all infidels who dare allow women rights, drink alcohol, sing and dance to music or do some other activity that the Islamists cannot handle the idea of.
Lets not forget that those who caused this and all those who supported them are the true evil. Evil might seem like a word that is a bit too subjective and even a bit emotional, but I can think of none better. They are evil like the Nazis, evil like the Stalinists, evil like Pol Pot and evil like every other regime founded on injustice and violence. They claim they are at war with the West and if that is the case, they can have it. Lets welcome war with them then, as this was an act of war. For the civillians who may be harmed in the cross-fire, there is only one to blame and that is the Islamic extremists who forced this to happen by their own attacks.
(And no, the Spanish Inquisition or any activities by Christians against others are not even worth bringing up here, they’re completely irrelevant. It has nothing to do with this. It was wrong too, but it’s sure not a current threat)
Seven years ago I was at a university and the day after the attacks I had class. The first class I had the teacher passed out a photocopy of an article that was entitled “Why do they hate us.” It was about all the things the US had done wrong in recent history and how we had caused such great suffering that middle easterners had almost no choice. She said she hoped there would be no retaliation for this and it would be a wakeup call for us to start being more peaceful. It was a taste of our own medicine. This was seconded by nearly everyone in the class.
Later in a history class someone mentioned that there had been shells fired at the capital of Afgahnistan, and that the claim was that it was rebble forces in Afgahnistan, a common occurance. Someone said “But you know that was really the US behind that. They’re just mad and taking it out on inocent people in Kabul.”
In all my classes, I recall being nearly the only one who thought that this event was something that should not be tolerated. Others said it was terrible but the general consensus was that it was caused by the US not being a responsible member of the international community. This was on September 12 2001.
I was called a monster when I suggested that if it could be verified that Afghanistan was involved in harboring those involved actively that the country should be subject to a nuclear bombardment. I still believe that the most appropriate action would have been a nuclear attack on all major centers in Afghanistan. Nuclear weapons are maintained for one reason: A deterrent. A deterrent cannot be useful unless it has teeth, that is, unless there is a willingness to use it if it is needed. Nuclear weapons that the US maintains simply imply “Do not attack us or you will be destroyed.”
The use of such weapons on an attacker is not immoral, even if it causes mass civillian casualties, because it is not the choice of the US to do so. It is an inevitable action initiated by an attack. Had the Soviet Union attacked the US during the cold war the US would have fired back and millions of Soviet civillians would have died. This would not have been immoral because it was the understood effect of an attack and thus it was brought on by the initiation of one. Al Queda and the Taliban are respobsibke for all retaliation that occured in response to their actions, just as the destruction of Dresden is ultimately the fault of the Nazi leadership.
But in any case, there’s been more anti-Americanism than I can remember since the attacks that day and I’m really pretty sick and tired of it. Al Queda and all those who support them are so much worse than the US on it’s worst day and worse than almost any any other group, save a few historic examples of tyrants, that they should be shown zero mercy. That’s not to say that those who have not been convicted deserve torture at Camp X-Ray, but no disagreements on policy should ever be used as an excuse to shift the blame for what happened on that horrible day.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Announcements, Culture, History, Misc, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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September 11th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Fighting terrorism is not war, any more than policing drug production is war. You’ll will occasionally need to borrow some of the capabilities of the millitary, but the military alone cannot prevent terrorism, nor strike effectively to eliminate it.
That is to say: outrage is fine, but direct it to effective steps, not merely to bloody revenge. If you want to hurt those who hurt you, make sure that you do not create a million more that want to hurt you. There may be a price too high for avoiding the chance of a repeat.
It’s a bit like the level of regulation that is sensible in the nuclear power field. There is such a thing as too much regulation, when it shuts down the industry and discards the benefits. In the same way an excessive response to terrorism may throw away other benefits, like travel freedom and cultural diversity, that you weren’t even thinking about when you pressed the button.
September 11th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I was in DC on September 11, 2001, and I remember the day well.
The overwhelming feeling was that this attack was unprovoked, and that there was no reason behind it. Too many people said it was because the terrorists hate our freedoms, whatever that means. Among my friends and coworkers, I was the only one that said it should not have been unexpected. The US is not innocent in meddling in world affairs.
Please note, I said some kind of attack should have been expected. Not warranted. Your professor put forth the idea that the US deserved to be attacked, much like an errant child deserves a spanking. Now that we have received our punishment, we learned our lesson, and we should never do anything bad again. And that kind of thinking is extremely dangerous.
There is a very large difference between taking a punch, and thinking that you deserve a punch and seeking one out. There are a lot of parallels between what is happening in the mideast, and what happened in 1930s Europe, as you pointed out. The rest of Europe had the philosophy that the conditions in Germany were the result of too stringent terms placed on Germany after WWI, and they would look the other way at Germany’s growing aggressiveness. Then when the Germans marched into the Rhineland, they met no opposition, because the feeling was that this transgression was somehow deserved. And, we all know the results.
In global diplomacy, sometimes might does make right. To do anything less is to risk national sovereignty.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Wasn’t fear of the Soviets a big motive behind appeasement of Hitler though? The Holodomor and Stalin’s Great Terror happened before the Munich Agreement, while almost all of Hitler’s crimes (even Kristallnacht) were still to come.
Also, I don’t believe that 9/11 was an attack perpetrated out of sheer hatred, but rather that it was the first phase in a grand plan – read Terrorist Strategy 101…
September 11th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Thanks for the reminder and I totally agree. I’m not going to try to get political (as in party or ideological about it), but I’ve always thought the same as you about the motivations for the attacks – it’s not so much that the terrorists resent our military power, or our money and capitalism. Instead, they hate and resent our individual freedoms, our freedom of (and from) religion, our tolerance for different points of view and different lifestyles, our freedom to express even unpopular (and sacrilegious) ideas in art, books, and movies. Above all, they resent the fact that all of these things that are antithetical both to their religious beliefs and their own power over their people continue to spread across the world – not by conquest and imperialism, but because they have proven successful and have survived head-to-head confrontations against older, competing systems. In general, it doesn’t take an invading army – just a semi-free market, some satellite TVs, and a few Internet connections.
The political irony in the U.S., at the risk of making some sweeping generalizations, is that the most liberal, academic, “peace loving” Americans who blame America for “causing” the attacks due to our past “sins” are probably the kind of people the terrorists would hate the most. After all, if an infidel is an infidel, isn’t one who pushes the notions that all religions can co-exist, that anyone can do or believe whatever they want, or that all religions are the same because God doesn’t exist a bigger and more alien threat to them than the Christians and armies they have fought for centuries?
September 11th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
George:
That was actually an intelligent, interesting, and very perceptive article. I am completely flabbergasted that it was published on The Daily Kos…
Seriously though, it does describe a pretty plausible scenario for Al Qaida motivations. If you take my references to “hate” out of my comment above, I think it is still valid in conjunction with the Strategy article.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
As despicable and unjustified as these attacks were, I have to agree with CBMTTek that the shouldn’t have been unexpected.
The U.S., in geopolitical terms, inherited the British Empire after the Second World War. It did so not out of a desire to dominate, or pick up the ‘White Man’s Burden,’ or for the prestige, or any other romantic notion, but only because it was necessary to maintain the most important aspect of this empire: open seas, and open trade, which the capitalist Free World depends on. That and keeping the East in check.
All First World nations benefit from the fact that this empire exists, if for no other reason than it is much more benign than the alternatives, and that absent it would create a power vacuum the filling of which would probably much worse than the current situation. More importantly however is the that we enjoy a high standard of living in the West because someone is minding the shop for us.
Of course, it was not posible to declare an empire in as direct a manner as the old European Powers did, but nevertheless an American Empire does exist, and with it all the problems that this entails. Korea, Vietnam and now Iraq are different only in name to any of the several colonial wars fought in the 19th and early 20th centuries by the European empires. The difference is that Americans don’t try and glorify them for the people back home. Within this context, the attack on 9/11 was just part of the price.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
DV82XL said:
In that case should it simply be accepted? Yes, there are people out to harm us, but in a war senerio the way you defend yourself is by destroying them. Japan, Germany, North Korea et all, they were enemies and the only way they were stopped was by beating them into submission with truly massive amounts of force.
When it came down to it they did not hate us in the end for what we did. They hated their leaders who initiated it. Especially for example Germany where the destruction brought down by the allies was seen as the fault of Hitler. This should be no different. If we had to take out half of Afghanistan to get Bin Ladin then it’s his fault for forcing us to take such steps.
Maybe it should have been expected. Maybe Pearl Harbor should have been expected. But the response should be the same “You have awoken the sleeping giant. You and your people now will bear his wrath”
September 11th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
George Carty said:
Well I’ve always seen Islam as being a completely dishonorable and revolting religion. Yes, I hate Islam. I hate the ideology. I hate Nazism and I hate Soviet communism and I hate the Barbary Pirate mentality and I even hate the US mentality that existed which condoned the use of slavery on a massive scale against innocent people for the color of their skin. I hate these mentalities because they are always unethical and always unjust and have no or nearly no redeeming qualities. This too is why I hate Islam. If you disagree that it’s violent at heart, I encourage you simply to read the Koran. The Koran makes the worst of the Bible seem tame. It reads as written as the ravings of a madman, written by someone like Charlie Manson.
No, I do not hate muslims, I hate that they have been infected with this cancer that is on humanity. As far as I’m concerned, all religions are a disease. Judism and Budism range in severity, but are generally like the flue. Christianity is pneumonia. Islam is ebola. You can’t get worse than Islam.
In the case of World War II one could easily say that allied bombardment made for more support of the war by the people of the Axis powers and in the short term it certainly did. The more Japan was bombed the more the people rallied behind the emperor… to a point.
Despite the fact that the Japanese were rallying behind the emperor and their tradition, he himself eventually had to ask them to surrender, although even before this there were factions turning against the government. The reason was that, despite taking the first two nuclear weapons and more firebombs than used in history, eventually the message became clear: “You cannot win and we will continue to open devastation and destruction on you until you surrender 100% No compromises. Surrender or we will continue to destroy everything you have and pulverize your country. You have no choice”
This is how you deal with these types.
Morality went out the window when they hit the US they declared total war and showed that they do not differentiate between civillian and military targets.
Now I’m not going to claim that “They” are any one country or group. “They” are a faction within a group, but our message should be the same: Anyone who supports this will die and any collateral damage it takes to get them is their fault. If they run into a village and everyone in that village dies, it is their fault for doing so. Therefore, do not support these people. Do not allow them near you. If there is someone who supports this, kill them. If you do not, we will and you will go with them too.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
While I agree with the reasoning that other commenters are presenting about the motivations of the individuals who carried out the attacks, I think we have to look higher up the chain for the motivation of those who convinced them to do it.
I think George’s link nails it. Bin Laden and his cohorts seek a return of the Caliphate. Furthermore, they seek to be at the head of it. They’re in it for money and power, and they think they can win, either by frightening their opponents into doing their bidding or by throwing their opponents into a state of disarray which renders them less effective on the local, national and global playing fields.
In this, they have certainly succeeded. We have a Department of Homeland Security which spends billions of dollars and captures enormous amounts of media attention, distracting us from other problems on our own doorstep. (I wonder whether the subprime mortgage crisis would have developed to the point that it did if we hadn’t been so distracted by OMG!terrorism.) This same Department has provided us with nothing more than “security theatre” which has done nothing to capture terrorists, but lots to anger ordinary citizens and leave people feeling less in control of their own lives. It doesn’t help that our legislature has effectively rolled over and allowed the executive to do, for the most part, as it pleases. In a hundred years, I think history will recall 9/11/01 as the moment when the United States gave up on the entire notion of “separation of powers” and our Great Experiment began drawing to a close.
At the same time, we are also overextending ourselves on the global front. Mobilizing the National Guard in support of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts has left us undefended in home-front situations which it is the Guard’s mission to address — the aftermath of Katrina being a prime example of this.
Lest I come off as a “9/11 troofer”, let me point out that I don’t think there was any grand conspiracy behind this or that anyone in the Bush administration was in league with anyone behind the attacks. If Bin Laden or someone in his power structure was clever enough to think “hm, if we strike a blow that makes Americans fear for their national security, their current administration is such that they’re likely to make a power grab that will destabilize the country”, then they were awfully smart. I think it more likely that they expected the US to roll over in the manner of, say, Spain, and the US executive department made a power grab because that’s the direction the country’s been going since Roosevelt. The fact that the power grab actually helps the terrorists is gravy for them.
It saddens me that the US has forgotten the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” The true tragedy of 9/11 is not those who have died as a result of it — here or in the Middle East — but what we as a nation are doing to the living.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
DV82XL said:
Al Queda sees the non-Muslim west as a monolith of evil. They see the US as the head, but they’d just as soon kill Brits of French.
Are you somehow saying that the fact that the US is the head of a quasi-empire as a reason for rolling with the punches and tolerating it? This incident was completely unjustified and even if it should be expected it should still be dealt with with the appropriate retaliation against anyone who was involved and any countries that supported it directly or indirectly.
Maybe there is something of an Empire, but that does not justify anything. If there are those who disagree they are free to employ diplomatic sanctions, boycotts all kinds of other things. I’d even go so far as to say that I’d not consider it terrorism to attack a military convoy engaging in activities they find offensive. 9/11 was not justified in any way. It wasn’t an act of war and was only an act of murder.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
George Carty said:
I somewhat agree with parts of that, but I find that to be really pretty much a call to throw down arms and try to take hits and not fight back. I think drbuzz0 has a point in that attacking and harming others will not necessarily make them hate you if it makes them realize that they are being attacked because someone provoked you and you otherwise would not be harmed, but that might be a propaganda thing.
I also think moral is a part of it. I mean by that that the terrorist factions are very much energized and helped with nations pull out troops or when they see that their attacks are hurting us and making us consider being less aggressive in rooting them out. The Isralies figured this out a while ago. If have some casualties, lets say in Afghanistan and the people see that this makes you withdraw more then they will continue to shoot at you and it gives them reason to keep going. If you take a hit and keep on going as hard as ever (or harder) then they will not continue because it is disheartening to see their efforts are for nil.
I think Iraq was a bad idea, but now that we’re there we have to make the stand that we win and not cower at each casuality. When you say “Oh my god we’ve lost 100″ then that makes them think “Oh good, this is working. If we take out another 100 then we’ll really be making progress.” But if you don’t meat loss with sadness but instead increased zeal then they will find that “We have blown up 50 car bombs and yet they are not seeming to be wavering”
People want to be on the winning side.
In Vietnam the US forgot how to fight a war because they were trying to win over people while fighting at the same time. You can’t do both.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
mlp said:
If I can take you back to the time shortly after the attack for a second, you might remember there was a time when we had just invaded Afghanistan that Bin Laden seemed resigned to death and he said he hoped his followers would continue. Also, we had some very good momentum and it seemed like the beginning of the end for Al Queda. I remember this as I had some involvement in the support.
Iraq was a distraction but that’s not the real problem so much as it was a loss of resolve and the willingness to not see it to its end. The grab for power is not the real problem either. Bush’s leadership has been crappy in every juncture but the real problem is everyone seems to be so upset about bush that they think Al Queda is the good guys and they hate their own country. They hate the military and they think Bush is worse than Bin Laden. That’s insulting. Fine, oppose the Bush policy, but that’s not who the real enemy was. You’re confusing tactical disagreement with being the enemy.
You know why they attacked? They thought that it would give a message that they can hurt us and we’d pull a Spain and say “Oh oh we’re sorry” and back down. That’s what Tojo thought in 1945. He found out that when you hurt the US they don’t get sad but they get really angry and they want blood. The coward tried to kill himself and failed when this happened and he realized he had just sewn the seeds of his own undoing.
Everyone here seems to think that being gentle and trying to win hearts and minds is the way to do it. People are too smart to know when you’re trying to buy their loyalty. What is more important is winning because the population is not going to back a loser forever.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Q said:
Again, though — follow the money. Why are we fighting in the Middle East? Because for the last forty years or so, the tenuous balance of power there has been a balance that allowed us to buy energy more cheaply than we could produce it ourselves. Note that every time a Middle Eastern nation has tried to expand its borders, we’ve been right there to put a stop to that — cf. Iran during the Reagan years and Iraq during GHW Bush. Maintaining the status quo in the Middle East has made it possible for quite a lot of people to keep making money the way they have been for several decades, even if that means keeping the US dependent on an incredibly fractious and unstable area.
Yes, the people who think we went to war in Iraq to take their oil from them are idiots. We’d much rather buy it on the cheap. When drilling companies have to compete on the open market, that keeps prices low for customers like us. Consolidation among providers means they can start jacking prices (growing up, I frequently heard my dad, the now-retired Exxon chemical engineer, complaining about OPEC price manipulation) and hit us in the pocketbook, so it’s been in our best interest — given the sheer size of our energy deficit — to keep that competition strong.
The bitterest pill to swallow in all of this is that we could have weaned ourself off of Middle Eastern oil almost completely if we’d sucked it up and gone for nuclear power. I’d be delighted if it were possible for us to say “Screw you guys, you can go fight for as much barren desert as you want. We’re going to go buy what little oil we need anymore from Canada and Venezuela. Give us a call if you ever get your **** together.” Rather than “taking hits and not fighting back”, I see that as shoring up our own system and fighting back in the way it hurts them most — economically.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
mlp said:
No. No it’s not. It’s the people who died in an unjust and inexcusable attack and it’s the fact that we have not taken enough of a stand to stop it happening again.
In don’t like Bush either and I don’t like what he has done to constitutional rights, but I realize that is not the same issue.
Are we overextended maybe, but you don’t go to a war you don’t intend to win. I know you’re going to say this is not a war, and you can call it what you want. I just want to win.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
PO Gomez said:
Oh, I agree with you completely. However, I think a more effective strategy would be to put ourselves into a situation where we no longer need Middle Eastern oil to operate, and then let them deal with the consequences of losing their biggest buyers. You know what Saudi Arabia’s biggest exports were before the oil boom? Horses and dates. Good luck to anyone trying to be a global power with that as the basis of their economy.
Unfortunately, we’ve been lured into a war of attrition where the enemy has the home turf, and we’re not looking at how we could win this thing by instead waging a war of resources.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
mlp said:
Ah I see. Bad foreign policy and overextending means we should roll over and cry. If that’s the case then sorry sorry sorry that we’ve been so bad. What if we are using too much of their oil? They have made huge profits over it for one thing.
You don’t seen to understand that fighting for our allies (Kuwait or Saudi Arabia) when someone grabs their borders is one thing and in hindsight maybe we should have never been involved there. That’s not the point you just want to change the past. You really think we should make up for too much action in the past by rolling over and taking this? No, nobody should take this **** without going ape**** on those who did it.
Let me ask you what you would do if someone shot you with a gun but didn’t kill you? lets say you were walking in an alley and someone sneaks up and shoots you in the knee. Now lets say you just happened to have an M-16 under your jacket? What do you do? Do you say “Oh I’m sorry I shouldn’t have been in this alley to begin with so please don’t shoot me again” and hope that they won’t shoot you again?
I know if it were me I wouldn’t care if I didn’t belong in that alley, I’d open up on them with the M-16 and no court would consider me a murder for that.
Forget about Iraq for a second. Lets consider the Afghanistan actions that have pushed the Taliban out of power and the fact that our forces and those allied with us have captured the higher up leaders. I know we don’t have Bin Laden and I don’t buy into the fact that if we killed him he’d be a martyr.
You know that if we don’t answer this then next time someone disagrees with us it will happen. Spain showed that they have no spine. Guess what will happen if they try to go do something and someone doesn’t like it? They’ll get hit with another bomb because they proved that’s how you can stop them.,
September 11th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
PO Gomez said:
Dead people are dead. It sucks, but to me it sucks worse that the survivors are marching forward into a future that many of the dead would not have wanted to live in.
PO Gomez said:
I certainly agree that we haven’t taken enough of a stand to stop it happening again. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have the ground resources to make that happen, unless we reinstitute the draft — we’re overextended as it is. I’d rather not see that happen. We could just nuke them into the stone age, but that cuts off the resources which, currently, we can’t keep going without.
This is why I favour total economic war. Bin Laden wants to control Middle Eastern oil? Fine. Then let’s shore up our energy reserves and give him no buyers.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
mlp said:
You’re right in so far as being dependent on the Middle East means we will be in a bad place because the Middle east is an area of war and conflict. It has been for centuries and it’s in their culture and there are distinct groups there that have been fighting for their whole history. Also, they’re all rich now. You took a stone-aged society and brought them into the modern world overnight and they don’t know how to handle it.
If you want to depend on the middle east then you are going to need to go to war and often because the middle east is so unstable that your supply will be choked off if you don’t keep going in to make sure it doesn’t. If we didn’t go to war in 1991, then Saddam would have disrupted the supply in Kuwait and it could spill over to Saudi Arabia and so we had to. You can say it was not our war, but we HAD to or we would have been up **** creek and so would every other modern oil-hungry country.
You have to realize that this will never change until it becomes legal to use domestic sources and offshore drilling is illegal. Uranium mines are illegal. New power plants are illegal. What other option do we have if you’re not willing to change this?
September 11th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
PO Gomez said:
Now wait just a minute here. Where are you reading that in anything I’ve said?
PO Gomez said:
And they’re counting on continuing to do so. If for one second they thought that those profits were likely to dry up, they’d change their tune faster than you could blink.
PO Gomez said:
Not in the slightest. I think we should recognise that we didn’t do ourselves any favours by betting the house on an unstable political situation whose key players are zealots and madmen, and that trying to preserve any kind of stability there is a loser’s game. The fact that our energy needs rely far too much on oil provided by a fractious, unstable region is of direct threat to our national security. I advocate switching to nuclear as fast as our construction industry can roll out the concrete and steel to do it, thereby placing ourselves in a far more secure position.
Or, to put it metaphorically: We started bleeding out through the stomach back in the ’70s. The fact that we’ve been punched in the face is distracting us from patching up the hole in our guts.
Regarding your M-16 question — I’m ex-Army, a member of the JPFO, and I carry whenever it’s legal for me to do so.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
mlp said:
The draft does not work as much as you might think. You can draft people but it’s too easy to get out of and even if not, then you have ton ask yourself what kind of a soldier or sailor someone will be if they are not really wanting to do it. You really need to have a mentality that makes people join. After 9/11 we had a greater influx than ever before. In WWII it was different then with the draft because most of those drafted were willing to go because the mentality was different and it was seen as necessary, which was the same way it was briefly after 9/11.
You know when D-day was, though? 1944. The US did not fight in a major capacity that it would in 1942. It takes a lot of time to make a military from a draft. You can’t draft someone and put them in combat. That will not work and these days it is worse. You need time to get the system going and then you need time to train and qualify everyone and put the units together. If we started drafting today it would be at least a year before the first candidates were out fighting and maybe more. Even the infentry now has to know how to work secure communications, night vision. It’s a big deal to turn a civ into a fighter.
Draft is not as helpful as everyone thinks.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Chem Geek Gregor said:
No I was not in any suggesting that America should roll with the punch – only that if you are going to have an empire, you have to expect that you are going to be a target. That this group could commandeer four civil aircraft and pull this attack off without being challenged by anybody but a group of passengers in one of the planes is quite frankly a disgrace. It’s not as if aviation wasn’t recognized as being vulnerable, and the Israelis have shown that you can secure that mode of transportation very efficiently without causing much delay or trouble to the passengers.
I mean it had to be clear beforehand that there were elements that wished America harm.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
PO Gomez said:
Trust me, if I had the power to change just one aspect of US domestic policy, it would be this. America, and the West as a whole, are in desperate need of modern nuclear power plants which reprocess their fuel. We have the designs. We know they work. We’re just not using them, and this is retarded.
Energy independence gives “Atoms for Peace” a whole new meaning.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
mlp said:
I don’t think most people really understand the whole thing is not directly but definitely indirectly connected to the fact that the middle east is a very unstable place and we can’t escape conflict with them until we stop relying on them. It is like being on drugs. When you are on drugs you buy from dealers and when you start down that road you always end up in danger because drug dealers are not the kind of people you want in your life. Same thing with oil. Oil comes from countries we’d be better off just turbing our back on.
I don’t know that would stop terrorism completely though at this point because radical Islam does indeed want to kill non Muslims but at least it would put some distance between the two, but nobody wants to stop oil dependence with something like nuclear. It is not politically possible. People want wind. Wind is popular. It does not matter that it will not work, because there are big groups saying it will.
You have to change that.
The biggest danger IMHO, is what will happen if China and India and other countries do allow nuclear and the US does not allow for more? In 20 years, we still fight for oil and choke on coal and we could loose our place in the world to those smart enough to gi nuclear.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
There is so much anti-americanism in the world since 9/11 I think that it may have been an excuse for other nations to hate the US. There’s probably more hate inside the US and also in Europe so much so that people seem to think the US is 100% against the common good and worse than the soviets or Al Queda. Seriously I believe most in Europe consider the US the enemy and will do anything to try to hurt the US or encourage attacks indirectly.
Sometimes I think that if the world hates the US and thinks the US is only hurting them and causing injustice then we should say fine and stop helping them out ever. I think the US should stop all forign aid to european countries and break out of NATO and at the same time refuse to sell food to them and refuse to even allow them to fly over our territory or go in our waters.
That would be within our rights, and if they believe we’re not their friend, we should stop treating them with any politeness and see how well they can do when we start doing everything short of war to make their lives hell. Don’t they insist we do anyway? Well then they can see what it would be like if we actually did.
Lets see if they come crying back then. Why would any person be polite or show anything to people who hate them so much? Why would a country be any different? I mean it might hurt us too, but why should we deal with countries that hate us? Pretend they’re our friends?
September 11th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Not all countries hate the US. For one thing, Israel and also…. uh… um…. well the UK doesn’t hate the US, they just dislike the US and… uh… Did I already say Israel? Uh… Taiwan, Poland. Maybe Ireland? I’m not sure about that one though.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Magic Donuts said:
I’d add Nepal, Jamaica, and (maybe) Japan. That’s all I can think of.
Personally, considering how much the world is against the US, which I do partially blame on Bush, I’d like to go back to an isolationist policy. Everyone hates us so much we ought to stop extending them the courtiers we offer. For example, I recently read that less than 50% of international internet traffic is routed through the US. I say, fine, but lets see how they like a 40% reduction in bandwidth.
Being isolationist would require more domestic capabilities (it would take a while to get off of our addiction to China), but trade is one thing. We can trade as long as we never offer those that hate us any kind of freebies or any kind of courtosy that you know they are completely ungrateful for.
Oh what’s that? You want to fly from Paris to Tokyo and the weather is bad over China so you want to fly over the US? Sorry, France. You hate us so goddamned much no airspace rights for you! What’s that Germany? You’d like to refuel a ship in a US port? I thought you hated us. Sorry, Germany. Get the hell out of our waters.
It’s not that I think we need to be a douchebag, but everyone seems to think we are so why should we cater to them? Why should we go out of our way even a tiny amount for a population of sworn america-haters?
September 11th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Not all Canadians hate the US, it’s actually kind of hard to because the border is so open and there’s such exchange it’s hard to tell sometimes who might be an American. Actually, it’s always hard to tell when you’re near the border.
Seriously though, I think “Terrorist Strategy 101…” is bull**** because it implies that the best thing to do is roll over. I do think PO has a point that you need to fight hard and fight to win. I’d like to add one more thing though: Fight hard, yes. But also pick your fights hard. In other words, don’t fight when you don’t have to, but when you do, fight hard.
Bush’s leadership might not be the best, although I was pretty afraid that Kerry would be elected because he seemed like a complete pushover. I don’t know though, and maybe I should stay out because I’m on the sidelines.
Also, Germany and France don’t hate the US. They hate everyone. It’s part of the European culture.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
When I said that Terrorist Strategy Article was interesting, I should also have included the disclaimed that I didn’t agree with the “attacking them back is just playing into their hands” part of it.
Ah, the mention of John Kerry reminded me that it’s been years since I’ve heard the term “cheese eating surrender monkeys”!
September 11th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
I think that the US response in the months straight after 9/11 was just right. The US destroyed the Taliban regime with minimal use of it’s own forces and convinced a lot of other regimes that harboring anti US terrorists is a BAD IDEA. The whole world supported their actions 100% percent, even Russia and China. They should have left it at that. There were plenty of warlords in Afghanistan that would have been happy running the place for their own profit and being very careful not to offend the US and endanger their wealth.
If the US had just smashed the Taliban and left Afghanistan to it’s own devices, the world would still be very careful about offending the US.
But then Bush decided to impose democracy in the country even though it’s directly against their religion and culture, in the process assuming the role of Hated Infidel occupier, while directly resurrecting the Taliban as the opposition to said Hated Infidel occupier.
Then came Bush’s criminal invasion of Iraq, a country that:
1 – was hated by Al Quida(Bin Laden had called for Saddam’s death because he clamped down on Islam since it threatened his power)
2 – Did not pose any threat whatsoever to America(And coincidentally this same WMD bull**** is now being throw against Iran with exactly the same ammount of evidence)
3 – All of Saddams atrocities were done with full US aproval and sometimes active support, because he was a useful puppet against Iran.
Now, 5 years into the (so far) $3 Trillion war:
1 – The US economy is in total shambles from dollar devaluation and endless Government borrowing.
2 – New Orleans is still hasn’t been rebuilt after the levees failed when the money for their maintanance was diverted to Iraq.
3 – China is beginning to overtake the US in science, since US science funding is diverted to Iraq.
4 – The US army is so overstretched and worn out that they can’t even present a credible threat to defend their puppets/alies in Georgia.
Now Bush wants to go out with a bang(quite literally) and attack Iran before he leaves office. How many American families will freeze if oil hits $400/$500/bbl this winter with an Iran war.(I don’t think that the US can prevent hidden Iranian missiles hitting tankers, refineries and oil terminal throughout the gulf and the Iranians have explicitly stated that this will be their main deterrent)
September 11th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Don’t you wish anyone in Washington or, hell, any member of the public had the balls to do this. I have been an adamant supporter of returning to an isolationist foreign policy for a long time. But alas, it’s not going to happen. I put all the blame on image-driven society that puts your ‘cred’ before anything else. For some reason, people feel that having the U.S. be “liked” by other nations is important. This is such a crock of sh@t. It drives the appeasement mentality in this country, and the rest of the Western nations seem to suffer from a case of the same.
Take it or leave it. It’s a business deal.
Chem Geek Gregor said:
September 11th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
CMPalmer said:
At the Kerry nomination, I remember just thinking “This is the best you can do to oppose Bush?”
I’m glad I was not presented with the choice as US citizens were. They had to choose to elect bush again or to vote for… John Kerry. I mean, they called him a ‘flip flopper’ but there was definitely something to that. He never took a firm position and.. the man seemed to have no clue what he actually was hoping to do.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
metatron said:
Well, I’d have to say I’d support anyone who takes out Iran in any way shape or form. Now they scare me. I’d rather see an international coalition, but at this point I’d pat North Korea on the back if they nuked Iran. Now there’s a country that just plain should not be allowed to be.
September 11th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
metatron said:
I always thought the takeover of Afghanistan was masterful and brilliantly successful. The fact that the US had to ally with the factions of the Afghan resistance is a weak point and it means that it will be harder to keep a hold on the situation. The Afgahn situation is a big compromise and not 100% in any way. It’s a psuedo-democracy that is going to require some coaxing to assure that those who control regions stay in line.
Lets remember something here: Afghanistan can’t be conquered by raw force from an outsider. It does not work that way. Oh sure, we’d all love to just have a conventional war and then have a new coherent government and not have to make deals with the devil. This is the country that brought the soviet union to it’s knees.
Played by their rules and exploited their weaknesses and won. Yes, it involved some enemy-of-my-enemy logic, but had we done it like you suggest it’d be the Soviet invasion all over again.
September 11th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Yes, it was actually pretty impressive how well the initial Afghanistan campaign went and also how it’s been relatively well handled. I’d say it was just an example of good tactics and a good plan to understand the culture and country and work with what you have.
As for the hatred of the US, I guess it exists in the UK, but don’t feel bad. We’re self-loathing too. The UK generally feels that we’re not appeasing enough and we should cry about how bad we are. We also think that the US and any other country who has generally been seen as an ally is bad and any group that hates us or opposes Western society is the good guys. Iran, the PLO, Greenpeace – they’re all the freedom fighters. The US, UK, EU.. we’re bad and we should be sorry for all we did to the world.
September 11th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I am closing this post to further comments. This is unusual and I don’t normally do this. It’s not that I have any problem with what has been said here. Everyone has expressed their opinions in a relatively somewhat civil manner.
However, this kind of thing is not the primary topic of this blog. I just felt like mentioning it today and as the blog owner, I’d rather focus on other things and not really have to keep revisiting this horrible tragedy in our recent history or all the conflict it has caused.
Feel free to discuss this elsewhere, but lets get back on focus to other topics that have more to do with “bad science” and not just international politics and horrible tragedies.