It ain't diplomacy, it's war. If we can make peace with the Taliban, that's fine, the Pashtun aren't going anywhere. But we won't make peace with ISIS or Al Quida, not ever.
Muslims were consistently invading the west, Africa and Asia throughout history when they were the strongest global powers, it's not all about victimhood. There's no reason to believe that most supporters of Islamic terror would transform into secular democrats if the US suddenly disappeared. I personally agree that the US should limit its actions on foreign soil, but there are times where there was simply no rational choice. Not retaliating against the Taliban for sheltering Bin Laden would have meant open season on US civilians who refuse to defend themselves. Realistically, such retaliation hasn't been sufficient to date because it bypasses the Taliban and Al Qaeda's support base in Pakistan. I think there are options other than bombing, like not trading with anyone who trades with such pricks, and not paying them billions of dollars every year to openly defecate all over western values while faking anti-terror cooperation. But when 3000 Americans are killed by unapologetic terrorists and those terrorists continue receiving support from a semi-hostile nuclear power, the response has to be serious and unacceptably painful and debilitating for the perpetrators. Given that nothing anywhere close to the scale of the 9/11 attacks has occurred in the Americas or Europe since then, it seems that at least some element of western policy has been effective. Russia brutalizes Muslims to a degree the US has never even dreamt of and yet they haven't had a 9/11 either, nor anything else even remotely proportional to the number of innocent people they routinely and proudly kill. I personally prefer the sanctions route, isolating nations like Pakistan from the rest of the globe and letting them crumble to dust. Militarily I think the US should simply annex, depopulate and settle pieces of foreign territory every time residents of an aggressor nation are freely permitted to make war on residents of yours without provocation, rather than seeking prolonged occupations of hostile uncooperative populations. Most of the time, that's what your enemies hypocritically wish to do to you, so you ought to deprive them of resources for their would-be empires. War is war, what would you have liked the US to do after 9/11? What should they have done after Pearl Harbor?
Not really. our posts do not exist in a vaccum. spiders colonialist view point is fairly well documented. Spider defends violence against nonwhite people he'd never accept against someone who is white.
considering the Us's tendencies to go on random military adventures do you really think it helps your argument to conflate terrorism and warfare? are you forgetting christianity was being spread by the sword when they were the preeminent powers as well become secular democrats no. nor did i ever say they would. but a large motivating part is western aggression, colonialism, and the west general attitude it can do whatever it wants. so if the Us went poof theyd tampt it down. true but this was not true in this case. so you think doing exactly what they wanted is somehow a win for us? bullshit all the response has o do is be smart and effective. invading afghanistan was neither. that wishful thinking. the death toll for 9/11 was sheer dumb luck. russia's corporation don't manage to dominate in foreign countries. your ignoring the fact russia was most of these countries benefactor during the cold war while the Us and britain were trying to topple the countries democratically elected leaders. thats how iran got so islamic. So you want to take steps that would create more terrorists and war crimes. its a good thing your not making policy. again you conflate terrorism and warfare. i would have preferred to step up police and intelligence work and not invaded a mountainous country that's entire history has revolved about fighting invaders. for pearl harbor exactly what we did do minus the nuclear bombings. there is a time for warfare to be used as a solution but as a last resort and intelligently. using it as a first resort and without forethought just seems stupid to me.
That's not empathy. That's simply understanding root causes. Empathy is to feel for them. It's an emotion.[/QUOTE] like i said you clearly didn't read the link
since people seem not to actually understand what empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy#note-1
Wouldn't they have to tell me? Is your point that I should ignore terrorism until it affects me personally?
I know I know Lets terrorize the terrorists! Yeh--------------that ought to work.........................
Compared to other nations, the US doesn't seem to have much of a tendency to go on random military adventures. Iraq and Vietnam are the only major cases I can think of in the last 5 decades where the US didn't have a pressing strategic interest at stake. By the numbers, in the last decade nearly all deaths in war and occupation have been attributed to nations such as Russia, China, Iran and their allies. Even in Iraq, one can argue that Iran and Syria have contributed to just as many deaths as the US with their own sectarian interventions. So I stand by my point, the US isn't the only aggressor in town and never was, yet you seek to hold it uniquely accountable for global conflicts. I never denied that Christians have their own colonial history to account for, only that they are in no way unique in this regard and do not owe some historic debt to humanity which doesn't apply to other major civilizations. Muslim imperialists have exhibited the exact same behaviours and attitudes for the last 1400 years. Post-Roman Europe only became a global power 500 years ago, the US has only existed for roughly 250. I don't doubt that US and European arrogance inflames those attitudes, but they existed long before the modern concept of western civilization was ever conceived. The people who seek wars with America and its allies aren't entitled to unconditional sympathy. Also, being from one part of the middle east doesn't earn one some special privilege to intervene in a completely different part of the middle east and call it a "domestic issue". Iranians are as foreign to Iraq as are Americans, unless indigenous Iraqis almost universally say otherwise. Al Qaeda didn't want the US to occupy Afghanistan and cause thousands of terrorist casualties. They wanted America to flee the middle east in panic, abandon various minorities to the ensuing Muslim massacres, and for American soldiers to die by the millions in resisting these ambitions. Yes they wanted to disrupt American society, make it less democratic and so on, but those goals were complementary to the overall objective of forcing the US and Europe out of the middle east so that infidels can be freely slaughtered, as they do in practically every country where a western presence isn't felt. Why is it a bad idea to destroy a regime that permits people to use its soil to recruit, plan and organize for operations to blow you up? You'd prefer to see Bin Laden acquitted by a Taliban "Islamic trial" and then go on with life as usual until the next attack? It's dumb luck that the death toll didn't hit 20,000+ as was initially speculated after the attacks. So that's your solution when extremists strike at your country from a foreign safe haven and kill thousands, just write it off as a lucky shot and go back to life as usual? And it's America's fault that American corporations do? People have the right to boycott products from countries they don't want to do business with. Pakistanis should stop drinking Pepsi and pirating American movies if they hate America so much. You're ignoring the fact that the Cold War ended almost 30 years ago, and Russia has killed far more Muslims than the US and Europe combined during that time and ever since. Most conflicts in human history have only ended when one side or the other found itself deprived of the territory and resources needed to continue their war. You're not going to defeat Islamic terrorism by giving it free reign to abuse other cultures and belief systems at will, so you might as well take away their access to resources and piss them off accordingly. If Al Qaeda is free to operate against the US from Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere in the middle east and Africa, with nothing to worry about on their own home front, then you will need an authoritarian police state to protect you from them. Did you support Trump's attempt to ban Muslims from visiting or emigrating to the US? Afghanistan's history has not revolved around fighting invaders. It revolved around invading Mongol savages raping and pillaging the population, then converting to Islam and settling down to complain about other people getting involved in the region. Mountain people can't wage aggression and then resist the retaliation if their supporters are no longer permitted to live in said mountains. Don't act like the US is powerless to protect itself by any means necessary, because that's a silly baseless notion. If you're willing to reward Al Qaeda and its supporters for killing 3000 Americans, what would have been wrong with letting Japan take China and the Philippines, signing an armistice and calling it a day? If you were paying attention at the time, you might recall that many years ago, former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf claimed that George W. threatened to bomb Pakistan to smithereens if it failed to cooperate with the post-9/11 anti-terror campaign. How exactly do you think that conversation went down? "Mr. Bush, I want to be the first to tell you that we have nothing but the deepest regrets and sympathy over the tragic events in New York City. We pledge to you nothing less than our full cooperation to hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice, whether they be in Afghanistan, Pakistan or even the Moon!" "Heh heh heh, well shucks there Pervo, that's mighty kind of y'all. Here I was thinking I'd need to threaten bombs on Islamabad, but I guess we can shelve that for now." Yeah I agree with you that war should only be used as a last resort in life or death situations, I just don't think you adequately comprehend the Taliban's lack of inclination to accept any of the alternatives. That's exactly what you advocate for whenever Russia bombs hospitals in Syria (with the added presumption that everyone inside the hospitals is a terrorist), so why wouldn't you want your own country to do the same? But you got me all wrong, I think when negotiations fail to produce a reasonable outcome, the only viable alternative is to commission Paul McCartney to write love poetry, and implement a Jizya tax on Americans to finance more Wahhabi schools and summer camps. Or you can economically and militarily deprive terrorists and their supporters of the resources they use to wage war, and leave it to them to worry about whether they are or aren't terrorized by that prospect.
Uh, you might want to rethink that one. In addition to noticing that Vietnam, and especially Iraq, are kind of large - elephants in the room, if we are talking modern war - note that pressing "strategic interest" was invoked in both. In the second place, "strategic interest" is no fucking excuse - even a real one. Start with South and Central America. Compare US behavior in that arena with China's or Russia's (or anyone's, except Israel's) in comparable - distance, history, strategic interest - situations. Iraq was the aggressor - under Saddam, under the US, both. Iran has very little modern history of aggression. By your justifications of American aggression, Iran would be justified in doing anything within its military power to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the US - with Chinese and Russian backing, if they were willing. That would include invading Israel with tanks and air bombardment, reducing Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to rubble, occupying the country, making international refugees of a third of its population, and installing an Iranian ally as "temporary" ruler while overseeing the transition to true democratic government. Bagrams and the like optional accessories, for interrogation of Israeli terrorism suspects. The authoritarian police state we are drifting into is at least partly a consequence of the over-militarized response to AQ's terrorism. Hyping up the military and launching wars all over the place is not the historically recommended way of avoiding authoritarian home rule. Economically and diplomatically, would be the first choice of sane people.
Starting with Erdogan or Netanyahu or bin Salman - or is there somebody else more significant we should focus on? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/world/middleeast/iran-parliament-attack-khomeini-mausoleum.html The MEK has been protected and supported by the US from the '92 Iraq War until now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Mujahedin_of_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_state-sponsored_terrorism Pot confronts kettle: https://worldisraelnews.com/erdogan-continues-anti-israel-rant-netanyahu-terrorist/ Historical background https://mondoweiss.net/2018/05/remarkable-disappearing-terrorism/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
Sometimes we support terrorists who fight other terrorists. God help me if I ever have to make such a difficult decision. I'm no fan of Bibi either, but Israel has been a useful ally against Russia, and Putin is exponentially worse.
So does everyone else. Just ask them. Some - such as Iran - have a better claim to that status than others.
