Your War on Terror: The Terrorists Are Winning

No, I mean that because you make it sound like the terrorists won the war in the title, that gathers everyone's interest because, well, the sounds of a bunch of cavemen with ak's and rpg's winning any war is ridiculous.

Then you twist it around to make the US into the terrorists, which of course can lead to her allies, like say, Israel?


Which of course provokes an incredibly shortsighted yet brutal counter argument which of course your perfectly adept to counter because we all know that if we asked you about US/Israeli atrocities you could list off ten examples off the top of your head without even trying.

So it may have been unintentional, but it really was a clever troll.

A troll is simply leading someone else into a situation they are not only completely unprepared for (ie, making someone think they are arguing that terrorist could never win a war to actually arguing about western terror which they aren't prepared for).

I haven't even read any of the posts here, so please try and convince me this isn't the direction that this thread is going in.

Kudoos to you sam, although kinda funny that after 10 pages of argument it wasn't until I pointed out the nature of this thread that you got reported as a troll.

Although the difference between you and a real troll sam is that a troll tries to make the other person look and feel like a moron, you try and win an argument. All your doing is stacking the odds in your favor.

 

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While I will readily agree that the US has made a superb mess of things, often involving loads of blood and death, the only way things change significantly is with blood and death.

My personal belief is that stagnation is worse then change, and so long as things are changing then the world is at least headed somewhere.

The US may be screwing stuff up, but at least they do a good job off stirring up everything.

 

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I think it's difficult to "argue" the point due to rather imprecise definitions. With respect to "terrorism," it's complicated enough--and while we are primarily discussing global terrorism here, it's even more convoluted with respect to "domestic terrorism," which for all practical purposes remains essentially un-defined--but "total war" is even more vague. Looking to wikipedia again for a fairly succinct definition, we get this:

"Complete mobilization." What's that? Obviously, that doesn't mean that everyone is armed and active, but should we include complicity via economic support (i.e., paying taxes)?

When "collateral damage" becomes so, uh, significant and the numbers just keep adding up, should we perceive that as treating civilians as "fair game"? I mean, for the most part we don't specifically target civilians; nevertheless, it doesn't seem that we really make an extraordinary effort to avoid killing civilians either.

And I think the "guns vs. butter issues" are at least somewhat relevant here--again, there is the matter of complicity: one can complain and condemn the U.S. for it's military ventures, and it's flagrant neglect of domestic concerns in favor of such ventures, but so long as one continues to provide support economically (via taxes, etc.) such airing of grievances simply falls on deaf ears. Experience has taught me that, while it may be fun and psychologically gratifying to complain and condemn, nothing ever gets accomplished by complaining.

I think "indirect" deaths can very easily be construed as employment of terror: when it becomes apparent to a population that while they may not be targeted directly, hardly anyone is taking great pains to ensure that they are not "indirectly" targeted, they might rightly feel threatened and intimidated by this revelation.

I'm personally of the opinion that if,say, a family's home is wrongfully foreclosed upon, and they resist when the authorities come to evict them, said family could make a compelling argument that they were simply "fighting terrorism."

Yeah, after I had posted that I realized that my sarcasm mightn't be so apparent. I was trying to make a little joke about "prevention" and "preparedness."

Of course, the trend of the past decade is to run public schools like corporations--it seems like we could make great strides in improving health care were we to run our medical system like we do the military.

 

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I think the premise of Tiassa's thread is that if Americans destroy their civil liberties, their economy and their principles while killing people half a world away in mud huts for their resources, or because they don't like their turbans or lifestyle, then they have pretty much lost the war on terror because well, they are afraid - so the terrorists have won.

Lets hope you feel the same way when your medicare and social security pays for these adventures.

 

Again, the definitive prototype is WWII. Huge segment of fighting-age males sent into battles, remaining economy mostly devoted to support of that, government spending all its resources on the war, etc. It means that everything being done in the country is basically supporting the war - not just in the tangential sense of paying taxes, but in the sense that society is mobilized to contribute directly. I don't think this term is particularly difficult to define.

You include working in factories to make war munitions, and that sort of thing. Paying taxes is just your regular stuff - if you're going to count that as "total war," then there has never been any such thing as a "civilian," and never will be.

Not unless you want to eliminate the deliberate killing of civilians as a war crime. You can have a regular war, and just be a criminal about it - we shouldn't excuse that by relabelling the effort as a total war. For one thing, you can't legitimately claim to be in a total war that erases the distinction between combatant and civilian, unless said civilians are actually mobilized to directly support the war effort. I don't see any serious grounds to claim that either the USA nor Afghanistan nor Iraq or whatever are so mobilized.

Guess that depends on what you consider "extraordinary," and what your reading of just war theory would support. The usual laws of war do allow one to kill civilians on purpose (not actually target them, but do things that have an expected loss of civilian life associated with them) - but there needs to be a legitimate military justification that is proportional to such.

Uh, my understanding of "indirect deaths" was that it referred to second-order effects like the rise of insurgency or internecine warfare, or degradation in the economy, health care systems, etc. Not just straight-up collateral damage - those are direct deaths, if "untargetted" ones.

How is a mistaken foreclosure an act of political terror? I don't get it.

 

Except that the point of terrorism isn't just to instill fear, as such. The fear is supposed to motivate the target to take some political action that the perpetrator wants. And I don't see any reason to think that Al Qaeda gives two shits about American civil liberties or principles. I guess they'd like to see the economy go down the tubes, as this would imply a dimunition in American influence in their areas. But it's not really the wars that are fucking up the economy - it's the 30 years of Reaganomics.

Again, that stuff isn't going to pay for the wars - it's going to pay for bank bail-outs and tax cuts for billionaires and loopy deregulation efforts and clean-ups of nasty environmental disasters.

There's a reason that the same right-wingers pushing these economic policies are so keen on the War on Terror - foreign threats are a great distraction from their nefarious domestic program.

 

You used that again, SAM? *rolls eyes*

What's up with the "Latino" part of the pie chart, eh?

They blow up $hit because they are Latino?

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I was surprised by that as well - the categorisation itself is so diverse, religion politics and ethnicity [wth are "others"?] but it seems to me that Latinos need more lobbies.

 

I would not define the nuclear attacks on Japan as terrorism, in spite of the fact that they were deliberately designed to kill as many Japanese people as possible. The nature of the war was existential at that point. Ending it was not just a political imperative, as if the president were worried that he might not get re-elected if things went bad. How much longer could all the soldiers and the American public keep up a total war, on an industrial scale never before imagined? Millions of Americans and their European allies were dead, most as a direct result of Japan, and many others indirectly to the extent that Japan forced a second front in the war. Our notions of what constitutes moral action can change with the situation. The moral thing is to end total war as quickly as possible.

 

There you go. Now it's only rational to do the same to the ones doing such nefarious things now. But politically correct multi-culturalists are not rational; so they refuse to connect the dots when it comes to Muslims.

 

Surely your attention span isn't so short you can't read a full sentence. I specifically said (as you in fact quoted me) that in that particular post before (my "P.S.") I neglected to mention that. There were four posts involved:

1) the main post

2) the follow-up post

3) the P.S.

4) the P.P.S.

In #1, I mentioned that fact about the EU limitation of the graph, but only in passing.

In #2, in crucially addressing your points in more detail where it would have been beneficial to remind you of the EU limitation of the graph, I forgot to mention it in my list.

In the P.S., I again neglected to mention it.

Finally, in the P.P.S., I remembered to remind you of it; for it's an important feature of my argument in #2.

You should be a stand-up comedian. I'm thinking Mort Sahl meets Whoopie Goldberg and goes to bed with Noam Chomsky....

 

So basically Americans are working for al Qaeda?

Then everybody is winning, I guess

 

Sorry, "Loonwatch" is not a credible site for anything. Just as Lefties sneer at and dismiss anything coming from Jihad Watch and FOX News, so I do the same for "Loonwatch".

I have taken the trouble in posts here to find mainstream media sources in links to back up some of my claims. Surely you can find a better source than "Loonwatch".

 

How do extremist Jews make up 7%? they make up like one percentage point of the American population?

And personally I have never heard of any American Jewish groups that are as extremist as say the kkk.

 

A fundamentalist Muslim is just a moderate Muslim that really believes their religion.

 

"Islamist" is a neologism coined by Westerners anxious to avoid the problem of the difficulty of distinguishing dangerous Muslims from putatively harmless Muslims.

Funny how Muslims don't have the concept of "Islamist". And not so funny that the majority of Westerners in that regard help whitewash the systemic problem their Islamic culture has. Instead of expecting good Muslims to prove, rationally, how they differ from the "Islamists", we bend over backwards to simply assume the distinction; and they don't have to lift a finger. On the contrary: It's their responsibility to defend that distinction; not ours.

Thus, to pluck one example out of many, Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey -- deemed by Westerners to be a "moderate" Islamic country says:

"It is unacceptable for us to agree with such a definition. Turkey has never been a country to represent such a concept. Moreover, Islam cannot be classified as moderate or not," Erdoğan said, speaking at Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies late Thursday.

And:

Speaking at Kanal D TV’s Arena program, PM Erdogan commented on the term “moderate Islam”, often used in the West to describe AKP and said, ‘These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” ]

Prime Minister Erdogan is also infamous for saying:

The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers...

 

Perhaps the folks at Loonwatch saw the movie Bananas with Woody Allen holding up a bank with a gun made of soap, and took it literally...

 

With modern warfare it wouldn't be particularly viable or necessary to employ the masses in manufacturing the implements of destruction, etc.--unless the intent were to destroy the entire planet 100 times over. To be honest, I don't really believe that what we have should be considered "total war" under stringent analysis, but I do think that a strong argument could be made either way (that is, for or against positing it as such) insofar as it might resemble a total war scenario for the modern age. While masses of civilians are not employed directly in the war industry, the flagrant disregard and neglect of citizens (of the U.S. by the U.S., that is) makes it abundantly clear that to some, we are little more than fuel or a revenue source for the war industry.

I emphasize the complicity and the economic support largely because we are ostensibly a democracy of sorts, even if we more closely resemble a plutocratic oligarchy, and our actions--in theory, at least--are supposed to reflect the will of the people (or their elected "representatives"). Many commentators have suggested that the current climate is more Huxleyan (Brave New World-ish) than Orwellian, though I think it's reasonable to posit that it's a little of both. On one hand, we have antidepressant medications, "entertainment," and all sorts of toys to keep us placated and compliant to the will of a very select few; on the other, there is fear of scorn, intimidation, and punishment for any who are not clearly, and unquestioningly, "with us." But we still, supposedly, make and support these choices--here the choice being our continual pursuit of our military ventures.

On that latter aspect (the Orwellian qualities): there was a time when civil disobedience was considered an honorable and patriotic thing to do when one does not support the actions of the government--almost a duty, in fact. Nowadays, thanks to the Patriot Act and F.B.I. programs which make COINTELPRO seem harmless by comparison, civil disobedience--and sometimes even simply voicing dissent--can land one in prison (and they've got "special" prisons for some) and branded a "terrorist."

But the entire venture in Iraq was premised on blatant falsehoods in the first place.

Ah, my bad. On consideration I realize there is a distinction. I think my confusion arose out that rather curious pairing of words--I mean, "indirect" and "death" just don't seem to go together very well, no?

I intended "wrongfully" more in an ethical sense than a logistical one, i.e., victims of "predatory lending," etc. Also there's the whole "sins of the father" thing: Mom and Dad might have made some pretty dumbass decisions, or maybe they just lost their jobs, but punishing little Timmy and Susie for it just doesn't sit well with me.

The "terror" aspect figures in with the debt collectors, the evictors, the guy in the emergency room who turns you away because you don't have any insurance (unlwaful, I believe, but it happens plenty and it's happened to me), et al: these persons and entities do not shy away from tactics of coercion, intimidation, and "terrorizing."