[karajorma]

Yeah, you read that correctly. And it's not a blank page either.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/151731/page/1

[Al Tarket]

exactly what i expected to read.

and i have known about bush since that terrible 2001 twin towers incident, even so the idiot went to war still. which was a big mistake at the time and still is.

[S-99]

Yeah, sure, retaliation towards the people who caused 9/11. Yeah screwing over the taliban and alquaida the ones who did it. Yeah, that's just so wrong.
Not to retaliate. That's sort of like not taking on the japanese after pearl harbor happened.

What i mean by taking on the taliban and alquaida, is what went on in afghanistan. Not the war in iraq which didn't really need to happen at all. Iraq seems to still have totally no relation with 9/11. Iraq is like bush brainfarting, and then randomly telling his vice iraq, and next thing you know 250,000 american troops are there. Although saddam hussein is a very deceptive, lying, character who did a lot of bad stuff, i don't think there was proof of him supporting alquaida or taliban even though it does sound like something he would very likely do (probably did...like i said no proof of it). The whole nuclear warhead materials in iraq thing was bogus too. Iraq actually being a war for oil? Sure, why not? The public would totally rather questionably ingest that. In the mean time idk why so many in america are so pissed about getting foreign oil from the middle east? Iraq is currently an american military occupied country with american oil companies that have already moved in there to do business. Oil coming from iraq to america currently is technically not receiving foreign oil.

As far as that goes that article seems like a useless waste of my time. I didn't want to read the rest of it because it doesn't say anything particularly important and doesn't show off anything new. Just a regurgitated news.

[Al Tarket]

the news article was about how bush has failed the united states and puts more emphasis on the iraq war, i was responding to that not afganistan or the taliban or even adolph hitler having sex with a moose in canada somewhere(scary thought ).

if it was about afganistan then it was a good idea to find the taliban for sure, i have no objections to that.

[Flipside]

We had to know where the Taliban were, how else would we know were to leave the weapons they used to fight the Russians for all those years

[Herra Tohtori]

Yeah, sure, retaliation towards the people who caused 9/11. Yeah screwing over the taliban and alquaida the ones who did it. Yeah, that's just so wrong.
Not to retaliate. That's sort of like not taking on the japanese after pearl harbor happened.

Analogy is not entirely justified since Al Qaida has never represented any single country or government, but the Talibani did support and protect them and getting rid of them in itself was, in some measure, a justified action since quite obviously Osama bin Laden and his merry band of miscreants were a threat that the Talibani government were protecting.

What i mean by taking on the taliban and alquaida, is what went on in afghanistan. Not the war in iraq which didn't really need to happen at all. Iraq seems to still have totally no relation with 9/11. Iraq is like bush brainfarting, and then randomly telling his vice iraq, and next thing you know 250,000 american troops are there. Although saddam hussein is a very deceptive, lying, character who did a lot of bad stuff, i don't think there was proof of him supporting alquaida or taliban even though it does sound like something he would very likely do (probably did...like i said no proof of it).

Saddam Hussein was pretty much ideologically as opposed to Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden as it was possible to be. Saddam would've probably executed any Al Qaida member at sight and he would definitely not have supported them. That is, as far as I know, the opinion of most analysts about this issue - the claim that Saddam somehow had supported Al Qaida was not really taken seriously by people who knew something about the matter...

The whole nuclear warhead materials in iraq thing was bogus too. Iraq actually being a war for oil? Sure, why not? The public would totally rather questionably ingest that. In the mean time idk why so many in america are so pissed about getting foreign oil from the middle east? Iraq is currently an american military occupied country with american oil companies that have already moved in there to do business. Oil coming from iraq to america currently is technically not receiving foreign oil.

Considering all the ties that Bush and his cadre of crooks have to oil industry, it might very well have been orchestrated to generate the current high oil prices due to unstability. I wouldn't put it beyond Bush administration to act completely selfishly and malignantly, but obviously that possibility opens the conspiracy can and no one will likely ever know for sure if that was the case instead of just idiocy and ignorance of intelligence materials that actually said there very likely were no WMD's in Iraq...

What is sure is that the war happened because Bush administration wanted it and made it happen. Whether the real motives behind their actions were the ones they claimed them to be or something else, doesn't really matter - they should've been ousted out the White House the moment it became clear that they lied about the intelligence reports considering WMD's, not to mention other misconducts like the phonetapping debacle and that thing with the undercover agent being put to danger... and if not for that, simply negligence and incompetence in doing things rite. No matter what the motives behind Iraq incursion were, it was handled craptacularly and pretty much everyone agrees to that at least.

[S-99]

Yeah i eventually got to that. It's still a dumb article though. Regurgitated news. Don't know the point of why the author wrote it. All it does put in perspective is that the republicans have an obvious agenda that most of them seem to be in on. At least if mccaine wins we'll have somebody managing the war affairs better than the big dumb G dubbya. Democrats just want to pull out of iraq, but america is in way too deep over there to pull out at the flick of a wrist. All american forces leaving iraq within a short time frame is a very bad idea. Leaving in a longer time frame is better. If they all left now stuff would immediately turn to **** real fast. Unfortunately going over there and instituting a new form of government means that you got to make sure it gets to the point where new government can stands on it's own two legs before leaving. And this is not a short process at all. Also if pulling out of iraq very fast before new government can stand on it's own, well then that's quite the fail for all the resources poured into the war. Who knows if the new iraq government will stand it's own even after a longterm withdrawal of forces, but it's better than a speedy withdrawal of forces with a less prepared new government. Iraq is a messy situation.

In the mean time the war on terror has become too broad. It'd be nice if the war on terror only pertained to terrorists and not shifting to push a countries dictator out of leadership (pretty terror unrelated to me, unless yet again proof of dictator supporting terrorists is even there). As happy as i am about saddam being dead was something so questionable of a war supposed to happen? Is there actually a reason to gathering everybody up at the UN from other countries to come to an agreement that saddam should be removed from power, and then using that to go to war and doing so? Along with the rumor of nuclear weapon materials being in iraq (yet again something saddam would totally do, getting plutonium for nukes, but proof?), it all seems very "excus-ish" to me.

[General Battuta]

Osama bin Laden once begged the royal family of Saudi Arabia for a chance to overthrow and kill Saddam Hussein. They're pretty opposed.

Ironically, the world might be more stable -- and al-Qaeda more contained -- if we had done nothing after 9/11 except pursue the terrorists as criminals. Turning to warfare legitimized their cause. Terrorism is a lot like EVE Online: the only really necessary resource is morale and media attention.

A quiet, intense international manhunt might've done the trick.

[Flipside]

Osama bin Laden once begged the royal family of Saudi Arabia for a chance to overthrow and kill Saddam Hussein. They're pretty opposed.

Ironically, the world might be more stable -- and al-Qaeda more contained -- if we had done nothing after 9/11 except pursue the terrorists as criminals. Turning to warfare legitimized their cause. Terrorism is a lot like EVE Online: the only really necessary resource is morale and media attention.

A quiet, intense international manhunt might've done the trick.

Agreed, a more moderated response to 9/11 would have pretty much defused the situation, since you are then armed with the line:

'They accuse us of killing thousands to get what we want and then go out and prove they are every bit as bad, at least we are trying to get better, not worse.'

However, there was pride at work, and that always cripples choices.

[S-99]

Osama bin Laden once begged the royal family of Saudi Arabia for a chance to overthrow and kill Saddam Hussein. They're pretty opposed.

Ironically, the world might be more stable -- and al-Qaeda more contained -- if we had done nothing after 9/11 except pursue the terrorists as criminals. Turning to warfare legitimized their cause. Terrorism is a lot like EVE Online: the only really necessary resource is morale and media attention.

A quiet, intense international manhunt might've done the trick.

Unfortunately terrorism is too easy like you pointed out. If americans had just sat back and had done at least a quiet war (US has done it before), the quiet manhunt thing like you said, it most likely would have been more contained. Al quaida probably wouldn't see the need to increase it's followers feeling that the lethargic satan cowboy isn't going to do something about it if the satan cowboy hadn't gone to obvious big war efforts.

Big war effort totally ****ing over the enemy will make the enemy want to get more troops for a sustained defense or at least to keep their ideologies from getting wiped out.

Yes silently picking off the terrorists in a good old terrorist hunt would be totally cool tool But no, we have full blown war and terrorist hunting at the same time making al quaida need to get bigger to prolong the obvious fight. Good point you raised battuta.

Even pearl harbor had similarities. The japanese were relentless, and it took a bunch of demoralizing and drastic things to shut them down back then. Hell the japanese didn't want to stop after one nuke, it took another nuke to make them change their minds....example of drastic. But, before all that, japanese WWII troops fighting to the death, remind us of anyone looking to get an easy ticket to heaven here? In the mean time, pearl harbor was also very different, it had amassed forces ready for a full scale war whereas alquaida does not and is really ****ing pesky and annoying (that's how terrorism is).

[BloodEagle]

When Pearl Harbor is compared to terrorism, you just know that the topic is heading downhill. 

[S-99]

The japanese back then fighting to the death and doing kamikaze attacks and requiring drastic measures to stop which was a messy situation has it's similarities with terrorists blowing themselves up taking drastic measures to stop (terrorists did do kamikaze runs with airplanes b4 too, just passenger jetliners going into buildings as opposed to fighters plunging into naval vessels) which is also a messy situation.

It has it's few similarities which i find fascinating as well as it's big gaping differences which i already pointed out. Anyway that's enough of pearl harbor i guess.

[Al Tarket]

i dont have the first clue about this pearl harbor war, that aside.

even terrorist groups have cells which will know if one of theirs has been killed, its only logical to do so. to both prevent infiltration by foreign orders, organizations and so on. if one of these people are killed, the rest will know and osama and another will replace that person. even if you quietly assassinated one cell, another will rise and a few more if Osama feels like their is something wrong with the picture of their deaths.

so a quiet war to snipe one terrorist off by another wont do, even if you took Osama's life, another will replace him and just as radical. besides this i think you mis-under-estimate the al quieda terrorists, they could be much bigger then you realize, my suspicion is many terrorist groups in the Arabian states including israel and west bank are linked to the al quieda terrorist group in one way or another, directly or indirectly. i hope i am wrong though.

[BloodEagle]

i dont have the first clue about this pearl harbor war, that aside.

 

[NGTM-1R]

When Pearl Harbor is compared to terrorism, you just know that the topic is heading downhill. 

To be fair, the casualities were of a comparable level. (And if you want to go assigning a dollar figure, 9/11 was almost undoubtedly much worse.) In a sense, the US had to retalitate in a very public way on a very large scale, as that is how attacks of that degree on US interests have always been met. Overall the response in Afghanistan was actually very well-conducted from a military point of view, but the devil is in the details. The 10th Mountain dropped the ball at Tora Bora, resulting in the invasion's most public objective getting away.

Nevertheless from a standpoint of dismembering Al Queda's support network and financial backing, it worked quite well. Had that been followed up with a serious, sustained effort in Afghanistan and the quiet manhunt that has been ongoing all this time, it would have been much better. But it was not.

However I think in a sense one of the things Bush did correctly will never be credited. He stayed in Iraq. I won't argue the morality or wisdom of having gone in in the first place because that's not the point I'm trying to make. Once there, withdrawal would have served no useful purpose, and it still wouldn't today. No one will ever thank him for sticking to his guns on this subject, I think, but it was the right thing to do. We made the mess, and it was/is our duty to clean it up.

[Shade]

I quite agree about staying in Iraq. Whether going there was a mistake or not (not going to restart that whole debate), it would definitely be a bad move to pull out early now that the mess has already been made. It may not have been a haven for terrorists before, but if left alone now, it almost certainly would become one.

[karajorma]

However I think in a sense one of the things Bush did correctly will never be credited. He stayed in Iraq. I won't argue the morality or wisdom of having gone in in the first place because that's not the point I'm trying to make. Once there, withdrawal would have served no useful purpose, and it still wouldn't today. No one will ever thank him for sticking to his guns on this subject, I think, but it was the right thing to do. We made the mess, and it was/is our duty to clean it up.

Actually the article made several mentions of that as one of the things he did right. I do tend to agree that a rapid US withdrawal would do no good at all. This again is another point made by the article.

Of course it would have been political suicide for Bush to have pulled out once he'd managed to convince the American public that finding WMDs kicking out al-Qaeda Bringing peace and democracy was the reason they went in.

[IceFire]

Just a little spelling nitpicking...I don't normally do it but they are the main subjects at hand.

al-Qaeda or al-Qaida are acceptable spellings (according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qaeda)  Taliban is the acceptable spelling of the former regime in Afganistan.  Thanks!

[redsniper]

You mention this on a board where people can't even spell ?

[Flaser]

Am I the only one who actually cared to read up CIW (Counter Insurgency Warfare)?

Terrorism is the most basic form of Insurgency, the prelude or embryonic form of Guerrilla Warfare, just as the later has the potential to become Conventional Warfare. What makes fighting International Terrorism hard is that it has its roots all over the world.

The only way to fight it is to cut it off at the trunk, and systematically uproot what's left. The problem is that later part - the first can be accomplished with good humint within a reasonable amount of time - you have to treat each and every hot-spot who could have founded them.

America is really bad at this. Malaysia was it's only successful CIW campaign, and the lessons were sadly unlearned or never learned in the first place. A short summary:

-CIW is long and bloody, and there is no discernible end to it. It instead merely evaporates over time.
-Insurgency can only exist with the willful and solid support of the native population.
-Only by eliminating this support can the Insurgency be rooted.
-To do so, you need to implement the very changes the Insurgents are fighting for in the first place...
-...which is usually economic grievances on a massive scale that torment the majority of the population and which the insurgents propose to solve with their "brand of political bandaid".
-Therefore economic (and only later!) political reforms must be carried through.
-Reforms can't be made without the involvement of the general populace - PSYOPS is a must!
-Good PR is also a must! The public of the occupier needs to maintain a reasonable look and a hard to muster vigilance through all the hard years ahead.

When you combine this with International Terrorism you have a really hard task: you can no longer screw over people in the world, because it will eventually come back to you. (Sure you can use pesticide = CIA on them), but in the long run you will have to settle the issues you create, or the mutant bacteria of Terrorism will only grow stronger after it overcomes the antibiotic you sedate it with.