RecklessTim

How many times do we have to hear the President say that this is a "War on Terror"? Does this wording scare anyone besides me? How would you go about defining a "War on terror" and formulating a winning strategy? Will this turn out like the "War on Drugs" did where the price and availability of illegal drugs continue to improve since its inception?
The answers to these questions have been speculated on many times in the last few months. You hear from the Democrats that it's not winnable and pulling out of Iraq is in our nations best interest. While the Republicans contend that we must stay the course and defeat the "Evil doers" where ever that may be. Let's take an objective look at the "War on Terror" without all the politics that tend to go with it and post how you feel about it.

My views:
The "War on Terror" is not a winnable war. This is due to the fact that the world will always have differing populations with different views and religions. This we can never change. Even within our own borders we have domestic terrorism (White supremacists groups, Antigovernment groups and countless other organizations) that threaten us as a whole or in part. The terrorists that we are focusing on right now are Islamic extremists that hate our religious beliefs and way of life, so to win this war we only have three choices.
1. Change our way of life to conform to their beliefs.
2. Convert them to our religious beliefs and way of life.
3. Eliminate every last one of them.
None of these three options are viable solutions leading us to never "win" a "War on Terror". I don't think that Americans realize how dangerous it is to have our government create such a broad and undefined campaign such as this. The politicians from both sides of the house can and will capitalize on this opportunity to perpetuate their own agendas. We must be careful not to freely give away our freedoms in the guise of protecting those very same freedoms that we enjoy today. I do believe that we must be a strong nation that will protect its people, but we must be careful not to let political agenda dictate the direction that we go.

What are your thoughts and views on this topic?
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Mr President;
It has been reported that you are here to "lecture" us on democracy and human rights. But with a record like yours, you will not be very convincing.

dt3

I agree, it's probably not winnable. Ever. But is it wrong to go after people like Osama? Regardless of everyone's view of Iraq and whether or not we belong there, should we not try to hunt Osama and his followers down? If, after 911, Bush had done NOTHING, his approval would probably be way lower than it is today. I feel better knowing that SOMETHING is being done. We may never get rid of all terrorism, but I think we should do our best to get rid of any threat to our nation.

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lemon

the "war on terror" isnt winnable. it cant.

you will always have someone opposed to some action you take, unless you are the last person on earth. this is fine. its when they do something you are opposed to thats not fine. and thats what "the bad guys" are doing.

so nope, its not winnable. so now the question is:

why did we go into this "war"?

RecklessTim

I agree 100% we should have gone after Bin Laden. As far as Iraq, yes, but after we put together a stronger coalition. Charging in like Cowboys hurt our international image. He was a threat, and a few months more would not have made a difference.

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Mr President;
It has been reported that you are here to "lecture" us on democracy and human rights. But with a record like yours, you will not be very convincing.

artisan00

hey tim, yes i agree that winning has a very tiny (if at all) chance.

but at the same time, you gotta realize (which it looks like you do):
like you said:
keeping that in mind, if the pressure is stopped from our side, who is to say that it will stop from the other side? fundamentalists will still be fundamentalist, and still insist on doing what they do, and will likely hate the US just as much. yes, granted, us being aggressive does give them a leg to stand on when they say we are being to power hungry, but at the same time, if we werent aggressive at all, theres no reason theyre actions would change.

so like dt3 said, just becasue a war cannot be won does not mean it is not worth fighting.

you also mentioned "3. Eliminate every last one of them. ". and you know what? the fundamentalist POV is pretty similar when looking at us. so if you stop fighting, again, they will not.

here is the main point i have to make, which i think makes a lot of sense ---

you tim, are a pretty intelligent, rational (this is key) human being. you are making valid and logical points. BUT you cannot resolve an illogical issue with logical points. likewise, a rational thinker cannot easily solve an irrational problem.
fundamentalists are not logical almost by defnition. so you see, trying to solve the problem logically wont work.
the solution would be, in the ideal world, everyone stfu and stop giving a shit about what other people belive in and go on with your lives. but the irrational fundamentalist cant accept that, so if you go ahead and try and proceed with a 'logical' solution, the other side will still be fighting.

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RecklessTim

Yo are right, they're not rational or logical when it comes to some of their beliefs. But going over there to fight "Terrorists" would be the same as having the military attacking NYC to combat the rat problem. No matter how many rats we seek out and kill, we will never eliminate all of them and after we leave, they will build in numbers once again. I say instead of trying to kill all the rats, we surgically go after the big ones while fortifying our homes from infestation.

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Mr President;
It has been reported that you are here to "lecture" us on democracy and human rights. But with a record like yours, you will not be very convincing.

AtlanticBlue99

for a quick summary: they are so far behind structurally in their economics, society, governments, and personal views. they have been doing things their way for thousands of years and nobody can change them, not even the idealogues of democracy. it is sad but true, and because of it, america will ultimately be on the defensive or pouring tons of money into trying to change them. either way, it doesnt look good for either side

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"Smokey Mountains"

IntruderLS1

They declared war on us 30 years ago. I know it's an over simplified way of looking at the world, but I say it's time to fight back.

When we did nothing to them, they attacked us. When we tried to 'police' them, they attacked us. Now we're at war, and they say the reason they're attacking us is because we're attacking them. :tard

I think it is a fight we can win. You don't have to kill every last one, and you're right in that there will always be somebody out there who want's to scrap. But what we can do, is poor so much presure on them, their organizations will not be able to stand. One the organizations are defeated, new ones will have a harder time recruiting, because everybody will remember what happend to the last group that tried it.

The reason the middle east is such a hotplate for terrorists is the economics. By spreading democracy, giving people a voice in their governments, and building fat and happy middle classes, you've wipped out 90% of the recruitment. A fat and happy middle class family man has no interest in blowing himself up because life isn't fair.

So in short "Yes" I feel the war on terror can (and will) be won. It just takes patients and an iron will.

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UncleBacon

as long as people are willing to die for a cause/religion they believe in there will always be terrorist..

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you look like a retarded slingblade

Phreaked

There is no way to win a war on terror, its a term, there will always be terrorism although the meaning of the word may change. American revolutionists were called that way back when, we discussed earlier, you cant have the geniuses/revolutionaries without people stepping outta the box and unfortunatly there will always be people on both extreme sides of the line, its not a bad thing from a sociological evolution point of view, do you think racism and genocide would have been so widely condemned if not for hitler, im not condoning anything about him, its just people are so easy to condem things that happened before, that the entire world is now against and ignor the fact we have learned something from it, before WWII there was widespread genocide by all groups of people in the world, even in america, now its practically dissapeared....its all about lessons learned and it seems sometimes the human race needs a great big smack up-side the head and it takes these really bad people to bring it about....i so wish it was another way but it isnt

nic_vb

Unfortunately our conflict with the middle east did not begin 30 years ago although that would simplify things greatly. Western powers have always had a strategic interest in the middle east dating back as far back as the Romans, but in recent history starting with Napoleon's occupation of Egypt. While those two examples are very important in understanding our domonearing relationship with the middle east they are well before the mechanized area when oil became the most sought after commodity in the world.

Lets start the history around first world war era Iraq when they were invaded by the British armies who were rather ironically in retrospect, claiming to be liberators rather occupiers and were expecting to be greeted by "flowers and smiles". Sound familer? well the entire history of the occupation is one of the best examples of repetetory history i have ever seen. The British idea of needing to control the iraqi's political agenda for there own good to the acctual road where the first british soldier was killed by the iraqi insurgence are identical to what the Americans are experiencing at the moment. The British encoutered much more opposition then they expected and a lot of people began to be killed. Eventually pressure was put on them to get out of iraq only because of the casualties they were suffering, but also because it seemed as if they could no longer retain control. The military argued that they could not leave because the barberous Iraqi's would surely obliterate each other after the british stopped doing it for them. Does that also sound familiar? Well eventually they had to leave because they lost support for the whole thing and the Iraqi's were left in a political situation that the British claimed would surely lead to civil war. However, no such barbarism came from internal forces in Iraq.

And now the same situation is present in Iraq and us (the west) has put upon ourselves the incredibly noble task of keeping the various tribes from killing each other. Right? isn't that part of the reason we are there? oh no wait it was to prevent terrorism...right? well if it were a reason then we surely didn't do our research or look at a map, then maybe we would have realized that economic sanctions imposed on Iraq during saddam's rule made the country dirt poor...and killed over 100 000 children but that's inconsequential... but the point is they had very little to with the attacks of september 11th anyways.

Just like the British while they were the empirical power of the world, the US has now taken upon itself the duty of colonizing any important resources for the purposes of further promoting its power across the world. You may believe that is not such a bad thing due to America possessing some level of stability greater then in more harsh countries. It would be hard to argue against you if that entire campaign of self promotion has not resulted in millions of deaths, the gutting of autonomous, socially developing countries by our militaries and special interest groups and a level of global instability that increases the chance of nuclear war everytime anyone feels backed into a corner.

My favourite part of this whole discussion is when somebody said "and we did nothing to them". That would appear to be true if you were getting an education from daytime television but unfortunately daytime television tends to tell you what you want to hear anyways.

Ok i better respond to the actual discussion question now then "is the war on terror winnable?" well if you take the accepted definition of terrorism which is "the unconventional use of violence for political gain" then you are faced with a bit of a delema. Such as..who are the terrorists? the west has been using violence for political gain in the middle east for two milenia, killing literally millions of people for strategic reasons. I mean that is not even just restricted to the middle east, it spans from Indonesia to Panama to Nicaragua and on. In 2001 something changed though. Not the scale of an attack, but rather the direction that it was aimed. The crazy men who wear funny clothes who to any daytime television educated individual had no real motive for attacking America's economic core and killing 3000 people. The problem is that "terrorism" is what autonomous people do when they want to accomplish something and either A. have no other real way of doing it...or B. can do whatever they want because they have military and economic superiority to use for political gain.

The only difference between the people who are in situation A and B is that the A population (ya thats right the "wierd" guys who can't speak english very well) do not have the economic ability to promote that there actions are justified while the B. people are usually hidden from what is acctually going on due to the grasp of information and bias by agenda setters and special interest groups.

So a real war on terrorism would be a popular revolt against states that kill for political gain, which is probably the one you are all living in right now be it in Europe of North America.

It seems that when Western Capital is funding operations resulting in deaths of innocent people its a justified miltary action, but when the wierd guys do it its terrorism. It would be funny if charred bodies weren't so deppressing.

Winning the war on terrorism would mean cleaning up our act while somehow dodging a massive wave of hate from the rest of the world. Good luck.

artisan00

yes, yes - but you still ignored a massive point. the issue is that EVEN IF THE WEST BACKED OUT (sorry im not yelling,just trying to add some intonation to by sentence), there is NO reason to assume that these self declared fundamentalists would stop what they do. thinking that the west caused all this is pure idealism and is also completely false. part of the fundamentalist belief is in fact "destroy or convert infidels" (keep in mind i am not labeling all people from that area, just the radical fundamentailsts).
keeping that in mind, you really think if the west backed off they would just go "hey you know what we dont have to destroy anyone anymore, lets go home.." ??? no. thats what misguided faith and dogma can do to someones way of thinking.

also,
you say
a) what 'actions' are you reffering to here thaht are 'justified??'
b) you think the people behind terrorist attacks dont have money???? are you nuts?? yes they can get poor people on the bandwagon and send them off to do their bidding, but the guys high up are by no means poor. sayinb that we wiped these cuntries poor is also a horrible blanet statement. when one or 2 leaders of a developing country are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars or more, and the country is falling apart around them, you cant blame the west...i dont have to point out why.

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nic_vb

I find the best way to dig into the understanding people or systems of people is by asking why they are the way they are. Why do so many people around the world hate us? did we do anything? i've never told my military to kill anybody, personally i'de rather they not do it unless they have to to protect me and the society i live in, but not for aggressive reasons.

If you do enough research and look at resources and records that do not flow directly through the state departement you can trace a very long history of America and Europe for that matter, using aggresive force to achieve economic and political goals of total domination. I mean this wouldn't really surprise anyone if you just used common sense. What do more powerful entities do when they want something from a smaller entity? well of course they take it even if the society in question consideres itself a democracy, that just means it's aggressive behaviour cannot be on the surface and the reason why it is very difficult to unearth the truth of what is acctually going on. So now that more powerful entity takes what it wants to the smaller entities feel oppressed, as they should, and this results in a backlash. This backlash is the reason why there is a growing hatred for what special interests, such as multinational corporations and war mongoring politicians and generals have done to the rest of the world. Why hasn't Africa developed? because we have set up financial institutions such as the IMF to make sure that they develop according to our needs, not there's, and are legally forced to export surplus to our nations. Why does Iraq look like a shithole whenever you see it on CNN? because of the fact its fought multiple crippling wars in the past couple decades with the help of our funding. We propped up Saddam in order for him to attack Iran, he would not of had so much power over his people if it was not for the weapons we directly gave him. And these are small examples, nothing compaired to when our government gave Indonesia weapons and supported them in killing almost everyone in East Timor, which the body ended up in the millions. But i dought most people have heard about that because it is never reported in mainstream media because we, the population, would be outraged that our tax dollars are going towards weapons that are wipping out an entire culture.

But this has nothing to do with the middle east right? well it has everything to do with the middle east they hate us because we are trying to control them for no benefit but our own and in the process have cripelled their societies under the same context. People with power here use that incredible amount of power to fufill there ambitions, and us the population are given reason after reason to support sending our armies out to fufill those ambitions.

You talk about "radical fundamentalists" in the middle east. They exist and they want to kill us because our ambitions of domination have lead to the crippling of their societies. They want to "destroy and convert infidels" that is true...but so do we, the only difference is that we've acctually been quite succesfull. We also have our fair share of radical fundamentalists who are not only xenophobic, but they have the power to do something about it.

"thinking that the west caused all this is pure idealism and is also completely false" I find the best quote to refute this claim is when George W. Bush declared something about going on another crusade before or after..i forget now.. operations in Iraq began. We have a very long history in the middle east as i've said before, but the last 40 years are a decent enough example. We've supported two conflicts between Iran and Iraq, we've given the "humanitarian aid" (weapons) to isreal that they've used to kill and keep land away from palestinians. But you can say that it wasn't us who was doing the killing right? well we would but its easier to sell to your population that someone else is doing the killing.

You say that "when one or 2 leaders of a developing country are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars or more, and the country is falling apart around them, you cant blame the west" well how do these guys get power in the first place? obviously they start by accumulating weapons. Where did they get these weapons? well in many cases they were given as "humanitarian aid" by western powers because these ditators allow there country to liberalize their economies for our benefit, not theirs. Examples:1. Idi Amin in Uganda, Supported by Belgium after they left because he agreed to cooperate with them (do what the want). He was eventually named "the butcher of east Africa" or something like that and killed a ton of people in the most brutal of ways. 2. the Sha of Iran. Put in power by the united states, of course western friendly, meannig he liberalized there economy for our benefit, not theirs, and in the mean time became rich with the money we gave him. A very brutal man with secret police and secret murders and all that orwellian stuff but was eventually overthrown. 3.Saddam Hussein. He was not put into power by us, but we empowered him in two very important ways. First we gave him all the weapons he could ever want because he played a role in our ambitions of controlling the middle east (used to subdue Iranian power). And after the first gulf war we imposed some of the harshest economic sanctions of our time, resulting in a starving population that increasingly depended on this psycho for basically anything they needed to live.

"what actions are you talking about that are justified" - well by justified i do not mean "right" or "good" or any of that morallistic bullshit. I mean if you look at the history and what is currently being been to these societies on the other side of the planet due to our policies i can understand how islamic fundamentalists justify themselves. The actions of course being trying to rid there countries of westerners. suicide bombs, pshycho's screaming about jihads before they kill a ton of people. These actions are nonesensecle to anyone seeing them on the six oclock news because they see it as an isolated insident with no historical backdrop. What would you do if your society was being directed and controlled by a foreign entity, members of your family were killed so that a superpower could feed off the oil on your land and this is the same superpower that starved your country for a decade before they decided to come in and control everything. Would you be placide about it? or would you be completely engulfed by "nonesensicle" rage? well the only thing i know now is that the rest of the world would think there's something seriously wrong with you and you need to be further controlled.

You are right on the point that groups such as Al Queda do get some serious funding from oil rich families and state heads, but there is a obvious difference in the amount of control they have over popular opinion around the world due to the massive scale US economic and political interest around the world. The point is that of course the middle eastern fight for independence from the west seems ridiculous, because we live in the west and that is what we are supposed to think so that we, or rather special interests, can control as much resources and capital as possible.

ok this is already way too long

electricglidingwarrior

You guys are classic. You actually think 9/11 or any other act of aggression against the U.S. happened because "they hate our beliefs and way of life" or "they hate our freedom"? Imagine an Iraqi saying the USA attacked their country because "they hate our way of life, not because Saddam is a tyrannical dictator".

Osama bin Laden: Some of his "justifications" from 1998

"We however, differentiate between the western government and the people of the West. If the people have elected those governments in the latest elections, it is because they have fallen prey to the Western media which portray things contrary to what they really are. And while the slogans raised by those regimes call for humanity, justice, and peace, the behavior of their governments is completely the opposite. It is not enough for their people to show pain when they see our children being killed in Israeli raids launched by American planes, nor does this serve the purpose. What they ought to do is change their governments which attack our countries. The hostility that America continues to express against the Muslim people has given rise to feelings of animosity on the part of Muslims against America and against the West in general. Those feelings of animosity have produced a change in the behavior of some crushed and subdued groups who, instead of fighting the Americans inside the Muslim countries, went on to fight them inside the United States of America itself.

I do not condone in any way the acts of aggression that have been carried out by bin Laden, "terrorists", the US or any other country, but to say this is happening because they hate a way of life is ridiculous and shows absolutely no insight in your current state of affairs. Do some research on what crimes your country has committed against humanity and maybe it will be easier to see why America is the focus of terrorist attacks. Try this for starters.
http://www.vexen.co.uk/USA/hateamerica.html#Why

nic_vb

Yes i completely agree with electricglidingwarrior, Osama Bin Laden has organized some horrible operations but we've given him plenty of self justification. The only thing i can ask you to do is put yourself in the position of anyone in the middle east, then see how justified you can be in doing literally anything. Is it our duty to overthrow a government that kills people around the world for poltical gain..which is in line with the definition of terrorism? Well we always thought it was the Iraqi's responsibilty to overthrow there government, or any country in that situation for that matter.

So if we don't do something about it then someone else around the world who has been negatively affected by us will be able to justify attacking us. We would do the same.