The radical Islamicists who have decared war on the West and are using terrorism as their primary tactic to wage this war. Was this not clear?
Sure you can hit the terrorists and all Arabs.
You are slandering me. I never said anything about "Arabs". Just terrorists, and radical Islamicists, and other synonyms of these two things. It is you who has (for some reason) made the connection between terrorists and "Arabs", here. I must distance myself from your insulting comments completely, out of respect for the millions of peace-loving Arabs of all stripes (and religions!) out there.
Does that solve the problem? No.
Fighting and winning the war against radical Islamicists by killing them and/or pounding into submission does not solve the problem? I can't wait to hear this.
In the round about and unclear way of mine I was trying to get to the point that we are reaping the seeds we have sown by our intervention around the world.
Well, whatever. I'm sure there will be a time to study this history, and all the oh-so-justified "reasons" why those beasts murdered 6000 innocent people, in our respective easy chairs. But for the time being we are in a war. Don't you get that? Given that we are in a war (and it is a given), we may as well try to win it. I mean, what is the alternative?
Did the Americans and others that died deserve it? No. But they were "collateral damage" as the saying goes.
Suppose I accept this characterization. "Collateral damage" is a phrase which only makes sense in wartime. By saying this you are implicitly conceding that we are at war. Given that we are at war, we should try to win the war. Period. I don't even see what else there is to discuss.
So we bring the terrorists to justice or death and we kill a lot of people, has that solved the problem? No.
Actually, yes. Dead terrorists will have a much harder time of murdering us than do the current crop of (live) terrorists we are dealing with.
The problem is solved when the terrorists can be brought to justice, if that is possible,
It is quite possible indeed. 9/11 was a brutal act of war and a mass murder. In such a case, "justice" equals death. The way to exact justice is therefore to kill the bastards.
I know we're hearing a lot about the mystical supernatural Afghani fighter, but I don't think they are immortal.
and the reasons for the attack no longer exist.
"reasons for the attack"? You just got through saying that the victims "didn't deserve it", so what the hell "reasons" can there be, other than sick twisted psychopathic ones? (Or maybe you didn't mean what you said earlier after all - maybe deep down you think the 6000+ victims really did deserve it?)
Anyway, the "reasons" which psychopathic delusional people have for doing the things they do will certainly vanish if those same psychopathic delusional people are obliterated. So, I guess we are on the same page? Kill the psychopaths, and their psycho "reasons" for murdering are gone as well. Two birds with one stone.
Our record in solving problems by intervention is very poor. We go into WWI which leads to WWII. WWII didn't solve anything
Yes, of course it didn't. All the Jews have finally been exterminated, people on the East Coast still live in fear of Nazi U-boats, and here on the West Coast we still tape over our windows at night so the Jap zeroes won't bomb us. Man that WWII sure resolved nothin'!
What world are you living in?
WWII didn't solve anything as it lead to over 40 years of Soviet domination in Central and Eastern Europe and our troops are still there.
You are misunderstanding the purpose of WWII. The purpose of WWII was not to prevent Soviet domination of Central and Eastern Europe. It was to stop the spread of the Nazi and Japanese empires. Certainly I would have liked to have seen Soviet imperialism halted somehow as well, but it is simply incorrect to think of this as a failure of WWII (and not, for example, Yalta). Whether WWII "solved" something is a question which must be evaluated with respect to the actual goals of the US leaders and soldiers who initiated, directed and carried out US entry into WWII.
And let's face it, German Nazism and Japanese emperor-worship ain't exactly the problems they used to be. So, only a truly delusional person could spin this result as a "failure" of WWII.
Vietnam, despite the tremendous sacrifices of our men, went Communist.
This is only because our government prevented our military from taking the steps necessary to Win The Damn War, which they could have, had they only been given a real chance.
Now we are in a simliar situation. I advocate the government letting and enabling the military to Win The Damn War - and I think precisely of Vietnam as the kind of thing which results when you instead make a half-assed attempt at it. So your example here merely buttresses my point: we should try to Win This Damn War.
Again, just what is the alternative?
The problem is that we are not abiding by the wisdom of our Founding Fathers particularly the wisdom of George Washington.
I agree wholeheartedly with the wisdom epitomized by Washington's statement. I don't believe, however, that he ever intended for a million years for people to attempt to apply that statement towards a situation wherein over six thousand of our civilians have already been brutally slaughtered in cold blood. Do you?
Once something like this happens, we have left the realm of "entangling alliances" and are now in a "war". What do you believe were Washington's thoughts and feelings on war, by the way?
I say it is vitally important to understand why we are in this situation so we can extricate ourselves from it
Big error here. We can't simply "extricate ourselves from" a war. There are only two outcomes of war. One is that we win it. The other is that we lose it.
Actually there seems at present to be a third option, one which enjoys a certain amount of popularity, even here on FR: we simply don't fight back, and let the enemy keep on murdering us. However, upon further reflection, in practice this option is indistinguishable from option #2.
and to make sure we don't get into this situation again
I have nothing wrong with this advice. The best and foremost way to "not get into this situation again" is to win this war decisively, so that no one else desires to attack us. As far as more geopolitical foreign-policy lessons go, which is probably what you have in mind here, that's fine and dandy too with me, to revert back to Washington's sage advice.
Just as soon as we win the war we're in, of course.
If we can punish the terrorists good, but we have to stop the endless cycle of our interventions. We have to be true to our founding and our Christian faith.
Fair enough, but you come across some dilemmas here. For example we are told that one (but not the only) reason we are so "hated" is because of Israel. So, say we abandon Israel and she gets annihilated, all of her citizens murdered.
Would that be remaining true to our Christian faith? Something to think about.
On the one hand you speak of my "insulting you" because I mentioned Arabs and then you talk about killing terrorists and 'radical islamicists' (and who would those be?)and you mention 'abandoning Israel' and the Israelis being anhilitated. Well, now, where is Israel and what is the ethnic make-up of those countries surrounding Israel? Dr. Frank! You know what? I think they are Arabs. Or maybe you think the Serbs or the Greeks or the Bulgars will come down and destroy Israel. Please, don't try to play two sides of the coin.
The history you relate is good, solid standard history that has been taught in governmental schools for the past 50 years. You mention U-boats terrorizing the East Coast and my having to tape my windows here on the West Coast. However, the extent of the Japanese attack was a few shells from a submarine off Santa Barbara. I do think I am safe. Let's get down to the real fallacies of this history.
The Americans in pre-WWII were terribly opposed to our involvement in the European War. Dear Franklin and his cronies were desperately anxious for us to enter the war to help Uncle Joe. Considering that Roosevelt's closest advisor was Harry Hopkins with known communist sympathies and the State Department was staffed with men like Harry Dexter White, known communists, and others; their desire to enter the war to help Uncle Joe was understandable. Hitler would not accomodate the wishes of FDR and his deliberate circumvention of the Constitution and the will of the people. We can talk about Lend-Lease, the occupation of Iceland and our assistance to the convoys pre-WWII to Britain.
Since Hitler wouldn't respond to the provocations of Roosevelt, dear FDR, had to find another way to enter the war. He looked to Asia. Japan was an easy target to incite due to their precarious position in regards to raw materials. FDR embargoed oil, steel, etc and he knew the result would be an attack. To naively believe that FDR was unaware of the forthcoming attack on Pearl Harbor is inexcusable. He deliberately allowed the death of over 3000 US Servicemen so he could get his war. War is also good for the economy and his New Deal was not working.
Does this make Japan and Germany innocent by no means;however, the American government was not a 'knight in shining armor' with the flag of the 'Four Freedoms' coming to the rescue. Our brave servicemen gave their all for what they were told, but what they were not told was of the complicity of Uncle Joe in the war and his massacres and his goal of a Soviet Europe. War is an extension of politics by other means as Clausewitz said. If you believe that we entered the war because we were brutally attacked for no apparent reason other then the desire for global rule then you are right the war was only to eliminate the Nazis, Japanese and establish the Four Freedoms and we did the job. Or did we? I am sure the people in Poland, East Germany, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia would argue with that. However, if there were more to America getting into the war then what is told to us by the government then you are wrong.
Without getting into a more lengthy discussion with you regarding our foreign policy history, suffice it to say if we had obeyed General Washington we would have saved thousands of our boy's lives, we would have a smaller government, and we wouldn't be so hated or the target of terrorist attacks. True, you can say that this is all water under the bridge and, in a way, it is; however, you have to go back to my initial post and my statement that to root out a problem you have to know what the problem is.
We were attacked and thousands of innocent people were killed, if the perpertrators can be found we should deal with them in a just manner. Remember despite what 'they' did to us we are a nation of laws and the indiscriminate killing of other innocent people is not justifiable by your blood lust or others on Free Republic nor is it a Christian attitude. I understand that your solution would be to kill all the terrorists and that is fine. However, terrorism is really guerrilla warfare and that is a weaker side fighting a stronger side. I say side because we are not dealing with an identifiable 'nation' as such. A guerrilla war is waged with the consent of most of the civilians who would be willing to harbor and support a guerrilla movement. There are reasons for civilians to feel the need to support a guerrilla war despite the dangers to them. In order to 'win the hearts and minds' of the civilians you have to find out what the injustices are that caused them to support the guerrillas in the first place. Does this justify terror, absolutely not, but it does mean we have to find out why.
Could some of the reasons we are hated, not just by the 'radical Islamists', are because we bomb Serbia for the terrorist Albanian Moslems? Is it because over a million Iraqi civilians (acceptable casualties per Albright) have died due to our embargo (that has not toppled Hussein) and that promises to the Kurdish in the north of Iraq to support them by Bush Sr.,were not kept so those Kurds had to flee the Iraq? Is it our Imperial tendencies throughout the world to preach the God Democracy and tell everyone how they should be like us? Could it be because we uncritically support Israel in her actions and our American made weapons are used indiscriminately by the Israelis?
Yes, Dr. Frank, I agree bring the terrorists to justice, but your blood lust is not agreeable. We need to bring them to justice and we need to correct our policies. We need to handle this as a nation of laws (the Constitution) and as a Christian nation and with all that that implies.