Maybe we'll get rid of the whole problem.
Had an interesting proposition presented to me today: Bush is pushing getting back in the air to help the oil companies, not loosing jet fuel sales. Not sure I buy that but wanted to post it anyway.
Posted on 09/28/2001 11:19:47 AM PDT by Magician
Ins't that wonderful?
Pro-adiction crowd are going to have a tough time now!
If THIS is what is keeping you awake at night, then you have serious issues. These people do not reflect anyone I have ever met . . . ever! Not in 50 years, not in numerous states (including many in the South), not in any social class. I think they may be out there with "Rita X" from the Rush Limbaugh show.
That should be plain old Mohammed, born in 570 AD, not ELIJAH Mohammad, of the Nation of Islam, which is to Islam what Christian Identity is to Christianity. A fellow Freeper gently pointed out my mistake.
Why is it necessary? This author was on the right track talking about the symbolism, but it goes a bit further. Have you ever asked yourself why the Japanese and Germans don't still hate us en masse? We didn't end WW2 just by destroying the capabilities of our enemies to fight. We destroyed their desire to fight by discrediting their beliefs. The Germans had a personality cult built around Hitler. The Japanese went even further, worshipping their emperor as a god. America showed them their gods were impotent, precipitating serious personal crises of faith among their populations.
When extremists believe in a violent Allah and worship an intangible, it's a bit harder to discredit their beliefs. Nuking Kabul and Baghdad, for example, would probably just make their belief more fervent. However the Muslim holy sites are critical to their beliefs. How could Allah allow Mecca to be obliterated? As we did with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we would be answering terror with an even greater horror. I feel sorry for the peaceful Muslims whose faith would also be challenged, but if we want to win, that is what it will take.
ORRRRRR we should consider giving New Mexico to the Jews...move them here, they do well in deserts, and then bomb the crap out of the middle east....
This is a no win situation...BUT do enjoy the, "kill the whole nest...not a few wasps..." rhetoric.
As long as we have the Bible vs the Koran...Christians have to support the Old Testament and the Jews...we must and we will.
Robotically repeating the mantra "I have NEVER heard of ... " is a tactic that goes back to the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s.
-- Christian Identity groups such as The Covenant, Sword and Arm of The Lord (CSA), the White Patriot Party, the Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nations and the Order have been responsible for the Christian right's most violent incidents over the past 20 years. Convicted members of the Order committed murders and armed robberies. White Patriot Party members committed three murders. Posse Comitatus leader Gordon Kahl killed three law enforcement officers.
-- The Army of God has taken responsibility for the bombing of a gay bar and an abortion clinic in Atlanta. Authorities have also linked this same group to the Olympic Park bomb explosion set off during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
-- The Phinias Priesthood, an Identity sect, has accepted responsibility for a series of bombings and bank robberies in Spokane.
-- Richard Wayne Snell, an Identity adherent and former CSA member executed was executed in Arkansas for the 1983 murder of a pawnshop owner he had mistakenly thought to be Jewish. Snell had previously been convicted for the murder of a black Arkansas state trooper in 1984.
-- Christian Identity literature was found in the van of Buford O. Furrow, the guy who wounded three children, a teenager and an adult at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, Calif.
-- The Aryan Republican Army (ARA) carried out at least 16 bank robberies in the midwest before they were captured by federal authorities.
-- During the ARA's reign of terror, Timothy McVeigh told his sister, Jennifer, that he had helped organized a bank robbery and he showed her a wad of $100 bills, which he claimed was paymentfor his role in the job. Richard Guthrie, an ARA bank robber who committed suicide in jail, referred in his unpublished memoirs to an accomplice named "Tim."
-- Movements of a number of ARA members and McVeigh were nearly identical in the years and months leading up to the attack on the Murrah building.
-- Telephone records reveal that McVeigh placed two calls to Elohim City, an armed Identity enclave headed by Robert Millar, a few weeks before the OKC bombing. Millar, of course, denied knowing anything at all about McVeigh (sound familiar???).
-- McVeigh got a speeding ticket a few miles from Elohim City.
So now you have heard. So what are YOU going to do to stand up to radical, militant Christianity?
We can “handle it”, we just don’t like it. We don’t think like you do.
we attack their shrines which are religious. The West is not ready for this but if the battle escalates this retaliation on Islamic targets will come...
That is not the American way. We don’t attack churches or religious shrines. This was an attack on thousands of American citizens and our business and military centers. We will retaliate but not by attacking their religious buildings. To do so would be savage, and we aren’t savages. If you want to attack their religious buildings, go ahead, but don’t ask Americans to help you. Please stop telling us Americans what to do. On this particular subject, we don’t think like you do.
Maybe we'll get rid of the whole problem.
Had an interesting proposition presented to me today: Bush is pushing getting back in the air to help the oil companies, not loosing jet fuel sales. Not sure I buy that but wanted to post it anyway.
Half of Osama BenDover's beef with America is over the US troops and presence in Saudi and Kuwait. He wants the US completely out of the MidEast. So even if there is no Israel he would still be wanting to destroy us. Now if you think the US should not be protecting Saudi and Kuwait that's a whole 'nother line of argument. I don't think your brain can follow it though.
Even if there was no Israel, Osama Ben Laden would attack us. He wants no USA presence in the MidEast and we have a huge presence there to protect the flow of oil. To protect Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein.
Holding The Bag In the Gulf
The New York Times, September 18, 1996
By Lawrence J. Korb,
Director, Center for Public Policy Education
On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, House Speaker Newt Gingrich criticized the Clinton Administration for using $1.2 million cruise missiles "to do $60,000 of damage in radar equipment that takes three days to fix." While it is debatable whether launching million-dollar cruise missiles at Iraqi targets is less cost effective than dropping thousand-dollar bombs from million-dollar airplanes, Mr. Gingrich's specific criticism raised a much larger issue: How much should the United States spend to protect its interests in the Persian Gulf? In fact, the 44 cruise missiles used against Iraqi air defenses were the least expensive part of the operation. Most were launched from billion-dollar ships that cost thousands of dollars an hour to operate and millions of dollars a year to protect. (A few of the missiles were fired by B-52 bombers flown from Guam.)
After the gulf war, the Navy created the Fifth Fleet, stationed permanently in the gulf. It consists of 21 ships manned by 15,000 sailors and marines, along with 12 more ships with equipment for ground forces and about 250 planes to protect the fleet and enforce the no-flight zones over Iraq. In addition, there are 10,000 people on the ground in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, along with enough equipment for another Army brigade.
On various occasions since the gulf war, including this month, the United States has augmented this standing force by sending a second aircraft carrier, a squadron of stealth fighters and additional air defense groups and bombers.
According to Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, the total cost of maintaining the United States force in the gulf is at least $50 billion per year.
The purpose of spending all this money is to insure that neither Iran nor Iraq threatens the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. But the United States currently imports only about 10 percent of it's oil from the Persian Gulf — some $10 billion to $15 billion worth, depending upon world prices.
Our European allies get almost 30 percent of their oil from the gulf while Japan depends on the region for half of its imports. But except for a handful of French and British planes helping us patrol the no-flight zones, these countries make no contribution to gulf security. Is it any wonder that we spend more money on defense than Western Europe and Japan combined, and that our military budget remains at about 90 percent of its average cold war level?
Since it appears that we are going to have a large force in the region indefinitely, we must ask our allies for a contribution similar to that of the gulf war, when the Bush administration won commitments from the Saudis and the emirates, Europeans and Japanese to pay 80 percent of the costs of Operation Desert Storm. If Europe and Japan would rather send troops than money, that would be fine too. But if they refuse to do their share, we should let them know that we will be forced to consider reducing our troop commitments in East Asia and Europe to pay for our burden in the gulf.
© Copyright The New York Times
Note: The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and should not be attributed to the staff, officers or trustees of the Brookings Institution.
In Kosovo, we preferred TV stations, embassies, trains, cigarette factories, car factories, soap factories, convoys of escaping farmers, nursing homes, trains and bridges. I'm sure I left out some of our "strategic" targets. I'm so happy (not) to see you here again. Did your latest bypass succeed?
Provocative.
But correct?
We should do whatever works, and not create further unnecessary "blowback."
I'm not so concerned with avoiding retaliation, which is appeasement, which defers teh problem & makes it worse, so much as avoiding unintended consequences, which are unendingly counterproductive.
Intelligent use of extremely targeted tactical nukes &
sending heads of dozens of Muslim extremists back to their relatives sewn in the bellies of pigs (which to a Muslim, means he can NEVER get to heaven!),
would let them know we 1) understand their culture &
2) we have the will to win.
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