ETA strikes again
- Thread starter DemoCoder
- Start date
epicstruggle said:
that approach is the problem, as you Americans and your gov. seem to genuinely believe that it is possible. Ppl in Europe have had terrorists of one kind or another for decades, and it is clear that you cannot kill them.
Why? Well unless you kill every single protestant in Northern Ireland, or every single Basque, or every Arab. Unless you act like Stalin and kill all their extended families in one go, or exterminate the whole villages, once you kill a guy his brother will step in, or his neighbour, or his friend and will be well motivated to blow himself up (if neccessary) as you as an entity has done him enough harm to hurt forever.
The whole point is that because there is no HOPE for a political or any other solution people turn to terror as to only means of making the other side talk and make progress on their unbearable situation. This is why these people exist, and unfortunately their methods work too, as their plight gets public attention and public forces democratic governments to do somenting over long term. Ie make agreements with legal/political wings of those organisations.
In NE it happened, and a lot of progress has been made, and at the end everyone wants to live in peace, but it is the hardest for the first generations who have to live with lots of harm grief done directly.
As for the Arabs, we have been screwing them around since the collapse of Ottoman empire, and there is a lot of pissed off people who see our hypocrit foreign policy, and the effect it has on them. IMHO there is only one way out from the present situation and it is two fold.
1. Go after AQ with all our intelligence communities have 100% and that involves capturing etc (this is just to keep them downsized as much as possible for the time being)
2. Repair Iraq, repair Afghanistan and help those countries get on the way of recovery, get some support from all the countries and governments there - even Iran - if Europe can do it so can US, sort out Israel/Palestinian conflict finally and we are on the way to reconciliation with the people over there.
Epic it is silly to attribute the lack of terrorists attacks to the strength of the administration, if you do that then you have to attribute the terrorist attack to the weakness of the administration and also say every other president in history has done better at preventing terrorist attacks(why better you may ask pointing to OK city, well there were less deaths so = better).
The truth is that the FBI and CIA have always been working to stop this sort of thing, and they failed on 911 who knows how many times since they have been succesful. Whether the administrations policies are actually a benifit or not is really just opinion it is not like you can have a control to do a study. In any case it is not a big deal. A terrorist attack is really simple to pull off, but you need a bunch of fools who don't mind killing themselves to do it easily, and hopefully there are less of them around in the US
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The truth is that the FBI and CIA have always been working to stop this sort of thing, and they failed on 911 who knows how many times since they have been succesful. Whether the administrations policies are actually a benifit or not is really just opinion it is not like you can have a control to do a study. In any case it is not a big deal. A terrorist attack is really simple to pull off, but you need a bunch of fools who don't mind killing themselves to do it easily, and hopefully there are less of them around in the US
.Just as silly as attributing the economy to the president. Both are still common place. My comment if you read it carefully is that people in general credit their safety to bush. It might or might not be correct/right but they still do.Sxotty said:
A terrorist attack is extremely easy and hard to catch when no one in their cell talks about it. How do you find them or track them down? Very hard. Thats why going after leadership and funding is better.The truth is that the FBI and CIA have always been working to stop this sort of thing, and they failed on 911 who knows how many times since they have been succesful. Whether the administrations policies are actually a benifit or not is really just opinion it is not like you can have a control to do a study. In any case it is not a big deal. A terrorist attack is really simple to pull off, but you need a bunch of fools who don't mind killing themselves to do it easily, and hopefully there are less of them around in the US
later,
epic
Good catch, didnt see the obvious mistake.VtC said:
later,
peic
epicstruggle said:
I don't. In fact, I think it can be easily argued that his actions have made the world a less safe place. By acting against international norms and without UN approval, his administration encourages other nations to do likewise. And how can we then criticize a Russia or China if they sack a neighboring state in the name of self-defense against terrorism? There is a reason why European polls have voted Dubya as the #1 threat to world safety; sure, we can write our European allies off as pseudo-intellectual, socialist nutcases who now have a vested interested in opposing us economically, but that's a bit too pat for my tastes.
And while a huge portion of our armed forces are pinned down in Iraq trying to help create a working democracy, nations like NK are developing nukes that will be in the hands of a clearly insane demagogue who's expressed an interest in selling them to whomever he pleases. We've lost our mobility while we're in Iraq taking out a secular leader who posed absolutely little or no threat to us domestically or our interests abroad.
Hopefully the lives lost and the money and time spent in Iraq will pay both us and the world dividends. As much as I opposed our invasion and still believe it was wrong, we are obligated to rebuild that nation and give its people a chance at a decent future.
Joe DeFuria
Legend
John Reynolds said:
Quite to the contrary, I was not under the impression that we needed to outsource our defense to other countries or governing bodies.
What other nations are going to "do likewise?" The ones that are saying that they would never do it? That would make them hypocritical, don't you think?
Because they don't support us doing it. the question is, how can Russia / China criticize us if they sack the neighboring state in the name of self-defense?
We laid our case out to the U.N. (And have laid it for over 10 years.) If other countries want to "sack in the name of self-defense", I'd hope they would at least state their case for it.
Apparently, the UN heard our case, some disagreed with it, but I guess couldn't be bothered to actually do anything of note about it, other than shoot off the mouths non-stop. (Which is of course, underscores the whole problem of the UN to begin with....)
Because they are pseudo-intellectual, socialist nutcases who have a vested interest in opposing us economically and ideologicially.
As long as we're the superpower, we will always be blamed both for action and inaction, and be the "root cause" of whatever problem they're not willing to take on themselves. It's easier to blame, than to fix.
VtC said:
oops
OK... I guess IRA would need to kill all protestants to get to their goal
- Ireland could unite...To do a similar attack on the US, you'd have to either hit the subways of the largest cities (new york), or blow up bridges (e.g. the "rails" for cars). Most Americans drive rather than take public transport. The exception is places like NYC.
Most of the US just isn't as susceptable because Americans like driving around in steel boxes on interstates instead of being crammed into tin cans. San Francisco and DC also have significant public transport, so they could be hit as well.
A sniper is the most effective terrorist weapon for the US.
Most of the US just isn't as susceptable because Americans like driving around in steel boxes on interstates instead of being crammed into tin cans. San Francisco and DC also have significant public transport, so they could be hit as well.
A sniper is the most effective terrorist weapon for the US.
DemoCoder said:
Funny you mentioned NYC. As a daily subway commuter, I can tell you, I do in fact worry about safety during rush hour. It's not on the forefront of my mind since I don't travel during rush hour (I work 10-6, which means I'm traveling 9-10 and 6-7, an hour or so past peak), but eddie certainly does in the morning.
For the hell of it, I counted how many people can fit in the seats of a normal sized car in the subway. It's about 50 per car. Considering that the volume of passengers swells during Rush Hour to where all the cars are jam packed, I estimated another 50 could fit in each car standing, which means about 100 people per car. 10 cars per train means 1000 people per train, with a density of a train every 5 city blocks I believe. Consider that the trains move from one station to the next every 30-45 seconds, and you see how many are in service each day. The subway system here is absolutely vast, and there would be absolutely no way to stop anyone from bringing a high yield explosive into a crowded train.
I see the same shipping "go fors" every morning bringing stacks of boxes taller than I am on rolling hand carts onto the E that I take. If I were a terrorist, I'd hit the NYC subway system during Rush Hour. There's basically nothing we can do about it either unfortunately.
There is no ventilation in our subway system yet, and won't be for several years, so if a bomb did go off, not only would hundreds, if not thousands, die from it (if it were large enough), but hundreds more would die from smoke inhalation. I'm pretty pessimistic in this regard that it's not a question of if, but merely when.
If terrorists could somehow smuggle a bunch of car tires into the subway and set them ablaze, they'd kill huge amounts of people from smoke. Actually, a friend of mine came up with a way to cause mass car casualities: drive a huge truck filled with old rubber tires into the Lincoln Tunnel, stop it at the exit and set it on fire. For extra deadliness, drive another one in the rear to block exits. Rubber tires are almost impossible to extinguish, generate huge volumes of toxic smoke and heat, and easy to obtain. Sprinkle lots of aluminum to burn in there also. A truck in a tunnel in Europe caught fire and the tires killed loads of people and caused the tunnel ceiling to collapse from heat. They had to let the fire burn itself out.
I think i remember this story, wasnt one of the reasons so many people died because many walked the wrong way out of the tunnel. I think the people who survived, went down the slopped tunnel, instead of up.DemoCoder said:
later,
epic
Terrorists are way beyond being appeased, certainly AQ. They want the west out of the middle east altogether. That includes culture, trade, etc etc. Much of the philosophy goes back to centuries old thinking.
The people who think they can be appeased by 'education', 'sorting out israel', 'money', or 'understanding their feelings' are delusional. That might help for the next generation, but certainly not this one.
Its increasingly obvious that AQ must be hunted down and dealt with appropriately, anytime anywhere.. along with any country that supports them no matter the consequences.
The people who think they can be appeased by 'education', 'sorting out israel', 'money', or 'understanding their feelings' are delusional. That might help for the next generation, but certainly not this one.
Its increasingly obvious that AQ must be hunted down and dealt with appropriately, anytime anywhere.. along with any country that supports them no matter the consequences.
Joe DeFuria said:Because they are pseudo-intellectual, socialist nutcases who have a vested interest in opposing us economically and ideologicially.
It's easier to blame, than to fix.
In related news, President Bush gave Spain his sympathies and said he'd gladly be willing to invade a country that had absolutely nothing to do with last week's attack on them.
/sarcasm
