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billvon

The new terrorist threat

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I have little doubt that one day we'll wake up to find that DC has been vaporized. The times that follow will be interesting indeed.
"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

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Muenkel, why is that in reply to my post?



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Hey, Prof...

If I can be so bold as to answer for someone else, methinks it's possibly because he was reading all the responses before he decided to write one himself. It wasn't meant for you...



Thanks Michele, you're absolutely right.:)
Sorry Kallend.



_________________________________________
Chris






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Had lame ass politicians not stopped at the end of the Gulf War this situation would be
different now.



Just a point of clarification. There are many reasons that President Bush the 1st didn't finish the job and go after Saddam.

1.) He didn't have congressional authority. The powers that were given to him by congress clearly framed it out that he was only supposed to liberate Kuwait and reduce the threat of Iraq's military might.

2.) The possiblity that the Middle East would become so unstable (not like it isn't now) after an ousting of Saddam scared our Middle Eastern allies *$less. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and various others were all afraid of what might happen if the US took out Saddam and the political unstability that would ensue, not to mention the (albeit unlikely) threat of Iran running in and taking over Iraq after we left. Could you imagine if the US established permanent bases and residence in Iraq so that we could establish a democratic government in a region that doesn't look very highly upon the US and has only a handful of democracies to speak of? Bad news was all that could come of it. (not to say that it isn't worse now)

3 and finally.) We had no guarrantee that we could have even found Saddam or that any government we put in place would last once we left. We would have needed to establish a permanent residence in Iraq (much like Afganistan) which would not be tolerated by the populace of any of the countries in the region and could have quite possibly caused a global crisis because of all the oil in the region.

I'm not arguing one way or the other on whether or not we should go in now. Just pointing out a few reasons why we didn't go after Saddam then.;)
J
YSD#0009

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Invading the region may not make the situation better. But neither will doing nothing. We did nothing the last few years and got airplanes stuck in our ass, ships blown up and embassies attacked.



In all those cases the work of AQ supported groups.
If W had serious evidence of a link between Saddam and AQ I think he would have made it public by now.

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Invading the region may not make the situation better.


Then don't.

When a threatment is obviously not doing any good you just don't just add more? In this case doing nothing to make things worse is a good idea.


I think the problem is that W wants to fight a conventional war to show some progress in the War on Terror. Obviously OBL is not giving him a conventional war.

I also think that there is no thing that would please OBL more than an invasion of Iraq, half the point about terror is causing your enemy to overreact. It would certainly increase his support in the arab world.

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My first official act would be free jumps every Friday and mandantory nudity for all females on Saturday at my DZ.


Finaly something I can relate to :)
---
PCSS #10

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what is so different from that situation and going in and removing the taliban regime from control over afghanistan. i don't think that made the middle eastern climate unstable. i think a lot of people actually appreciated it especially those being oppressed. however, i do agree that it may prove difficult to find saddam within the confines of iraq.

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Whoa. Hold on there. I'm not saying we should/should not go in and oust Saddam. All I was doing is pointing out why Bush the 1st didn't.Remember 1991 was a totally different world than today.

But I will try and address your question as it pertains to the situation today.

First Afghanistan is not in their backyards.

Secondly, the nations in the Middle East had no stake in Afghanistan nor did they have any economic incentive to worry about it. Plus if Afghanistan went crazy and had refugees all over the place because of some prolonged war (we know this didn't happen but what if it had) the middle eastern countries would not have had to deal with it. (except maybe Iran)

Third, I don't think the people/populace of the Middle East had that much of a connection with the people of Afghanistan or the Taliban. Yes, there were/are connections between a selected few but as a populace I think there is quite a bit of separation.

Fourth, the US had some legitimate (in the eyes of the world) reasons for going into Afghanistan. September 11, provided enough proof to the people of the Middle East that they could reason why the US went in. (This remains to be seen about Iraq today.)


:)

J
YSD#0009

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>I have little doubt that one day we'll wake up to find that DC has
>been vaporized. The times that follow will be interesting indeed.

Unfortunately, I think you are correct. I think our best defense against such an occurrence is a concerted effort to support a world government, one that allows concerns to be addressed before nuking DC becomes the best option for either a terrorist group or a foreign country. We will never have the might to kill every terrorist in the world; even with our best efforts, Al Quaeda remains at large with its leader and half its "senior staff" unaccounted for. Nor will we have the ability to take military action against every country who develops nuclear weapons; already, several countries have them that we do not have great relationships with. At best, we can make sure that we don't give any countries a desire to see Americans dead no matter what the cost, and support a forum that allows them to air their grievances without relying on the use of force to do so.

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