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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (29788)	9/27/2001 8:40:31 AM
From: Poet	Respond to of 82486

I could not care less if anybody sees that as clumsy, selfish or whatever.... Now hang on there. Isn't one of the lessons the US has learned since Sept. 11th that how we appear as a country does indeed have importance?

To: jlallen who wrote (29788)	9/27/2001 8:49:24 AM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I don't care if we bully or bomb them into submission as long as we take action to make sure that more innocent Americans don't fall victim to these religious fanatics You may not have noticed, but bullying and bombing Afghanistan and Pakistan is not going to make American people safer. When would you stop? Maybe if you wiped out both nations, entirely - you're OK with ~160 million deaths? That's, what, 20 times more than Hitler managed, and even 8x Stalin? After all, history tells us that genocidal attacks against weaker groups never turn back on those attacking. And, of course, you'd have no enemies among all the expats and emigrants (including those in the US), or the neighbours of those countries, or other Muslims, would you...? They'd be quite happy and have no abhorrence at all for the authors of their genocide... right. Or maybe you'd show restraint, and only kill 1/2 the Pakistanis? OK, I'm sure they wouldn't take nuclear retaliation. Absolutely not. I mean, they might have so much more to lose... And no one in any other country would take any action, because we've seen that these terrorists are so scared by possible death, yes? so worried by the creation of more martyrs, right? And hey, all those nice oil-producing countries would be really impressed and happy about the slaughter of their co-religionists. Saudi society is so very stable, the groups funding the Taliban wouldn't mind at all, I'm sure. How many enemies do you want to breed??? I think the American interest would be served by more use of the brain than you show. I know it's your impotent rage talking. Try coming out of it, move to the next stage: grieving is good but should not fixate or obsess. <edit> I knew this sounded familiar... only it's meant to be satire. It is clear to me, as it should be to all Americans, what our nation must do: Retaliate with blind, violent rage, striking back with a fury and vengeance the likes of which modern man has never seen. We must launch every available missile at any nation in which the terrorists are rumored to be hiding. We must bomb every square inch of any country that may be harboring them. Then, when the thick, black smoke has finally cleared, we must bomb them all over again, reducing the rubble to its component atoms. If, in the midst of carpet-bombing a country, we find that it had no involvement in the Sept. 11 attack, so be it. Apologies can come later, but vengeance must be immediate. After pummeling the holy living hell out of those fuckers with bombs, we should send in ground troops, armed to the teeth, to sweep through and exterminate anyone still alive who might have been involved. America's soldiers must be under orders to pump round after round into their bodies, pausing only to replace their clips. Only then will closure to this horrible event be possible. If we do not strike back fast and with as much military might as humanly possible, America will never be able to heal. theonion.com

To: jlallen who wrote (29788)	9/27/2001 9:07:49 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

American interests are what concern me, in this case the American interest of internal security and safety of our citizens. I could not care less if anybody sees that as clumsy, selfish or whatever.... JLA, I agree with that. I haven't really heard any disagreement with that. When you hear what sounds like disagreement with that, it is, instead, debate about the best strategy to accomplish it. I don't think we should worry about clumsy or selfish if they are instrumental in success or irrelevant to the matter any more than women who win sports championships worry about whether their lipstick is on straight. We should apply ourselves to doing what's smart. What underlies the apparent disagreement, the debate about strategy, is legitimate. Certainly a Pakistan, with its nuclear capability, being overtaken by their internal Taliban is not a good outcome. We may make a conscious choice to risk that if we have some game plan for taking over Pakistan or destroying its nuclear capability should we have to fall back to plan B. If we do, fine. But I think what underlies the apparent disagreement is a lack of confidence that we'll be any smarter this time than when we gave stinger missiles to what would become the Taliban. I don't think you can brush off such debate with a simple "screw them." Karen

To: jlallen who wrote (29788)	9/27/2001 9:35:22 AM
From: Bill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

I agree with most of that. What's missing is a proactive effort to "sell" the west to the people of Islam. A major PR campaign needs to be undertaken in the entire region to educate the man on the street that we are NOT the great satan they were taught we were. We should earmark portions of our aid to each country for TV, radio and print commercials to spearhead a full blown marketing campaign. The people that do the NFL United Way commercials should be brought in.

To: jlallen who wrote (29788)	9/27/2001 9:37:09 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

It seems a bit stupid. If we terrorize them we will create more terrorists. You can't bomb people into submission unless you get them all. If you bomb people and some survive they will be much angrier and more motivated to hurt you, than they were before the bombing. This will probably be intensified if the bombees feel they were target for no very good reason. Whimsical bombings so we can feel we "retaliated" don't seem a very good idea to me. But great minds will differ on this point, no doubt.