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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (457039)	9/11/2003 2:17:47 PM
From: Bill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

We should, of course, be talking about the powerful ideas that move them and we should be according the charismatic and dedicated men that lead them their due. Only through countering those ideas and undercutting those men can we expect to see a sea change in the wave of terrorism that is building in the world. This is the kind of naivete that pervades the peace at any cost crowd. The leaders of the terrorist movement are the very mullahs who preach the terrorists' religion. The powerful ideas that move them have been thoroughly examined. The fact remains that there are cultural and religious issues which divide the west from the terrorists in a chasm that cannot be bridged. Clinton tried to bandaid the problem and failed to stop the attacks. Bush is taking terrorism on directly, and so far his actions seem to be working. Will Bush's actions rid the world of terrorism? Probably not. Will they keep America safer? They already have.

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (457039)	9/11/2003 2:24:55 PM
From: Doug R	Respond to of 769667

Very good points. "...dedicated believers who use their world view..." In that the US is preeminent in shaping world view as a result of our vast international reach, the neocons' basic approach to addressing any negative world view has so far been to affirm and reinforce the negative. The potential for the US to exert its influence as a positive role model has been, and will remain, entirely squandered as long as the disingenuous attempts to justify our actions in Iraq continue to be foisted upon the global community. Since these attempts are driven by an ideology that sinks to the level where killing should only be met with more killing, and have indeed swung the pendulum of reaction wildly past the point of rationality (realizing of course that the 9/11 attack was, in part, designed as an attempt to swing the pendulum this far), it can hopefully be expected that reason will return in the form of dealing with the root causes of terrorism instead of the neocons' "agent orange" approach of mass defoliation at the expense of the greater need for a supportive forest.

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (457039)	9/11/2003 3:51:46 PM
From: Kevin Rose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Thanks for the post. It's nice to see some considered arguments on this thread in the midst of the usual mayhem. I agree that this problem (our 'troubles'?) will not be solved through a plan that simply includes force. An overwhelming use of indiscriminate force will invoke Darwin's law and result in a highly evil, cunning, and skillful enemy. Witness the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia; they emerged from the jungle carpet bombings as as close to pure evil as possible. However, I disagree that force is not part of the equation. I base this on an analogy to fighting crime. I believe that, to effectively fight crime, you have to fight both the criminal and the criminal 'incubator'. Many criminals themselves are too far down a road to change. Sure, some of them 'reform', but the rate of habitual criminals is staggering. These criminals must be dealt with in forceful terms: polices, investigation, conviction, incarceration, and tough laws like the California 3 Strikes law. However, we must also address the reasons why people become criminals. Some are just evil, and will do so anyway. Others turn to crime for a variety of reasons: a crime 'culture', lack of education, lack of opportunity, lack of role models, etc. We must address these root causes to reduce the number of new criminals 'created'. I think terrorism is the same. Bin Laden and his ilk are unreformable, even if we had the desire to do so (which we don't). They must be done away with. We won't be safe until they are hunted down and killed or incarcerated. Likewise, we need to deal with the root causes of this brand of terrorism. The truth is that we haven't always dealt fairly with the Muslim world, protecting our own interests at their expense. The conflict in Palestine is also a lightening rod for Muslim unrest, and a cause of much of the violence and hate. We need to address these issues, and deal with the Muslim world in a fair way, to reduce the number of terrorists 'created'. Given these views, I supported (and still support) our effort in Afghanistan. Afghanistan had given way to a regime that was clearly supporting Al Qaeda. However, we've left that work half-done (an increasingly common thread to the actions of GW Bush), and gone off on a lark that not only did not have the proper justification, but actually distracted us from our pursuit of the Al Qaeda killers. If we had 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, instead of Iraq, we'd be much closer to ridding ourselves of OBL and Al Qaeda. Unfortunately, we seem further away from that goal that on the first anniversary of Sept 11th...