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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: skinowski who wrote (273096)	10/8/2008 2:57:52 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793974

Skinow, if you think Iraq was the centre of Islamic Jihad, you are barking up a gum tree. There is nearby Iraq a couple of places called Saudi Arabia and Iran. If you are looking for Islamic Jihad, you would have found a LOT more of it there than under Saddam's tutelage. He was NOT interested in any Islamic rule of law. HE was the rule of law. Pakistan is more of an Islamic Jihad supplier than was Iraq. Al Qaeda didn't get a devastating defeat in Iraq. The conflict was by the local yokels for the most part, with Iran stirring the pot and other Islamic supporters backing one or other faction. There was an opportunistic adventure in Iraq by foreign Al Qaedans of no great consequence. The reason the USA lost in Vietnam was that the local population opposed the USA. It wasn't because a few foreigners opportunistically joined in. The reason Iraq has settled down is because a political accommodation between the local yokels has been reached and the relatively few foreign miscreants lost their local support as a result. Hunting them down helped too. Perhaps Osama would become a martyr. I'd take my chances. Appeasement of megalomaniacs doesn't work Skinow. Obama has made perfectly sensible comments about getting Osama. John McCain has made the silly comments. "I know how to get him" - if he does he should whisper to King George II his top secret plan and get it done [without breaching Pakistan's territory]. <Pakistan is indeed a nuclear power. The more reason for Senator Obama to refrain from trying to destabilize that nation by making idiotic comments.> Pakistan is unstable enough whether or not Obama made those comments. Bush failed to get Osama. McCain could any time have passed on the secret method. He didn't. They didn't. Osama won, Bush lost. Maybe they have a secret plan to bring him Osama to justice as an October surprise. I doubt it. Obama is right and McCain is wrong. Tell Pakistan what's required by way of getting Osama. If they can't or won't do it, then inform them what the USA will do. If Pakistan won't support a reasonable effort by the USA to get him, then a reasonable inference is that they support Osama, in which case appeasing them is irrelevant. If all the troops in Iraq had been sitting on the Waziristan border and indeed were looking for Osama INSIDE Pakistan, then the issue would have been sorted out years ago, the troops would have been home and a lot fewer of them harmed. A LOT less money would have been poured down the gurgler too. There's not much I agree with Helen Clark, but focusing on Afghanistan was one thing we agreed on. I didn't object to the USA conquering Iraq, [other than it was a waste of my hard earned taxes] but it seemed an unwise idea. There were good outcomes such as Uday not being in the newspaper any more, but the cost has been too high. There were other, better ideas, and you can read my posts from the time pointing out that there weren't WMDs and what should have been done instead. A lot of Americans are more worried about their cash flow than about Al Qaeda roaming the streets of Lebanon in Kansas, or Peoria. Taking their shoes off at airports adds insult to injury. There isn't going to be another hijacking. The appeasement approach towards hijackers which was codified in the "take me to Havana" early days when hijackings were entertaining diversions from the planned trip is over. Now, when a hijacker pops his head up, he'll be attacked with whatever weapons are at hand and there are plenty on an airliner. A blanket, carry on bag, or life jacket might not seem much of a weapon but they are very annoying for hijackers being smothered in them then buried under the weight of fists, belts, and strangulations. The galley has wine bottles which make quite a thunking sound when landing on a hijacker's head. A couple of hijackers with knives or even guns is not going to have much success in taking over an aircraft. People will make do or die attacks on them and the pilots will be swinging the cockpit axes and whatever other weaponry they now wield. Entering a shut cockpit door with a pilot swinging an axe on the other side could be difficult. Come on now Skinow, give up the idea of appeasement. You trendy liberal lefties should learn from history that appeasement is not a good solution. Here's the answer. Phone whoever claims to be the current boss of Pakistan. Tell them they have 48 hours to hand over Osama, dead or alive or provide the coordinates of his location and give approval for a sortie to the location with the sole purpose of getting possession of Osama. If they think that's a bad idea, tell them that since they are supporting Osama, it's now a state of war and they should surrender unconditionally. If they refuse to surrender unconditionally, do a demonstration of what a nuclear bomb looks like at midnight at an altitude of 100 km over Islamabad. Give them another 24 hours to unconditionally surrender then tell them there will be another demonstration at midnight but at an altitude of 20 km. These would be something like 10 megaton bangs so they are visible. Maybe smaller bangs over a longer period of time and more slowly reducing altitudes would be better. Say 1 megaton at 100 km, 50km, 25km, 15km, 10km, 5km, 2km, In case you haven't noticed, Islamic Jihad isn't trying to appease We the Free [not that we are free - that's just a slogan]. They are wanting to cut our throats, bomb us and kill us any way they can. Return the compliment. Vladimir put polonium 210 in Litvinenko's tea. Litvinenko was an Islamic Jihad type. Remember Beslan? That's the nature of Islamic Jihad. Instead of fighting the Cold War again against Russia, why not join forces with them to deal with the real threat which is Islamic Jihad. Maybe the USA could hire Vladimir to do his polonium 210 trick on Osama. The USA made a big blunder backing Osama in Afghanistan instead of Gorby. There was serious blow-back from that, in the form of missing Twin Towers. Gorby was a good guy who would have made a fine ally of the USA. But no, the dopey Reaganites/Bush insisted on keeping the Cold War going though Gorby gave it away as a silly idea. The USA mistakenly thinks they won. They didn't. The USSR just stopped doing it. There was no victory. The USSR collapsed but that was nothing to do with the USA building ICBMs and flying B52s around putting CO2 in the air. The current USA problems are not because of foreigners doing a cold war, it's just that the USA did foolish things. If the USA collapses, it would not be because Vladimir won. If China's communists lose power, it won't be because the USA has big ICBMs either. It'll be because the local yokels are sick of them. There's not much sign of that with the booming economy. Give up on the appeasement. There are too many trendy lefty liberal appeasing types lurking around here. Obama knows how to deal with Osama = go and get him. Some of us remember the Twin Towers falling [as Obama mentioned]. Getting Osama would be good. Obama getting Osama would be poetic justice. I bet General Petraeus could do it if he is given a free hand and he thinks it's a good idea. He might consider my strategy a bit too confrontational and extreme. I'm sure he has a more co-operative way of achieving the goal. For example, what if the Waziristanis think "Good job and good riddance to Islamabad and the bad bastards who live there. THANK YOU USA"? My strategy, or maybe it is tactics, would be useless. So some fine tuning might be a good idea. Mqurice