They Finally Say What They've Thought All Along

In this piece of garbage. Was 9/11 Really That Bad?

I heard it kinda sucked if you were on a high floor in the WTC that day.

Gaius is astounded.

Dr. Sanity says it's a myth.

Curt says Sick and Twisted

The unfortunate thing about the Left is that if this were the time of Hitler, they'd be wringing their hands over his strict upbringing, or whatever other nonsense made him out to be just another victim.

Oh and they'd resent it, just like Hillary. The Left and the Dems are going to try and do everything they can to minimize the threat from radical Islam, because when push comes to shove, they lack the courage, will and foresight to fight, even in a just cause.

Giving the country over to their leadership would eventually result in a string of seemingly unending attacks until America finally gets fed up, if it ever does. We'd be seeing attacks just like Israel has, see below, and the Dems would be more about the civil rights of the terrorists, than they would be the well-being of average Americans. Actually, that's been their position all along.

Comments

[TheSpartan]

Wow. Dan, lighten up a touch dude. You might consider a switch to Sanka. I get a kick out of conservatives when they say things like "If the dems win they'll surrender..." oh lord. Here's the thing,when we talk about a war on terror we actually like to plan on fighting THE TERRORISTS...wow, what a concept.

[Cal]

Newsflash asshat, 9/11 was 5 years ago - bin Laden still not 'brought to justice', Taliban still running around, no WMD's and a civil war in Iraq. You cons are utter failures and America told you so on 11/4.

[Phoenix]

we actually like to plan on fighting THE TERRORISTS...wow, what a concept.

Posted by: TheSpartan |

Any chance you can reveal that plan to us dimwits?

[Bill Adkins]

If George W. Bush had been in charge on 12/7/41 we'd have attacked Paraguay and declared war on their allies the inhabitants of Pangea. And we'd be speaking Japanese today.

[91B30]

Phoenix-of course not, it's a secret plan.

The best response I have seen to this was posted on a thread at Free Republic:

"Actually if you read the entire article the Professor has some perfectly valid points, and the "overreacting" thesis is only one of the two poles of his consideration of the topic although regrettably it is the one he comes to advance. I think, though, that to consider the matter purely in terms of body count is to miss the entire point of terrorism - it is the expression of the potential of violence, and not necessarily the violence itself, that is terrorism's objective.

For example, a suicide bomber attacking a school may succeed in killing "only" a half-dozen children. To parallel the Professor's argument, what's a half-dozen children compared to the thousands killed by, say, drunk driving? Well, that isn't an argument that is likely to appeal very much to their parents, for one thing, but the objective wasn't to kill the kids, it was to place the fear of a similar activity into every parent's heart. It was to destabilize the existing society by proving that it cannot protect its constituents.

Now, a true believer in "proportionality" would respond by saying that assigning surveillance and SWAT teams and locking down schools is a disproportionate expenditure of resources in response to "only" a half-dozen dead children, and that a proportionate response to such a "low" number of casualties might properly be no response at all.

And that is where the argument from body count breaks down entirely. It implies that an aggressor who proclaims his intention to attack but who can only kill a few people must be tolerated. That is the nexus of the Professor's argument here, and it is the grand swindle of the entire "proportionality" approach - it means that a terrorist who tunes his attacks to take place under a specific threshold will be safe to continue them indefinitely. That isn't an academic argument, it's the way it actually has been for decades now.

Modern terrorism counts on this. In order to combat this evil game the response must be disproportionate. Two buildings down, two governments taken down. And Iran's frothing at the mouth despite, nobody wants to take the third building down at the cost of being the third government. And that's one reason nobody has. Disproportionality is absolutely the answer against terror and it demeans the value in human life of its victims to imply that they're only worth so much in the grand scheme of things."

I suspect that the lefties "plan" involves a lot of blaming Bush for any future outbreaks of terrorism, but not much else. Still, it might just continue to get them elected and that is the only battle they are really interested in fighting.

[Purple Avenger]

Nothing to see here. Just move along.

[scarshapedstar]

91B30, actually, I think "the terrorists" counted on our spending 2 trillion dollars on a wild goose chase.

[91B30]

Right-and how much was your plan to fight terrorism going to cost again?

[TheSpartan]

well if it cost 1 trillion and was only twice as effective it would be a bargain.

[91B30]

Details, Spartan, details. Tell us your brilliant-and economical-plan to fight terrorism (or "the terrorists" as the unfortunately quotation mark afflicted "scarshapedstar" above puts it).

[seekeronos]

Solution to state sponsors of terrorism: a flight of MIRVs to thier most densely populated cities.

Solution to radical islam: a 50 megaton warhead dropped on Mecca and Medina during the busiest week of the Islamic pilgramage, and a few dozen on the Shi'ite shrines to Ali on Ali's special day.

Cost: maybe $200-300 million, tops... bought and paid for years ago to keep the Russkies at bay.

[scarshapedstar]

My plan doesn't really matter at this point. It would have been to keep the bulk of our forces in Afghanistan, wipe out the Taliban and kill Osama, and then go home.

If there were/are sleeper cells in this country, invading Iraq certainly wasn't/isn't doing anything to deter them, no matter how "strong" we look.

[scarshapedstar]

And, yes, I know that Osama would have said "The crusader armies have gone home in shame and defeat blah blah etc etc." I don't care. I, like most people, learned to ignore schoolyard taunts in grade school.

I will never understand why the 28-percenters can say in the same breath that the Arab race is just a bunch of cavemen with AK-47s but our number one priority is to make sure that we hold to their insane notion of "saving face" that leads fathers to stone their daughters to death because they were raped. What ever happened to "we've got the carriers, we've got the nukes, bring it"? Now it's all "if the Arabs think they've won, then they have!"

Jesus. You won't even win a game of chess thinking like that. How the hell did we expect to win a war?

[TheSpartan]

What does it matter if I present details for a War on Terror? We aren't fighting a war on terror in iraq to begin with. And as it stands W's plan hasn't worked, I can certainly come up with a plan that doesn't work too for easily half the money. You want one that works? You'll have to find someone above my, or your, pay grade to deal with that.

As for Iraq, I'm a fan of the Biden plan.

[Scrapiron]

If Usama is alive you can kill every person in Afghanistan and not kill him. He is in hiding in some other country. The place to kill terrorists is where you can sucker them into gathering, right now that is Iraq. Looks like the second tap with a nuclear bomb will be in Iran. All of the force and equipment to destroy the entire country of Iran is in place and withing striking distance.

I notice the lefties never worry about the 3,000 Americans killed and the billions of dollars in damage done in NY and at the Pentagon. The only excuse they have to live is to complain about someone who actually does something. They're pitiful life isn't worth saving.

I say it's time for us Vietnam Veterans to organize and get violent with the anti-americans that want to force another loss on the United States. What the He**, we're mostly over 65 so what are they going to do to us? Spend trillions in prison and medical cost on us? Might be good deal for us. Whack a liberal, get them out of their unhappy, miserable life and get good care the rest of out lives. Maybe the VFW should start getting this idea spread around.

[91B30]

So, not so much with the details then. Among the problems with maintaining Afghanistan as our primary focus in the GWOT is that the terrain makes it difficult for us to use many of our advantages (armor and air) while at the same time being a landlocked nation surrounded by other nations which are not exactly what you would call friendly to us. Meaning that our supply lines would be exposed and dependent on the goodwill of guys like Musharraf and the wide variety of Jihadi crazys in his country. Frankly it seems to me that sending every light infantry battalion we have into the Hindu Kush where they would be repeatedly ambushed (and where, just for example, it would be that much harder to get a medevac) doesn't seem like such a brilliant strategy.

Now maybe shifting the focus of our fight to a nation which we can access from the sea and is also bordered by an ally of ours (Kuwait) which we can use as a logistical base, while at the same time eliminating an acknowledged enemy of ours might not seem like such a good chess strategy, but some of us can see the wisdom of it.

Of course Osama has used previous "schoolyard taunts" (Somalia) to recruit more jihadis to the fight.

Iraq is a mess, wars are messy, but the enemy there can never in a 1000 years force us to quit the field.

As for the $2 trillion estimate I googled around until I found Prof. Stiglitz's paper and that estimate includes an assumption that we remain in Iraq until 2015. Much of what he estimates is money already spent, seems to me that we ought to at least try to get a win for it.

[91B30]

I couldn't get the hyperlink to work, but Stiglitz's paper can be found at http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/download/2006_Cost_of_War_in_Iraq_NBER.pdf

[TheSpartan]

Scrapiron,
back in the wheelchair old man.

[Paul]

91B30, your comments about Afghanistan seem to amount to the idea that since Afghanistan was too hard, it was better we find an easier country to have a war in. Never mind the fact that they were no threat to us and not working with our actual enemies. And pay no attention to the world's 2nd largest oil reserves that, just due to pure coincidence, happen to reside in the soil of this 2nd country we chose to hold our war in.

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Now maybe shifting the focus of our fight to a nation which we can access from the sea and is also bordered by an ally of ours (Kuwait) which we can use as a logistical base, while at the same time eliminating an acknowledged enemy of ours might not seem like such a good chess strategy, but some of us can see the wisdom of it.
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Yes, you 28% still see wisdom in such folly. Similarly, I expect there were cavemen who held their food in the fire by hand instead of using a stick, and no doubt they saw some form of wisdom there too.

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Of course Osama has used previous "schoolyard taunts" (Somalia) to recruit more jihadis to the fight.
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The Iraq war has recruited far more jihadis than the efforts of Osama and all Islamists who came before him.

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Iraq is a mess, wars are messy, but the enemy there can never in a 1000 years force us to quit the field.
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So you're saying that the US military could remain in Iraq forever, even up to 1000 years??? Can you not see how utterly absurd that is? Unless America formally colonizes Iraq and sends over tens of millions of Americans to live there and serve in the military for generations, then the fact remains that ultimately the Iraqis are at home and the Americans are not. Eventually, the Americans will go home and the Iraqis will stay where they are.

[Phoenix]

Should the U.S. military remain in Iraq forever? 'Forever' is a little ambiguous, don't you think? Why not see it in terms that Iraq becomes a democracy filled with capitalists and happy, free, liberated citizens allowed to create their own livelihoods? What an enormous threat that would be to the entire region where the young populations are beginning to see the light and causing their totalitarian governments no small amount of worry? These countries will implode from within. Nothing better. Iraq, The Model.

We need a base there - the location is perfect considering the region.

oh ugh... People are so short-sighted, it blows my mind.

[91B30]

Gosh Paul, how about addressing what I actually said as opposed to what you wish I had said. What I said is that focusing our fight in Afghanistan meant that we would not be able to bring all of our military advantages to bear and that shifting the fight might deny the enemy the initiative. As to whether Iraq was a threat to us, well it is not in dispute that one of the 1993 WTC bombers had taken shelter there and that other terrorists, like Abu Nidal, had taken up residence.

I'll leave aside the 28%'er snark since policy isn't a popularity contest. I also wonder how it is that you know that Iraq has recruited more jihadis than Osama ever did-I guess since it makes you mad you figure it must have a similar effect on Islamic extremists.

And again, the point is that the enemy can never drive us out. It seems to me that we ought not to hand them a victory they didn't earn.

[Peter]

1942: North Africa never attacked Pearl Harbor!
1943: Italy never attacked Pearl harbor!
1944: France never attacked Pearl Harbor!
That is what you folks would have been screaming all during WW2 when we put the lion's share of our forces into the ETO and Nimitz, MacArthur and the Marine Corps operated on a shoestring all the way into late '43 before our production really got on line.
Here is a clue. There is an unknown, but significant percentage of the one and a half billion Muslims in this world that would like nothing more than to kill or enslave us. I'd peg it at closer to twenty percent than ten, and growing. It grew during the Carter years and during Reagan, through Bush 41 and Clinton and now, finally, one Administration is fighting back.
While I do not agree with every move Dubya has made, at least he is fighting.
It's too late. We are in Iraq. Maybe we should have gone into Iran first, I dunno. I do know that if we pull back now then it will be just exactly like the mid seventies in Southeast Asia, the same slaughter of millions of the little guys the left claims to care so much about.
Trouble is, every time you leftists get power, little guys die. Russia, China, Germany, Africa, SE Asia, doesn't matter where, leftists in power, megadeaths.
Pardon me for not believing you now.

[sglover]

"Trouble is, every time you leftists get power, little guys die. Russia, China, Germany, Africa, SE Asia, doesn't matter where, leftists in power, megadeaths."

I guess the guy who took power in Germany was that renowned leftist Adolf Hitler. I guess he picked up his Red leanings from the organization that gave him his start in politics, that hotbed of Bolshevism, the Reichswehr.

Is being a flaming ignoramus a high-status job, wherever it is that you live?

[Anonymous Coward]

sglover: Are you suggesting that Hitler and Stalin are different? The only difference I can think of is that Hitler had it out for certain special groups, while Stalin was an equal-opportunity mass-murderer. Does it really matter that one totalitarian dictator is labelled "left" while the other virtually identical totalitarian dictator is arbitrarily labelled "right"?

The only reason Hitler and Stalin fought is simple. "In the end, there can be only one."

Plus, I don't see how (someone you arbitrarily label) rightist Hitler killing lots of people refutes in any way the statement that "every time you leftists get power, little guys die. Russia, China, Germany, Africa, SE Asia, doesn't matter where, leftists in power, megadeaths."

[Hello people]

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