War on terror- is it Worth It

[jackattack502]

SO far, that war on terror has streched on for years

With the death and maiming of many lives, some people say we should pull out

Others say that the terrorist infrastructure needs to be demolished before we leave

Discuss your opinions

[bu11eTJuNkiE]

pull out, nuke'em. Thats my plan. And if nobody likes the way we handle things, nuke them too.

[Kester]

Disclaimer - I'm drunk so this may make little sense.

I totally agree with the 'war on terror'. Although at some points I doubt the way it is being handled.

I honestly thing, unless we show them we aren't going to stand for their religious hatred (which is what it is), they will continue to steal innocent lives.

I also think that allied casualties are a sacrifices we have to pay for the security of the western world. That is one of my biggest problems with how the media treat this war on terror. They use the death of our soldiers as an arguing point. That is something I detest. However I accept that casualties are a part of war, and don't understand the big deal the media make about it.

Yes, it's a sad thing when anyone dies, but this is war, and to be honest hardly anyone has died in in compared to wars on the last century. Also the amount of Iraqis and other opposing forces that have died, really get ignored, then when one of our soldiers die it's all over the place in the news, that's hardly right.

[John Clabo]

pull out, nuke'em. Thats my plan. And if nobody likes the way we handle things, nuke them too.


HAHAHAHAHA!!!! :rofl::rofl:

[TheTaxidermist]

pull out, nuke'em. Thats my plan. And if nobody likes the way we handle things, nuke them too.

I can't wait to see what the hippies have to say about this. haha

I don't think war is right, but since we're in there, support em on their quest for victory!

[jambo]

The War on Terror is ok, but the illegal invasion of the sovereign country of Iraq is not!

[lubbe]

We're not going to stop terrorism by invading countries and killing countless civilians. Simple as that. If anything needs diplomatic measures, it's this.

[Ares]

At the moment, I'm actually supposed to be writing a term paper about this very subject.

The War on Terror is necessary, and always has been going on, we've just never really had a name for it, and it wasn't always a prime concern to national leaders. Even if we do "win" the War on Terror, we won't simply be able to say, "That's it! Lets go home!", we'll have to continue surpressing terror in the world.

There's a few problems with the War on Terror though:

1: There's no internationally accepted definition of "terrorism" or "terrorist"

Believe it or not, this is a big deal. If we want to effectively convict and detain terrorists of crimes and avoid accusations of holding innocents (much like what is happening in Guantanamo Bay), a standardized definition of just what terrorism is will need to be developed and accepted around the world, so we can prosecute them.

2: Defending is expensive in money, Attacking is expensive in money, lives, and foreign relations.

There's basically two ways to go about combating terrorism. You can close and seal the hatches and fortify your position using billions (perhaps trillions) worth of state of the art technology and human effort, or you can spend billions (more likely trillions) of dollars using "preemption" which also consumes human lives, and (as Iraq has proven) can have disasterous consequences with your foreign relations.

Defense is hard because you, as the defender, must guard every one of your valued areas. The terrorists, meanwhile, can select the weakest one, and spend a fraction of the amount you are paying in the act of destroying it. A terrorist only needs to get to an airport with an ak-47 to completely wreak havoc and fear. The security measures (which just failed, by the way), guards, intelligence service agents (which were supposed to stop stuff like this happening in the first place) and elite counter-terrorist response team called in to kill said terrorist cost millions.

If you need to know why preemption can fail, refer to figure A, "Iraq".

3: Diplomacy does NOT work.

Sorry lubbe, but you can plead with the terrorists all you like, nothing short of the complete dismantling of all free-countries in the world and the elimination of Western Pop Culture will satisfy the terrorists.


I've already written alot, I'll contribute again later on I guess...

[jackattack502]

The sad thing is that a Predator Uav, armed with a helfire missle, found what apperently was Bin Laden (being 6' and all makes him very easy to spot) But Clinton Denied the right to fire the missle, so therefore, we get this **** during 9-11

[Tesseract]

There is only one solution to stopping terror. But it is a horrifying and awful price that would come as a result. To accomplish the task any resistance to the acceptance of the social order would be stamped out without DUE PROCESS. I for one would not want to live in such an oppressive world.

[DarkFlood]

Welcome to the combine.
Population: You

While even though our means to thwart terrorism are somewhat vague and ineffective, I only condone the war on terrorism. NOT THE WAR IN IRAQ. We were lead there under false pretense, we attacked them illegally, and while the media only shows soldiers that have died in the war, they fail to show that over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians were killed.

There is no true way to stop terrorism aside from a massive wipe of all emotion and personality.

[Tesseract]

That or a purge of humanity in it's whole. Mankind is violent in nature.

[Ares]

That or a purge of humanity in it's whole. Mankind is violent in nature.

Indeed. Somebody's always going to be mad enough about something to the point that they'll kill to have it changed, or at least because they don't know what else they can do.

The sad thing is that a Predator Uav, armed with a helfire missle, found what apperently was Bin Laden (being 6' and all makes him very easy to spot) But Clinton Denied the right to fire the missle, so therefore, we get this **** during 9-11

A lot of people throw out quite a bit of flak at Bill Clinton because he "failed" to stop 9/11, whether it be because he threw a "wall" between the FBI and CIA, or his Cruise Missiles didn't blow up Bin Ladin, or he didn't order something that somewhere along the line would have killed some major terrorist leader.

You do realize that at that point, we really had no reason to kill Bin Ladin? Sure, we knew he was doing things we didn't like, but we didn't actually have physical proof that he was actively attempting to harm the United States or its citizens. And do you honestly believe that killing bin Ladin would've stopped 9/11 dead in its tracks? Even if bin Ladin was dead, something would have occured. Bin Ladin just wouldn't have been the one who ordered it.

[Tesseract]

For the most part things were handled by subordinate minds aswell. I'm guess Bin laden is more of a figure head anyhow.
Bill Clinton did great things for the american economy. That aside he did order strikes that were about as effective as our current war on terror.

[DarkFlood]

Well, would you rather have a guy in the white house who gives our economy a surplus, gets into a sex scandal, and (almost) gets impeached?

-OR-

Would you rather have a baboon in the white house who gets our economy into a recession, deals major blows to human rights, fights a war based on a lie, tortures and imprisons innocent people of his own country, has the second lowest approval rating, is against net neutrality and for hindering scientific progress, and has yet to be impeached?

Clinton was loads better than Bush could ever hope to achieve.

[TheTaxidermist]

Don't believe anything the media tells you whether they are for or against the war on terror. You won't be getting the whole truth either way.

[Ares]

@DarkFlood: Well, technically Clinton almost got impeached because of "WhiteWater" (illegally selling land or something like that), but the Lewinski scandal made for much more interesting press.

As of right now, Bush hasn't really done anything to cause him to be impeached.

@Taxidermist: which is why you have to read all the news and seperate the Politik from the facts and then create your own view of the situation...

[Tesseract]

The man speaks the truth. doesn't mean he wasn't as good for the US as anyone.

[rtanger]

We cannot win with force. For every terrorist that takes a bullet between the eyes, several more fill the vacuum.

This is a fight that needs to be settled on an ideological level, and that is something that is going to be relatively impossible.

Western ideology has been doing battle with Middle Eastern ideology since pretty much the birth of the disparate mindsets. No amount of fighting is going to solve a 2000-year history of fighting.

Blowing up half of the 'promised land' isn't going to help, no matter how many times we attempt to.

Our biggest mistake was to take the fight to them, instead of working out ways to secure our own lands for ourselves. We've stirred up a Hell of a hive by marching all over their lands.
Now we're stuck. We can't simply pull out, but we're never going to have "mission accomplished" either.

[jackattack502]

We cannot win with force. For every terrorist that takes a bullet between the eyes, several more fill the vacuum.

Thankfully, our troops are not that accurrate, and the jihaddist count reduces by the day.

For Mods- the reason i quoted this is because i want people to focus on a specific part of what RTanger said. I realize what you say about quoting people above you.

[rtanger]

Seems pretty worthless to quote me for nothing more than a play on words.

[TheTaxidermist]

If the terrorists keep blowing themselves up, they'll be gone eventually.

Yeah that was harsh. But it's true and you know it is.

[jackattack502]

Terrorists are not like mushrooms

when you kill one- they dont multiply

the terrorist count is gradually going down

[rtanger]

I'm moving my edit down a post or two-

And who says the jihad-ist counts dwindle by the day? Them, or us?

As far as I understand it, many of their children's lives are spent learning how to properly hate us.

The void may not be filled overnight, but it will be filled.

[DarkFlood]

Most people are taught to hate us primarily because we are free or don't have religion controlling our government. (Although Bush is trying) Unfortunately there is no way of seperating the crazies and the fundies from the rest of the world. Even worse is that the crazies and fundies are in places of power.

Most of these people want their state to remain controlled by their religion, which wouldn't be bad if the ones controlling that religion weren't sexist, fascist, and.. well, crazy people.

The people in the Middle East are all still in the medieval mindset where religion controls every aspect of their lives. There are Muslim organizations that do 'under the counter' payments to families of suicide bombers. They see it as a means to escape their poor economic predictament. Of course, ask these organizations about the payments and they act as if you are crazy. They don't think of terrorism and suicide bombing as 'murder' like the rest of the civilised world, they consider it to be martyrdom. They think that if you kill yourself while killing people that don't share the same beliefs as you, then you're a hero.

So, why not just pull out and cut off all economic ties to them (including oil) this will completely decimate their economy and they'll be too busy learning just why they shouldn't be fighting the US to actually attack us. Really their Oil and the US's consumption of it is the only reason they aren't poor. Our country is the reason their country stays afloat.

/rant

[DKR1138]

America will not win over there, period. Its impossible, without the peoples backing its like fighting a whole nation (vietnam anyone), the only way to technically win is for them to not exist... America and following nations should withdraw, and let the unavoidable civil war take place in Iraq.

Lets face it, since WW2, every war Americas been involved in has pretty much been screwed up. Maybe they should learn something and stop attempting to play world police for a second.

[DarkFlood]

Like I said, pull out, stop purchasing Middle Eastern oil, and invest in Russian oil (at least they aren't trying to kill us anymore) then all you have to do is wait for everyone to come begging for the US to buy their oil because their economy sucks.

We all know that the war in iraq was for the oil. It was obvious from the start.

[(Undecided)]

As a natural born United Statesian I offer my expert interpretation of the situation:

Were are F'ing screwed.

[klaymore]

Sadly for us every time an American soldier dies a hippy takes his place.

[FullMetalJacket]

sadley


oh my god, did i just ccontribute to my bro's thread?

[TheTaxidermist]

Like I said, pull out, stop purchasing Middle Eastern oil, and invest in Russian oil (at least they aren't trying to kill us anymore) then all you have to do is wait for everyone to come begging for the US to buy their oil because their economy sucks.

We all know that the war in iraq was for the oil. It was obvious from the start.

Oil is down to less than $52 a barrel. Yet the prices keep going up.

[Atomic Waffle]

O Canada.
I say we pull out all the troops in the middle east, then drown the terrorists in maple syrup! Bwhahahah!

Suprisingly, we have a surplus of it in storage, and we have no way to get rid of it. 2 birds with one stone.

[Ares]

^I'll gladly take off some of that pure Canadian Maple Syrup off your hands. I can't think of anything better to put on pancakes and waffles...


On a more serious note, Bush just declared two days ago that he's going to go through with the troop surge in Iraq. Not really that it's going to do anything though. The issue in Iraq and the rest of the Mid-East goes far beyond there being a lack of power.

[Atomic Waffle]

That power-mad bastard... Really, that's all I think of when hear of Bush.

[(Undecided)]

Sadly for us every time an American soldier dies a hippy takes his place.

Does the hippie get killed?

[Atomic Waffle]

Yes, and they are replaced by emos.

[Kester]

Keep in sensible and on topic please.

[klaymore]

Does the hippie get killed?

Last time I checked hippy's don't march off to war.

[Ares]

Like I said, pull out, stop purchasing Middle Eastern oil, and invest in Russian oil (at least they aren't trying to kill us anymore) then all you have to do is wait for everyone to come begging for the US to buy their oil because their economy sucks.

We all know that the war in iraq was for the oil. It was obvious from the start.

Who says it was all about Oil? I'm sure that played a part in it, but I also believe Bush was 100% sure (considering what intelligence he recieved) that Iraq (more specifically, Saddam Hussein) was a threat to the United States. So we invaded, and he we are now several years later.

As for the Oil, I'd say invest in Canadian Oil moreso than Russian Oil. While Russia isn't overtly trying to screw us over anymore, the United States and Russia arn't exactly on the best terms. Canada, on the other hand, is an ally of the United States, is literally next-door to us, and has a TON of oil.

[DarkFlood]

I wonder.. Whatever happened to the system of checks and balances? :dry:

Bush has taken our nation from the best one in the world, to a nation worse than what hes fighting.

[Atomic Waffle]

Who says it was all about Oil? I'm sure that played a part in it, but I also believe Bush was 100% sure (considering what intelligence he recieved) that Iraq (more specifically, Saddam Hussein) was a threat to the United States. So we invaded, and he we are now several years later.

As for the Oil, I'd say invest in Canadian Oil moreso than Russian Oil. While Russia isn't overtly trying to screw us over anymore, the United States and Russia arn't exactly on the best terms. Canada, on the other hand, is an ally of the United States, is literally next-door to us, and has a TON of oil.

We have the biggest oil reserves in the world next to Saudi Arabia.
However we like our oil too.:D

[TheTaxidermist]

You know what's funny? John Kerry was very positive that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that we needed to deal with saddam hussein. I'm not saying it's right, but he's a hypocrite.

[lastdinosaur]

Yeah, let's keep up the war on terror, because we all know how well the war on drugs went...

Realistically, the war on terror is a big, flashy name that is really hard to deny, simply because being against it connotes you are for terror. In furthering this mythical war on terror, it becomes totally reasonable to invade nations like Iraq and attempt to secure oil reserves. The truth is, there is vast terrorism going on that the United States does absolutely nothing to address. Basque separatists recently broke the armistice in Spain and North Korea has been continuously kidnapping people in Japan and South Korea for years, just for some examples. Why doesn't the war on terror take us to those places ever? Because there isn't any profit in it.

Further, let's look at the wording here. Terror is an emotion. This isn't a war against a tangible object, it is a war against our own fear and uncertainty. And the results are twofold. At home, the president, who fears the freedom of his own people to make their own choices, creates this polarizing war, rapidly crystallizing american viewpoints into a few, highly simplified ones; with us or against us, liberal or conservative, god or allah. So we end up huddled together in our ideological bomb shelter of strict, evangelical christianity, violently exclusionary to those who would deny our views and thus place themselves into the same category as the enemy (al quaeda, muslims, liberals, etc.). And then, in the name of maintaining this war on terror facade, we go out and totally bomb the **** out of some islamic people, where all the survivors, people who probably didn't like us before but, really, weren't willing to sacrifice their lives to attack us, now have lost their families, their health, and everything else they had at our hands, and basically have no reason NOT to want to destroy us. I'm not saying that terrorism is justified, but I'm saying that terrorists DO come from somewhere, and we are in the process of bringing up the next generation as we destroy their homes and lives every single day.

So this is the recent history of america, eternal, faux wars on vague ideas that serve as nothing more than expensive diversions to help push the various agendas of whatever political figures we hand the power to next, inevitably believing they align themselves with our interests despite their clear manipulation of us at every turn. I for one have no interest in taking part in this. As weird as it may seem, I believe in doing what is right for people, and not forcing my ideas and beliefs on them. I don't even know where this puts me in the political spectrum, because I can't stand for the self-serving bull**** coming from either side, but I don't think that anybody should be condensed down to liberal or conservative, and a given set of standpoints that they hold to no matter what, because that is what's destroying our country at the moment anyway.

[TheTaxidermist]

Rwanda is a good example of the US government doing nothing because there was no profit to gain. It's the same situation now in Darfur. But if you think about it, just because the country gains something from a getting involved in a war doesn't necassarily make it a bad thing. Just look at World War II. It ended the depression.

[Jacob]

The sad thing is that a Predator Uav, armed with a helfire missle, found what apperently was Bin Laden (being 6' and all makes him very easy to spot) But Clinton Denied the right to fire the missle, so therefore, we get this **** during 9-11Clinton vs. Fox News (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPyQ4Ae6Ei0)

Rwanda is a good example of the US government doing nothing because there was no profit to gain. It's the same situation now in Darfur. But if you think about it, just because the country gains something from a getting involved in a war doesn't necassarily make it a bad thing. Just look at World War II. It ended the depression.because steel for tanks was in high demand, and there was no one left in USA to have a depression. you were either fighting a war or working to help the fighters. though that could be wrong. *shrugs*

war on terror: you can't fight fear, as it is always there. if you lose your fear of one thing, you gain another.

war on terorists. you can't fight terrorists with an army, or you kill civilians in the process. that's what armies do. they decimate countries. and if a country kills your beloved family member, of course you are going to grow up feeling anger towards that country...aka more possible terrorists ("possible" because we will eventually win their hearts and minds...right?). :huh:

it would be better and more descrete if special ops are used, aka Solid Snake and all other copies video gamers love. you're going after the select people then, and not the whole city/country.

[Collision]

My opinion.

GTFO of there and GTF back home.

[Lopez]

Oh man that sucks, I just looked at the "War on" bit and saw "War on Iraq" If I had known it was the war on terror I probably would've chosen the first one. Man I'm an Idiot.

[Atomic Waffle]

World War 2 Was fought because the Axis was going to take over the world. There was immediate danger to the countries invovled in it. Iraq can't do jack all to the U.S. and probably never could/would.

[TheTaxidermist]

World War 2 Was fought because the Axis was going to take over the world. There was immediate danger to the countries invovled in it. Iraq can't do jack all to the U.S. and probably never could/would.

Well you see the original idea (and I'm sure 99% of the people in America thought this as well without any outside opinion weighing in) was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Now, even a small country, could do severe damage with a weapon of mass destruction.

If you get the chance if you haven't done so already, read a book called "The Mouse That Roared." It shows how it could actually be a possibility that a small country could invade a country like the US. Of course, the book is based on fiction but it really is truly a believable tale.

[El]

Disclaimer - I'm drunk so this may make little sense.

I totally agree with the 'war on terror'. Although at some points I doubt the way it is being handled.

I honestly thing, unless we show them we aren't going to stand for their religious hatred (which is what it is), they will continue to steal innocent lives.

I also think that allied casualties are a sacrifices we have to pay for the security of the western world. That is one of my biggest problems with how the media treat this war on terror. They use the death of our soldiers as an arguing point. That is something I detest. However I accept that casualties are a part of war, and don't understand the big deal the media make about it.

Yes, it's a sad thing when anyone dies, but this is war, and to be honest hardly anyone has died in in compared to wars on the last century. Also the amount of Iraqis and other opposing forces that have died, really get ignored, then when one of our soldiers die it's all over the place in the news, that's hardly right.I'd like to add to Sir Drunk's point. As well as the media's increasing attempts to make it look terrible, if we pull out, the world will be chaotic, and there's no guarantee that the terrorist attacks will stop. We need to stabilize the Middle East before we do anything else.

[Black Op]

Now, even a small country, could do severe damage with a weapon of mass destruction.
However potential Iraqi WMDs would be limited by the range of the missiles the Iraqis posessed. Iraq might have been able to strike its neighbors, but they had nothing capable of hitting the US itself. Maybe they'd be some legitimate concern if Saddam aquired ICBMs, but this map shows what targets Iraq could have reached:

http://www.strategypage.com/iraqwar/missilerangemap.jpg

[Atomic Waffle]

The counter-attack on Iraq would pretty much wipe it off of the face of the Earth. And I'm not talking about a nuclear counterattack. There really wouldn't be anything left afterwards.

[MaxTheLimit]

We have the biggest oil reserves in the world next to Saudi Arabia.
However we like our oil too.:D

but the process for gathering the oil out of the soil is expensive, which is why we are trying to get it from the reserves in the eastern countries because there is not as much of a process to make the oil usable. I heard Canada had enough oil to keep producing for the next 20 years if we did as much as we could for the next 20 years. That's if we didn't even find any more. And also let's not kid ourselves about this war. Very little of the decision to go over was because the benefit to smaller nations or to protect anything. The main reason was political advancement and money benefits. To think otherwise is naive. No matter what we do over there it's not going to protect our way of life in any way....in fact it may put western civilization at risk of alienating the whole region of the world....making it worse.

[rtanger]

To me the whole bit with Iraq was a bit like walking up to that hornet's nest in the corner of your garage, and smacking it with a stick just because they might attack unprovoked had you not hit them with a stick.

Now that they're all riled up, we're too busy being stung to do anything productive, and now we're stuck with nowhere to escape to, trying to placate a nest of extremely angry hornets with naught but a pair of tweezers and a bottle of isopropyl.

The extreme pre-emptiveness and lack of forethought before we engaged in their country has now screwed us over for several years now.

Can't really stay, can't really leave, can't really do anything except get in the way of this obscene civil war of OUR creation...

It sucks. That's all it does. I just can't shake the feeling that this Iraq business will continue to devolve until we're left stranded in the middle of a violent quagmire (Oh, wait...) that'll make Vietnam look like a resounding success for us.

And yet, there's STILL no solid reason or pretense for why we started it in the first place! That's all I want to know. The REAL why. There is no "Here's Why" that makes a lick of sense to me yet. I'm tired of the administration's success at playing our entire country like a bnuch of fools. We really must be, we all on the whole seem to keep eating up the bull**** as they keep feeding it to us.

It worries the Hell outta me.

War on Terror? Sure, if there's a real, direct threat to our country. Using the War on Terror as a pretext to waltz into places uninvited and royally **** it over? NO.

[intooblivion]

The extreme pre-emptiveness and lack of forethought before we engaged in their country will CONTINUE TO SCREW US OVER FOR SEVERAL DECADES now.

Can't really stay, can't really leave, can't really do anything except get in the way of this obscene civil war of BUSH'S creation...

And yet, there's STILL no solid reason or pretense for why we started it in the first place! That's all I want to know. The REAL why. There is no "Here's Why" that makes a lick of sense to me yet. I'm tired of the administration's success at playing our entire country like a bnuch of fools. We really must be, we all on the whole seem to keep eating up the bull**** as they keep feeding it to us.

Using the War on Terror as a pretext to waltz into places uninvited and royally **** THE USA over?

Fixed.

As for why, Bush felt like it.

[Manbearpig]

I'd say this war is for power mainly, keep the citizens scared keeps them in line, keep fighting a war that can not be won, and essentially bitch-slap the middle east. Before we invaded Iraq Al-qaeda had no presence thre, then we invaded disbanded everything of the central govt. distabalizing the area allowing insurgents to form and letting Al-qeada and Iranian special-ops to enter the country (both of whom Reagan armed). Since we didn't learn out lesson the first time when it came to arming fanatics we decide to arm the militants, so in the end all we've done is set the stage for a new country to hate us.

P.S. I would just like to say I'm independent, not a wimpy Democrat or a imperialist Republican