RRC Archives

The war. You haven't forgotten, have you?

charlie wrote:Victory, I can see it right around the corner. No wait, that's defeat.

You're still hoping that al Qaeda will turn in their tracks and kick our asses, don't you? Amazing.

I've been wanting to post this article for a while but I've been a little busy. I've put the pages up temporarily on my website. It's from the November "Readings" of Harper's Magazine.

Pretty interesting. Where's the rest of it?

There it is, took a long time to download.

L K Day wrote:

charlie wrote:Victory, I can see it right around the corner. No wait, that's defeat.

You're still hoping that al Qaeda will turn in their tracks and kick our asses, don't you? Amazing.

You're still thinking invading Iraq has helped (or was even about) the situation with Al Qaeda? Amazing.

Any comment about recent critical failures regarding what I have always considered valid efforts to combat Taliban / Al Quaeda in Afghanistan? Commentaries from General McNeill and other international figures working in Afghanistan point to the lack of resource as their biggest obstacle to an effective strategy to execution. Their comments make me think it would be a better place to mortgage the American people's economic future. You know, if we don't waste it on domestic programs.

Afghanistan is now a disaster. Iraq as an exercise in government subsidies to Haliburton/KBR, CACI, and Blackwater is a freakin train wreck to be sponsored by Americans and Iraqi's for generations to come. How is this not painfully evident?

I hope to God you're trolling, but I know many other people that are clueless enough to think like that so I am no longer surprised.

We have already lost the "war on terror", or rather they have won. They have effected the US lifestyles, peace of mind and economy to a very large degree.

Take a minute to read Bruce Schneier here:

http://www.schneier.com/essay-124.html

I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.
The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics.
The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.
And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

Good one, Wes.

Word.

Wes - While Scneier has some of the facts straight, his conclusions couldn't be more wrong. Terrorism is a tactic, not "sometimes" to further a political goal but always.

Their goal, simply put, is to control the entire Middle East and along with it the modern world's energy supply. Until that political goal is accomplished we most definitely have not lost the war on terror. When and if the terrorists do accomplish this goal, they believe they can affect the collapse of the West. It's not out of fear that we resist these bastards, but out of self interest.

Having killed or captured something like two thirds of al Qaeda's top leadership we are most definitely not "doing exactly what the terrorists want". The immediate goal that Bin Laden hoped to accomplish with the attacks of September 11 was the withdrawl of American troops from Saudi Arabia and the entire Middle East. I think exactly the opposite has happened.

Yes, we're stretched very thin by fighting the war on two fronts, and huge mistakes were made initially in Iraq, possibly including the decision to even go there. But to choose to lose would grant a huge victory to al Qaeda, and have profound negative consequences for the Western world.

We don't have to fight the war on terror. We could simply pack our shit and go home. Let the radical Islamic nuts take over the middle east one country at a time. Then we could pay truly extorsionist prices for oil, how about $200 a barrel, $300? At those prices the New Caliphate could afford all the nucler weapons they desire. We could just park our cars and walk to work. Oh, sorry about that, we wouldn't have jobs, so we'd be free to go climbing all the time, if only we had a way to get to the crag. But at least we'd have lots of free time. Lots of time (when we're not grubbing for our next meal) to think about when and where the first nuke will go off. Not that we'd succumb to feelings of terror or anything. Because that would be exactly what they want us to do, after all.