I would not join the military unless I was willing to risk my life for my nation. Just as I would not join the Police Force unless I was willing to risk death to "protect and serve".

If you're not willing to risk your life for the cause, dont join the military.


Recognizing the threat is a pre-requisite to responding to it. Bush is already several steps ahead of most liberals in that respect.


Not necessarily. If someone is coming at me with a knife, I dont need to understand them in order to fight back. I just kick and punch and shoot (if I have a gun).


Maybe...if it is rabid and trying to peck my eyes out, yeah, I do whatever I need to in order to make it stop.


How many 911's have we had since the last one? Seems to be working pretty well so far.


So what?


We've replaced a dictatorship with a democracy. We've permanently removed a threat and replaced it with a potential ally. The "mess" we have now is preferrable to what we had before.


.

__________________
My Political Blog (Updated Oct 3rd) - Which Flame Warrior are you?

So fine - I mean, this thread kinda verifies the hunch I had - which is, that in most peoples' minds, this whole thing equates with "safety". It's like, two of the three answers were "safety" ("perception of a threat" is safety too, right?) -

So, SS and Catz and others, you guys are seeing a real threat from these Islamic radicals, and I'd agree with you on that - the threat is definitely there. It exists. I mean, to deny that would be stupid, right? "Contradicted by facts in evidence", and all that....

So, then, the first part along the SunTzu 101 course, is to figure out "what is the nature of your enemy". 'Cause I mean, there's 1.4 billion Muslims in the world, but only a small fraction of them are "radical", and only a small fraction of those are affiliated with Al Qaeda. So like, what's the "scope" of the fight? Are we fighting "all of Islam", or "just AQ", or is it something in the middle? To put that into context, there are something like 10,000 AQ in the world, give or take, so "something in the middle" might be, what, a hundred thousand? Even a million? I mean, what's the outside number on that? Ten million? What do you think?

Okay, so we're gonna fight "these guys" (whatever the scope is, that we've decided), and so now we need a "mechanism", right? 'Cause we know certain things about them - they're geographically dispersed, they "seem" to have a hideout somewhere although no one can really find it, they're all "quite radical" with their religious beliefs, and so on - so we "characterize" the enemy that way, his strenghts and weaknesses. So, what we probably come up with, is that "right now", we're dealing with maybe ten or twenty thousand folks who are willing to take up arms and go after the Great Satan, but the trouble is, their numbers are growing, so like, tomorrow it might be a hundred thousand, and the year after that, five hundred thousand, or whatever - and that's a threat, right? I mean, a threat "over and above" the mere existence of these clowns.

So in terms of "vulnerabilites", then, we know certain things - or, let me be specific on this one. "I" know certain things, that Bushie apparently doesn't seem to know. Because, I've studied the various Islamic cultures, and I get the distinct impression that Bushie is completely clueless in that regard. For one thing, Islamic men are scared to death of women - they are, and that's why they subjugate 'em. It's freakin' institutionalized into their religion, and if you look at it from that perspective, I mean, there's a lot of that type of low-hanging fruit that can be exploited for propaganda and other purposes. And the more "fundamentalist" they are, the more this is true - in other words, "ordinary" Muslims are generally pretty cosmopolitan and forward-looking people (and some of them are even "spectacular" that way), but these guys are kinda the opposite, right? They're isolationists and they wanna look "backwards" to find their utopia - so I mean, all that, can be exploited, right?

So then, we finally come to the military piece. Now, Sun Tzu seems to be of the opinion, that the best generals, are ones who never have to actually fight. Those are the ones who defeat their enemy without even firing a single shot. They use scouts, and propaganda, and deception, and tools like that, before they'll use the infantry. Yeah - I mean, Sun Tzu, right? See where I'm going with this?

There's kind of a "logical progression" in these types of things, and it's codified, and it's been codified for thousands of years.

And you know, suddenly, along comes a guy like Bushie who wants to wave his hands over that whole thing and ignore three thousand years of history and pretend like he has a better idea - I mean, the guy's definitely going through some "on the job training", 'cause I mean, only a moron would test the hypothesis that "Sun Tzu was right", you know, a couple thousand years after the fact....

See what I mean? If that whole piece weren't so frightening and sad, it would be terribly funny.....

How is it that you conclude that only a small fraction of muslims are radical? How do you define the term radical, for starters? And, the next part of the question is: what do we do to support the growth and development of moderate islam?

To me, separating radical islam from access to funds generated by oil revenues is a huge start.

__________________
Catz Meow
Badly behaved.
Hedonistic Lemming.

************************************************** ***
JW Frogen, my new favorite noob poster:

If you are such a weak jellyfish you can be bullied on a forum where you can ignore any poster you do not want to read than I suggest you move to Tibet, convert to Buddhism, protest the Chinese occupation, be killed as you will by the Chinese and hope you come back with some form of backbone.

Their nature is irrelevant, because we are not going to negotiate with them anyway. It is like trying to find out the "nature" of a rabid dog. There is nothing that needs to be understood...it's a rabid dog. It will try to bite you if it can.

You either cage it or kill it to remove it as a threat. Understanding is irrelevant.


The scope is fluid. Because our enemy is not confined to a single nation.


No. Because there are many Islamists who do not pose any threat to us.


No. Because there are terrorists other than Al Queada who are a threat to us.


Probably. How many white supreamists are there in the US? A million really isnt that much if you take it in perspective. A million is less than 1/25th the population of Iraq, and only 1/300th the population of the US.


We have a mechanism. We are replacing their bases of operations (and sources of funding and support) with democracies which are likely to be unfriendly to them. That is our mechanism.


We are removing potential hideouts from them.


So what? The alternatives are still worse. Without democracy as a platform we have no way of changing the hearts and minds of the people they are recruiting anyway. So the fact that "they are growing" is irrelevant. The way it is now they will grow anyway. Because without a free media we have no way of maintaining a dialogue with the Islamic masses and the recruiting will continue...the dictators and oligarchies will always be in our way.

So establishing open democracies is a pre-requisite to permanent change. Everything else is a bandaid fix.



Your expertise is insufficient for me. Try not to take it personally.


An open democracy will change that, even if it takes a generation or two. Either way it is irrelevant in the context of our immediate problem.


Just as it was with Christianity...BFD. They will mature too. We know for a fact Islamic moderates exist. Therefore we know for a fact that it is possible they will mature.


Sun Tzu also never ruled out violence as a solution. I do not accept your solution as superior to a military solution.


That is not an option for us, because we are the good guys...remember?

We are not trying to subjugate or exterminate people. We are the most powerful nation in human history...we dwarf the wildest imaginings of any emperor in Sun Tzu's time. That is why we can afford to do things he would not.

Our situations are not analogous, therefore you have to take what he says with a grain of salt...he did not know what we know.

Yes, we could permanently remove the threat if we had no morals. We could nuke them into glowing powder. We could bomb them into oblivion with conventional weapons. We could engineer any number of diseases to inflict on them (even humane ones....for example a disease that makes them sterile). We have a vast knowledge of chemical warfare too, and very advanced means of delivering it.

But we dont do that because we are the good guys. So the options you listed are not options for us. We have to pull our punches.


He does. We have succeeded where all previous empires have failed. We have nothing to prove.

Given the limitations we impose on ourselves, I have not seen any better alternatives presented so far.


.

__________________
My Political Blog (Updated Oct 3rd) - Which Flame Warrior are you?

.......the answer is no. Now if no one was willing to risk their life for the cause and didn't join the military, then what do you do?

Do they open up the draft like they did during the Vietnam War.

Peace.

__________________
E.Pluribus Unum

People of power have NO good will and people of good will have NO power.

If you think Education is Expensive try Ignorance.

ad hominem.

I work in a dangerous job that is equivalent to combat in the U.S. I've been shot at multiple times. I've on-viewed shootings.

Does that qualify me then to comment on this thread?

__________________
Catz Meow
Badly behaved.
Hedonistic Lemming.

************************************************** ***
JW Frogen, my new favorite noob poster:

If you are such a weak jellyfish you can be bullied on a forum where you can ignore any poster you do not want to read than I suggest you move to Tibet, convert to Buddhism, protest the Chinese occupation, be killed as you will by the Chinese and hope you come back with some form of backbone.

If you want to interpret my answer as "no", you're free to do so.

Why did you join the military if you are not willing to die for your nation? This isnt a rhetorical question. I am curious to see if you have the balls to answer it.

You claimed to be (or to have been) in the military on this forum before, right? So I'd like to know why you joined if you had no intention of following through on your promise to die for your nation if necessary.


Probably. It would depend on the situation.

That is why I have my sympathy for Vietnam and Korean Vets on issues like this. They did not voluntarily sign up to risk their life for their nation. So the argument you are making would matter more coming from them.

But every single person in the military right now (without exception) DID. Not one of them was drafted.

__________________
My Political Blog (Updated Oct 3rd) - Which Flame Warrior are you?

How ungenerous of you! You must be joking!? An "islamic empire" is about as likely as the Pope becoming pro abortion. Good lord, we can't even persuade Iraqis to stop killing ea other. Palestinians are brawling and disunited. The Lebanese are usually on the verge of killing ea other when they are not demonstrating against Syrians. And no one likes the Saudis. Of course, the West did its best to crush secular pan-Arabism so once again, we have to cope with the blowback which is the rise of fundamentalism. In fact the only unity among Arab Muslims is the desire for us to stop building bases in their countries and supporting Israel unconditionally.

I think Super is asking the right question.

"Would you, yourself, personally, fight this war?"

You know, would you actually take up arms, personally, if you had an opportunity to knock off a few Islamic terrorists?

I would. I'd do it. But I wouldn't go enlist in Iraq. That's something entirely different.

But yeah, I think Super's got the right idea. The question We the People need to be asking ourselves, when we're trying to decide whether we should go to war or not, is "would I fight this thing personally, myself" -

'Cause if the answer is "no", then I submit, that We the People probably shouldn't be fighting the war. Right?

So, my "short answer" in this space, is: would I kill an Islamist terrorist? Absa-freakin-lutely. I'd even shove a football into his hand just as he was dying.

But would I go enlist in Iraq? No way. I have nothing against those people. I feel for them, but they didn't ask for my help, and until they do, I'm not gonna lift a finger on their behalf, 'cause I got too many other things to think about.

Know what I'm sayin?

Good point, Super. Very good point.

Well, what "I" mean by radical, is the guys that are willing to take your life in the name of Allah. That's radical. I think that would be my "dividing line" there....

So, I think if you ask "most" Muslims whether they'd do that, the answer would be "no". I mean, you'd probably have to "interpret" their various answers to that question, 'cause Islam-speak is couched in its own vocabulary (you know, they have their own version of cherubims and sepulchers and all that stuff) - but when all that is said and done, I think you'll find that tne answer would be "no". "Most" Muslims understand what Jihad really means. It's only the radicals that don't "get it".

"moderate islam" - well, that one's a little harder. It's hard to say what "moderate" is. I mean, like, what would you say "moderate" is, in relation to, say, today's world of Christianity? You know, you've got the religious right, and the religious left, and what's "moderate" exactly? How much territory does that cover? Hmmm.....

Well, okay, but let's "assume" we've determined that, so the next question would be the mechanistic piece, like, you asked "how". Well, you know, reach out and touch someone. That's a no-brainer, right? Communications - through whatever means. I mean, what other way is there?