Re: Are dems in the Senate giving aid to the enemy by asking for a date for withdrawa
Archon said:
Instead he lets Cheney run around begging Congress to let the CIA torture more of them
The CIA does not answer TO DICK CHENEY.
You are beginning to **** ME OFF.
What the heck are you talking about? What I said in now way implies the CIA answers to Cheney. They would answer to McCain's bill if it passed. My point was to illustrate the propoganda defeat America has suffered because our Vice President openly wants to allow torture. He just put another log on the fire.
M14 Shooter said:
It should go without saying that these murdering freaks should be unconditionally condemned for what they do. It should be obvious to any rational human being that blowing up civilians and cutting off their heads is unconditionally wrong. Only the morally bankrupt would need to have that pointed out to them once, much less repeated. Bush and co. have done a good job condemning terrorist violence. It's pointless to be redundant when it's so obvious.
But its -not- pointless when people try to equivocate.
Equivocate what, that Americans are the real terrorists? If that's what you mean, then I agree with you. That's the problem, it seems nobody can point out America's foreign policy mistakes without someone assuming America is being blamed for the whole damn thing. Both sides have been unfair to each other in the past, some more than others of course, but admitting to one or two mistakes is not the same as accepting full responsibility.
M14 Shooter said:
...and remove the fuel with humanitarian-oriented diplomacy the rest of the time. But Bush has a problem with the 2nd part.
How so?
I explained that in the rest of my post. Bush has failed to properly identify the reasons behind anti-Americanism in the Middle East.
"In an interview with The American Conservative magazine, Robert Pape, author of the book Dying to Win, said "The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign — over 95 percent of all the incidents — has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism#Terrorist_view
But Bush continues to propogate the notion that they just hate for the sake of hating. He doesn't address their arguments, he doesn't even acknowledge that they have an argument. He doesn't do enough to remove the fuel.
M14 Shooter said:
Removing the fuel is what Democrats stress the most, because that's the part Bush keeps forgetting. He doesn't understand why terrorists have targetted us. He tells us they hate our freedoms, they hate democracy, and they have an ideology of hatred.
And Bush is right.
Remember that we were NOT in Iraq when the terrorists attacked us on 9/11.
No, Bush is wrong. Bin Laden's resentment of America turned into flat out hatred during the first gulf war when Saudi Arabia allowed our troops on their "holy land." He wants America out of Saudi Arabia, out of the Middle East entirely for that matter, and wants us to stop supporting Israel. Those are specific arguments that Bush needs to refute, and could easily refute with a little effort, but to my knowledge he hasn't done so. He pins the "religious fanatic" label on him, deservedly so I might add, but that's it. No rebuttal to the specific arguments at all. No effort to quell the sales pitches that terrorists have to recruit more fanatics. It probably wouldn't change bin Laden's mind, but it would certainly make it harder for him and others like him to brainwash people into flying airplanes into our buildings.
M14 Shooter said:
He doesn't acknowledge that people were beheaded in direct retaliation for Abu Ghraib, even though al'Zarqawi, the piece of **** thug responsible for the beheadings, said exactly that.
And that didnt happen because ol' Zarq is watching CNN, right? What did you THINK he was going to say? Do you really think they arent going to use our media for their purposes?
In this case it's not our media being used against us, it's an event that actually happened. Of course it doesn't justify what they did in response, but when it comes to why, I think it's reasonable to consider the answer given by the actual perpertrator. Nobody knows what the real motive was better than al'Zarqawi himself, not even Bush.
M14 Shooter said:
You can't extinguish a fire with gasoline.
Yes you can, if you pour enough on in a short enough time.
M14 Shooter said:
It means removing the threat of terrorism by whatever means necessary. That includes not giving them more reasons to hate, thereby making it as difficult as possible for them to convince others that America deserves to be bombed.
No matter how nice we play with the terrorists, the terrorists will never play nice with us.
You're only considering current terrorists, who probably won't change thier minds about us. I'm talking about future terrorists. People who don't hate America enough to blow themselves up yet, but who can be duped by terrorist propoganda based somewhat on realities like Abu Ghraib, Iran/Contra, US-endorsed sanctions that end upstarving civilians, etc.
Islamic Jihad has been around for more than 20 years. Today's Islamic Jihad does not consist solely of founding members from 20 years ago. To be around for that long, they need to constantly recruit more terrorists. They need to sell their case and convince others that America/Israel deserves to be bombed. That ability to recruit needs to be shut down if we ever hope to curtail the terrorist problem. American foreign policy "mistakes" make their recruiting efforts easier, not harder.
