07-23-2004, 09:41 AM
As for who attacked us on 9/11, how do you propose we prove exactly which group did it? The fact that certain groups declared war on the United States is good enough for me. The fact that we keep finding high ranking members in Iraq tells me we must have been looking in the right place after all. I'm not even sure it matters if Osama's money or planning was behind 9/11. He runs terrorist training camps, teaching people what a good idea it is to hate and attack America. It's like we're not real sure he pulled the trigger, but we caught him fleeing the scene of the crime at 90mph with gunpowder on his fingers and a dead body in his trunk. I'm not sure we need to prove he pulled the trigger, we have plenty of other charges we can press.
I'd also be surprised if we managed to pin it on some other totally unrelated group. What group of extremists has the numbers, money and foresight to send people through flight school and then send people to America with spending money and plane tickets? These aren't just some disgruntled refugees who got together some loose change, they're people with financial backing. I doubt we'll ever know for sure who did funded it unless someone stands up and says, "It was me", but we can make a pretty good guess.
The bottom line is these people will keep attacking us so long as we have anything to do with the middle east. Even if all we did was buy shoes from Israel, there'd be extremist groups calling for our destruction. So I see three options:
1) Stay there and fight them
2) Stay there and don't fight them
3) Completely get out of the middle east
#1 is what we're doing now. The main argument against this is that we're just generating more hate and thus more terrorists. I would argue that they hate us anyway, they're going to fight us anyway, at least now they're attacking marines in Iraq and not civilians in America. I also think it's safe to say that 99.9% of Iraqi's don't actually hate Americans enough to want to kill us, it's just a handful of (mostly foreign) extremists that we're dealing with. A lot of Iraqi's were glad to see Saddam go and are happy to see the work being done on the infrastructure. Why do you think Iraqi's keep getting killed while standing in line to join the police force, yet the next day more of them stand in line? They don't like the extremists either and want to take their country back just as badly as we want them to have it back.
#2 is what we were doing. Problem is we can't stay in the middle east, trying to bring stability to the region and not have people want to fight us. So #2 just isn't viable. We tried it and we had 4 planes get hijacked and smashed as a result. #2 is like #1 except all the new terrorists you generate don't have any marines to fight, so they just keep growing in power until they spill out of the country and start causing real problems.
#3 is the old pre-WW2 head-in-the-sand act. We pull out and hope like hell that things work out and nobody builds nukes nobody builds a huge army and takes over the whole area and dominates the oil supply and uses the money to build an even bigger army, etc. In the light of history, I don't think this has ever been a good idea and it's even less of a good idea in the age of long range missiles and terrorism, where there truely is no such thing as someone else's problem.
Personally, I would be very concerned if America switched to isolationist policies. I think it would just be a matter of time before the next madman with a huge military and a desire to do something with it showed up. Isolationist supporters always seem to downplay that possibility despite the fact that it's happened all the damn time throughout history. I don't see why they suddenly think humanity is all peace and cupcakes today.
I'd also be surprised if we managed to pin it on some other totally unrelated group. What group of extremists has the numbers, money and foresight to send people through flight school and then send people to America with spending money and plane tickets? These aren't just some disgruntled refugees who got together some loose change, they're people with financial backing. I doubt we'll ever know for sure who did funded it unless someone stands up and says, "It was me", but we can make a pretty good guess.
The bottom line is these people will keep attacking us so long as we have anything to do with the middle east. Even if all we did was buy shoes from Israel, there'd be extremist groups calling for our destruction. So I see three options:
1) Stay there and fight them
2) Stay there and don't fight them
3) Completely get out of the middle east
#1 is what we're doing now. The main argument against this is that we're just generating more hate and thus more terrorists. I would argue that they hate us anyway, they're going to fight us anyway, at least now they're attacking marines in Iraq and not civilians in America. I also think it's safe to say that 99.9% of Iraqi's don't actually hate Americans enough to want to kill us, it's just a handful of (mostly foreign) extremists that we're dealing with. A lot of Iraqi's were glad to see Saddam go and are happy to see the work being done on the infrastructure. Why do you think Iraqi's keep getting killed while standing in line to join the police force, yet the next day more of them stand in line? They don't like the extremists either and want to take their country back just as badly as we want them to have it back.
#2 is what we were doing. Problem is we can't stay in the middle east, trying to bring stability to the region and not have people want to fight us. So #2 just isn't viable. We tried it and we had 4 planes get hijacked and smashed as a result. #2 is like #1 except all the new terrorists you generate don't have any marines to fight, so they just keep growing in power until they spill out of the country and start causing real problems.
#3 is the old pre-WW2 head-in-the-sand act. We pull out and hope like hell that things work out and nobody builds nukes nobody builds a huge army and takes over the whole area and dominates the oil supply and uses the money to build an even bigger army, etc. In the light of history, I don't think this has ever been a good idea and it's even less of a good idea in the age of long range missiles and terrorism, where there truely is no such thing as someone else's problem.
Personally, I would be very concerned if America switched to isolationist policies. I think it would just be a matter of time before the next madman with a huge military and a desire to do something with it showed up. Isolationist supporters always seem to downplay that possibility despite the fact that it's happened all the damn time throughout history. I don't see why they suddenly think humanity is all peace and cupcakes today.