The way that I see it is that only Arabs can stop these insane terrorists. Not nukes, not surgical strikes against certain cells, not diplomacy with the current governments in the middle east. Bush has had the right idea all along. Topple the current governments and replace them with democratically elected governments that are friendly to the west. The democracies will (eventually) keep their radicals in line. They are only ones that will have the power to control their people. But we have to do it right so that they won't have a civil war and become even worse enemies (for historical perspective look at the Afgans). We can't prop them up only to let the radical muslims take over. :dis: Start with Iraq and the rest will follow over the next 50 years. Sorry folks, it takes time to nation build. If Bush would have had the political support (or in my opinion the balls) to back up the "if you support terrorists we are going to kick your butt" rhetoric, I think that we would be in a larger war (in Syria and Iran), but a more winnable one. A quick assasination of a certain Iranian leader would be a great next step. Iran had been ripe for a revolution until that nut job took over. If we don't just do it, it will be a never ending saga of minor wars (like what is happening with Hezbollah), terrorist attacks, and eventually they will get nukes. We absolutely need to crush Iran and North Korea NOW before there are mushroom clouds all over the US. The trick is to do this even when China, the EU, and Russia are trying to stop us from doing it...
I agree with you Tigermark, The problem that I see is this country has no stomach or patience for a real war and part of the problem is the opposition of the political party that seem to be on the same side as the enemy. Bring Bush and Republicans down at ANY cost. This is the first war that I am aware of that we have been divided other than Vietnam, I was too young to remember. Like I said the other day, If Democracy fails in Iraq then the rest of the middle east is hopeless. I also said that Iran and Syria haven't paid any price for their actions in Iraq. If we keep putting this off we will pay the price down the road. Might as well get this over with stop kissing everyones *ss. To hell with what the world or anyone else thinks. Anyone who is pregnant or taking a six month child on board with bombs? Bunkers and Ammo under schools? Think about that the next time they show CIVILIAN casualties in these countries? Who exactly is the enemy? As far as I'm concerned, end the war on terror in hours instead of years. Bombs over major cities in Iran, Syria, Pakistan and everywhere else where they have their terrorist schools breading hatred. Give them their Jihad and maybe next time they will think twice about declaring a war.
Bush has had a foolish and hopeless idea that has failed time and time again. You can't conquer a country and "install" democracy. The people have to want it bad enough to take it for themselves. And they just don't. Bush naively thought that elections would automatically produce democracies. History suggests that is never the case. Just look at Iran or Egypt, both of whom elect their strongmen. Or Pakistan who had a military coup. Look who the people elected in Gaza when they had their first free elections ... Hamas! Look at Lebanon who elected Hezbollah into their Parliament. Look at the joke of a government that was elected by the people in Iraq. It will never be democratic. If the rags were yearning to be free, why didn't they overthrow Saddam? The same effort they are putting into this insurgency would have toppled Saddam. They don't want democracy, they want another strongman. There isn't a democracy anywhere in the Arab world and it is probably incompatible with islam. Traipsing around the world starting fights with 20 Arab countries in an absurd and futile attempt to democratise the Middle east is a lunacy of the neo-con republicans and is doomed to abject failure as we have already seen. Meanwhile Al Qaida still is in business and Osama runs free while our administration is sidetracked in impractical national-building (a practice he swore he would never be engaged in when he ran for office in 2000). Democratizing the middle east is a failed, futile, foolish, impractical, and doomed plan and a waste of time, military resources, and money that we don't have.
I think I agree with your statement here, the only problem is how do you fix this terrorism problem we have? Police action and treating these people as criminals will NEVER work. There is too many of them and sooner or later we aren't going to be lucky and more innocent civilians on the civilized side will die. Under this theory terrorism will last forever so we better be prepared to lose family members at some point. Are we willing to change and live our lives, our children and grand children this way forever? They have declared war and want to kill us all but a lot of people seem to have missed the big picture here?
Look at Germany, Japan, etc... There are PLENTY of examples of conquering a country and "installing" democracy. That is what happens after a war when you don't want to expand your borders. The Japanese didn't want democracy. There were factions that were as whacked out as the radical muslims are now. They seem to be fine now. Nation building is viewed by the PC crowd as a bad word. That is nonsense. The only other choice when taking over a country is to annex them as a territory of the US. Too bad that won't fly., we could use the oil. But seriously, there is nothing wrong with nation building when done properly. Did we conquer and run the elections for Iran, Egypt, Gaza, or Lebanon? No. I think that people are just too impatient with Iraq's government. The Kurds seem to be doing fine and they are Muslim. This civil war can be squelched. Our press and the democrats certainly aren't helping though. Who said anything about starting fights with 20 muslim countries? Only three. Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Then the others fall in line. The others don't want any part of us. We have the 9/11 excuse in our back pocket and we need to use it. They have harbored terrorists and they need to pay. And like I said, we cannot put an end to Al Qaida or any other Muslim faction. The Arabs have to do that! Impatience and partisanship are our enemies. Declaring that a long term project is futile, doomed, yada yada yada after 5 years is just impatient. No one should expect that everything will go perfectly along the way, but the plan is working. But it is not helped by those who hate anything "Bush" blindly crying "failure" every time we hit a bump. Face it, we have split the region in half and established a damned fine foothold. That is nothing to scoff at. Iran and Syria see the writing on the wall. Iran just needs that nuke and they will survive. We need to hurry up and crush them before they do.
First, you ruthlessly focus on the terrorists that hit us on on 9/11. Nobody else matters until we get those bastards. Sure, there are a bunch of islamic blowhards in the middle east that proclaim ugly rhetoric loudly for consumption by the local illiterate religious fanatics. But Israel's local enemies and other islamist groups who talk loudly but carry no stick at all . . . we should just ignore them unless they get in our way. They distract us from the real fight. Giving them attention just makes their silent friends give them more arms and money to annoy us. The same is happening with Israel and Hezbollah. Countries who despise Hezbollah are supporting them just to create problems for Israel. We must focus on the real problem and concentrate our resources on it, not disperse our resources in a futile effort to defeat every raghead in the world that is angry about something.
Not at all. Both countries wanted democracy and cooperated with us to achieve it. Neither of them looted their own country when the dictators fell. Neither country entered into a guerrilla insurgency against us. NOT ONE US SOLDIER was killed by Japanese during the occupation. They cooperated. They wanted democracy and they worked to make it happen. Furthermore we did not go to war with those countries to install democracy and we didn't invade Iraq for that reason either. Japan attacked us, Germany declared war on us, we destroyed them and were left with them to deal with. We invaded Iraq to eliminate Saddam and the WMD's we were told. Well, its done--Saddam is in prison and the WMD's never existed. But the Iraqis are left for us to deal with, only they aren't cooperating and if we wait for a democracy before leaving, we will never leave. The Iraqis haven't earned our help. We eliminated Saddam for them so they sacked their own country and blamed us for it. Now they hate us and kill our soldiers. Whenever we leave, be it next December or 50 years from now, another strongman will just take over and this time it will likely be an islamist dictator rather than a secular dictator like Saddam. Surely you're joking? You really think there is a plan that is working? Iraq is not only a disaster but a snowballing fiasco with no sign of progress, much less an end. It's already gone on almost as long as WWII. Many of us have seen this scenario before and heard the same kind of "stay the course" rhetoric during Vietnam. It's an excuse for a failed foreign policy and a red flag that the situation is a quagmire. We already had over 30 military bases in the region before the disasterous occupation of Iraq. Iraq is a millstone around our neck preventing our military from gearing up for the next struggle. It's sucking up 2 billion a week and we are still taking casualties for no profit at all that I can see. We haven't even crushed Iraq. Are you seriously asking to get involved in two more middle east wars when we don't have enough troops to subdue Iraq?
I think he meant Iran.....what to do with Iran? Iran doesn't give a damn about bin Laden. They want the bomb and if you think N. Korea is trouble, just wait. The US needs to facilitate the end of the regimes in Syria, Iran and Palestine. Then and only then can lasting peace come about. I agree with TigerWins......to think that this is a problem worldwide that can be solved in 5 years is a joke. This is going to go on for the next 50 unless we do something now about these countries........and if that means taking them over and setting up democracies then so be it. There will be bumps and as Rumsfeld said, as long as the terrorists have brains, the enemy will adapt.....we then have to adapt and win. You just don't pull out and quit.
On this we can agree. Where we disagree is how to go about doing it. The neo-cons believe that all problems can be resolved with military power. Well, in Iraq they have exposed the limits of our miltary power instead. The US is powerful in many other ways and they are not all being exploited properly. We have to end these regimes smarter than we have been. It takes diplomacy, economic pressure and sanctions, political hardball, covert action by special forces, veiled military threats, and sometimes overt military strikes. The best way is to engineer the fall of a regime from within as we did with the Soviet Union, Taliban Afghanistan, and Romania . . . or to influence them to change their ways as we did with Libya and Serbia. Attempting to occupying a bitterly hostile land just never works out (see Iraq, Somalia, Vietnam). Remember we defeated the only other Superpower in the history of the world without firing a shot by patiently bankrupting them over three decades.
