Cycloptichorn wrote: ... I don't even care about the political mistakes that lead us to the situation that we are in today. I only care about solving that situation.
I do suppose there are some of us who feel that you cannot fight terrorism only by going after terrorists. It's like fighting the sympotms of an illness, and not the cure. Sure you have to keep the patient alive, so the symptoms must be addressed. But to not address the cure would be folly.
Let's focus on the cure.
Let's focus on keeping as many of the patient
S alive as we can,
while we concurrently focus on the cure.
To keep the patient
S alive we must concurrently proceed to eradicate the desease
while we search for the cure.
Cycloptichorn wrote: I infer that we do not live in a vacuum, that our actions do have consequences. WE gave Sadaam and Bin Laden money and weapons when they were on our side, WE set up the 'oil economies' of the middle east, WE don't give a damn how bad things get over there as long as we get our oil. Now we are reaping exactly what we've sewn.... I agree with your last sentence completely. I think the problem is caused by the intolerance of those who constitute the problem - both us AND them.
Excellent! We agree!
Cycloptichorn wrote: If we can't figure out what is making these people willing to sacrifice their lives in order to strike at us, then the problem will occur over and over and over, no matter how many people we kill or lock up.
I agree! However, I think the short term cause of people willing to sacrifice their lives in order to strike at us is known. I think the Sponsors of the TMM are the short term cause. Just as the Nazis elite were the short term cause of the WWII German committers of atrocities, and the Shinto elite were the short term cause of the WWII Japanese committers of atrocities, the TMM sponsors are the short term cause of the TMM.
First, we eradicated the short term cause by eradicating the Nazis and Shinto elite.
What was the long term cause? We know that too. It was the absence of
secure liberty for the people of Germany and Japan. We helped eradicate that long term cause too; we
helped them secure their liberty. I think the long term cause of the success of the Sponsors of TMM is also the absence of
secure liberty for the people of Afganistan and Iraq. We are
helping the Afghanis and Iraqis secure their liberty and thereby eradicate their long term cause too.
Cycloptichorn wrote: You must be willing to admit that aggression can cause MORE terrorism than it saves - people will not be cowed into being afraid of us! Think about it. Our response to Afghanistan should have been enough to show any terrorist that we will move with overwhelmening force to take them out.
Yes, I admit such!
Cycloptichorn wrote: Yet Al Quaeda is alive and strong. Obviously whatever we have done to eliminate them so far just plain isn't working. Does that mean we have no hope, or that we should abandon the course and pull out of the region? No!
It is alive but not strong. Our efforts have not worked, yet.
Cycloptichorn wrote: But we should consider a two-pronged approach to the situation, I'm not saying we should wait militarily to solve all problems socially, but we should not wait socially to solve all our problems militarily.
We agree!
Cycloptichorn wrote: Actually, it's nothing like that at all. That is probably the worst analogy for this war I've ever heard. If we had been pissed at the English, and their tyrannical polices, and France had invaded, conquered the English lords who were in America, and set up their own government to 'show us the way to liberty' life would have been much, much, much different.
The French (among other extremely helpful things)
bottled up the British Army at Yorktown making it possible for GW to lead his forces to beat the hell out of the British. I think the
English lords in America were in fact quite analogous to the bottled up British Army, including its lord-y generals, at Yorktown. The French objective to bottle up the British Army in America is surely analogous to our objective to bottle up (e.g., eradicate, defeat, disable, remove) the TMM in Iraq.
Cycloptichorn wrote: Noone in Iraq asked us to invade... there was no active rebellion before we got there. These people don't see us as saviors, they see us as invaders. Did we do a lot of good things for them? Yes. Have we done a lot of bad things for them? Yes.
We were in fact
asked by many Iraqis who fled the Saddam Hussein regime. Some Iraqis see us as saviors, some don't. "The jury is still out."
Cycloptichorn wrote: The situation is not as cut and dry as you think. I think you simply must be able to empathize with a common man, from a beat-down country, to understand people's motivations.
The truth of the situation is somewhere inbetween our views. Some terrorists are bad people, some have been pushed to do it by their teachings, some have been pushed into it by us. We must address the totality of the situation in order to solve the problem of terrorism, not simply assume they are all evil people.
I think all people who repeatedly threaten to perpetrate and repeatedly do perpetrate the murder and maiming of innocent people as a way to solve their particular problems (no matter how severe those problems may be) are evil, and have thereby forfeited any claim to our or anyone else's sympathy or empathy.
By
innocent people I mean those people who are not threatening to perpetrate bodily harm to anyone, and are not actually perpetrating bodily harm to anyone,
except to defend themselves against such threatened or actual bodily harm.
I do not buy the evolving so-called wisdom that people are not responsible for the consequences of their actions, if they have been previously abused. Most such abused people respond to such abusive treatment by making extra efforts to eradicate the abusive treatment and not to eradicate innocent people.
Thanks for the complement! :wink: 
Why can't Bush leave the Iraqis alone to select their own leaders as long as they select people not known to be sponsors of TMM?
