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Originally posted by BP:
the muslim community in general was moving towards a less conservative and less extremist position before 9/11 and iraq....
...than it is now. the W approach of pre-emptivism on the WOT which is doomed to be about as effective as the war on drugs. this administration has proven they cannot multi-task effectively. look at afghanistan, bin laden, iraq. very dissapointing.
and are you sure you're feeling ok jato? you mean this isn't all clinton's fault, as our resident 'intel analyst' and neo-con crew would like us to believe?
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The blunders that the present Bush administration has delivered is most certainly NOT anyone's fault but it's own. Poor planning, poor execution, overly optimistic expectations; I have not changed my tune or my desire to see many in the Joint Chiefs given the boot and Rumsfeld flogged and I have mentioned this countless times...
The current problems we face in Iraq stand on their own and no amount of political rhetoric can change the fact that things have gotten MORE difficult and with little sign of letting up. Someone other than me once said something about "winning a war, but losing the peace" and this is precisely is what is on the brink of taking place. Not all is lost, but I do not have much hope that we will see a functional and relatively peaceful Iraq anytime soon, and by that I mean not before 5-10 years have passed. The Sunnis and Shi'ites are just too fractured by their localized differences that Hussein managed to magnify by the way he ran the country. Notice I'm not even touching how the Kurds are going to play into this...
No, I cannot and absolutely refuse to blame our present military situation in Iraq on the Clinton administration. However, I do completely throw the lion's share of the blame on our intel failures that did lead to a number of bad calls in the pre 9/11 and the early post 9/11 days of the Bush, Jr. administration on the abysmal way that intel was gathered and handled by the Clinton Administration. The '93 WTC bombing was a wake-up call that was more or less put on snooze for 8 years. I could blather on for hours, but suffice to say that wiser heads than mine have already put the screwups that William Christopher and Madeline Albright propagated under sctrutiny and they have even started pummeling on one of the few figures in the Clinton administration that I truly admired (and even had a chance to meet in college during a seminar), George Tenet. His story is damn-well near a Greek tragedy as he pretty much sunk his own ship with the following two words:
"slam dunk"
I guess I would say that the Clinton administration with the modest help of the Regan and Bush I administration help set the stage and provided most of the shoddy props in this drama, but the bad acting that has most of the crowd booing has been all due to poor planning and poor execution of the Bush II administration. Unfortunately, it's rare that the public get more than knee-jerk reviews of the show and few care about the scriptwriting or the choreography that has gone on during pre-production.
Then again, we did have Hussein selling tickets at the door, promising an unknowing audience and production crew a surprise nobody would have guessed...
Lots of blame and finger-pointing, but none of it changes the reason of why we went in. Again, Bush made the right decision based on what ultimately turned out to be the wrong reasons. If we knew then what we know now, I'm sure House and Congress authorization for military action would have NEVER been given and I highly doubt the Bush administration would have requested it.
JaTo
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Originally posted by BP:
Originally posted by BP:
the muslim community in general was moving towards a less conservative and less extremist position before 9/11 and iraq....
...than it is now.
Forgot to address this; I still disagree with this assessment. Radical Islam has been constantly progressing foward since the 70's and has seen few if any contractions in it's influence or it's ranks of followers. Now if you said blatant state-sponsored extremism, I would agree, since most Islamic political apparatuses have figured out this is pretty much a one-way ticket into getting their clocks cleaned out by the West sooner or later. The way the governments get around it though is by turning a blind eye to these radical organizations in their midst, forking support to them through back-channels that cannot easily be identified or tracked, all the while denouncing them on any UN podium they can find just to make us feel "warm and cozy" about the "progress" they are making.
These people and governments may be simple compared to our own and possess one-track minds in some ways, but they aren't stupid. They know how to work the fools at the UN and they know how to position themselves to the media. Some of the spin Hamas and the PLO has pulled over the years in the media should have PR hacks in corporate American taking notes...
I always liked the line in "The Usual Suspects" that Kevin Spacey uttered:
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist."
If you are buying into the presumption that things were "all quiet on the Islamic extremists front" before Bush got into office, you are beginning to buy into this con. Mention to a Chechen how Islamic radicals were few and far between in the '90s and watch the expression on their face........
JaTo
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I don't think anyone ever wins in war. Both sides suffer. The new wars seem more like peacekeeping and less like war. Terrorists blend in with the civilians and that strategy seems to work. In other wars it was military against military.
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Originally posted by JaTo:
If you are buying into the presumption that things were "all quiet on the Islamic extremists front" before Bush got into office......
give yourself more credit than that. my opinion is islamic extremism has been exacerbated by the bush admin foreign policy and the very badly managed wot.
edit -
that said, there is hope for lasting peace in the me and a reduction in the threat of terror attacks on US interests. i just think it's a lot further off than some of us are willing to accept, and we'll have to forgo the scorched earth approach that so many people love in order for us to get there.
Last edited by BP; 08/31/06 02:38 AM.
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interesting link I found at the Lebonese embassy website in Washington DC..
PM for LINK
and no im not making a political statement here..
Last edited by Shaggy; 08/31/06 01:24 PM.
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Since many Arab countries put forth the notion that 9/11 was a direct result of US foreign policy practices in the Middle-East during the last 20-30 years, I wonder if those same Arab countries and those very same voices will be willing to admit that it has been Hezbollah's actions and stated policy of seeing Israel destroyed that brought the Dogs of War to their doorsteps in Southern Lebanon this time around...
Hezbollah has been lobbing rockets, conducting bombings and kidnappings as their method of "foreign policy" with Israel for quite some time and Lebanon has been pretty much turning a blind eye to these activities.
Very sad, but hopefully that as much as Israel understands that it was heavy-handed in the way it went about this latest campaign, the Lebanese government finally understands that Hezbollah is a liability and one they need to rid themselves of before any chance of a lasting peace can be found.
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Originally posted by Goonz SVT:
interesting link I found at the Lebonese embassy website in Washington DC..
and no im not making a political statement here..
It has only been the south that they wanted to destroy. Due to hezbollah using the houses and apartments as war bases.
The south loves and supports hezbollah. I am glad they blew it up, and i wish they did more damage, they aksed for the war when they intervined isreal fighting palistine. Now it will take longer for them to regroup like they had too back in 2000. Regrouping now would be a good idea for many to decide which side you want to be on.
Hopefully they will think twice before they start a war again.
Last edited by Shaggy; 08/31/06 01:25 PM.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
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Originally posted by Goonz SVT:
interesting link I found at the Lebonese embassy website in Washington DC..
and no im not making a political statement here..
I've seen some of those before from a friend that is pro-palestine. The American media seems to only present one side of the story (IMO).
We need to get out of the ME entirely in terms of military and politics. That includes Isreal, which we have supported for far too long. Let them fight their own wars without the support of American money, intelligence, technology etc. If some American companies wish to do business over there, that is their call, but our politics and our military don't need to be there.
Last edited by Shaggy; 08/31/06 01:24 PM.
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Originally posted by Pete D:
We need to get out of the ME entirely in terms of military and politics. That includes Isreal, which we have supported for far too long. Let them fight their own wars without the support of American money, intelligence, technology etc. If some American companies wish to do business over there, that is their call, but our politics and our military don't need to be there.
It's US pressure on Israel that holds them back from really getting down to fighting. Israel KNOWS they're up against the wall, and a country that's smaller than an average state in the US and surrounded by nations that really don't want it to exist (by virtue of its Jewishness, remember) will come out swinging at any provocation. US policy kept Israel from getting into the fight in Desert Storm, when Saddam was shooting missiles at it, and US policy has reined in Israel's aggression against Lebanon in the past month.
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