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There’s really no real way to combat these types of people, save for the ancient ways of the Romans and the Mongols, and we’re too civilized to do that.

Maybe. But are the Russians? Are the mothers and father of Beslan? Would the slaughter of American children leave us feeling “civilized”? Or prepared to act medieval?

I hope we never have to find out. But I have a feeling the Caucasus region is about to.

Well, the people of the Caucasus region have never been known for their mercy in war, so it’s anyone’s guess.

The bitch of it is that the Chechen people have a legitimate anger against the Russians for what they’ve done in Chechnya during the last decade or so, but the scum who murder children and hold theater patrons hostage are occluding the legitimate grievances and will probably be responsible for bringing a new round of atrocities upon their people.

The big problem is that in order to defeat barbarians, you have to be more barbaric than they are, which destroys any moral authority you may have, but war itself is ammoral, so what can you do? Is it more moral to annhilate a people so thoroughly that they become a footnote in history like the Etruscans or the Carthaginians or to engage in a prolonged tit-for-tat struggle that ultimately makes more people suffer than the first option?

I don’t know. What I do know is that since WWII, there has not been a single decisive war fought by this country or any other Western country (and the Falklands don’t count) that has resulted in complete victory over, and utter nullification of, a foe. We’ve been paying the piper for over a half-century of half-measures and compromises, and will continue to do so until we die the death of a thousand cuts.

As painful as it is to even write this, my objective side sees the atrocity in Russia, the kidnappings/beheadings, car and truck bombs in Iraq becoming a common occurence in the US over the next few years. Of course, we’ll catch many of them and they’ll suffer too….We’ve caught and killed or imprisoned many of the Al Quaeda terrorists that existed right after 9/11. Let me make a hypothetical example here, which may or may not be borne out by facts. Say there were 100 terrorists in the world after 9/11 and that we have captured 75 of them over the past 3 years. That should leave 25 remaining to be caught, right? But I’m guessing here that the hypothetical number remaining would be closer to 1025.

Norway and Sweden didn’t have troops in Saudi Arabia the past twelve years. They’re probably paying out the wazoo to put gas in their cars. But the terrorists could care less about them. It’s probably been 10 years since I’ve been to Canada, but I’ll never forget the freedom I felt walking around up there. It’s real, and it’s indescribable, and you should feel it walking around America, but you don’t.

I’m going to have to disagree with you on that. There is no anti-American logic to Al Qaeda. They have indeed threatened Norway. The only logic to their threats is, “not a Wahhabist Muslim? Convert, submit, or we will wage Jihad against you.”

They’ve killed Muslims in Morocco, Indonesians and Australians in Bali (Ali Imron, Bali bomb-maker: “Australians, Americans, whatever – they are all white people”), the UN special commissioner in Baghdad, hundreds of Kenyans in Nairobi, etc., nearly ad infinitum.

We are locked in on the memory of three airliners hitting specific targets, but in most attacks, they use shotgun targeting. Go where ever you want. Go hide in the smallest school in some tiny town you’ve never heard of.

And there they are.

I know what you’re getting at with your comment. But I only find one place to put the blame for beheadings and the slaughter of children. On the primitive and damned souls who commit those acts. I no longer have a speck of “why do they hate us,” or “what have we done”? The IRA, the ETA, the fighters in America’s Revolutionary War, even the PLO … every insurgency, revolution, or war for independence in the past 250 years could have easily taken schoolchildren hostages, or gone on a beheading spree. But they didn’t.

Only these Islamic fundametalist terrorists have used such tactics. In the history of mankind, there never has been, and never will be, any shred of justification for such an act.

Those schoolchidren would have been massacred if Al Gore had been elected. They would have been slaughtered if Ralph Nader was President. If the entire US military has been disbanded in January, 2001, those children would still be dead.

Canada is no harbor of safety from such barbaric animals.

I concede that there’s probably no real safe place in the world, though some may be safer than others. And I concede that no matter what we did as a military power, those Russian children would still be terrorized, tortured and murdered. As Paul said, the Chechens have a score to settle with the Russians.

And I’ll concede that the Islamic fundementalists are creating a whole new level in butchery and atrocity. Religiously inspired barbarism seems to know no limits, if history is any indication. I guess what I’m trying to get a handle on is, how do we deal with these animals and still live in our civilized world? Like it or not, the US homeland now has a big red target painted on it that it didn’t have before the first Gulf War.

In this country, we had problems with religious extremists (blowing up abortion clinics) and far-right extremists blowing up government buildings (Oklahoma City). So far, our policy of vigorously prosecuting them has seemed to have worked. That appears to be what we’ve tried to do with Al Quaeda, but you pretty much have to capture and kill them because they’re outside our legal jurisdiction. I think invading Iraq was a monumental disaster when we should have been pouring all our resources into Afganistan and Pakistan. And I guess I’m not smart enough to know why we kept our military bases in Saudi Arabia all through the nineties. But those two events are over and we’re now in the reality we created, even though it’s the Islamic terrorists who are doing the butchery.

I don’t think it’s possible to track down and kill all the terrorists who are at war with us. You’re right, they’re religious extremists, and when you kill one, there are ten waiting to take that one’s place. I think you have to take a long run approach to it, realizing that given the past, we have a whole world of hurt coming our way in the next few years. In the long run, assuming I had any say in the matter, which I never will, I would pursue a policy that dried up the sea that the Islamic fundementalists swim in. One that dried up their money, and dried up their targets and spent more time with diplomacy aimed at pouring money and effort at the problems in the Middle East that allow religious extremism to get a foothold in the first place. Over decades, I’d envision us spending a lot more for the oil we consume, and I’d expect to see a gradual modernization in the Middle East with more focus on improving the average person’s life. When that happens, the sea of terrorism is dried up and it collapses, just like the former Soviet Union. Or, we could continue our unilateral approach and blast the hell out of them wherever we find them. This is probably the approach that our government will continue taking. I just hope they realize that it’s a whole religion they’re taking on and not just a few evildoers.

“I guess what I’m trying to get a handle on is, how do we deal with these animals and still live in our civilized world?”

I’ve got a better question for you. If we lived in a world where scores of children are murdered as pawns by rabid adults, how can we dare to call this world “civilized”? I don’t mean to be harsh. I’m trying to take a clear-eyed look around. But being pretty fully cynicized these days, I can almost say “our civilized world” is nearly as delusional as the idea the Ever Present Jews were behind the massacre in Beslan. I can almost say that this world is not that far removed from the Roman and Mongols Paul mentions. We are far more technologically removed from them than morally.

“Like it or not, the US homeland now has a big red target painted on it that it didn’t have before the first Gulf War.”

And why did we fight the first Gulf War? Sure, oil was a motivation. But even so, the invasion of Kuwait and the threat to Saudi Arabia was a invasion and threat of our allies ... as they were defined diplomatically (you can sure argue otherwise in hindsight). They called for our help. Sure, our own interests were at stake too. But I can find no fault in that war other than it was about 24 hours too short (the time it would have taken to destroy or surround the final two Republican Guard divisions who got away … and then suppressed the Shi’ite and Kurd uprisings).

We stayed in Saudi Arabia, again, at the invitation of an ally, and to enforce the will of the UN Security Council, and the cease fire Iraq signed.

Live up to our alliances. Free the invaded, at their request. Protect our allies, at their request. Enforce international sanctions through the UN, at their request. These are the things we used to do, in those days around the First Gulf War. If those are the things that have built Islamic fundamentalist enmity against us, then they hate traditional American values. Those are things (multilateralism, working with allies and the UN) we’re now accused of abandoning. The kind of things I hear the Democratic party calling for a return to.

It appears to me, Republican values or Democratic values make no difference. The 9/11 attacks were initiated and planned during the Clinton administration, Bush was no motivation. The Madrid attacks originated in spring of 2000, long before 9/11, Iraq, and Spain’s support there. Those supposed underlying political motivations don’t wash with the historical timeline.

These “animals” have no politics. They have only their fervent Jihad.

“I think you have to take a long run approach to it, realizing that given the past, we have a whole world of hurt coming our way in the next few years.”

No matter who is elected.

“In the long run, assuming I had any say in the matter, which I never will, I would pursue a policy that dried up the sea that the Islamic fundementalists swim in.”

Ah, but the problem is agreeing on what created that sea. Many will argue it is mostly US policies. I argue that it is the repressive policies of the authoritarian regimes in the region, primarily Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And, yes, US policies have supported those regimes for decades. But Mubarak controls what happens in Cairo, not Bush (or Clinton, or Bush I, or Reagan). It’s always been Mubarak (or Sadat, or Nassar). Groups like Islamic Jihad have allied with Al Qaeda and turned against us because in their home of Egypt, they are mostly in jail or driven out. Saudi Arabia made their pact with Al Qaeda in the 90’s to “leave them be” as long as they didn’t attack the Saudis themselves (a deal that obviously didn’t work out in the 2000’s). When Syria had a problem with militants, they launched an artillery attack against the neighborhood where they were based that killed 50,000. Then they came in with bulldozers and leveled what was left.

That’s why there’s no more militant problem in many of these regimes. It got exported, and outsourced to our shores. No matter who is elected, do you think we’ll see Egypt and Saudi Arabia addressed with realistic hard ball policies?

Not a chance in hell.

I fear that we will see no drop off in these monstrous deeds until the world sees enough of them to vomit it out. I fear it will literally have to burn out, not be put out. After the murder of children in Beslan, many in the Arab-Muslim press, and clerics as well, are condemning this poison, and questioning how “their own” could do such things. Only when this happens enough times will the mass murder of innocents begin to fail, and then cease to be considered a viable tactic.

We’ll still be dealing with these issues in the 2012 and 2016 elections, except than then, when we talk about the most recent horror, Beslan will be a quaint memory of “back when it wasn’t so bad.”

I don’t know who the Chechen terrorists will kill next, but kill they will-until they get their way, which is political independence of Chechnya. Sad, isn’t it?

Check out what I wrote about Russia and the Chechen terrorists last Thursday (9-2)

Tom

We are not to blame for the atrocities commited by terrorists. To say the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia was the cause of Bin Laden’s war on us it to credit bin Laden with reason in his “97 Fatwa.
Let’s say that Islamic radicals have no animosity towards the US. Then we step into a war to prevent the invasion of a highly religious Moslem country by a secular Moslem dictator. We fight effectively, then end the war unilateraly because we don’t want to slaughter Arabs to no purpose. The upshot of this mercy is that said dictator remains in power. We stay to “keep him in his box” and make him honor his surrender.
Through all of this, we have paid for the oil we used. We don’t even have to talk to the Saudis to buy oil, it’s a world market.
Now, where in this is the trigger for Osama’s Jihad?
Militant Islam is not a rational view of the world, but a mystical one. The Chechens who went to Beslan may have done it for Chechen independence, but I would rate it just as likely that they did it to further radicalize the clash of cultures that the rest of us are trying to simultaneously ignore and forestall. They want this war, they glory in it. They don’t look at force structures and economies to see who will win, they already “know.”
Try to analyze them as if they were nation states, and you will always be surprised by their methods. So counterproductive to their cause, right?
Check your assumption of their cause. It’s not about economics, or governments, or diplomacy or national recognition. It’s about the nature of the universe, and they have to be right, to prove they are right, or their world is a sham. This conviction must be absolute or reason would shake it. It must be so absolute that it allows anything, even commands it.
That’s what we’re fighting, and why we will have to destroy them utterly or fight forever.
Dennymack

You are right. What ever short term goals they have, they are only a bridge to something much bigger. I hate to say it, but this war has not really started yet. These are just the skirmishes that procede a bigger, longer fight to come.

As long as there are MUSLIM TERRORISTS there will be WAR!

The fight MUST continue until the last breath of mankind has been expelled.

For the MUSLIM TERRORISTS there can be no other way.
Question?
When you have nothing to live for Is it easy to find a cause to die for.

It is about religion of course
It is about the religion of HATE
CAIN/ABLE HATE

The MUSLIM TERRORISTS have come to KILL STEAL AND DESTROY.

To win favor from God. The God of Adam.

It’s kind of funny when you think about it…
Adam was lonely, God made Eve from his rib and Man has been multiplied into billions of souls since that day.

Every generation is at war with itself one blames the other and claims God as his reason for killing his brother.

At the end of the day if you could gather all of the souls from mankinds history…could you ever put Adam back together again.

Adam thought he needed a mate.

Maybe all Adam ever needed was God and he just didn’t understand or realise it untill today.

Maybe someday God will put Adam back together again.

On that day maybe the wars will end and MUSLIM TERRORISTS will stop the Killing.

Thou Shalt Not Kill.
Wake up Adam!