Terrorism

[ZefaLefeLaH]

Well, let's say that you're right & some hooha from Lebanon leads an attack against the USA 10 years afterward.


September 11, 2011. An investigation begins.

October 11, 2011. Every city in Lebanon is leveled.


If they're dense, we just keep erasing countries until they get the message. You kill people with terrorism in the USA and your whole country gets erased. Everything you lived & died for will end up being a page in the history books & nothing more. Your families will die, your friends, your pets, your houses will be gone, your churches, your land will be radioactive for thousands of years, your entire culture will be removed.


I'm reasonably sure that terrorism would cease to exist quite quickly.

[Avatar]

The point I was making, is that the terrorists not only do not necessarily belong to a certain country, but may well not care what happens to any country suspected of harbouring them.

All such a plan would accomplish, is preventing any country from knowingly providing them with safe haven and resources.

Can you honestly say that if terrorists, without the knowledge of the government, began to operate from say Switzerland, and evidence to that effect was discovered, then America would cheerfully nuke Switzerland?

All the terrorists would have to do then is appear in various countries, leak information to that effect, and then move on, while the world is reduced to a nuclear wasteland in their wake.

They'd achieve their goals, and the work would be done for them by America itself in an endless and impossible quest to eradicate terror.

--Avatar

[ZefaLefeLaH]

Okay, Okay, I get your point.

Then what we should do is round up all of their loved ones, everyone they ever knew, as many as we can find. Then we bring the terrorist to his favorite place. If it is a farm house or something, then that's perfect.

Then we torture everyone he has ever loved to death.

Then we kill that guy real slow like on Seven, with cigarette burns. Feed him & keep him alive for a year or so. Then right when we think he's going to die. We burn down the house.


Then we nuke his country! Well, okay, no nukes.



You're making this hard Av. It needs to be revenge. It has to be revenge. I suppose we don't have to kill them all. But we could cut off their arms & legs, pluck out their eyes, and slice off their tongues, then poke out their eardrums. That way they could only smell & touch. Then keep them all alive for 10 years. Then burn up the house.




You see, when those terrorists attacked on 9/11, americans got real angry. Then as usual they became desensitized and lost interest. I never stopped thinking about it. It's in my heart moment to moment. I have no problem at all with this war in Iraq. Give em hell Bush. Take it over & put military bases there. Make sure that the world knows that when you mess with USA there will be revenge.

[[Syl]]

Yeah, 'cause Iraq had so much to do with 9/11. That'll teach 'em to be Arabs!

[ZefaLefeLaH]

Well now, just because they didn't have WMDs doesn't make them good.

Fact: Iraq was the *ONLY* country in the world that outright said that the United States deserved 9/11.

Fact: Saddam Hussein played games with the UN inspectors & the world for a decade. Okay, you can come in. No, get out. Okay come in. Get out. Okay come in. Get out.

Fact: The United States issued a cease-fire for the Gulf War, it was not an end of the war & we committed a cold war & enforced a no-fly zone. USA has been at war with Iraq since it invaded Kuwait.

Fact: Even now, Iraq is not being straight with the world. And more importantly, they were indeed interested in WMDs.
www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/region.php?id=96386&region=6

Fact: Saddam Hussein murdered his way to the top. His sons murdered their way toward the ends of fear. The Iraqi government enjoyed the good life while the nation lay in economic ruin and rampant starvation.

Fact: The Iraqis were chanting USA, spitting & stomping on Saddam's broken statue. The USA was behind the war & the president enjoyed some of the highest approval ratings in history. John Kerry also agreed that Iraq should have been attacked & any of us that saw those documents would also have agreed to the attack.

Fact: There has not been another major terrorist attack on U.S. soil since. When you have half a million troops in the Arab world, suddenly no one wants to do anything to your country.


Just because everyone has a short-term memory didn't make this guy any less dangerous.

[[Syl]]

You're talking to the wrong guy, Zef. I was for the war in Iraq (if not the scale, and definately not the occupation the way it's being handled). I'm just against the duping, if not outright lying to, the American public. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and little to do with terrorism (outside of supporting Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel, which I'm strongly against, btw).

[ZefaLefeLaH]

Heyif I'm barking up the wrong tree, at least its to a forestal!

[[Syl]]

touche

[Avatar]

You're making this hard Av.

Thanks I do my best

It needs to be revenge. It has to be revenge.

Why? Aside from the vicarious pleasure you'll get from suspecting that someone who may vaguely have had something to do with, or even perhaps only supported the idea of, 9/11 suffered even more than you did, what good does it do?

Convince more people that America is the great evil of the 20th Century? Hasten the onset of even more opressive legislation?
Increase attempts to strike against it?
Cost America the "moral high ground"? (If they still occupy it.)

Revenge inevitably does more harm to those who carry it out than to those against whom it is directed. If nothing else, it must be bad for your Karma.

--Avatar

[ZefaLefeLaH]

Think of it on smaller terms.

Someone rapes your sister. What would you like to have happen to them?


You see, it's easy to be objective until it becomes personal. If you lost a father or brother in 9/11 you wouldn't be thinking this way. It would be personal. Most patriots take terrorism personally. Most people who feel the way I do recognize that the families who were so sad & pathetically holding up cards with pictures of their family members did not magically get their family members back. They're still dead today. It's just that most people tend to forget. I never will. Ever.

[Avatar]

And I don't think that anyone should forget. But there's a big difference between the smaller scale and the larger.

On the small scale, and with your example, it's easy. One victim, one perpetrator. It's possible for it to be dealt with on a personal level, with a fair certainty that you are affecting the riht person.

On the large scale of Sept 11th however, solutions such as the one you propose will affect, and kill, many millions who are innocent in all senses of the word.

I have nothing against punishing the people who did it personally. My problem comes in when you want to punish anybody who even might have had anything to do with it, or who simply happen to live in the same city/country. That's not just, that's wanton.

--Avatar

[ZefaLefeLaH]

And yet, quite obviously, effective.

[The Dreaming]

Think of it on smaller terms.

Someone rapes your sister. What would you like to have happen to them?


You see, it's easy to be objective until it becomes personal. If you lost a father or brother in 9/11 you wouldn't be thinking this way. It would be personal. Most patriots take terrorism personally. Most people who feel the way I do recognize that the families who were so sad & pathetically holding up cards with pictures of their family members did not magically get their family members back. They're still dead today. It's just that most people tend to forget. I never will. Ever.

Ahh, I think something that Bannor said in I Chrons is extremely appropriate. (I don’t have TPTP with me so I could be a bit off) "Retribution is just a mask for vengeance."

If we continue the cycle of violence we are exactly the same as they are. Unfortunately, in an imperfect world, there are times when bloodshed is necessary to preserve the greater good. It is so easy to excuse wrath and vengeance in these circumstances. Many people have tried to tell me the difference between retribution and revenge, but I have never seen it. Of course we must strive to end terrorism, not with the blind rage of an avenging superpower, but the cool and precise dispassion of a surgeon cutting out an infection.

[Avatar]

And that's debateable.

I really doubt that it would make people less likely to want to attack. It may well make them more prone to carrying such tactics out.

Don't forget, as much as you want vengeance, so will they. Your enemy is never evil in his own eyes.

--Avatar