Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Yeah this just sucks, my sympathies as well.

It seems strange that they haven't figured out that these attacks strengthen our resolve.

If the UK gets credible evidence that Syria or Pakistan or some other country was complicit in the bombings, who among us would fault them for bitchslapping the whole country?

When Spain capitulated after their train bombings, they did nothing but embolden the terrorists.

I think it is dangerous to say that Spain "capitulated". The ejected a blantantly corrupt administration that originally tried to pin the attacks on the Basques for political gain. I'm not so sure the terrist incident itself was a turning point, as much as the governments inept and dishonest response to it.

Spain bought time. That's all.

So tell us how to fight and win the war on terror.

Well, that was a definition. But tell us how to FIGHT the war on terror.

Props to Cooper. Good points. I agree and as always have some additional points ;).

There is no "way to win the war on terror" thats the FUCKING POINT. There is no way to win a war on a noun. There is not a nation to fight the war against, not one individual or even set of individuals that control the threat.

We can certainly minimize our risk with a sane foreign policy that gets OUT of bed with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (yeah Saudi Arabia). We can stop with the sky is falling rhetoric and scare everyone bullshit, we can address real threats with real force and stop making up shit that just pisses everyone off and makes us look bad. If we have suspects when can use *evidence* and *charge* them. As much as people dont like it it IS more of a law enforcement function. (When the bad guys are operating in loose networks across national boundaries it is.)

When I say terrorism will be here I also say that we need to be aware of security and mitigate the risk. This will be an ongoing effort to MINIMIZE the risk, there is NOTHING to WIN. We will never eliminate terrorists completely, we can simply try to address actual threats and try to understand why threats develop in the first place (and as such stop that development).

I can tell you exactly what NOT to do:

1. START "wars" in other nations that NO NOT threaten our security and are not related to the issue.

2. REPEATEDLY LIE and state said wars are the battlefront of the "war on terror.

3. Rely more and more on oil and pretend we can control the price. Also disregard global warming and fuel efficiency standards and so on (yet every Lincoln Navigator has a "support our troops" sticker where I live, fucking brilliant).

4. Drop more and more bombs in muslim/islamic nations without a specific plan to address a specific threat and then move on. We are inspiring more and more nutjobs to join the jihad rather than addressing any real threat to the states (we sure as hell may be CREATING real threats, but they did not exist in Iraq pre invasion, no one has argued with the Afghanistan house cleaning, different matter).

basically on and on and on, just about every Bush has done, do the opposite, thats how.

Jihad is a "holy war". HOLY WAR has been declared on the US. It is been going on since before most on here were born. It has little if anything to do with the things you speak of.

Yes look at India. India WANTS to become a modern society. The people you speak of want modern societies to become third world countries. There is quite a difference.

Maybe nobody takes the Klan seriously is that they haven't crashed the WTC lately. There is a difference there too. The terrorists have declared war on you. YOU. Persnally if they meet you. The Klan might burn a cross in your yard. Big deal.

Cooper, with all due respect, I do not believe you have any in to the psychology of the jihadi mind. I know you mean well and you clearly have a big heart.

Whomever this anonymous is, probably the same person on various threads, and always opposing coopers views but then praising him (i have a theory on this - for another time - has something to do with Suzanne Somers) is just about as ignorant as is possibly is possible (if the Suzanne thing is correct then its very sad - hopefully I am way off base with that, but shit like "a big heart" points that direction, its sad that its so ignorant and sad thats its pseudo surreptitiously even here).

You just said "Big deal." about the Ku Klux Klan?

The klan KILLED A LOT OF FUCKING PEOPLE TOO, they did not just burn crosses, no matter who you are that is just an offensive moronic fucking statement.

The fundamentalists everywhere declare their "jihad" on various things, they do it every day, including Christians on as Cooper pointed out, abortion, gay marriage, etc, they arent committing as MUCH outright terrorism (at present) but its terrorism just the same (shooting doctors, bombs, etc), the Christian terrorists are generally a lot less sophisticated and a lot fucking dumber, but terrorists none the less.

AND they were dealt with in a long term law enforcement engagement reality based manner. They have been for the most part mitigated.

And everything we have spoken about COMPLETELY relates to the motivation for this shit.

This discussion with these "anon" posters (all with the same IP) is just fucking pointless though. Say something substantive rather than "its a JIHAD" (which is pointless) and try to use your name so we can tell its you each time you post (or rather I will just start putting IP addresses back on the public view - maybe thats a good idea anyway).

Cooper, with all due respect, I do not believe you have any in to the psychology of the jihadi mind. I know you mean well and you clearly have a big heart.

The jihadist isn't the one I'm worried about. It is the society around them. It is about marginalization.

Thomas Freedman, whom I generally regard as a complete 'tard had this to say today:

What do I mean? I mean that the greatest restraint on human behavior is never a policeman or a border guard. The greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed. Many people said Palestinian suicide bombing was the spontaneous reaction of frustrated Palestinian youth. But when Palestinians decided that it was in their interest to have a cease-fire with Israel, those bombings stopped cold. The village said enough was enough.

The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.

While I think the whole "issued a fatwa" bit is overplayed (I have never heard a Southern Baptist condem Eric Rudolph or Tim McVeigh either), I think there is the nugget of truth there. The point is, the reason the vast majority of the Muslim world doesn't have a problem with us, but we find ourselves dealing with this middle east... crap... is because (a) we made our bed with 60 years of "our bastard" foreign policy that (b) left the majority of the population with, what I like to call the "Chris Rock syndrome". That is "Yeah, OJ killed her. But if I bought my wife a Ferrari and her boyfriend was driving it around, I'd be that mad too. I ain't saying it's OK, but I understand."

It's that "I understand" part that much of the Arab and North African Muslim world feels about us. Once they DON'T understand. Once OBL is Terry Nichols to them and they just see it as fucking with everone's day, THEN the "War on Terror" is one. It is not, however, anything that we can bomb into submission, any more than sending the Marines into Montanna will cure the "Tim McVeigh" problem.

Once someone is a Jihadist, they are gone. That's it. The question is, does the average person on the street see it as being better to be a Jihadist or to wear a bunny suit at the AMD fab when they are 18. The question is, does the society look at the jihadists as "crazy for a good cause" or "just fucking crazy".

Regarding "condemnation", don't you think the rest of the Muslim world would have more credibility if they DID condem radical Islam? Or Southern Baptists if they condemned McVeigh? Or the Catholics if they condemned the Crusades? Or the NAACP if they condemned the separatists in their midst? Politically, groups stick together. MY question though, is whether America can stick together enough to survive.

Shouldn't they have stuck around to finish the job? And shouldn't further terrorist attacks do nothing but reaffirm our resolve to clean up the mess in Iraq? Yea, I think it's yes to both of those questions.

Yeah. Though I have to admit, I am now torn on the situation in Iraq.

You are absolutely right at a raw moral level. We have a definitive, implicit and inherent responsibility to clean up the mess in Iraq. The problem is, it is damned near exactly like Macedonia or Yugoslavia -- a nasty, nasty civil war among factions kept in check by strongmen for decades is coming. I am not sure we can stop it, and I am not sure a "democratic" stongman is the answer. Simultaneously, I feel that Iraq is draining resources away from Afghanistan, where we are squandering a real opportunity to build something better than there was in the past.

If nothing else, however, the current half assed operation in Iraq is turning the country into a training ground that Afghanistan could have only dreamed of for Al Qaeda. Not only can they train people on the fringes, they can run actual field ops against isolated and undermanned groups of the US and the Arab world's best trained personnel, then export that talent to North Africa or Europe or the US.

For all Colin Powell might be out of favor with the current Neocon intelligencia, he was fucking dead on with the first Gulf War, in terms of both tactics and strategic import. I can't help but wonder where our nation would be if he and Condi had had opposite jobs in 2002.

keyword contribute, reading comprehension is fundamental

You know what, I have no issues if you dont register and dont start threads and so on, if you comment (and say something meaningful whether or not I agree with it) then you are sure as hell still contributing, but at least type in three letters when you comment - "Jim", so we can tell one "anonymous" from another, thats all I am saying.

And I apologize to every single "anonymous" that has ever posted here if my Suzanne Somers thing was off the mark. It might have been (but I still doubt it). If someones relatives are posting here as "anonymous" and offering praise then thats pathetic, its a pathetic excuse for a relationship with your relatives and its a pathetic abuse of this forum (because its not genuine).

(And I would not even bring this stuff up except for the fact that is HAS HAPPENED before and has been confirmed.)