War and Morality. Al Qaeda v USA

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The attacks were attributed to Al Qaeda, however, and the Taliban hosted the Al Qaeda leadership. With the intelligence that we had at that time, we simply couldn't have sent James Bond or Maxwell Smart around the world to pick off individual targets. We had an enemy that had identified itself and that had taken claim to an act of terror, and we had terrorists who came from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan was a known training center for terrorists and we had to appease the victims families by doing something! What else could we have done?

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You could have applied more intelligence and less emotion/gung-ho-ism.

You could have learnt the lesson the Soviets learned about fighting in that terrain (namely: don't - even if you've not got a population who, tiring of the bodybags, can demand an end to things).

You could have delayed gratification.

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From an outsiders perspective I stand amazed at the child-like shock expressed after 9/11. America has been pushing it's weight around, around the world, for decades .. then someone manages to step inside your defences and gives you a bloody nose.

I don't imagine those who planned 9/11 omitted to take account of your knee-jerk response in their forecast.

No peasant in their right mind wants to blow themselves up to save the family goat.

Well they do think they will get 72 virgins and go directly before allah while the rest of us have to wait till judgment day.

Now if you would believe that not only believe but "know" that you would get that wouldn't you blow yourself up to kill a hated enemy of the god that provides you with that?

From an outsiders perspective I stand amazed at the child-like shock expressed after 9/11. America has been pushing it's weight around, around the world, for decades .. then someone manages to step inside your defences and gives you a bloody nose.

For the first weak after the attack i was expecting a nuclear retaliation do to the idiot president you had and well because they are Americans to put it mildly just about the whole world thinks Americans are just a bunch of rednecks with too many weapons.

From an outsiders perspective I stand amazed at the child-like shock expressed after 9/11. America has been pushing it's weight around, around the world, for decades .. then someone manages to step inside your defences and gives you a bloody nose.

So, what? America deserved it? They should retire humbly to lick their wounds and reconsider their ways? Bin Laden attacked the West because we are not Muslim not because of our human rights abuses and voracious capitalism.

The Taliban was supported by and gave protection to Bin Laden and his network. They ruled a good portion of Afghanistan in 2001, which they took by force, and were culpable.

If you want to talk about people throwing their weight around you should look at what the Taliban did while in power. Look at regimes like North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Libya among others.

You could have delayed gratification.

Classic plush stuffed arm chair quarter-back luxuriating in the vast expanse of his freedom. Why don’t you try heading over to Kandahar and hand out a few bibles. Outsider indeed.

frako writes: Well they derive their morality from the Quran or their belief

You're right on, Frako. Europeans seem to realize this because they see how things go where Islam prevails.

The Koran, yes, but don't forget the Haddith and the Sunnahs, being even more violent than the Koran and which, like the Christian New Testament were written by the successing apostles of their master. These manuscripts are regarded by the Mullahs as much scripture and important as the Koran, itself.

If the American sheeple would study up on the life of Mohammed and his apostles/followers, how they initiated and grew their religion by the sword, being themselves terrorists. American sheeple should wake up to the fact that they are being prepared for the coming slaughter as prophesied for the latter days in Revelation 20:4

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4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and such as worshiped not the beast, neither his image, and received not the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they lived, and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

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The unique decapitation method has, for the most part been the Muslim method of execution in today's world.

http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/SKM40715.htm

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

Suicide truck bomber targets Afghan hospital, kills 30

Well it's better that than "Al Qaeda jet fighter bombs hospital killing 1000's."

And the US is NOT excluded from killing civilians, like this: US hits wrong target and kills people, including a mother and father and at least two toddlers -- whether you tried to hit civilians or not, in the end, people are still dead.

What does Al Qaeda want from us? Why are these people under such enormous social and cultural pressure to fight us?

There are only 100 members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. There are always going to be 100 people anywhere -- (including in the US) -- willing too fight us. I don't think they want anything at this point other than to just fight the US.

- Oni

Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

Buzsaw anyone can mold the bible to be worse then the quoran, the only difference is that most of the Christian fanatics come from developed countries so they cant get such a big following to their interpretation. And that the Christian belief is mostly centeralised and has a hierarchy so if someone like the pope says condoms are evil and a sin the rest follows that bullshit, but Muslims dont have such centralized governments in their religion and any quack that knows how to read can quote a few lines from their book and get the poor uneducated and miserable peasants on their side who are all to happy to give their pitiful lives up in exchange for the 100% certain reward they are going to get in the afterlife.

And buzz if you read the quoran you will find that about 80% is IDENTICAL to the bible.

being prepared for the coming slaughter as prophesied for the latter days in Revelation 20:4

U gonna star printing doomsday fliers too ??

Tel me whats the time line so i can have a noter its not the end of the world party

The unique decapitation method has, for the most part been the Muslim method of execution in today's world.

Yea the christian church was way more inventive when they killed someone who did not believe in their imaginary friend

You dont want to know what this one is used for.

Compared to these the muslim decapitation is humane.

Dogmafood writes: So, what? America deserved it? They should retire humbly to lick their wounds and reconsider their ways? Bin Laden attacked the West because we are not Muslim not because of our human rights abuses and voracious capitalism.

The US is far from innocent, but what is it precisely that we do to keep these people down? I notice that the rest of the world seems quite able to compete with us and in some cases even better us.

This still doesn't explain the motive behind hating the US.

Would invading their country be a reason?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

jar writes: Would invading their country be a reason?

It seems that this conflict had a much earlier history than the Afghanistan invasion of 2002.

I read the history from Bill Moyers Journal. Brief History of al Qaeda

1) It is evident that although the US helped support the effort to oust the Soviets and although the US abandoned Afghanistan after that, (which may be a prior motive to hate us) Bin Ladin sought to form a global terrorist network. What he hoped to accomplish and what his motives were are what I am questioning. It seems that Al Qaeda was a legitimate enemy and target for the United States. I see no evidence that their existence was helping anyone.

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From the sanctuary of Sudan, bin Laden began synching up with groups from all over the Middle East and northern Africa, and began laying the groundwork for his jihad against the West.

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Even Bill Clintons administration warned GW Bush to watch out for Al Qaeda. Why were these groups so against us? What different foreign policy might we have used to appease them..IF they even should have been appeased?

Read what you wrote.

Al Qaeda is not Afghanistan, it is not Iraq.

Name the Middle eastern countries that the US has not invaded or controlled.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This still doesn't explain the motive behind hating the US.

As I understand it, in UBL's case, it is simply a matter of us having the wrong religion.

It is difficult for us 'educated' folks to imagine the mind set of a goat herder in Afghanistan. It seems to me that if some militarily superior alien force invaded Canada and started building vastly superior schools, hospitals and friction-free highways, the last thing that I would do would be to go around killing Canadians. Even if I owned a highway building company.

Maybe someone else can adjust my metaphor to be more accurate.

What really annoys me are those who would bask in the luxury of our society, enjoy all of it's benefits and then, out of the other side of their face, condemn the principals that have created it.

So Jar, are you saying that UBL and Al Qaeda have a defensible justification for their actions?

It was evident that Al Qaeda was targetting the U.S. The main base for their operations was Afghanistan.

I read a rather interesting bit of journalism on the internet: Dr. Marc Sageman explains how Al Qaeda has evolved from an operational organization into a larger social movement, and the implications for U.S. counterterror efforts.

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As a CIA operative based in Islamabad from 1986 to 1989, during the Afghan-Soviet war, Sageman interacted with Islamic fundamentalists on a daily basis. There he says he developed an appreciation of them as human beings that ran counter to media portrayals of them in the aftermath of 9/11. This understanding led him to gather empirical evidence to better understand the psychological factors behind the violence.

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What amazes me about the Docs findings are several things.

1) (after we destroyed the centralized support in 2002) As a result, the international jihadi movement reverted to what it was before Al Qaeda and bin Laden came to the forefront -- a collection of local people with local grievances who share the same ideology, Sageman says. These groups follow the methodologies and precepts of Al Qaeda, but without direct links to the group.

Whats even more amazing to me is this:

2) Sageman found that three quarters of his sample came from the upper or middle class. The vast majority -- 90 percent -- came from caring, intact families. 63 percent had gone to college, as compared with the five to six percent typical in the third world. "These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways," he says. ...professionals or semi-professionals. They are engineers, architects, and civil engineers.

Unbelievable! Why then is their ideology so different from ours?

Al Qaeda is not Afghanistan, it is not Iraq.

No, but we had to hit them somewhere. The facts show that this was an organization designed to attack the West.

however...

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"Military options work very well when you have hard targets you can destroy -- which we did in a relatively short period of time. Now, because the U.S. and its allies have taken all those targets out and the organization is diffused, military options are limited." Sageman argues the way to fight this is to switch strategies and now engage in a war of ideas.

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Partly.

I think their actions were wrong but I can certainly see their position.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!