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Author Topic:   War and Morality. Al Qaeda v USA
Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 1 of 175 (621336)
06-25-2011 5:57 AM


I was reading the news this morning and came across a couple of disturbing articles. Even though President Obama is pledging and trying to get our troops home, and even though we have spent more money fixing Afghanistan's infrastructure than we should be spending on our own, there continue to be random and cowardly (in my opinion) acts of terrorism against troops and civilians alike.Suicide truck bomber targets Afghan hospital, kills 30
The real question: How to achieve Afghanization
The gall of these people! They should expect war if they continue doing the things that they are doing! I realize that the U.S. is far from innocent in matters of efficient killing, but we do at least try and target non-civilians, within the limits of our technological capacity to do so. What does Al Qaeda want from us? Why are these people under such enormous social and cultural pressure to fight us?
I still don't understand the mindset nor the motive.
Edited by Phat, : fixed link
Edited by Phat, : changed topic title

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 5 of 175 (621374)
06-25-2011 1:02 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by jar
06-25-2011 8:14 AM


Re: Stop and think
How much money does it cost to create, build, maintain and use smart weapons?
many billions.
How much does it cost to create, build, maintain and use an improvised explosive device?
perhaps five hundred dollars
If you are a poor peasant fighting to drive the invaders out of your country, which of those weapons is in the realm of possibilities?
This is what I dont understand, though. This conflict is more than poor peasants driving out the "infidels". Most of these peasants are not Al Qaeda members, and many are told to fight. Besides, we rebuild their infrastructure better than it was before in many cases. My question is directed at actual Al Qaeda operatives. No peasant in their right mind wants to blow themselves up to save the family goat.

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 8 of 175 (621382)
06-25-2011 2:25 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by jar
06-25-2011 1:09 PM


Re: Stop and think
I am at a loss...to comprehend...and I don't think we are the bad guys. Browsing the internet, I looked for opinions and comments of others. I realize that this is not the best way to find answers, but it may lead to further questions.
Jack L. Treese, CWO US Army, Retired writes:
We don’t want to be in Afghanistan, we have never invaded a country for the purpose of occupying it or taking its land or resources. We are there because it was the birthplace of the plot to destroy the World Trade Center and ruin the financial district of America. They attacked our military center at the Pentagon and our Capitol in Washington, D.C. hoping to kill as many Americans as possible including women and children. We have to be in Afghanistan because there are those in this world who want us dead.
Surely the people of Afghanistan have a choice whether to support the Taliban or to support the Western Democratic system of capitalism and commerce. It would be the same as if my neighbor had a rowdy house guest who scared my children and egged my car. Would it not be my neighbors responsibility to expel this house guest for the good of the neighborhood??
The really tough problem with Afghanistan is the culture; we have to change hearts and minds, a virtual impossibility when the Taliban are embedded in the population.
I know that some of you may ask why we have the right to try and change another culture. The fact is though, many of them hate us and mostly because they don't want to understand us any more than we want to understand them. As long as they plan on attacking us, we need to react and react forcefully.

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 14 of 175 (621404)
06-25-2011 5:19 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by jar
06-25-2011 2:48 PM


Re: Stop and think
jar writes:
The evidence shows that much of the planning and training for the 9-11 attacks took place all over the world, Indonesia, Canada, Spain, England, France and the US as well as Brazil IIRC.
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?
Edited by Phat, : added

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 23 of 175 (621528)
06-26-2011 6:39 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by Dogmafood
06-25-2011 7:58 PM


Hating the US: Still In Vogue?
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.

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 25 of 175 (621534)
06-26-2011 7:28 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by jar
06-26-2011 6:48 PM


Re: Hating the US: Still In Vogue?
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.
quote:
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.
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?

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 29 of 175 (621541)
06-26-2011 8:00 PM
Reply to: Message 26 by jar
06-26-2011 7:41 PM


The Ideology Behind Global Terrorism
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.
quote:
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.
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...
quote:
"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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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 33 of 175 (621563)
06-26-2011 11:28 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by Buzsaw
06-26-2011 10:30 PM


Sense Of Duty
I was amazed that the majority of Al Qaeda were educated stable family men. They voluntarily enlisted at age 26. Many were not even religious before they became involved.
Jar always worries about US evangelicals being dangerous. Lets honestly think. IF the US became a second class poorer nation, such as Britain...could you see our young people getting a renaissance interest in becoming Christian "soldiers" to save our nation from being overwhelmed economically and culturally from other beliefs?

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 57 of 175 (621617)
06-27-2011 12:08 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by crashfrog
06-27-2011 1:20 AM


Re: Stop and think
We're the guest.
No. Al Qaeda was the guest of the Taliban. Al Qaeda was an announced and sworn enemy of the West. We drew a line in the sand, told everyone who was for us to step onto our side, and went after the house guest. What other strategy can be employed against such terror tactics?

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 59 of 175 (621621)
06-27-2011 12:25 PM
Reply to: Message 58 by crashfrog
06-27-2011 12:14 PM


Re: Stop and think
Points noted.
I guess my main question that remains unanswered is why these young professionals, most of them educated and coming from nice homes...and many not religious...joined this organization that committed to a war against the West. Why can't they just come and compete with the rest of us and earn a living?

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 61 of 175 (621632)
06-27-2011 3:58 PM
Reply to: Message 60 by crashfrog
06-27-2011 1:37 PM


Its Group Dynamics, Stupid.
I was all set to refute you, having earlier read that the Al-Qaeda organization was made up of young educated professionals. Surely they could not be so gullible! Then I read more from Marc Sageman, the so called expert. Understanding Terror Networks
It is religion! (Also due to loneliness...they attend the meanings as a social outlet, initially) Un-frickin-believable! Surely our own domestic example is organized Christianity...but beyond protesting an abortion clinic or some anti gay crap, it never seems as if many American Christian fundamentalists would ever dare kill themselves over a cause! (I was one and am a coward!)
But I read further....
So what’s in common? There’s really no profile, just similar trajectories to joining the jihad and that most of these men were upwardly and geographically mobile. Because they were the best and brightest, they were sent abroad to study. They came from moderately religious, caring, middle-class families. They’re skilled in computer technology. They spoke three, four, five, six languages. Most Americans don’t know Arabic; these men know two or three Western languages: German, French, English.
When they became homesick, they did what anyone would and tried to congregate with people like themselves, whom they would find at mosques. So they drifted towards the mosque, not because they were religious, but because they were seeking friends. They moved in together in apartments, in order to share the rent and also to eat together - they were mostly halal, those who observed the Muslim dietary laws, similar in some respects to the kosher laws of Judaism. Some argue that such laws help to bind a group together since observing them is something very difficult and more easily done in a group. A micro-culture develops that strengthens and absorbs the participants as a unit. This is a halal theory of terrorism, if you like.
These cliques, often in the vicinity of mosques that had a militant script advocating violence to overthrow the corrupt regimes, transformed alienated young Muslims into terrorists. It’s all really group dynamics. You cannot understand the 9/11 type of terrorism from individual characteristics. The suicide bombers in Spain are another perfect example. Seven terrorists sharing an apartment and one saying Tonight we’re all going to go, guys. You can’t betray your friends, and so you go along. Individually, they probably would not have done it.
Group dynamics!!! That I could understand! When I was a charismaniac Christian, I felt accepted and part of a group. Had the Pastor told us that the government was of the antichrist, and provided circumstantial evidence, as a group who knows what we would have done???
Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 77 of 175 (621675)
06-27-2011 11:29 PM
Reply to: Message 75 by Coyote
06-27-2011 11:10 PM


Re: Soft Targets vs Terrorism
As an American, I get outraged every time i see footage like that. How dare they? I feel no remorse over any casualties we cause...they should have picked their side.

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 80 of 175 (621702)
06-28-2011 8:43 AM
Reply to: Message 79 by frako
06-28-2011 6:40 AM


War is never pretty
War is never pretty. Seeing as how the terrorist organizations are not willing to sit down and talk with us about their differences, nor are we dealing with a nation....i think our response was in line with the outrage that we suffered.
If another nation was attacked by a gang that had its base within America, they would have a right to demand that we bring this gang to international justice. Of course, they couldn't demand it since we are stronger than they are...and history is written by the victors.
Perhaps America could have won public relations points with the rest of the world by accepting the slap on the cheek without retaliation. I agree that it would have been cheaper and more rational to do so. But what do your tell the families of 3000 killed? Do you tell them that we are sorry that it happened but that we don't have the power to do anything about it?

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 103 of 175 (621872)
06-29-2011 11:23 AM


Topic Title Change
As this argument has widened and progressed, I am officially changing my topic title.
In regards to morality, is there a distinction between the United States of Americas official and unofficial foreign policy?
Is there a distinction between the U.S. and Al Qaeda?

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Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 105 of 175 (621878)
06-29-2011 11:42 AM
Reply to: Message 104 by jar
06-29-2011 11:35 AM


Re: Distinctions
Perhaps my next question would be this:
In todays world, how can we hold individuals or groups of individuals responsible for acts of war against nations?
Often, when police need to apprehend a suspect, they have to violate an individuals household who is suspected of harboring such a suspect.
It would be testing the law, however, if the police occupied the house after the suspect slipped out the back door.

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