War and Morality. Al Qaeda v USA

How do you commit an act of "terrorism" against a uniformed soldier during a state of declared hostility?If Al-Qaeda in Iraq had killed my middle school best friend (Staff Sgt. David Day) with a bomb dropped from an airplane instead of a bomb buried by a road, would anyone call that "terrorism"? Why does it matter where the bomb was?I don't mean to lionize these people - they're an international network of religious zealots and criminals, a testament of the "power of faith" if ever there was one. But we're shooting and killing and bombing them and their families. I don't understand why we're supposed to think it's somehow not sporting for them to shoot and bomb back. Because we're in their goddamn homes and holy cities and there's no reason for us to be, and we won't leave for any reason at all? Jesus, Phat, if a guy was in your house killing members of your family, and asking him to stop and leave hadn't had any effect at all, what the hell would you do?

Exactly.We're the guest.

I don't disagree - but some of us are doing that, too.I'm not sure I understand the difference between "illegal out-of-uniform combatant" and "private military contractor", for instance, except that the Xe/Blackwater guys are on our side and not theirs.

That mission ended at Tora Bora when Bush allowed bin Laden to escape. That was ten years ago. That's the point at which we became the "bad guest", only there's nobody big and bad enough to kick us out.Why are we still there killing people, Phat? Bin Laden is dead. The masterminds of 9/11 are dead. How about "don't give a shit"? Less people died in 9/11 than died that year in motorcycle accidents. If you had absolutely no terror policy whatsoever, if the TSA didn't exist, if you could bring anything you wanted onto an airplane - a bomb, a gun, a poison gas canister, whatever you wanted - the most dangerous part of flying would still be the car ride to the airport.Instead of being a nation of bellicose pussies, we should take a cue from the Brits and just carry the fuck on. If a terrorist gets a bomb to a cafe - shit happens, and we should find the guy that did it and make an arrest. But turning Afghanistan into the 51st US state has done absolutely nothing either to reduce global terror or combat the spread of Al-Queda.

Religion. Duh!

I grant you, it's deeply unnatural to most people to kill and die in service of a cause. I think that's probably a good thing.But, consider this. If someone, or something, could convince you to fight for a cause, wouldn't it be most likely something originating from your religious community? Aren't those the voices you take most seriously on moral matters? If your pastor introduced a speaker one Sunday morning in church and told you this was somebody whose counsel and beliefs your pastor had enormous respect and admiration for, wouldn't you pay particularly close attention? Wouldn't you weigh those words particularly heavily?I was a fundamentalist once, too. So I remember how it is you get there - how you start with a faith that you basically inherited, never really gave much thought to. You had a notion, however, that your faith was morally correct and that you were supposed to follow its tenets.And then one day, somebody shows up and tells you it's not good enough. It's not enough to just be a good person - there's a spiritual war on, you're not just a regular joe, you're a soldier in a holy army. He's got the passages in the Bible to prove it. He's got the testimony of a few recent converts and they're just on fire. It's amazing! It's like they light up from the inside. You've never seen anything like it in your church, if you even ever went (which you don't, and feel guilty about), and you want more than anything in the world to feel that kind of certainty, that kind of faith, that kind of devotion. That kind of importance. Everything in your life seems unsure and maybe just a little insignificant. But here's your chance to be involved in the most important thing of all time and you won't be in it alone.It doesn't matter what religion you are; you're already primed for this. You fell for fundamentalism just as soon as you decided that interpreting words in a book was congruent with making moral decisions, that there was a way to skip over uncomfortable moral deliberations and just look up the answers in some kind of "life's instruction manual." Yeah, exactly, Phat. You know exactly how it is. We should thank our lucky stars that, generally, the agenda of the average American religious leader is to get his church attendees to leave Chick tracts instead of tips when they go out for after-church brunch.

"They" who? Average Afghani families?Not a single one of the 9/11 hijackers was from Afghanistan. To my knowledge, hardly any of them had ever even been there.Phat, what should the average Afghani family be doing to "pick their side" and thus avoid being bombed by drones?

The 9/11 hijackers lived in Florida longer than they ever lived in Afghanistan.When we bagged bin Laden he had been living in Pakistan for almost a decade. Should we therefore invade? Done what? Die in front of AK-47's?How about the fact that the Taliban were the only force in Afghanistan that could keep the narcotics trade down? Hey, now you're thinking. But that's kind of the problem, isn't it? There's no basis for saying we "won" in Afghanistan, so any time we leave it looks like a "defeat." And who is going to be the guy who gives the order and, by doing so, becomes the Man who Lost Afghanistan? Who is going to commit political suicide in order to bring our troops home? I'm not sure I blame a guy for not having that kind of courage. Politicians, after all, think they're there to have the opportunity to do good.So, bagging bin Laden becomes an excuse for more commitment to the war, because now they're really going to be after us.It certainly drives home the importance of not fucking starting wars. Hello, Libya!

Saudi Arabia sent them. Most of the hijackers were Saudis - over half - and Saudi Arabia has always been the epicenter of fundamentalist Islam in the middle east.If the Taliban had had something to do with 9/11, that would be a reasonable cause for war. When I thought they did I supported the war in Afghanistan. Come on. Don't be a tool. If dropping bombs on people from airplanes isn't a war, then what is a war?It may, or may not, be legitimate to start a NATO war in Libya. It may, or may not, be something we're obligated to do. What's the mission? What's the end-game scenario? What possible fucking reason is there to believe that we've not just committed ourselves to a third quagmire? This isn't just academic for me, anymore - my wife is a Captain in US AMEDD, now.I still remember "Democracy, whiskey, sexy!" in the early days of Iraq; now those people fucking hate us. How long before Libya is another massive clusterfuck where things are too fragile for us to leave and too dangerous to stay indefinitely?

Just wanted to come back to this and say - I was happy to have been proven completely wrong.