9/11 Anniversaries, or "OH DEAR GOD FORBID WE FORGET!"

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 5:37 pm

fbmf wrote:EDIT: Other than "don't us 9/11 as a justification for invading Iraq". I'm totally with you on that. Saddam needed to be taken down, but justifying it by saying "Remember the Towers" was shady. So, other than that, how should America have responded?

The only possible 9/11 linkage attempt was an Al-Quaeda connection which was more floated than pushed and dropped like a hot potato when it was realized how absolutely stupid it was. Ironically invading Iraq created a vaccuum for Al-Quaeda, but this really is more of Bush's fault for creating a FUBAR situation in the first place.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 5:47 pm

Ancient History wrote:Improved disaster prevention and relief systems in the United States. An effort to educate the population of the world on the reasons for the attack, and a multinational effort to address those issues so that they do not happen again.

Oh I'm laughing my ass off on this one. "Educate the population of the world on the reasons for the attack." I don't really know where to begin, so I won't. I'll just wonder why so many Denners actually think this pile of manure is so sweet smelling.

Sometimes I think it would be a great idea for all of us conservatives to pack up and move to Antarctica and watch you liberals crash and burn. You would starve in less than a year (where did all the famers go and why isn't anyone trucking the goods to the store). Then we can sanitize all the remains and move back in.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 6:01 pm

Do it. I've been waiting for the mouth-breathers to pull an Ayn Rand for my entire life.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 6:08 pm

Can I help you pack Tzor?

BTW: That you think that all farmers are conservatives, and that liberals couldn't possibly know how to grow food makes me laugh my ass off.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 6:23 pm

An effort to educate the population of the world on the reasons for the attack, and a multinational effort to address those issues so that they do not happen again.

we have to RAISE AWARENESS

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 6:47 pm

tzor wrote: Oh I'm laughing my ass off on this one. "Educate the population of the world on the reasons for the attack." I don't really know where to begin, so I won't. I'll just wonder why so many Denners actually think this pile of manure is so sweet smelling.

Why do you hate education, Tzor?

tzor wrote:Sometimes I think it would be a great idea for all of us conservatives to pack up and move to Antarctica and watch you liberals crash and burn. You would starve in less than a year (where did all the famers go and why isn't anyone trucking the goods to the store). Then we can sanitize all the remains and move back in.

Oh, sweet. Now we can stop sending tax dollars from blue states to red states.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 7:06 pm

actually if everyone like tzor did move to antarctica, then america would be a better place. obviously not for long as the numerous social programs implemented by democrats would invariably collapse inward on their own weight, but for a time we could have the illusion of prosperity

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 7:28 pm

fbmf wrote:
We shouldn't have gone in and beat down the responsible parties? Why not?

I'm not really seeing "reform" as a viable option in this instance.

there was no chance of us not sending a military response into Afghanistan after 9/11. Hell, we shot missiles at those assholes for the embassy bombings back in Clinton's time. The question of how much of a response to send and what kind of mission guidelines to have and so on was very much an open one. And the Bush administration failed on that super hard.

Recall that ultimately finding and killing Osama Bin Laden was done, but not by the Bush administration at all, and he was ultimately "hiding" in a Pakistani suburb for retired Pakistani veterans. So all the cave searching we did in Afghanistan was ultimately pointless. Still: there was no way to know for certain that was going to be the case before hand.

Entirely reasonable courses of action would have included:

Discorporating Afghanistan and carving it up between regional powers - recall that both Russia and Iran were super pissed at the Afghanis at the time, and we could have gotten them to do the heavy lifting on policing various parts of the shit hole. Do it up Germany style, where we commit to the long haul and actually administer our American section.
Full scale colonization of Afghanistan. Ship over civilian workers and start developing the place. Pith helmets and gin & tonics for all our White man's burden needs.
Targeted strikes. We blow up the Taliban leadership and then we fucking leave. Revenge having been achieved, we have no further interest in the place, and we walk away.

Those would all be achievable goals. What the Bush administration actually did is to try to invade and occupy the country on the cheap, and then maintain a force there that would somehow pay for itself with Afghan mineral rights even as we took large chunks of the force and diverted them to a wholly inadequate and completely illegal invasion of a completely fucking irrelevant country.

Afghanistan is now producing more heroin than the entire world produced before we started. We have by every measurable standard ruined our position with that war. We've strengthed drug gangs world wide, who I remind you are now killing more people than died in 9/11 along the Mexico border every year. We've stretched our economy and our military to the breaking point, and have absolutely nothing to show for it. Afghanistan isn't stable or on our side. Iraq isn't stable or on our side.

When democracy started coming to the Middle East, it happened elsewhere and in spite of the governments we were propping up. Egypt is a happier story than Iraq or Afghanistan, and everything we did there was pure diplomacy. Our cheap, targeted strikes in Libya were more effective than the entire Gulf War and were done essentially without the loss of American life.

So when you ask what we should have done instead of the "War on Terror" the answer is absolutely fucking anything. Because what we actually did is only a little bit better than getting drunk and invading Canada. It was absolutely pointless, it was incredibly expensive and did not achieve any goals because there were no goals.

-Username17

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 7:34 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
tzor wrote: Oh I'm laughing my ass off on this one. "Educate the population of the world on the reasons for the attack." I don't really know where to begin, so I won't. I'll just wonder why so many Denners actually think this pile of manure is so sweet smelling.
Why do you hate education, Tzor?

Education is a wonderful thing. I don't hate education. But when a hurricane comes your way, it's not the time to start educating the people as to the causes of the hurricane. It's the time to DEAL WITH THE FUCKING HURRICANE.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 7:41 pm

You know, I have actually read the constitution: the parts about how it separates the powers of government and sets the branches against each other; the parts where it guards against tyranny of the majority; the part where it enshrines all American's right to dissent with their government - those all strike me as not merely self-evident truths that are central to our national identity. With that in mind any unifying event large enough to effect the entire nation is fundamentally Unamerican and potentially anathema to our political system.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 7:43 pm

Part of dealing with the hurricane is, after the hurricane is done and all the bodies are buried you implement changes to make sure the next hurricane doesn't fuck you up the ass quite as bad. If you refuse to learn your lessons from the mistakes of the past, they will repeat.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 7:44 pm

You know, I was only kidding about the Antarctica thing (although I wouldn't mind having penguins as neighbors). But the thought of a massive conservative invsion of the continent scares even me. I mean just think of all the exploitation of the resources especially the coal and natural gas located there. "Exploitation of all mineral resources is banned until 2048 by the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty."

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 8:01 pm

tzor wrote:
RobbyPants wrote:
tzor wrote: Oh I'm laughing my ass off on this one. "Educate the population of the world on the reasons for the attack." I don't really know where to begin, so I won't. I'll just wonder why so many Denners actually think this pile of manure is so sweet smelling.
Why do you hate education, Tzor?
Education is a wonderful thing. I don't hate education. But when a hurricane comes your way, it's not the time to start educating the people as to the causes of the hurricane. It's the time to DEAL WITH THE FUCKING HURRICANE.

What if that education came after the first hurricane and could be potentially used to prevent future hurricanes?

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 8:23 pm

RobbyPants wrote:What if that education came after the first hurricane and could be potentially used to prevent future hurricanes?

The statement was in response to the question what should the response be to 9/11. You might say that was potentialy the first winds of the hurricane. So education at that point is stupid. Perhaps, long after the hurricane passed education becomes important if you could use to to prevent hurricanes, but you can't and not only that it's hard to prevent all forms of wacko nutcases with a cause by knowing the root cause of one wacko nutcase with a cause.

One of the problems with the laws of unintended consequences is that by definition they are unintended. The ROOT CAUSE OF 9/11 was the agreement by the House of Saud to allow US troops in Saudi Arabian Territory ... (from wikipedia)

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein on August 2, 1990, put the Saudi kingdom and the House of Saud at risk, with Iraqi forces on the Saudi border and Saddam's appeal to pan-Arabism potentially inciting internal dissent. Bin Laden met with King Fahd, and Saudi Defense Minister Sultan, telling them not to depend on non-Muslim assistance from the United States and others, offering to help defend Saudi Arabia with his mujahideen. Bin Laden's offer was rebuffed, and after the Saudi monarchy invited the deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi territory, Bin Laden publicly denounced Saudi Arabia's dependence on the U.S. military. Bin Laden believed the presence of foreign troops in the "land of the two mosques" (Mecca and Medina) profaned sacred soil. Bin Laden's criticism of the Saudi monarchy led that government to attempt to silence him.

Shortly after Saudi Arabia invited U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia, bin Laden turned his attention to attacks on the West.

OK Hari Sheldon, predict THAT ...

Hurrianes and monarch butterflies and all that ...

Count Arioch the 28th · Wed Sep 14, 2011 1:01 am

tzor wrote: a great idea for all of us conservatives to pack up and move to Antarctica and watch you liberals crash and burn. You would starve in less than a year (where did all the famers go and why isn't anyone trucking the goods to the store). Then we can sanitize all the remains and move back in.

Just letting you know, if you said that to my face I'd pop you in the mouth, rich man.

EDIT: Also, people of my economic background are overwhelmingly liberal. We'd take the land you fucks leave behind and raise our own food. Also, scientists are overwhelmingly liberal so we'd still have tech.

If you came back to "sanitize" the land, we'd be fucking ready for you, and stronger than ever. You have much to fear from us, rich man.

Edit part deux: Fuck, even the libertarians would probably want to stay behind, it would give them an opportunity to grab some land and live on it without any government to boss them around. So you would be taking all the people that makes this country shitty and leaving somewhere where there's no food, no shelter, and harsh weather. And we're the ones that'd starve to death in a year? WE ARE NOT FUCKING CHILDREN , CHRIS.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Wed Sep 14, 2011 1:25 am

Ancient History wrote:Do it. I've been waiting for the mouth-breathers to pull an Ayn Rand for my entire life.

What's funny about the whole "Going Galt" is the fictional characters who do it are taking themselves out of a marketplace where their skills are valuable and profitable to one where their skills are utterly pointless.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Sep 14, 2011 1:47 am

fbmf wrote:We shouldn't have gone in and beat down the responsible parties?

"gone in"? the US has been in the middle east in regards to momar kadhafi or whatever since the mid-80's and never left!

we been there for nearly 30 years now.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Wed Sep 14, 2011 3:53 am

30?
Try almost 70.