Invasiontastic (fightfightfight)

HeyYou

DubTony wrote:

No. Invading a country to depose it's regime has little to do with dealing with terrorism. Libya was attacked during Reagan's era but never invaded. Afghanistan was attacked during Clinton's era but never invaded. Both countries were attacked on the basis that they harboured terrorists.

When the IRA blew up Canary Wharf, would the British have been justified in invading Ireland? No, that'd be nonsense. The Taliban .... now read carefully .... used to be friendly to the US. They then harboured terrorists. When those terrorists began to attack Americans the US retaliated until, after September 11 they decided to wipe out the place and install a new regime. One that would be friendly. The old regime wouldn't have allowed American troops on it's soil. So they went in anyway and now hold a prescence.

You're missing the point I think, although I appreciate your going through my whole thing sequentially You actually agree that countries have the right to defend themselves, and that al Qaeda were behind 9/11; how then was the invasion unjustified? The examples you give of Libya and Afghanistan have a crucial difference to the situation we're discussing: neither of those countries were then harbouring an organisation known to be behind the biggest attack on America since Pearl Harbor. They're completely non-analogous, the circumstances a country finds itself in after an attack are not the same as the were before the attack.

Of course the British invading Ireland to get the IRA would be nuts, but that's because the Irish government don't shelter or tolerate the IRA: again, a totally non-analogous situation. And I'm aware the Taliban used to be US-friendly, but you said it yourself:"They then harboured terrorists. When those terrorists began to attack Americans the US retaliated until, after September 11 they decided to wipe out the place and install a new regime." What's the problem with that? US installs regime, regime turns bad, terrorists do bad stuff on 9/11, US responds to crush terrorists.

Makes sense to me.

DubTony

I'll put it this way. If you want to find a needle in a haystack you pick a point to start at and pull the haystack apart bit by bit.
The only reason you'd use a combine harvester is so you could destroy the haystack and not really care whether or not you found the needle. But once you'd got your combine harvester there you might as well leave it so that when a haystack in the next field needed picking through you could use it there.

You know what I'm saying, and I've no doubt you understand my point of view. That's my opinion, and we could probably go on for as long as it takes to find Osama bin Laden (with a combine harvester :rolleyes:), so I'll leave it at that.

Tony

StupidLikeAFox

Well, in my expert opinion, hes always in the last place ya look

Raphael

Well obviously. Does anyone keep looking once they find something?

Plunky

There's the odd time I keep looking, in case what I have might actually turn out to be not what I wanted originally, or in case it's not what it seems - like an illusion... but that only happens after about 48 hours of wakefulness...

Bazookatone

Plunky wrote:

There's the odd time I keep looking, in case what I have might actually turn out to be not what I wanted originally, or in case it's not what it seems - like an illusion... but that only happens after about 48 hours of wakefulness...

I see................Is that when that picture was taken (anyone else notice a similarity with "Here's Johnny" in the Shining?)

Plunky

Nono, that was taked just after showerification cuz me was entertooning a friend, and getting an opinion on a possible haircut. We decided I should get one!

TalkISCheap

HeyYou wrote:

You actually agree that countries have the right to defend themselves, and that al Qaeda were behind 9/11; how then was the invasion unjustified?

How was the invasion justified? Al Qaeda were behind 9/11, but that gives America the right to defend itself against Al Qaeda. The vast majority of Afghans were innocent, poor farmers trying to make a living. The Canary Wharf argument is very apt - the Government were strongly associated with the IRA in the past (Haughey and Blaney, the arms trials, the further back you go the worse it gets..) and the IRA had stated their intention to attack Britain until they ceded part of their country. An Irish fundamentalist group attack British soil waging an age-old war. Ring a few bells?

It comes down to the fact that the US cannot set a precedent in taking unilateral action on (what turned out to be very very) shaky evidence. (Talking about Iraq.) Bush cannot be trusted to make decisions like the Toy Story claw about "who will stay and who will go."

And as for the UN being useless - this is the fault of all of the member nations. It can be and it has to be made relevant again. Otherwise we are heading for the only action to reslove international disputes being military force.

Bazookatone

TalkISCheap wrote:

How was the invasion justified? Al Qaeda were behind 9/11, but that gives America the right to defend itself against Al Qaeda. The vast majority of Afghans were innocent, poor farmers trying to make a living.

And as for the UN being useless - this is the fault of all of the member nations. It can be and it has to be made relevant again. Otherwise we are heading for the only action to reslove international disputes being military force.

Just an interesting point. The generally accepted image of Al Qaeda (and one that has been quietly nurtured by those parties with a vested interest in the "War on Terror") is of a sinister shadowy orginisation, with sexy "International Terrorists" (I love that phrase, I mean, wtf does it actually mean!?) flying to exotic destinations, for sexy secret meetings, with their sexy "controls" and then blowing up "sexy" landmarks with "sexy" bombs (you know, the ones with the red flashing light and the LED countdown timer), all under the watchful eye of some sinister character from a big room full of giant screens.

Let's look at examples:
The Recruit
Alias
The Bourne films
Any Bond film
The Mission Impossible films

The truth is absolutely nothing llike this. In reality Osama Bin Laden does NOT pick up a phone and say "Let's blow up the statue of Liberty", and then some cool sleeper agent, who normally just works in an office does NOT recieve a text message, abruptly walk out of their job, pick up an arsenal of weapons from a disused garage. He is then NOT tracked down by a ruggedly handsome secret agent,m who will NOT be driving a kickass sports car that he couldn't possibly afford anyway, and his new, sassy street smart woman, partner (because his last partner of 15 years was killed by this terrorist, so "this time it's personal") who pretend to hate each other but will end up in the sack by the weekend. There will NOT be a cool shootout on a well known landmark, ending in the terrorist death and disaster narrowly being averted.

what actually happens is
Some young man or woman, usually from a poor background, probaby without a good education and very likely, from a place with much civil unrest becomes disillusioned and disaffected. They cannot find a purpose to their lives and cannot make sense of the horrible things they see. They turn to God for guidance, and if they're unlucky, a religious leader with sympahties towards Al Queda or Islamic Jihad gets their hands on them. They tell them (not entirely untruthfullly) that their problems are the fault of the "evil Americans". The young person is convinced that if he becomes a suicide bomber he will a) help liberate his country and b) go straight to heaven. The young person decides to bomb the US Embassy. He tells the Mullah, who contacts an Al Qaeda agent, for money. The bomber then finds the recipe for explosive on the internet, uses the money to buy the ingredients, build a very crude homemade bomb(no red flashing lights, no countdown timer), straps it to himself and walks into the Embassy. Theres no warning, and no defence.

Plunky

I'm worried that you know all of this, yet don't source it... Jack you are a strange, strange man...

HeyYou

TalkISCheap wrote:

How was the invasion justified? Al Qaeda were behind 9/11, but that gives America the right to defend itself against Al Qaeda. The vast majority of Afghans were innocent, poor farmers trying to make a living. The Canary Wharf argument is very apt - the Government were strongly associated with the IRA in the past (Haughey and Blaney, the arms trials, the further back you go the worse it gets..) and the IRA had stated their intention to attack Britain until they ceded part of their country. An Irish fundamentalist group attack British soil waging an age-old war. Ring a few bells?

And as for the UN being useless - this is the fault of all of the member nations. It can be and it has to be made relevant again. Otherwise we are heading for the only action to reslove international disputes being military force.

That's just crazy and malinformed, pure and simple. It's blind America bashing like that that tarnishes the views and standing of people who disagree with the US for viable reasons. DubTony and I came to a pefectly reasonable "we'll agree to disagree" on this. You've ignored the fact that the Taliban in Afghanistan harboured and supported extremist Islamic terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, the most basic aspect of the case for war. The people don't have to harbout terrorists for war to be justified, especially not in this case where the regime was so totalitarian that the people clearly weren't in charge of their own country at all. Should we not have invaded Germany in WWII if most Germans weren't Nazis? Of course we should have, it's the regime doing the damage.

The Irish government do not and have not ever sanctioned the IRA in its modern form. The IRA and Sinn Fein have gone through an evolution in history: the original IRA is something we can be proud of, as it wasn't a terrorist group which kills innocent people like the current IRA does. The Canary Wharf analogy is anything but "apt", it's totally non-analagous, the tenous lnks the Government has to the IRA in its previous form would certainly be no justification for British action against Ireland, whereas an extremist Islamic regime supporting a terrorist group whose aim is to destroy the west is a different case altogether.

Crash

Bazookatone wrote:

Just an interesting point. The generally accepted image of Al Qaeda (and one that has been quietly nurtured by those parties with a vested interest in the "War on Terror") is of a sinister shadowy orginisation, with sexy "International Terrorists" (I love that phrase, I mean, wtf does it actually mean!?) flying to exotic destinations, for sexy secret meetings, with their sexy "controls" and then blowing up "sexy" landmarks with "sexy" bombs (you know, the ones with the red flashing light and the LED countdown timer), all under the watchful eye of some sinister character from a big room full of giant screens.

Let's look at examples:
The Recruit
Alias
The Bourne films
Any Bond film
The Mission Impossible films

The truth is absolutely nothing llike this. In reality Osama Bin Laden does NOT pick up a phone and say "Let's blow up the statue of Liberty", and then some cool sleeper agent, who normally just works in an office does NOT recieve a text message, abruptly walk out of their job, pick up an arsenal of weapons from a disused garage. He is then NOT tracked down by a ruggedly handsome secret agent,m who will NOT be driving a kickass sports car that he couldn't possibly afford anyway, and his new, sassy street smart woman, partner (because his last partner of 15 years was killed by this terrorist, so "this time it's personal") who pretend to hate each other but will end up in the sack by the weekend. There will NOT be a cool shootout on a well known landmark, ending in the terrorist death and disaster narrowly being averted.

what actually happens is
Some young man or woman, usually from a poor background, probaby without a good education and very likely, from a place with much civil unrest becomes disillusioned and disaffected. They cannot find a purpose to their lives and cannot make sense of the horrible things they see. They turn to God for guidance, and if they're unlucky, a religious leader with sympahties towards Al Queda or Islamic Jihad gets their hands on them. They tell them (not entirely untruthfullly) that their problems are the fault of the "evil Americans". The young person is convinced that if he becomes a suicide bomber he will a) help liberate his country and b) go straight to heaven. The young person decides to bomb the US Embassy. He tells the Mullah, who contacts an Al Qaeda agent, for money. The bomber then finds the recipe for explosive on the internet, uses the money to buy the ingredients, build a very crude homemade bomb(no red flashing lights, no countdown timer), straps it to himself and walks into the Embassy. Theres no warning, and no defence.

damn, without you here to inform me of all that, here i was off to see if i could contact a terrorist cell so i could live the high life!! there go my plans!

...in other words, if you honestly believe the world is that naive, you need to take the pole out.

GlitterB

Bazookatone wrote:

Just an interesting point. The generally accepted image of Al Qaeda (and one that has been quietly nurtured by those parties with a vested interest in the "War on Terror") is of a sinister shadowy orginisation, with sexy "International Terrorists" (I love that phrase, I mean, wtf does it actually mean!?) flying to exotic destinations, for sexy secret meetings, with their sexy "controls" and then blowing up "sexy" landmarks with "sexy" bombs (you know, the ones with the red flashing light and the LED countdown timer), all under the watchful eye of some sinister character from a big room full of giant screens.

Let's look at examples:
The Recruit
Alias
The Bourne films
Any Bond film
The Mission Impossible films

The truth is absolutely nothing llike this. In reality Osama Bin Laden does NOT pick up a phone and say "Let's blow up the statue of Liberty", and then some cool sleeper agent, who normally just works in an office does NOT recieve a text message, abruptly walk out of their job, pick up an arsenal of weapons from a disused garage. He is then NOT tracked down by a ruggedly handsome secret agent,m who will NOT be driving a kickass sports car that he couldn't possibly afford anyway, and his new, sassy street smart woman, partner (because his last partner of 15 years was killed by this terrorist, so "this time it's personal") who pretend to hate each other but will end up in the sack by the weekend. There will NOT be a cool shootout on a well known landmark, ending in the terrorist death and disaster narrowly being averted.

what actually happens is
Some young man or woman, usually from a poor background, probaby without a good education and very likely, from a place with much civil unrest becomes disillusioned and disaffected. They cannot find a purpose to their lives and cannot make sense of the horrible things they see. They turn to God for guidance, and if they're unlucky, a religious leader with sympahties towards Al Queda or Islamic Jihad gets their hands on them. They tell them (not entirely untruthfullly) that their problems are the fault of the "evil Americans". The young person is convinced that if he becomes a suicide bomber he will a) help liberate his country and b) go straight to heaven. The young person decides to bomb the US Embassy. He tells the Mullah, who contacts an Al Qaeda agent, for money. The bomber then finds the recipe for explosive on the internet, uses the money to buy the ingredients, build a very crude homemade bomb(no red flashing lights, no countdown timer), straps it to himself and walks into the Embassy. Theres no warning, and no defence.

OMG wow thats so amazing...truly an eye opening post...thanks man

pinkpimp

Barry Aldwell wrote:

the entire Marine Corps, capable of mounting an amphibious operation that would make Normandy 1944 look like a day at the beach.

Wasn't it already a day at the beach?

StupidLikeAFox

pinkpimp wrote:

Wasn't it already a day at the beach?

And oh, werent the sandcastles just delightful?

jono087

ColHol wrote:

And oh, werent the sandcastles just delightful?

you might've been a bit more subtle..... but nice 1 all the same
*sarcasm beats all*

StupidLikeAFox

Yep, and speaking of sandcastles, war, al'quiada, 9/11, etc etc heres a very apt image

Undergod

Bazookatone wrote:

The truth is absolutely nothing llike this. In reality Osama Bin Laden does NOT pick up a phone and say "Let's blow up the statue of Liberty", and then some cool sleeper agent, who normally just works in an office does NOT recieve a text message, abruptly walk out of their job, pick up an arsenal of weapons from a disused garage. He is then NOT tracked down by a ruggedly handsome secret agent,m who will NOT be driving a kickass sports car that he couldn't possibly afford anyway, and his new, sassy street smart woman, partner (because his last partner of 15 years was killed by this terrorist, so "this time it's personal") who pretend to hate each other but will end up in the sack by the weekend. There will NOT be a cool shootout on a well known landmark, ending in the terrorist death and disaster narrowly being averted.

Prove it.

It wasn't me!

Colhol, where do you get this stuff?!

Undergod

Maybe he built it. I know for a factual act that there's a sleeper cell of sexy "International Terrorists" in /(Colhol's Location)/ wating for a text message from Osama.

Are you in cahoots?

Raphael

Cahoot, the owl pokemon, is often found near international terrorists. For this reason its cry is used on the terrorists mobile phones. This results in many an inexperienced trainer throwing his balls at a terrorist when he gets a text from Osama

jono087

Raphael wrote:

Cahoot, the owl pokemon, is often found near international terrorists. For this reason its cry is used on the terrorists mobile phones. This results in many an inexperienced trainer throwing his balls at a terrorist when he gets a text from Osama

wtf?!

StupidLikeAFox

Raphael wrote:

Cahoot, the owl pokemon, is often found near international terrorists. For this reason its cry is used on the terrorists mobile phones. This results in many an inexperienced trainer throwing his balls at a terrorist when he gets a text from Osama

Ive always wanted to be a pokemon master

Plunky

ColHol wrote:

Ive always wanted to be a pokemon master

Who hasn't?..

TalkISCheap

HeyYou wrote:

It's blind America bashing like that that tarnishes the views and standing of people who disagree with the US for viable reasons

Firstly, I didnt "america bash", blindly or otherwise. I merely disagreed with their reasons for war.

HeyYou wrote:

...where the regime was so totalitarian that the people clearly weren't in charge of their own country...

Secondly, surely this argument would justify the invasion by the US (or any like minded country) of China (with no free elections), North Korea, Saudi Arabia (and indeed most reigning monarchies including most of the Pacific Island States), Tibet, Nepal, quite a bit of Eastern Europe before the revolutions (eg Kazackstan, Kyrgistan, Georgia, Ukraine etc.) and many other countries I'm too lazy to mention.

How can you be in favour of unilateral action based on internal politics and rumour? Even "supporting an extremist group" is not a particularly persuasive argument. The US supported the Taliban against the USSR and currently support the Israelis in the Middle East. The UN is the only acceptable route to resolving international disputes.

HeyYou wrote:

...You've ignored the fact that...

And you've ignored the fact that George W. Bush feels like he can now dictate morals, cultural acceptibility and foreign policy to the rest of the world. I am not bashing him in any way, (much as I might like to ) but this is simply too mush responsibility and power for one man. My solution? Boring as it must sound, the UN.

And finally,

HeyYou wrote:

Should we not have invaded Germany in WWII if most Germans weren't Nazis?

We didn't.

Cool sandcastle by the way...

*wish i'd made it... sigh...*

StupidLikeAFox

Plunky wrote:

Who hasn't?..

MOOHA!!

Plunky

...

Methinks I'll get me someofthis for when my hair grows back!...

TalkISCheap

And interesting to hear today from Amnesty International that the American Government is making an "...attempt to dilute the absolute ban on torture."

HeyYou

TalkISCheap wrote:

Secondly, surely this argument would justify the invasion by the US (or any like minded country) of China (with no free elections), North Korea, Saudi Arabia (and indeed most reigning monarchies including most of the Pacific Island States), Tibet, Nepal, quite a bit of Eastern Europe before the revolutions (eg Kazackstan, Kyrgistan, Georgia, Ukraine etc.) and many other countries I'm too lazy to mention.

How can you be in favour of unilateral action based on internal politics and rumour? Even "supporting an extremist group" is not a particularly persuasive argument. The US supported the Taliban against the USSR and currently support the Israelis in the Middle East. The UN is the only acceptable route to resolving international disputes.

As you say, the arguments for war might not justify it if they existed only as individual arguments. However, as a package of several good reasons they certainly do. 9/11 was an enormous event, it's hard to overstate how enormous it was; after such an event, I think it's justified to go after the people responsible and not every other country in the world with human rights breaches. And anyway, if they did invade all those countries, would you be happy then?! Diplomacy remains the best way to deal with such issues, but after the out-and-out declaration of war that 9/11 was, no other options were available.

The fact that the US installed the Taliban is a black mark on theor record, but that doesn't remove their right to disapprove of their methods years later, what point are you trying to make? I really don't understand. And while the support for Israel is incredibly stupid and should be ceased as soon as is humanly possible, comparing Israel with Islamic extremists is a little ridiculous. Israel have not set out their goal as the destruction of western society. Al Qaeda have.

I'd really like to believe that the UN could be the route to solve all these arguments, it certainly should be. I just don't think it can. The fact that the French could agree with all off the principles in Resolution 1441 but then veto any 2nd resolution which would do anything about those principles is just ridiculous and completely counter to getting things done. UN R.I.P.

TalkISCheap

Firstly, an honest question:
Why do you think that al-Qaeda killing a few thousand people on 9/11 justifies war, but the other more protracted human rights abuses (which killed an equal, or larger number of people over a longer period of time) do not?

Surely the life of an American banker is not more valuable than the life of a North Korean labourer or a Chinese activist?

Secondly, thanks for recognising the at least partial validity of my point. That's rare enough on boards!

HeyYou wrote:

And anyway, if they did invade all those countries, would you be happy then?!

No, not at all. I think that this is the whole point of the UN, to stop countries invading each other every second week. And if it is dead and buried, put the resources into finding a new, workable format, not invading impoverished asian nations!