It’s 9/11 again and it seems that many people(Liberals) out there are forgetting why we are there.
I know I’m preaching to choir but the pic below really puts Americas’s global war on terror in the right perspective…
I wondered as I woke up this morning, how many people will get up and go through the day, and have no idea what today is until its purposely pointed out to them, and even then, pay it hardly any heed.
One of my closest friends lost her best friend in the Towers six years ago today. While I didn’t know her friend, I know that she misses her, and she thinks of the little girl who lost her mother.
I think of it everytime I read Pat Rogers’ signature line:
NEVER FORGET THOSE WHO DIED…NEVER FORGET THOSE WHO KILLED THEM.
Afganistan or Iraq?
Both. What most people in this country are failing to grasp is that Iraq is now considered, by AQ, to be the central front in the war against the US. You can argue the merits of being there in the first place but that is irrelevant as Iraq has become the main theater for the war against AQ.
Ditto
Unfortunately true. If we really wanted AQ, we would officially go into pakistan, but for some reason Musharaff is beyond reproach. Offend a dictator who took over from a coup? heaven forbid! If we did that, people in pakistan might start to dislike us. Nobody seems really dedicated to winning this thing, leader wise.
At 0729 AZ time (1029 WTC time) 11Sept 2007. the entire class at fired an NSR into the berm at the Eloy PD range.
I placed a call to my Brother Timmy who was attending a Memorial servive for the 12 members of his company (Squad Company 1) murdered on that day. We kept the line open so they could hear the sound of freedom going downrange.
There is a war on, though many seem to forget it.
Keep the hate train running…
If you could please spend a second and think about the political calculus behind not aggressively fighting AQ in Pakistan. In case you have forgotten or weren’t aware of the fact that Pakistan is a nuclear power.
The current government in Pakistan only has a tenuous grip on power. There are number percentage of the Pakistani citizens that are openly sympathetic to AQ, including a large number of high ranking officials in their intelligence service.
Doing what you suggest that we should be doing could lead to a coup and a new government that both retains nuclear weapons but is openly supportive of AQ.
IMHO we are doing the right thing with the current government in Pakistan in spite of what the idiots running the Democratic party want us to believe.
I am in no way tryign to shit on this thread, so listen carefully. I spent a year and a half in iraq and lost close friends there like many on this site have. The only reason AQ is in iraq substantualy, is our continued presence. Our goverment did just about the oposite of the right thing in every instance since 9/11. Between taking our Afganistan anyalists off the case and using South american and African anyalists to make decitions about the war, giving AQ leaders over a month to retreat to tora bora, reling on the most unreliable people in history to help us.
Every thing since 9/11 has been fucked up. The decitions that this white house has made has been wrong time and time again. The simple fact is, AQ is in IRAQ beacuse we are.
If you want to learn about this war from the people who are experts in the subject matter I sugjest you start by reading these 3 books:
Imperial Hubris - Written by head of Osama Bin Ladden CIA Task force
See no Evil
Ghost wars
First, thank you for your service. I am a bit curious about this statement. Is there any place you would rather fight AQ than Iraq? Isn’t better to have at them in an environment where you can deal with them in mass, or would you prefer that they stay dispersed waiting for the chance to strike? I am not sure that I am tracking with you.
rubberneck,
I understand those points and i’m not saying i necassarily disagree. A better way i could have said it would be “What is Bin ladin and the top AQ brass worth?”
I don’t but the “fight 'em there so we don’t fight 'em here” stuff. Any resonably ambitious terrorist could royally jack us up, Iraq or no iraq. They could do more damage here, with less resources, in a more permissive environment than against military forces in Iraq. The fact that they haven’t is a miracle or a tribute to their retardedness, or both. Of the different arguments for being there, that is the weakest.
cobracutter,
I am in complete agreement. I highly recommend See No Evil and Imperial hubris. While, like all opinions, I take them with a grain of salt they are very informative. Islamic militants have always hated us. they didn’t start attacking us (America) until we let greed and screwed up priorities drive our foreign policy in the ME. We are there because they attacked us. Why did they attack us? these is more to it than the trite bull that passes as an explanation from our current leaders.
If you read any one of those books, you should also read Rowan Scarborough’s Sabotage: America’s Enemies Within the CIA.
I agree. The CIA is one of the most corrupt, buerocratic agencies that we have. That is one organization that needs to have some housecleaning, and should be independent of the executive branch ( asside from intel reporting).
JUN 1967 USS LIBERTY INTERNATIONAL WATERS, EASTERN MED 34
The political correctness of this war is one of the biggest problems with this war. No one has been willing to publicly stand on television and state the history of Islam, the reason for the feud between Shiite and Sunni, explain Wahabbism, the history significance of Bin Laden to the jihadists of Islam and historically religious significance of the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The government does not want to make this sound like the Crusades against all Muslims. Militant Islamists have a priority list of things to do. They cannot and will not ‘multi task’. They need to rid the holy lands of infidels before going back to world wide operations on a grand scale. This is why they come to Iraq from all over the globe to fight against us there. I cannot believe that the FBI has done so much theology training on Islam to police all over the country (taught by clerics and those Muslims born and raised in the middle east but now working for the USA) and high government officials are not aware of it too.
Though it does appear that by using this logic, that the US military is being used like cheese in trap; our presence there is drawing AQ’s assets into one conflict. Of course, this does not mean ALL assets and that there is no potential for strikes elsewhere in the world.
Bin Laden is seen nearly in the same light as Mohummad himself at this time. Islam is trying to regain the standing it had in the world centuries ago. It had not won a major engagement in centuries till Bin Laden “led” them to beat a world power in A’stan against the Soviets. They have be taught for centuries that they can only succeed when led by one who is pure and chosen by God himself. They now see Bin Laden as that ‘chosen one’.
We can read all the military, CIA crap we want and point at whatever we want in regards to the failures…But the purpose, methodology and goals of the enemy go back 800 years and more.
By the way, according to those that have taught me and from studies I have done since; this is the grand final plan:
Atheists will all be killed with no mercy (for they have no faith in any higher power)
Jews are next
Christians (Jesus is listed in the Qu’ran and the Christian “God” and “Allah” are the same) will be killed if they refuse to submit to Allah and convert to Islam. Here is the catch-you can only understand the true teachings of Allah through complete memorization of the Qu’ran. And it can only be understood fully in Arabic. So you have to become fluent in that language first.
Mike,
I agree with your summation of Islamic thought but their are two levels. Islamists will never dominate the world through terrorism. it would take invasion and conventional war. The extremists are very very far from the conventional war phase (on a global scale). The key is not the terrorists themselves, as you will always find a malignant bunch in any group.
The key is why do they get so much support from rank and file Muslims?
That is their support base. Correcting poverty, encouraging education and changing cultural norms in Arab backwaters is way outside our box. That is the true root of the problem, the things that make people susceptible to signing on with AQ. We can rob terror of much of its support by acting like Americans. Americans don’t support brutal regimes for oil or more convoluted reasons.
There is no doubt our hangers on are brutal and dictatorial. There is no doubt we give them gobs of cash and support. John Q. Haji can put two and two together.
I am not defending the CIA, but their problem as an organization reflects our problem as a nation. How do you genuinely try to be the global good guy and still effectively fight violent and merciless people? We demand that we fight our enemies, but we want everything to be fair and nice. This results in PC crap and tying peoples hands on one end and genuine and criminal abuse of power on the other.
I agree with you 110%. The problem really is a combination. Its taken me a long time to realize we really dont need to be in the middle east. We shouldn’t have saved kuwait in the first gulf war. We should not send so much foerigen aid to the region as we so, especialy Saudi Arabia. We also should have been more low key on our support for isreal. We have squandered so many resources and burnt so many bridges that we really are just digging ourselves deeper. This country needs a rude awakening to set the course strait.