I read "Palestinian." Early reports identified his family as being Jordanian, though.

Because someone might get offended. Same reason Grandma Lindqvist gets strip searched at the airport.

We didn't do more because we live in a country and a society that does not kick in your door and search your stuff because you show "warning signs". It takes a bit more then that to get a warrent, and it should take more then that. Hell if we did kick in your door for showing some kind of warning sign, half the cellar would be on lock down tomorrow.

A lot of Christians and Jews think the same way, but our government gives them a chance to kill the baddies with societies thanks. It is an interesting dynamic. Using religion to prop up foreign policy is a dangerous business.

I'd say I'm a human first and an American second. It depends on what you see as universal. F'd up Moslems, Christians, Jews, or whatevers see their religion as universal so it trumps all else and justifies anything that suits their ends, just as super-patriots see their nation as the ultimate.:borg:

+1

Hmm. We are all part of something bigger, and our actions have consequences that reach beyond ourselves. I.e., no man is an island.

Agreed. I believe there are two different types of responsibility. The first type is simply being responsible for your own actions. When it comes down to it, if you make a bad decision, the responsibility is upon you and no one else. The second type is making rational decisions to prevent bad situations from arising. While I do not believe people should be held responsible for this, people, especially in leadership positions, should possess the insight to make rational, no emotional, decisions to prevent bad situations from happening. Basically being able to suck up your pride for the good of yourself and your surroundings.

Preventing mass shootings is extremely difficult if not impossible to prevent and psychopaths have no sense of responsibility so I don't think this is a great example.

Which makes the gun people's unstinting advocacy of concealed carriage of weapons both understandable and necessary.

And the bad Major was stopped by gunfire. The time to do that was as soon as possible.

And Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) thinks bad majors are caused by guns -- nothing new there. Nobody of Sen. Schumer's religion should have anything to do with promoting an essential precondition to a genocide, but Schumer does and always has, having grown up in an environment where the full play of Americans' civil and human rights is disallowed: NYC under the Sullivan Laws. Skews his perceptions, leaving him a hoplophobic advocate for extra crime and more genocide. Fuuu-uuckk. :headshake

Fort Hood slayings prompt full Pentagon review
Link

Doesn't this imply that it may be some type of terrorism? A point that no one wants to admit may be a possibility.

IMO. it is political expedient to call it an act of terrorism, particularly if one wants to further politicize the act.

It doesnt meet the legal definition of terrorism under US law any more so that a radical anti-abortionist killing a doctor or even a mother killing her kids because she was "directed by God" to do so.

These are acts of emotionally unstable individuals who find a self-serving religious justification for their actions. They are not terrorists.

Though terrorists themselves aren't invariably the poster boys for good mental hygiene. There's rattle room either way.

The big difference lies in strategy. Terrorists will kill people to try to shift the society's views and actions. Shooting sprees have no social strategy behind them. I do not see any strategy behind this shooting.

I agree.

Individuals acting on their own, rather than at the direction of a politically motivated organization are not terrorists. These individuals, in their own delusions, may believe they are supporting those organizations, but they are not "agents" of those organizations.

My greatest concern with calling all such acts "terrorism" is that its potentially gives the government more justification to act in response in ways that diminish the balance between individual rights and national security.

Easy solution... all military personnel must carry their weapons at all times, on and off duty.

The fact that this man was in contact with known terrorists and had a real potential to be used/abused by them into thinking this may have been a "good thing" leads me to consider the alternative. All the investigations being done by the various agencies also makes it obvious that there may be something to it.
To try and make all the smoke just "go away" for political reasons before finding out the truth is even worse.

Its possible. But even if he was influenced by a terrorist group, unless there is a larger strategy behind the killings, I think it should still not be labeled as a terrorist attack. A terrorist attack is some aggressive behavior by a group trying to influence a society by the use of fear.

If he was trying to scare the military personal, it seems that he has miserably failed. The only success I see from this, from the terrorist perspective, is that many are now trying to discriminate against Muslims because of this, polarizing Muslims, and making them choose from being loyal to a society that treats them as second class citizens or fighting against them (that is Al Qaeda's grand stategy IMO). But that still is a massive stretch.

@ Bruce's pic....:thumb:

Which is precisely what I consider this to have been. "Group" is not necessary to the definition, you will note on reflection -- Sirhan Sirhan and the late Timmy McVeigh come to mind.

And among the punditocracy: Obama's Wakeup Call?

"Group" is certainly necessary in the definition of a terrorist act under US law, as is a political motivation or intent to intimidate or coerce.

MCVeigh was not tried as a terrorist, but as a mass murderer. He acted alone (or with one co-conspirator) and there was no evidence of it being a political act.

And the evidence embodied in his picking a government target doesn't factor into it? I think it does. McVeigh was known for political thinking, however warped and mishandled and misconceived -- too weird for the militia, remember? -- and his motivation so far as we can determine was entirely political. He wanted to blow up lots of U.S. government in order to accomplish some, um, change of behavior on its part. Politics by disreputable means?

As you said, ". . .political motivation or attempt to intimidate or coerce." I'd count a large explosion as intimidating, particularly so if it's downtown. And would it necessarily have to be thought out in any organized or complete fashion before the guy starts building his car bomb or dragging his footlocker full of guns and ammo to the top of that Texas tower?

Trying him for mass murder simply indicates that we don't have or take political prisoners in our system. This will likely also be pointed out in the upcoming KSM-et-alia trial if that attempt to try POW's ever gets going. I don't see the good in that, except perhaps the negative result of showing an entire generation that the law-enforcement paradigm should not substitute for the war-fighting paradigm.

There was no threat of further action, no claim that the bombing was in response to......or demands for the US government to...(pick one - release prisoners, withdrawal US troops from anywhere, end its support of Israel, or even more localized demands like providing better health care and/or jobs to homeless vets,....).

There was no strategy to use the bombing to further any political goals, either personally or of an organization.

It was an act of an angry or emotionally unstable man (men).

Just because the motivation was political doesn't mean it is equivalent to something like the 9/11 attacks. For example, let say we have a kid who gets bullied a lot at school, so he breaks down, gets a gun, and shoots up the school. Then, another kid with the same situation, finds his three biggest bullies, hangs them in front of the school, and says anyone else who bullies will get the same fate. Both had the same cause and motivation but the second had an actual strategy to change the social setup of the school using fear. There is a clear difference and the second is much more dangerous because it attempts to control others.

I did not see any strategy related to McVeigh even if the attack was political in nature. Same with the Fort Hoot shootings. Al Qeada wants to US to keep attacking Islamic countries, forcing pro-Western Muslims to choose between those two identities, causing a war between the west and Islam. That is much more dangerous then anything McVeigh did or what happened at Fort Hood.

I don't see that as such a stretch. . . Would you have even considered the coordinated attacks including 9/11 as a "massive stretch?" If not, then you are in the very small minority.

I worded that badly. Of course some people are going to discriminate against Muslims because of this. But, I believe it is a stretch that the attack was made for the strategy of getting non-Islamic westerners to discriminate against Muslims. There are other and much more effective methods. Random shoot ups are rarely strategic. Bombs, gas, etc, work much better.

no no no - The radicals may have seen this as an opportunity to gather more support for their cause and help unite their brethren in America.
I don't think this had much, if anything to do with discrimination.

judgment from on high? Maybe Allah is paying attention after all.

Which "forcing" doesn't seem to be a matter of much moment to the pro-Western Muslims in question.

Frankly, where's the downside in making anti-Westernism extinct by shortening its practitioners' lifespans? Can anti-Westernism endure a thousand years of pruning? I doubt it. The arrogant anti-globalist, woman-abusing Islamofascists cry out for divine punishment. Let´s punish, and punish, and punish, until it is no longer fashionable in any circle to remain stupid. Let us provide our death-loving opponents with a glut. Show the world their unprofitability.

They're actually doing a pretty fair job of this already. The working definition of a terrorist is somebody whose ideas are so unpopular he can only press them by violence. The terrs are spending more time and explosives blowing their co-religionists up than anything else. In the name, apparently, of scaring off the West.

What happens to those guys if the West doesn't scare, but comes a-hunting?

A rope and a lamppost, I think.

\facepalm

At last, your god-delusion is exposed ;)

Seriously, in reply to
The downside is for every extremeist we kill, two of his cousins swing from sympathiser to activist, and five of his neighbours swing from neutral to sympathiser. Just like fighting the Hydra, cutting the heads off one at a time doesn't get you anywhere.

But that begs the question, does the homicide bomber recruit more supporters by;
1-us killing him,
2-him successfully killing others?

If the return from both courses of action (averaged across many homicide bombers) is more than 1.0 new recruits, we're losing.
One way to get that rate of regeneration down is by keeping impressionable youngsters out of reach of persuasive extremists. That means providing secular schools in important areas - not just Pakistan and Afghanistan, but eg Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Indonesia; and putting pressure on to close down the most extreme madrassas.
Men-In-Black-types still have a role to play, not in preemptively killing bombers, but in neutralising those who recruit the bombers, build the bombs, provide the money.

. . . or by killing ALL of them.

Just kidding

Why?:D

Yes, the most effective strategy will be polarizing the extremist minority from the moderate majority. If a separation can occur, then citizens will start blaming the extremists instead of, or along with, the west. If a separation is not there, most, if not all, blame will be shown towards the west.

Itdoesn't take much.
Remember Salman Rushdie? Indian (or was it Pakistani) born British citizen, British publishing company, but whose flags got burned in the whacky protests?
One thing I learned in my student days is that protests and especially the slogans are very rarely well thought through.

Actually, no. And in any case, what of it? They die too -- two more well directed bullets, two fascists made into good fascists. And everyone around them says of them, "Those guys were complete idiots." Fundamentally simple, is it not? Particularly if you assume the supply of fascists is finite, which is my supposition and I've not seen much to contradict it, if anything at all. What needs to happen is that those who decide to assail the Leviathan get dealt a short lifespan, with no profit and no chance to breed others like themselves.

Insurgencies get ground down by holistic measures -- I'd like you to stop thinking I don't understand that. We who fight the insurgents also work on their societies, to undermine any feelings of grievance or any improper understanding of globalization's progress. Agitators, representatives of undemocratic social orders, try to stir their youth up to attack us. Yet their success is limited, and much of the blowing up is of coreligionist Muslims -- getting blown up for the offense of not subscribing to the terr's brand of thinking.

Cultures are tough things; they are not broken nor wiped away by widened trade, nor the freest flow of finances, security, people, goods, and ideas. The agitators generally couch their rabblerousings in terms of defending the purity of their culture, but this "defense" is not of the culture but of the privileges of the élite. Political liberty and highly secure property rights are essential building blocks -- our troubles come from places lacking in one or both, not from other parts of the world that have figured these out.

Education of girls and women will be important in this -- so important that anybody attacking a girls' school should be hunted down and dismembered in public, perhaps by insertion of a rectumful of Semtex (250 grammes ought to do; a kilo is overkill and bad for surrounding plate glass) and a blasting cap. We should show the anticivilized, anti-wealth, antidemocracy opposition that the world will no longer indulge their illegitimacy, but will move not to merely kill, but to vaporize it.

Hanging from a lamppost is just as public, just as effective, and less noisy too. Or borrow a gas station and string 'em up by the heels there, as was done with Mussolini.

Your problem, Zen, is that your present position is one of moral cowardice in the face of terroristic antiglobalist fanatical factions, and insufficient belief in the inherent worth of the liberal democracy those factions attack. I don't have that problem, and I'm here to tell you you don't need it, but can live a better life without it. Take a life-lesson, and review your values and your soul. It is not itself evil to battle to destroy evil.

So, how'd that work for you in Nam?

Sectarianism is on the rise again in Ireland.
Apologists say that it's because the process of creating a united Ireland is too slow, and because the economy is in recession.

No.
Sorry.
Really. NO.

Some people like to kill.
They will wear a religion in order to do so.
Bullied? Jobless? Feel undermined? Part of a minority?
KILL EVERYONE!

I suppose we're supposed to be grateful that so far only those in the Armed Forces or Police are being targeted. Unlike at the height of the Troubles, when they were blowing up English shopping streets. And had American funding.

Fort Hood was a tragedy. And shame on him for not realising it fed the flames of Islamophobia. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Except he wouldn't feel that now, would he?
But it had as much to do with the Koran as IRA attacks had to do with the Bible.
I believe in neither, but I do recognise that without organised religion, human beings would find another reason to hate and maim and kill.

Money from Irish living in the US, money from Irish-Americans, and likely from Irish living in Europe. American funding, no.:headshake

Your compatriots were there too, may I remind you. The First Australian Task Force, SAS, some arty, armour, and support units.

Now didn't they amount to some improvement over yourself? Shall I need to continue being so blunt?

Hey, Communism is dead in Vietnam except as a sort of state religion, and is there no reason to hope this too will go the way of the Sumerian pantheon also? (That's the way I want it.) Should this be counted as failure on America's part and the West's?

Democracy and liberty keep getting vindicated, even among the schlubs who fight for slavery. Yes, it's damned fortunate these guys figured it out for themselves after busily wasting all those lives for all that time -- but it would have been even more fortunate had they been denied the opportunity to waste people for not wanting to be enslaved, right?

You should notice that the decline of communism had nothing to do with being bombed to buggery, but rather has followed 30-odd years of relative peace.

You should also be aware that the point about killing bad guys simply creating more bad guys is iterative.

And if your barbaric proposal of anally raping terrorists with explosive devices were adopted, that would swing damn near every human, decent or otherwise, into strong anti-Americanism. Remember Abu Graib?

Don't lecture me about goals. I don't want the talleban or anyone like them in charge of anything any more than you do. It is just that your methods of achieving the goals are hopeless; futile and counterproductive.

I just thought it'd be the right time to point out that Australia still wins as far as the most people killed in one sitting by a loony with a gun.

Which is why the latest plans for a troop surge, ala Iraq, will not work IMHO.

I think the US is thinking much more long-term then we realize. The Middle East and Central Asia is going to be a very large battleground in the future because it is the vacuum between China, India, Russia, the EU, and US. China is already making strategic long term moves in Central Asia (old Soviet -stans) and parts of Pakistan. Holding Afghanistan and even Iraq would be very strategic move for the US and I am leaning more towards that as the reasons we are currently occupying these countries.

Your argument still holds though. But I am more and more curious on whether our long term goal is to completely pacify Afghanistan or just pacify them enough to be able to set up our bases there.

Nothing initiated by Obama or a Democrat will work, IYHO.

The Democratic Presidential record for the last two generations is pretty hard to argue with, Spexx. Martial victory just isn't in these guys, not since Kennedy, and actual military victory under a Democratic President hasn't happened since Truman's first term.

So if it's important to anybody to destroy undemocratic regimes, it's important to keep Democrats out of the Oval Office and install war winners there instead. Bush isn't getting a lot of credit, but he seems to have laid the proper groundwork, sufficient to The Continuing Crisis.

And your methods are... invisible. You cannot bring yourself to actually fight the people who are fighting you. Dead oppressors cannot oppress anything but the nose. I don't believe you should discount that.

Abu Ghraib is something nobody in the Muslim world seems to give two cents about. They do know something about getting tortured, you know... and they could see there was nary a bruise, let along a burn or scrape, on anyone in the pictures. Reaction, thus, has been very properly muted. You're more excited about it than they seem to be -- so who is more discombobulated by Abu Ghraib? Them -- or you?

Excuses and rationalizations by agitators, serving their inexplicit agendas, are another matter -- but a matter that is not only invisible on the ground, but doesn't even seem on the horizon.

I don't see that we'd even notice if our foes worked up any greater hatred for us than they already have. In any case, their hatred seems very generalized, as busy as they are blowing up those coreligionists who don't subscribe to their particular mindset, and who are getting killed for the unpardonable offense of being more sensible than the terrs. Longterm, terrorism always collapses, failing. It usually starts with a governmental sponsor, and part of the counterinsurgency campaign is to pry the sponsor away from the terrorists. This is one of those "root causes" that get so vaguely mentioned by people wishing to appear wise. Part of the job is to uproot that cause.

Zen, our troubles stem entirely from undemocratic social orders. Their circles of power are going to be anti-American regardless, viewing the democratic ruleset (such as America powerfully and successfully exemplifies) as a threat to their privileged positions. And it is that -- as far as that goes. What such autocrats and oligarchs miss is the mass prosperity the democratic/free-markets ruleset always engenders, and they miss perceiving a chance to ride this wave to success.

All this is quite independent of what their subject populations think, and aren't allowed to mention. This is a point that gives the world's Core States much to be optimistic about, especially in the long run. Some figure that the effective road to democratization is economic opportunity, development, freedom, and that this shall lead to more distribution of political power in accord with the broadening of economic power.

You're trying harder than the case merits to make me out some kind of sadistic simpleton. I am neither, so I will lecture you on goals, inasmuch as you're not formulating anything much and I am willing to at least try. You could at least try studying on counterinsurgencies. Australia was instrumental in conducting one in Indonesia, postwar.

The longterm goal we should pursue will be taking Afghanistan out of the Non-Integrating Gap states. This is a longterm goal indeed, as there are few countries less promising for this kind of development, in its extreme political disunity (not fully appreciated by the nation states trying to deal with it) and its extreme want of institutions of security -- they feud, and that is a fair litmus test. The place is less a nation than it is a reservation for assorted non-nationalized tribes. Initial progress is only going to be piecemeal. For actual signs of true success, look for enlarging and diversifying economies, first local, then regional, only finally national. When there are more ways to make real money than growing poppies for the opium trade, guess what.

whoa, battle of the tl;dr wingnut

I dunno, guise. He's got a low UID buuuuuut . . . I like the dopey fartsy granola side of the cellar bettar. I can't get that uptight.

Tuba, I suggest you avoid the politcs and current events fora until you've got your bearings a bit. Homebase and Nothingland are good fun. Mostly.

It's ok, I can handle it.

I just wanted to let you know I thought it was lame.

Yes, he did a wonderful job of laying the groundwork for continuing crisis.

My goodness!

I was so hungry for a solid basis for my Crisis Groundwork that I voted for Rove for Prezidink.

Man did we ever kick ass in Grenada!

Hey, no need to play the ace if the two will do it, Griff -- whattaya want already, the Apocalypse? I'm as happy with it as any antitotalitarian person of freedom should be. Shut the Cubans up nicely, as I recall, and that's just how I want them until Raúl dies or leaves office and takes the Bad Religion of Communism with him. He's too old, too set in his ways, and too Third World Despot to pull a Gorbachev/Yel'tsyn and yank the lid right off.

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!!

j/k, it just fitted so well.

Yeah some of these goats have been butting heads for so long there isn't much left to say outside neiner neiner neiner!

Actually, that was the last time the Republicans won a war. The previous being the time they took down the Republic for good or ill.

I dunno; I keep seeing Republican Presidents thinking at least somewhat Libertarian. Reagan, despite his measure of statism, does come to mind. The Donkey Party? Not even close. Tens of lightyears out.

Cuba is down there at the bottom of the list below abortion and faggots as far as things that actually affect my life so much I need to complain about it.

I have no idea how these distant and nebulous concepts inspire so many blowhards.