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Originally Posted by Undertoad
Hey alph, I agree completely; mistakes were made. But in the long run it's the actual results that matter, which I like to evaluate regardless of what they said. Throw the politics out of it and play what-if with history. How would you have addressed the Middle East in late 2002?
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I believe we covered this in an earlier thread, which I will make no attempt to find because I am lazy. Basically what I said is that a War on Terror will fail because it addresses the issue in the opposite way that it needs to be addressed. You will not destroy terror. It is not an enemy, it is a tactic. Terrorism will happen as long as there are people with enough hate in their heart to commit these acts, and blowing up every hateful person will not remove the hate (and, in many cases, it will unavoidably result in suicide). What we need to do is remove the sources of this hatred. Use our muscle in Israel to force them to an accord with the Palestinians (I refuse to believe that a war in which you annex land can be considered "defensive"). Start treating the middle east as people living on top of an oilfield instead of an oilfield infested with people. As far as al Quaeda goes, they have already committed an offense. I have no problem whatsoever sending every single one of them to their virgins. However, war cannot be the only focus, and the use of force, by nature, must be reactionary. Of course we can't sit idly by and wait for the next attack, we must be proactive. But we must be proactive in spreading peace and eliminating hatred and destruction, or the cycle of murder will continue as it has in Israel, as it has in Ireland, as it has anywhere that neither side in a fight has had the sense, strength and restraint to actually stop the killing.
I was struck by something I learned around November of 2001 (the date could be wrong, but that is insignificant). Every single one of the 9/11 hijackers, and the vast majority of Islamic terrorists worldwide, have had a family member or close friend killed by an American or an Israeli (with an American-bought weapon). They let their hatred grab hold of them and take over their whole lives. They are driven only by the need to get vengeance upon the aggressor who wronged them. So they attack us. Then we are overcome by fear, anger and the need for vengeance, so we attack them. The inevitable civilian casualties of a massive war include peoples' mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. The hatred, the need for vengeance, is inspired again in another generation of Islamic extremists, so they attack us. And it continues,
ad infinitum. Laid out like this, it is obvious that the only way for the violence to stop is if one of the sides breaks out of the cycle. As America cannot control what the rest of the world does (as much as we try...), the only way to stop the cycle of violence is for America to be the proactive one, the peacemaker. We were all hurt by 9/11, and feelings of anger and vengefulness are perfectly justified. However, if we don't rise of above them, the violence will never stop.
Edit: As I think more about this, I think you and I fundamentally disagree on one thing, Toad. You say mistakes were made. I say mistakes are being made.