Understanding terrorism

[Undertoad]

One of tw's central points is that much Islamic terror is no longer from al-Qaeda but something the administration calls al-Qaeda. Huh:

Saudis warned UK weeks ahead of bombings

Saudi Arabia officially warned Britain of an imminent terrorist attack on London just weeks ahead of the 7 July bombings after calls from one of al-Qaeda's most wanted operatives were traced to an active cell in the United Kingdom.

Senior Saudi security sources have confirmed they are investigating whether calls from Kareem al-Majati, last year named as one of al-Qaeda's chiefs in the Gulf kingdom, were made directly to the British ringleader of the 7 July bomb plotters.

One senior Saudi security official told The Observer that calls to Britain intercepted from a mobile phone belonging to Majati earlier this year revealed that an active terror group was at work in the UK and planning an attack.

He also said that calls from Majati's lieutenant and al-Qaeda's logistics expert, Younes al-Hayari, who was killed in a separate shoot-out just four days before the 7 July bombings, have also been traced to Britain.

The Saudi official said: 'It was clear to us that there was a terror group planning an attack in the UK. We passed all this information on to both MI5 and MI6 at the time. We are now investigating whether these calls were directly to the London bombers. It is our conclusion that either these were linked or that a completely different terror network is still at large in Britain.'

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

One of tw's central points is that much Islamic terror is no longer from al-Qaeda but something the administration calls al-Qaeda.

These articles and accusations have continued every week since 7 July. Your assumption is that those phone called were to Al Qaeda operatives in Saudia Arabia - not to some Al Qadea 'look alikes' better called Muslim Brotherhood. Show me the trail to bin Laden?

You are assuming that every terrorist must be Al Qaeda. That is the administration propaganda. Time after time, the many terrorist attacks over the past few years have no connection to Bin Laden. Even Zarqawi's relationship to bin Laden is best called fictional; only exists in the principles of Muslim Brotherhood.

Part of the problem with this big centralized Islamic conspiracy under the headline of Al Qaeda: Al Qaeda does not even exist according to Musharraf of Pakistan. It has long since disbanded as effective terrrorist and guerilla insurgents routinely do.

For Al Qaeda to exist according to administration and Rush Limbaugh propaganda, then Al Qaeda also attacked the World Trade Center in 1993. But then these are the same people who blamed Saddam for 11 September. There is this wee little thing called credibility.

Post back when you have credibile facts - not just another accusation from one source that claims it was Al Qaeda. A phone call was made to Saudia Arabia. Therefore it must be Al Qaeda!!!!!

"Bank was just robbed in the next town. I read a report that says it was Al Qaeda. Oh god. Dear me. They're coming to get me." Call me when real facts exist. Posted here is just another in a long list of claims all citing Al Qaeda - from unnamed government sources... Karl Rove.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

The more rumors I hear about the PNAC -- got it bookmarked somewhere -- the more I think I'd approve of it in almost every particular. Seems to be about making everyone free, freer, and richer.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

TW, you have written at length, to an unexpected end: neither you nor I know what the hell you're talking about.

Refugees do not flee nice places. How many run away from the United States?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by tw

What happened once those fears were unfounded?

What unfounded? Do you not know that Laos and Cambodia were conquered by communists? There's a pattern to your representations here...

Nationalist Vietnamese wrote a Declaration of Independence only so that the US would come to their aid? A document as fundamental to them as the US Declaration of Independence is to Americans was instead written only as a cheap and dirty ploy . . . ?

Something you're not discussing, and I am, is the question of are they following the libertarian impulse behind such Declaration? They aren't, AFAIK, doing that even nowadays. Had they done something other than the usual communist oppression, purges, and poverty, they wouldn't have had refugee one. I'll take the evidence of a quarter million fleeing, preferring pirates, robbers, and dying of thirst at sea on rafts, to ordinary daily life under communism, over all of your pravda, TW.

Ho Chi Minh asked to become a protectorate of the US because ... well even the US government says why he made those requests.

And this is known; I addressed that in my previous post. It is known that he was disappointed in this, and that he turned instead to Red China and the Soviet Union, both of whom were hardly unwilling to spread Communism, and with a religious fervor about it, to yet another region undeserving of such monstrousness. Did Ho set up anything but yet another Communist prison state? I'm unaware of Ho's state doing anything Mao would have taken exception to. You have to understand totalitarian systems are evil, impoverishing, and wasteful of life before you can understand anything of history, TW, especially the history of the twentieth century. For an instance -- and such an instance! -- non-democracies perpetrated every single genocide in the twentieth century. Such understanding is less than evident in what you post.

The domino theory was a lie predicated on a now universally discredited theory that Vietnam was part of a global communist agenda. A global communist conspiracy necessary to justify a widely discredited Domino Theory did not exist. What you describe as targets of that Domino Theory was nothing more that civil war - leading to far more corrupt government in Cambodia. Thailand instead remained true to their people and therefore suffered no coup. How can that be if the Domino Theory was valid?

Who needs a global conspiracy when a regional campaign of expansionism will do? Who needs a conspiracy when you consider that at its base communism was a sort of religion? What did the communists do besides go on jihad? What did they succeed in doing besides kill folks by the many tens of millions over seventy years and make folks poor? What you present as argument is not so much history as collectivist-totalitarian pravda, which you've swallowed hook, line, and sinker. How does it feel to be in a fellational relationship with the shades of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao? I'm sure I'll never find out for myself.

Where do you fall in the political quiz over in Politics? I'd like to see your numbers.

Cambodia had communists in its hills, for years upon years. You want corruption? Look at the wonders the Khmer Rouge performed upon the Cambodian population. Corruption? -- better say Cambodia was run by crazy people. Whatever one can say about Norodom Sihanouk, he wasn't an ignorant maniac like Pol Pot. The domino fell.

A polite war? Where do you come up with these myths? America used every asset of our conventional war machine in that war. Armed forces in Europe, S Korea, etc were sometimes stripped down to almost decommisioning to fight a *polite* war. We even considered using nuclear weapons. We lost almost 10% of our B-52 force. When did that become a *polite* war?

Okay, here I'll cut you some slack because you've never thought of it this way, and are completely at sea.

Look at the limitations we clamped on our strategy: we stopped at borders, rather than go harrying the enemy wherever he might flee. Polite. We made a point of not bombing war matériel north of the Chinese border, rather than doing everything to break their power to battle us. Polite. It became even more absurd: rather than destroy the sinews of war everywhere in or near North Vietnam, we publicly restricted ourselves to only bombing targets in certain patches of North Vietnam. Beyond polite; this was born to lose, and the idea didn't come out of the people doing the fighting. This totally allowed the North Vietnamese to install missile sites to shoot at our guys -- unmolested in the least. We were so concerned about bothering a pack of totalitarians committed to an inhuman system that we forgot to win the war.

Even Johnson, in recently released tapes as president, admits the American war in Vietnam was not winnable.

Having lived through the 1960s, I don't recall that Richard Nixon thought of it in quite this way. He seems instead to have possessed the Republican capacity for resolve in war. Even with all our too-polite strategy, the communists remained stalemated until we left in 1973.

Even Johnson says UG has misrepresented the facts. Blame does not fall on the armed forces. Blame belongs on top management who both literally and intentionally lied to create a Vietnam War. Deja Vue. We do it again to American troops in Iraq. Even worse, Urbane Guerrilla endorses the trashing of American troops and American principles. He even puts up 'straw men arguments' about blaming the armed forces. The military was but another victim of lying Generals and civilian leaders. But again, Urbane Guerrilla conveniently declares the military was blamed.

This paragraph constitutes a most astounding misreading of this one:

"The blame does not fall on the armed forces. It falls on trying to fight a polite war, which was done in the nation's capital -- an error which today's Administration, having experience of Vietnam, is determined not to repeat. Neither the Kennedy nor the Johnson Administrations knew how to win Vietnam, and in the losing of Vietnam, the domino theory was vindicated also: South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and additionally Burma fell into darkness. That not all the available dominoes fell is just our, and their, good fortune, not a disproof of the concept."

The Vietnam Declaration of Independence was a ploy to get American support against the French?

What, this again? Was Ho Chi Minh NOT seeking outside aid? Was this NOT directed against the French? Ho was already done with the Japanese. I've never said it was a ploy and I'm not going to. Please cease to misrepresent the matter.

UG - who do you think was paying the French - according to US government documents?

Are you saying that immediately postwar we somehow shouldn't have been helping a very battered wartime ally? And is there any particular relevance in this, or indeed anything astonishing?

Meanwhile here we are again making the military another victim of a lying president and his "Mission Accomplished" war. When I say those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, well, we have Urbane Guerrilla as a perfect example.

What you've posted here is remarkably congruent with the kind of pravda that communists and their fellow travelers would say. TW, you do not have anything to teach me.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

And this is known; I addressed that in my previous post. It is known that [Ho Chi Minh] he was disappointed in this, and that he turned instead to Red China and the Soviet Union, both of whom were hardly unwilling to spread Communism, and with a religious fervor about it, to yet another region undeserving of such monstrousness.

Well again Urbane Guerrilla demonstrates fictional knowledge of history. Ho Chi Minh asked to become a protectorate of the US because Ho Chi Minh feared ..... Red China. Well documented in US government analysis but not found in "The World According to Urbane Guerrilla". Same documents that the US government feared Americans would read.

Those documents were widely published and read by Americans who learn from history rather than rewrite history. Urbane Guerrilla would even claim that Saddam was participatory in attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. He is again doing as the George Jr administration would do; rewrite history when convenient. Maybe Urbane Guerrilla will also declare "Mission Accomplished"?

Interesting how history will be rewritten to justify the invasion of Iran. Let's consult an expert. Urbane Guerrilla: what is the historical justification for an invasion of Iran? Legal precedent found in a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? Or is being defined as an axis of evil is sufficient? Maybe their election was rigged. Would that justify an invasion to rescue democracy in Iran? Maybe we could arrange a Gulf of Tonkin in the Persian Gulf? So many good myths from Vietnam could justify the invasion of Iran.

Ho Chi Minh asked to become a protectorate of the US in five letters to Truman because he feared Red China. Urbane Guerrilla tells us that Ho Chi Minh went to Red China for help. From what? Red China?

[Trilby]

Hypergraphia. It's not just for tw anymore.

[mrnoodle]

but this is a good thing. there is now a countervailing wind, and we can be buffetted by gusts from both sides.

I'm sure they're reading each other's posts, but I wonder if anyone else is.

No offense to either of you. You're just really....voluminous. My old newspaper editor would be having fits.

[Mr.Anon.E.Mouse]

I can't say I understand terrorism any more than I did before.

[lookout123]

well, as long as you understand that enlisted people are stupid, then all is well.

[Mr.Anon.E.Mouse]

Originally Posted by lookout123

well, as long as you understand that enlisted people are stupid, then all is well.

HAHAHAHAHA!

Originally Posted by lookout123

well, as long as you understand that enlisted people are stupid, then all is well.

Well, just hold this thought, ya dumb NCO!

BTW, how did 2nd LTs survive in Vietnam? They first turned to their Sgt and ask, "How do we do this". The sign of an intelligent officer.

[richlevy]

I'm trying to figure out what a right-wing military junta in Burma has to do with communists.

They do have an agreement with China, but that might have more to do with our relationship with China than losing Vietnam.

Originally Posted by richlevy

I'm trying to figure out what a right-wing military junta in Burma has to do with communists.

They do have an agreement with China, but that might have more to do with our relationship with China than losing Vietnam.

Well, my Dad fought in Burma during WWII. Probably he bungled something since he wasn't an officer and that explains it all!

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by richlevy

I'm trying to figure out what a right-wing military junta in Burma has to do with communists.

I don't draw any particular link between them either. They are as isolationist as Radar and over twice as cranky. Combine this with totalitarianism and the army and police, and you've got Burma/Myanmar as one fucked-up sweet-potato patch.

As they put it in The Green Mile, "That's a bad combination."

Noxiousness need not have a global conspiracy to be noxious.