[Osx-nutters] President Bush Vows Attacks "Across the World"

[David Cake]

At 5:01 PM -0400 5/10/06, Chuck Bennett wrote:
>
>Actually, 'we' are not fucked..   We haven't been attacked in the US 
>since we went on the offensive.

	You weren't attacked much before.... its not really a very 
good sample space. And surely 'minimise number of Americans dying' is 
actually a more important metric of progress than 'measure the number 
of Americans dying in the continental US', even if you want to be 
that simplistic?

>   No matter the bleating that we are not safer, one must ask.  How so?



>We know they want to attack us and have made plans to do so.  we 
>also know that the attacks have be thwarted.   Perhaps, just 
>perhaps, they are a little too preoccupied elsewhere at the moment 
>to mount a full scale plot against us here.  If that is all we can 
>come up with at the moment, then that is head and shoulders above 
>doing nothing.

	Only if you are determinedly short sighted, and look only at 
the present.
	Armed warfare against terrorists that stops a handful of 
individuals but vastly aids their recruiting and their pool of 
experienced personnel makes people safer only in the short term. Its 
like sending doctors out with drugs to treat the symptoms, but 
without any means to disinfest so they carry the infection with them 
where ever they go.

>Matt's 'solution', if I understood it correctly, is to change 
>administrations. (leaving aside that impeaching Bush makes Cheney 
>President)


>The problem is that that is naive to a fault.   It's like 
>suggesting the way to deal with the barbarian hordes that have been 
>harrassing the city for 20 years is to change the Mayor hoping that 
>they will go away.
>
>I can't imagine how we would have fought (and won) WWII with this 
>kind of thinking.   Imagine.  Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and the US 
>responds by impeaching FDR thinking that Japan would just leave us 
>alone if we changed administrations.
>
>This problem isn't new.
>
>We've had problems with terrorists since before the Carter 
>administration.   The problem isn't with Republican or Democrat 
>administrations it's with the fundamental approach to dealing with 
>it.   Actually, it's PC run amok and an unwillingness to face the 
>reality about the nature of the enemy.
>
>Guy is right.  We call it a GGWOT but that is with a wink and a 
>nod..   Anyone that can think 'knows' who and what we are actually 
>fighting.
>
>One thing we do  know, fact certain,is  that the old way wasn't 
>working.   The attacks were get larger and more frequent long before 
>Bush took office.   The signs were all there, but everyone was 
>ignoring them.   Odds are that Bush wouldn't have done anything 
>differently either, if it wasn't for  9/11.   That changed 
>everything and is rocking the world view of the kumbaya crowd.  It's 
>a hangover from the 60's that just won't go away.
>
>Of course It's the way of all bureaucracies.  They react to the 
>'last' problem and they never deal with the future.  Real security 
>consists of spending vast amounts of money and lives so that 
>'nothing' happens.   That always looks like a waste before you are 
>actually in a fight and seems obvious in hindsight.
>
>They think  "If we would just leave them alone, they would stay put 
>in their little Arab world and everyone else could all sing kumbaya 
>and share a coke"
>
>News Flash..  The Pope was right by quoting that rheir 'God' 
>commands them to spread the word, by the sword if necessary.

	So does the Christian one, certainly the Biblical literalist 
Baptist version of it so popular in the US. I don't suggest bombing 
North Carolina, though I have no doubt that if the US was occupied by 
a foreign government opposed to their religion, plenty of good old 
boys would be fomenting terrorist acts on the occupying power.

	Terrorism (Islamist of otherwise) has been a problem for decades now.
	What has been shown to work is
- pour security service efforts into getting real, useful 
intelligence. Information collected by torture isn't it. trust the 
security services to do their job, which can mean building networks 
carefully and building up skilled specialists, especially human 
intelligence resources.
- strengthen links to the moderates
- apply political pressure to the moderates, and allow them to oppose 
the extremists.
- be willing to offer significant concessions for peaceful settlement.
	This is, for example, more or less how the UK gradually 
stabilised Northern Ireland.

Instead, the current procedure is
- pour security efforts into signals intelligence, and brute force 
thuggery. Distrust your intelligence agencies, overrule their 
opinions, occasionally ruin the careers of the ones that won't go 
along with your lies. Put vast resources into poorly focussed signals 
intelligence, but alienate the people who would make your best human 
intelligence recruits. Demand results quickly, and based on 
unrealistic timetables based on party political considerations.
- do everything you can to weaken the political power of the 
moderates, ensuring extremists of one stripe or another hold 
political power.
- back the opposing extremists, publicly, just to make sure the 
moderates are thoroughly alienated and weakened. Apply your own model 
of a solution that clearly fits your strategic aims, so you have 
nothing to offer the moderates anyway.
- make it clear no concessions are on offer, so there is little point 
in negotiating anyway.


>Ask the French how that whole 'leaving them alone' thing  is 
>working.   What they are doing with all those burned cars BTW?.  Ask 
>the Brits about the subways and the Spaniards about their trains..
>the Danes about burned embassies.  (over a fucking cartoon!  I mean, 
>How can you deal with people that riot over cartoons or mistake 
>Buddy Jesus for an Imam and then riot about it?  I don't know 
>either, but leaving them alone is NOT going to work.)



>Long before BuchMcHitler was attacking all over the place we were 
>pretty much leaving the terrorists alone.

	Well, in the 80s we were arming and training them. And 
figuring as long as the terrorists disliked our enemies more than 
they disliked us, this was wise.


>    The occasional cruise missile perhaps, but nothing consistant. 
>Before that he entire west was busy mucking about in the Middle East 
>mostly fighting a proxy was with the USSR.    We created and 
>supported little monsters, but they were 'our' monsters so we 
>ignored what they were preaching in their own country as long as 
>they weren't Communist.   This crossed Democrat and Republican 
>administrations.  It crossed countries.

	Exactly. The problem is far bigger than a few terrorist 
groups, and will be far harder to fix. And fundamentally, its a big 
area wide political screwup that will only be fixed with region wide 
(probably global, at this point) political pressure. Military force 
is a tool, but its not the solution. Military force can help with a 
political solution by stamping on the problem where states break down 
or go rogue, but military force is not a substitute for political 
resolution.

>What shut Mu'ammar down?    Mostly he got very quiet after Reagan 
>just about nailed him in 1986.
>
>Why did that mean old Reagan take a pot shot on a sovereign nation?
>
>Becuase of a fucking TERRORIST attack on a nightclub in Berlin that 
>was controlled by and funded by Libya
>
>So even back then, leaving them alone didn't work.

	Actually, I have no problem with well targeted use of military force.
	But just imagine if, in response to Libya funding an attack 
on a Berlin nightclub, Reagan had decided to invade Syria (or Iraq, 
for that matter). Bush invaded a nation that had no direct connection 
on a pretext, everyone knows it. Comparing Reagan and GWBs responses 
is facile.

	The problem with Chucks 'we have to fight Islam because they 
want to fight us' rant is simple. Islamist extremism isn't Islam. Any 
characterisation of Islam that treats them the same (and that seems 
to be the substance of Chucks rant) worsens the problem. As most of 
the West have been doing for a couple of decades now.

At 5:01 PM -0400 5/10/06, Chuck Bennett wrote:
>Actually there are other ideas that make some sense, at least for Iraq.
>
>Here is one 
><http://michaelyon-online.com/wp/how-to-winlose-the-war-in-iraq.htm>
>
>Daly makes good points about why our Army isn't set up to deal with 
>a Counterinsurgency very well, and what to do about it.

	He has some very good ideas. When Australia sends 
international peacekeepers in to trouble spots, its usually at least 
as many police forces as troops. I would add that Daly, in typical US 
style, ignores the most obvious solution to the question of which 
agency, etc should be in charge. A UN force, with significant 
representation from nations that are either Arabic or Islamic, or 
have forces that are used to working with Arab or Islamic nations, 
would be the obvious starting position. It would mean giving up US 
control over the Iraq government, and is thus politically untenable 
to the current US administration (and, of course, the black 
helicopter brigade), but that doesn't mean its not a good idea.
	Cheers
		Dave