Ignorance is Bliss

[marharth]

As for this from marharth

"So you are saying if we did not invade Afghanistan and Iraq, Al Qaeda would have invaded the US?

 

They wouldn't of even been able to launch another attack, what are you talking about?"

 

No, that's not what I said, that is an bizarre assertion which I certainly did not make. It is YOU making that incredibly strange exaggeration.

If that is not what you meant you took my quote out of context when replying to it.

 

I was replying to "the whole point of having a war abroad is not to have it come to your own shore."

 

Which I found incorrect since Al Qeuda and Iraq are not a threat, and certainly won't ever invade us.

[grannywils]

Thank you for that video, Aurielius.

[BlackRampage]

Al Qeuda

Should be: Al Qaeda.

 

Which I found incorrect since Al Qeuda and Iraq are not a threat, and certainly won't ever invade us.

Terrorists don't invade, they disrupt, spread panic and, well, terrorize. Also, the lack of ability to invade the US doesn't mean Al Qaeda is suddenly no threat.

 

How is a terrorists group which is able to kill thousands US civilians in a single day not a threat?

How is a terrorists group which is responsible for killing thousands of US Soldiers in firefights and with IED's and whatnot not a threat?

How is a terrorists group which is able incite widespread fear in the local populace not a threat?

[marharth]

Terrorists don't invade, they disrupt, spread panic and, well, terrorize. Also, the lack of ability to invade the US doesn't mean Al Qaeda is suddenly no threat.

 

How is a terrorists group which is able to kill thousands US civilians in a single day not a threat?

How is a terrorists group which is responsible for killing thousands of US Soldiers in firefights and with IED's and whatnot not a threat?

How is a terrorists group which is able incite widespread fear in the local populace not a threat?

I can assure you if the media reacted differently there would have been no terror.

 

Killing around three thousand people in a single attack does not make you a constant threat forever. It was a single attack and something similar will probably never happen again. Even if they were a serious threat, you think its logical to kill even more citizens and soldiers by starting a huge war?

 

Al Qaeda is incompetent. That or they already succeed in their goal. After all they did completely screw the economy of the country and allow them to kill even more Americans.

 

Either way they clearly can not launch constant attacks.

 

Invading random middle eastern countries is not the way to deal with them in any case.

[roquefort]

@ginnyfizz

 

...aware as I am of the report that Al Qaeda were not specifically tied to the regime in Iraq, some of their associates were certainly operating there.

 

You have claimed (see posts passim) to be a lawyer, so you will understand the importance of evidence. Do you have evidence, or references, for that statement?

 

Saddam, nasty as he was, was basically a classic, old-style, northern-Arab quasi-Stalinist dictator, and would have been as antagonistic to Islamism as George Bush. The idea that he would have tolerated any nurturing of militant political Islamism within Iraq is risible. He spent most of the 1980s at war with Iran, and his later treatment of the Shia marsh arabs, with their cultural links with Iran, in the southern borders further emphasises this.

 

Actually (I add as an EDIT), why did the US so quickly dive in to defend Kuwait in Gulf War 1? That's the more interesting question.

Edited November 24, 2011 by roquefort

[ginnyfizz]

Wow do you just come on here with the sole purpose of trolling me?

 

Is the CRS Report To Congress good enough for you? I very specifically stated in that bit of my post that you quoted;-

 

(a) That Al Qaeda were not tied to the regime in Iraq

(b) That there were, nevertheless, affiliates of, or offshoots if you prefer, of Al Qaeda operating in Iraq

 

And I put it that way because I have read that report, which although refuting the idea that Saddam himself had any dealings with Al Qaeda, alludes to ;-

 

"Ansar al-Islam formed in 1998 as a breakaway faction of Islamist Kurds,

splitting off from a group, the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan (IMIK). Both

Ansar and the IMIK were initially composed almost exclusively of Kurds. U.S.

concerns about Ansar grew following the U.S. defeat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda

in Afghanistan in late 2001, when some Al Qaeda activists, mostly Arabs, fled to Iraq

and associated there with the Ansar movement. At the peak, about 600 Arab fighters

lived in the Ansar al-Islam enclave, near the town of Khurmal.18 Ansar fighters

clashed with Kurdish fighters from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of

the two mainstream Iraqi Kurdish parties, around Halabja in December 2002. Ansar

gunmen were allegedly responsible for an assassination attempt against PUK “prime

minister” of the Kurdish region Barham Salih (now a deputy Prime Minister of Iraq)

in April 2002."

 

It rather seems that Saddam did not have as much control over the whole of Iraq as you would like to think, nor did he ever quite manage to quell the warring factions, despite his brutality.

 

So you can stop tossing in terms like risible now.

[roquefort]

"Wow do you just come on here with the sole purpose of trolling me?"

 

No, but posts on this and other threads are read by lots of other people, so some attempt at clarification of often emotion-driven issues is worth pursuing, as I'm sure you would agree.

 

For example, we see, from your referenced quote, that Al-Q proxies were believed to be operating in Kurdish Iraq, an unstable, trans-border region that Saddam was struggling (often brutally) to control, and who were presumably hoping to take advantage of such instability. The no-fly zone probably didn't do Al-Q any harm, incidentally.

 

The fact remains that the USA's excuse for attacking Iraq in 2003 was that Saddam was, at least by implication, actively encouraging Al-Q; the words "nine-eleven" were thrown in at every opportunity by GWB in just about every speech in the run up to the attack.

[roquefort]

"The US involvement World War Two made sense considering the axis were a serious threat.."

 

Just to clarify, the US involvement in World War Two wasn't a matter of choice -- it was forced on them by the declaration of war upon the USA by Germany & Italy in 1941. But yes, it made sense.

[raatorotta]

Yea, i agree with that girl in the video. What are US troops doing in other countries? Trying to take care of whole planet? No wonder US economy is bad at the moment. Bombing civilians and torturing them doesn't give very good fame. Also stealing all oil in the middle east is so wrong. But after all, any nation trying to take over the world has been failed. So will USA.

[Beriallord]

I hate America's foreign policy. The idea that we need to keep the rest of the world in check by imposing our presence is just ridiculous. No other country in the world could even dream of ever conquering the USA militarily. And we don't need to impose our presence in the world to get that point across.

 

As Japanese General Isoroku Yamamoto once put, when asked about an invasion of the mainland of the US : You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass. Even the Nazis and their crazy ambitions wouldn't have considered such a feat.

 

There are certainly some countries out there with enough nukes to destroy us, but a conquering military force would never succeed.

 

Considering all that there is absolutely no need for such and aggressive and imperialistic foreign policy, if they claim the intention is National Security.

Edited November 25, 2011 by Beriallord