Brian
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Post by Brian on May 8, 2011 17:53:05 GMT -5
Killing Evil Doesn’t Make Us EvilBy MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON I don’t want closure. There is no closure after tragedy. I want memory, and justice, and revenge. When you’re dealing with a mass murderer who bragged about incinerating thousands of Americans and planned to kill countless more, that seems like the only civilized and morally sound response. We briefly celebrated one of the few clear-cut military victories we’ve had in a long time, a win that made us feel like Americans again — smart and strong and capable of finding our enemies and striking back at them without getting trapped in multitrillion-dollar Groundhog Day occupations. But within days, Naval Seal-gazing shifted to navel-gazing. There was the bad comedy of solipsistic Republicans with wounded egos trying to make it about how right they were and whinging that George W. Bush was due more credit. Their attempt to renew the debate about torture is itself torture. W. preferred to sulk in his Dallas tent rather than join President Obama at ground zero in a duet that would have certainly united the country. Whereas the intelligence work that led to the destruction of Bin Laden was begun in the Bush administration, the cache of schemes taken from Osama’s Pakistan house debunked the fanciful narrative that the Bush crew pushed: that Osama was stuck in a cave unable to communicate, increasingly irrelevant and a mere symbol, rather than operational. Osama, in fact, was at the helm, spending his days whipping up bloody schemes to kill more Americans. In another inane debate last week, many voices suggested that decapitating the head of a deadly terrorist network was some sort of injustice. Taking offense after Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said he was “much relieved” at the news of Bin Laden’s death, Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, posted the Twitter message: “Ban Ki-moon wrong on Osama bin Laden: It’s not justice for him to be killed even if justified; no trial, conviction.” I leave it to subtler minds to parse the distinction between what is just and what is justified. When Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said she was “glad” Bin Laden had been killed, a colleague called such talk “medieval.” Christophe Barbier, editor of the centrist French weekly L’Express, warned: “To cry one’s joy in the streets of our cities is to ape the turbaned barbarians who danced the night of Sept. 11.” Those who celebrated on Sept. 11 were applauding the slaughter of American innocents. When college kids spontaneously streamed out Sunday night to the White House, ground zero and elsewhere, they were the opposite of bloodthirsty: they were happy that one of the most certifiably evil figures of our time was no more. The confused image of Bin Laden as a victim was exacerbated by John Brennan, the Obama national security aide who intemperately presented an inaccurate portrait of what had happened on the third floor in Abbottabad. Unlike the president and the Navy Seals, who performed with steely finesse, Brennan was overwrought, exaggerating the narrative to demonize the demon. The White House had to backtrack from Brennan’s contentions that Osama was “hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield” and that he died after resisting in a firefight. It may be that some administration officials have taken Dick Cheney’s belittling so much to heart that they are still reluctant to display effortless macho. Liberal guilt may have its uses, but it should not be wasted on this kill-mission. The really insane assumption behind some of the second-guessing is that killing Osama somehow makes us like Osama, as if all killing is the same. Only fools or knaves would argue that we could fight Al Qaeda’s violence non-violently. President Obama was prepared to take a life not only to avenge American lives already taken but to deter the same killer from taking any more. Aside from Bin Laden’s plotting, his survival and his legend were inspirations for more murder. If stealth bombers had dropped dozens of 2,000-pound bombs and wiped out everyone, no one would have been debating whether Osama was armed. The president chose the riskiest option presented to him, but one that spared nearly all the women and children at the compound, and anyone in the vicinity. Unlike Osama, the Navy Seals took great care not to harm civilians — they shot Bin Laden’s youngest wife in the leg and carried two young girls out of harm’s way before killing Osama. Morally and operationally, this was counterterrorism at its finest. We have nothing to apologize for. www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/opinion/08dowd.html
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oskar
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Post by oskar on May 8, 2011 19:37:35 GMT -5
Murder is murder no matter how it's rationalized. It may seem to be necessary but save the phony moralising. It's becoming rather sickening.
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on May 8, 2011 22:10:00 GMT -5
We have nothing to apologize for.
Au contraire. You should apologise for having become so far out of touch with basic principles of justice that you do not see what there is to apologise for in invading another country and executing an unarmed old man point-blank instead of bringing him back for trial.
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Post by MacBeth on May 9, 2011 6:28:22 GMT -5
Dowd has not gotten anything right in the past decade. Why break a perfect streak now?
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Brian
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Post by Brian on May 10, 2011 17:53:02 GMT -5
We have nothing to apologize for. Au contraire. You should apologise for having become so far out of touch with basic principles of justice that you do not see what there is to apologise for in invading another country and executing an unarmed old man point-blank instead of bringing him back for trial. "Invading another country"? Come on.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on May 10, 2011 17:53:40 GMT -5
Murder is murder no matter how it's rationalized. It may seem to be necessary but save the phony moralising. It's becoming rather sickening. What would you have done about Bin Laden, Oskar?
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on May 10, 2011 21:24:37 GMT -5
We have nothing to apologize for. "Invading another country"? Come on. So what do you call it when you send your military into another sovereign country's territory without notifying them, and carrying out a combat operation where their citizens may be at risk? If it had been done to somebody in the USA by a foreign power, would you be so sanguine? In fact, isn't that exactly why you went to war with al Qaeda?
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Post by MacBeth on May 11, 2011 6:10:40 GMT -5
Brian, while there are all sorts of justifications (and I am not commenting on those here at this time), we did go into another nation, set up a covert operation and killed a specific person.
If this had happened in St. Louis and the target was the leader of some political party or church or major company, what would be the US reaction? Sovereignty would be the word of the year
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Pax
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quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on May 11, 2011 16:32:50 GMT -5
I remember when Israel bombed Syria about four years ago and Syria didn't say anything about it at all.
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Pax
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quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on May 11, 2011 16:34:44 GMT -5
I remember when Israel bombed Syria about four years ago and Syria didn't say anything about it at all.
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on May 11, 2011 21:57:08 GMT -5
I remember when Israel bombed Syria about four years ago and Syria didn't say anything about it at all. Maybe not, but do you believe we'd see the same reaction from the USA if they were attacked in this fashion. As I asked Brian, isn't this exactly what al Qaeda did - send in a combat force to kill people on American soil?
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oskar
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Post by oskar on May 12, 2011 0:03:31 GMT -5
Murder is murder no matter how it's rationalized. It may seem to be necessary but save the phony moralising. It's becoming rather sickening. What would you have done about Bin Laden, Oskar? How many times do I have to go over it? Think 100 would be enough?
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Pax
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quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on May 12, 2011 9:45:04 GMT -5
With my comment about Syria, this is what I was getting at. The prevailing topic here seems to be about a foreign country coming in and killing somebody within our borders. To answer the particular question about how the US would react, yes, we'd go apeshit over it.
That said, when a country really is doing something they shouldn't be doing, and get punched in the face for it, they really don't have a lot to say. Kind of like the drug dealer who gets robbed -- he can't very well go to the police and lodge a complaint. In the case of Syria, the most likely thing was that they had a nuclear reactor that they were going to use to weaponize uranium -- doesn't matter really what it was, though. The relevant thing is that Israel essentially committed an act of war by sending warplanes to bomb a site in Syria, and not only did Syria not respond in kind, they didn't say a word about it. Drug dealer who got robbed.
In the case of Pakistan, something like 25% of their armed forces are sympathetic to islamist extremists. As well, in prior attempts to cooperate with them, there was reason to believe that targets were tipped off as a result. Not to mention the rather odd fact that Osama bin Laden had apparently been living for six years within walking distance of a Pakistani major military base. That begs credibility. Never mind killing him, even if we'd asked the Pakistanis to capture him for us, there was a not insignificant chance that the response would have been, "Oh... we checked and he wasn't there," and that would mean that we had probably lost the ONLY opportunity we would EVER get to kill -- or capture -- him again.
All other things being equal, I think that the US would have been happy to have Pakistan take care of it for us, or at least cooperate much more tightly on this one with them, but given past history and the fact of bin Laden's location near their base, etc., etc., we couldn't trust them. We tried to do that with locals in Tora Bora, allowing Afghan collaborators a major role in the operation part of whose mission was to capture him. It can't be ruled out that he was allowed to escape by those people who were "with" us.
We had reason not to trust the Pakistanis, and even if we could trust the government, which we really can't, we definitely can't trust their military. And if we missed bin Laden this time, chances were good that we would never get the chance to kill or capture him again. That was simply unacceptable.
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on May 12, 2011 15:56:06 GMT -5
Depends on your definition of "unacceptable", and who's defining it.
You use the term "kill or capture". We all know that "capture" wasn't part of the mission. This was a 24-man hit squad sent in to kill a frail old man and wound his unarmed family members. Yeah, real heroic.
Syria's response to an incursion by Israel is bewilderingly irrelevant. I honestly don't know why you're bringing it up. Are you trying to say tht, because Syria didn't make a big deal out of it, that somehow legitimises what the USA did?
Bear in mind that Pakistan is your ally in the War on Terror. An ally of your choosing. If you can't even trust your allies, you are in a sad state.
Like I said to you elsewhere, all this rationalisation can't get around a basic fact. There are no "special cases"; Osama was entitled to due process, and you gave it to him out of the point of a gun. That makes you evil.
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Pax
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quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on May 12, 2011 16:34:42 GMT -5
I deliberately used "kill or capture" because for this particular topic the difference is irrelevant: Going into Pakistan without their knowledge or cooperation, and killing OR capturing him, from a violation of sovereignty standpoint, is just as bad either way.
What IS relevant to this topic is whether the US had reason to go after bin Laden without Pakistan's cooperation, and whether not doing anything at all was an option. Given the answers to those questions, the US had to go into Pakistan, and they had to do it without Pakistan's cooperation. Leaving bin Laden in place was not acceptable. Allowing Pakistan to allow him to escape was not acceptable; given various reasons, the risk that that is actually what would have happened was more than high enough to not be acceptable.
Actually, Israel's incursion into Syria is not "bewilderingly irrelevant," and I already explained why. I'm not saying that one justifies the other... you just seemed to be saying that cross-border attacks are NEVER justifiable, and I was just trying to use Syria/Israel to illustrate a point regarding times when border incursions are justified. An exception to the rule.
Trust of allies... Allies can only be trusted to the extent that their national interests align with your own... given that, some allies we can trust more than others. It's not that complicated. Personally I don't trust all my friends equally with everything that I am. Do you? Certainly it's no different between nations.
I'm not rationalizing. Rationalization is to pick something you wanted to do and then come up with reasons for why it's the right thing to do. Justification is to consider all the alternatives dispassionately and arrive at a conclusion. I've already gone into nauseating detail of how I considered each option, and how I justified the outcome... I didn't only consider one option that happened to be the one I wanted anyway.
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on May 12, 2011 21:25:18 GMT -5
Given the answers to those questions, the US had to go into Pakistan, and they had to do it without Pakistan's cooperation
That shows a singular lack of imagination on the part of US leaders.
You can't tell me that Obama could not place a secure P2P call to the Pakistani Prime Minster and say "we are about to do this". Only the PM would know about it, the notice could have been short enough that, even if it did get out, it would make no difference, and any leaks could be traced to a single responsible person. It would have enabled everybody to say "Yes, Pakistan was advised".
You do need to consider your allies. This lack of this simple courtesy call created a domestic political problem for your alleged ally. Furthermore, the Pakistani airforce scrambled jets because the incursion could not be identified. Had they been quicker, the SEALs might have come under fire. Your arrogance put them at risk.
There are right and wrong ways of doing things, even when you are after a mass-murderer. The USA needs to learn to stop throwing its weight around like a bully, because one day you are going to find there is somebody who is bigger and more cashed-up than you who decides to hit back.
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Post by cattleman on May 13, 2011 6:52:22 GMT -5
And, what would the US have done if their helicopters were shot down by Pakistani jets?
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on May 13, 2011 7:53:49 GMT -5
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oskar
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Post by oskar on May 13, 2011 8:41:03 GMT -5
Can't blame the US for the actions of other crazies. There are enough US crazies going around murdering people all over the world... Barack Obama being the most prominent among them.
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on May 13, 2011 18:08:51 GMT -5
Can't blame the US for the actions of other crazies. There are enough US crazies going around murdering people all over the world... Barack Obama being the most prominent among them. I think it's possible to assign blame here. Retaliation was an utter certainty, after all, and would have been considered in planning. The clear inference is that, because the price would be paid in Pakistani blood, it needn't be a factor in determining how to go about the mission. The USA did not have to provoke this by killing the man and dumping him into the sea. Capturing him and taking him back to the USA would have elicited a different form of retaliation, and probably in a different place. Instead, the USA decided to let innocents pay the price for their vengeance. We must always remember that non-US lives count less - they are merely collateral, not human.
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oskar
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Post by oskar on May 13, 2011 20:19:06 GMT -5
There's the trouble with that so-called "war on terrorism" - the US has joined the terrorists - and now both use the same tactics.. It becomes and never-ending cycle and the US is ever eager to prove how macho they are..
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Pax
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quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on May 14, 2011 7:06:14 GMT -5
"You can't tell me that Obama could not place a secure P2P call to the Pakistani Prime Minster"
That assumes we could trust the Pakistani Prime Minister. Right?
Anyway, we know what our positions are. Thanks for the convo.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on May 16, 2011 17:33:49 GMT -5
We have nothing to apologize for. "Invading another country"? Come on. So what do you call it when you send your military into another sovereign country's territory without notifying them, and carrying out a combat operation where their citizens may be at risk? If it had been done to somebody in the USA by a foreign power, would you be so sanguine? In fact, isn't that exactly why you went to war with al Qaeda? To me, an invasion implies seizing and occupying terrritory. I think in this case that your term is overly dramatic. And there is no comparison between our action against Bin Laden and the 9/11 terrorist strike in New York City. The two events are not even close.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on May 16, 2011 17:48:30 GMT -5
Brian, while there are all sorts of justifications (and I am not commenting on those here at this time), we did go into another nation, set up a covert operation and killed a specific person. If this had happened in St. Louis and the target was the leader of some political party or church or major company, what would be the US reaction? Sovereignty would be the word of the year As I've said for years, Beth, in a war with an enemy we have to go where the enemy is. Period. That may not be the easiest or "friendliest" thing to say, but it's the reality. And Obama--to his credit--GETS IT. As you'll recall, in 2002 and 2003 I was calling for Bush to send a large American ground force into western Pakistan to attack the Al Qaeda and Taliban forces who had fled into Pakistan from Afghanistan. I still believe that would have been the right thing to do--rather than fight the "wrong" war in Iraq. After all, Pakistan has allowed the folks who attacked us on 9/11 (and the regime who housed them) to have a "sanctuary" in Pakistan for years. So in terms of Pakistan's "sovereignty" for the 38 minutes we were there nailing Bin Laden, I could care less.
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oskar
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Post by oskar on May 16, 2011 19:14:56 GMT -5
Must be a kernel of truth to the old adage, "If you can't lick 'em, join 'em". Welcome the the "Terrorist Nations Club", Brian.
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on May 16, 2011 20:16:14 GMT -5
And there is no comparison between our action against Bin Laden and the 9/11 terrorist strike in New York City.Let's see.... - A covert group of assailants goes into another country with intent to kill
- A state of war does not exist between these two groups, nor has it been legally declared
- These assassins are convinced that the righteousness of their cause outweighs the niceties of the law
- They succeed in killing their target
- Their supporters rejoice.
No comparison at all, really.
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oskar
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Post by oskar on May 16, 2011 20:34:53 GMT -5
And there is no comparison between our action against Bin Laden and the 9/11 terrorist strike in New York City.Let's see.... - A covert group of assailants goes into another country with intent to kill
- A state of war does not exist between these two groups, nor has it been legally declared
- These assassins are convinced that the righteousness of their cause outweighs the niceties of the law
- They succeed in killing their target
- Their supporters rejoice.
No comparison at all, really. Two peas in a pod, actually.
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Pax
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quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on May 17, 2011 0:33:30 GMT -5
Cool, you guys demonstrated that there are some aspects in which the two situations can be compared after all. Taking only those aspects into account, yes, the two situations were exactly the same. You're right. I have to grant you that.
There are other ways in which they were still different of course. For example, in one case, there was the taking of the lives of thousands of people whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the other case, there was the specific going after of the one guy who proudly confessed to that crime on numerous occasions. In one case, it was the place that mattered, not who; in the other case, it was the who that mattered, and not the place. A lot of people would consider that an important difference, but I won't quibble with you over that at this time.
Anyway I don't think that Brian would argue with you that there were some aspects in which the two situations were equivalent. I can even help you out a bit and add that both actions were carried out by roughly the same number of men, who were probably of similar height, and similar age, all more or less clean-shaven, and I imagine most of them brunette -- but I do think that his meaning was more the "thousands of innocent people" versus "the one guy who did it" when he was saying the situations were different.
Anyway, just trying to help. There were ways in which the two situations were absolutely the same. I agree with that.
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Pax
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quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on May 17, 2011 1:08:42 GMT -5
Something to consider as well. I remember -- I forget which country, I think it was Yemen -- it turned out from WikiLeaks that the ruler of Yemen approved America's use of cruise missiles within his territory, but he would go on-air and claim that it was Yemen-bought American cruise missiles that he had sent. So, there is precedent for America and a foreign government to cook up a story together to cover a mutually embarrassing truth.
It just occurs to me -- the Americans were in that compound in Abottabad for FORTY MINUTES, the first ten minutes of which involved heavy gunfire, within walking distance of one of Pakistan's most important military bases. They used helicopters. They had time to take their time and clean the place out of anything that even looked like it might be useful intelligence material. I don't really know what happened there, but -- doesn't it strain YOUR imagination that the Americans could have been there for FORTY FULL MINUTES, making that kind of racket, and no official in Pakistan knew anything about it until it was all over? Maybe that IS how it went down, but you have to admit, it IS suspicious.
Let's assume that Pakistan knew about it the whole time and is only pretending that it didn't know beforehand. Why would they do that? One possible reason is that Pakistan's military is 25% islamist and has a habit of throwing a military coup every few years. That alone would be enough to make the nascent civil government not want to piss them off too much. And even if the military wasn't a worry for them -- I have to assume it was, but let's say it wasn't -- Pakistan has a very high number of people who are sympathetic to the islamist cause. The government probably wouldn't want to inflame THEM, either.
They have a good reason to lie. And coupled with the suspicious story that the Americans managed to get in there, with helicopters, I don't care if they're Stealth helicopters if they're flying around your neighborhood you're going to know they're there, stay forty minutes, and get away scott clean despite all this taking place right next to an important military base -- well -- whatever the truth of what happened, it's at least plausible that Pakistan is no victim at all, but a co-conspirator.
Quasi-relatedly, it's totally shocking what really goes on and that we usually never get to know about. Risking complicating things again -- there is a book I'm reading called "All the Devils are Here" about how the most recent financial collapse occurred. It's a total eye-opener for anyone who entertains any residual naivete about how the American "democracy" operates. Never assume you know what's really going on -- you're almost certainly wrong.
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wheelspinner
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Post by wheelspinner on May 17, 2011 7:42:32 GMT -5
Anyway I don't think that Brian would argue with you that there were some aspects in which the two situations were equivalent
Actually, he said there was NO comparison. His exact words.
I have only ever been talking about the fact that the USA would not respond at all well if the shoe was on the other foot. I pointed out that al Qaeda did invade the USA with deadly force, and the USA went, frankly, batshit over it. They still have not recovered their equilibrium 10 years later. And it wasn't jsut the horrific loss of life, it was the sense of violation, the bringing home to USAians that they are not impregnable and they are highly vulnerable, even on their own soil.
You as a country did not like that feeling at all. I'm just saying you need to understand that people in other countries feel the same way about you.
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