Was declaring a "war on terror" a bad idea?

[Wilber]

Unfortunately, the US and Canada got sucked into the Afghan civil war - a war which has nothing to do with terrorism. So it is accurate to say the Canada is an active participant in the Afghan civil war, however, Canada is not at war with Afghanistan.

Then why is it the same people we are fighting in Afghanistan, Al Queda and the Taliban. Terrorist organizations don't just get bored and go away on their own. Someone has to put them away and keep them there. True, Canada is not at war with Afganistan but our troops in Afghanistan are definately engaged in a war with the same organizations who plotted and carried out 9/11.

[KrustyKidd]

On average, Saddam killed fifteen hundred people a month. The past three years, less than seven hundred a month have died. Your point is crap.

Cite your sources, and I will reply with

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5053134.stm

The numbers look like they are over 1000 for every month this year, even last year many months had over 1000 civilians dead per month. Also this looks like just the Bahgdad mortuary reporting. What about the other morgues.

Under 700?? Again, cite your sources.

Answered at Werewolf.

You will note that if you are blaming insurgent attacks on the US then the logical rationale is that the deaths to Iranians and Iraqis during the Iraq/Iran war can be attributed to Saddam making the case for regime change and the invasion even stronger as that increases his murders to millions from three hundred thousand.

Lonius

They were doing this anyway, though on a much smaller scale. There might have been a time when dialogue might have made a difference, but the US stubbornly refused to acknowledge that there might have been something wrong with their foreign policy. Too many 'what ifs' now.

US foreign policy is a scapegoat used to unify Conservative Islamists. Much like a the Jews provided a unifying focal point for Germany. Millitent Islam has been brewing for eight hundred years, a result of Islamic aherence to medieval mentality and the western world's ability to conquer them with superior technology and free thinking to use their resources and land. The US is hardly the villain when considering the likes of Attila, Germany, Italy, France, England and on and on who's hedgemonic exploits make any US exploits pale in ferosity and humanity compared to them.

You know as well as I do that this is a less than honest representation of the facts.

Tear the above reply to Gosthacked apart then.

Gosthacked

By your posts it seems (I am extrapolating) the War on Terrorism should have focused on Saudi Arabia first. So why did we not go there first? Instead of waging war in countries where the root of the problem is not there.

A bad idea. Very bad. Explained here Why Iraq

See, the war on the Taliban took out an immediate threat in Al Qeda. The invasion of Iraq provided SA with a reason and the support (with the US seting up semi permanent bases there) to carry out their operations against AQ. To have invaded SA would have been the exact thing AQ was intent on making sure happened as it surely would have brought the entire Islamic world together even if one were not miltant they would have to join in the fight against the US. The ensuring battle would leave the Conservatives on the side of right and, in control of most of the regimes of the area.

Riverwind

Why should we? They are small groups of criminals who have the capacity to cause sporadic damage to public infrastructure and kill a small number of people. They are not an army nor do they represent a sovereign state that can defeated with a military force. Calling it a war is a ssilly as anything monty python could come up with.

Small groups of criminals who are all intent on doing the exact same thing in order to realize a common global goal. Very different from muggings here and there. Explained here.

Unfortunately, the US and Canada got sucked into the Afghan civil war - a war which has nothing to do with terrorism.

It has everything to do with terrorism though. If the elected Afgan government is defeated by Taliban forces composed of foeign Jihadists and whatever warlords they can muster, the incentive to fight terror in any middle eastern country would be zero. This would ultimitely provide the Conservative Wahabbists with a victory as there would be no way in which to prevent the continual errosion of governmental authority. The Jihadists would fill the vacum as sure as night falls. The incentive to put up any form of resistance would vanish - why fight terror if you will never get any support from the west?

[GostHacked]

This war on terror is bullshit as I see it now.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/04/cia.binladen.ap/index.html

The special CIA unit that was hunting BinLaden has been disbanded. Umm WHY? The man that suposedly orchestrated 9/11, the man who suposedly helped out Saddam. First they stopped looking for WMDs now they seemed to have stopped looking for Bin Laden. That is not suspicious to you all??

[sharkman]

This war on terror is bullshit as I see it now.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/04/cia.binladen.ap/index.html

The special CIA unit that was hunting BinLaden has been disbanded. Umm WHY? The man that suposedly orchestrated 9/11, the man who suposedly helped out Saddam. First they stopped looking for WMDs now they seemed to have stopped looking for Bin Laden. That is not suspicious to you all??

Maybe after 4 or 5 years they realize they can't catch him this way. Maybe it's a CIA plant to get Osama to get a false sense of security and then relax slightly.

Then again, with the New York Times leaking any advantage the CIA has, I opt for the giving up theory.

[GostHacked]

This war on terror is bullshit as I see it now.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/04/cia.binladen.ap/index.html

The special CIA unit that was hunting BinLaden has been disbanded. Umm WHY? The man that suposedly orchestrated 9/11, the man who suposedly helped out Saddam. First they stopped looking for WMDs now they seemed to have stopped looking for Bin Laden. That is not suspicious to you all??

Maybe after 4 or 5 years they realize they can't catch him this way. Maybe it's a CIA plant to get Osama to get a false sense of security and then relax slightly.

Then again, with the New York Times leaking any advantage the CIA has, I opt for the giving up theory.

Oh come on, they can kill Uday Qusay., and even the late Zarqawi was found and killed. But they cannot get the master mind behind everything? I thought this was the most wanted man on the list? If anything they should be creating additional units to hunt Osama. Also take note of the date in the article. LATE 2005.

False sense of security? I would assume Osama is alot smarter that that. IF I were Osama, I would take this as a ruse and actually be MORE careful about what I do.

[newbie]

And let's not forget Saddam's wife and daughter who are on the "most wanted" list.

[Shady]

Was declaring a "war on terror" a bad idea?

Hey moron. The war was already declared. By Osama Bin Laden. What are you upset about? That it was acknowledged? Gimme a break.

BIN LADEN'S FATWA

The following text is a fatwa, or declaration of war, by Osama bin Laden first published in Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based newspaper, in August, 1996. The fatwa is entitled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places."

Link

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear Shady,

Thanks for postng this link.

Hey moron. The war was already declared. By Osama Bin Laden.

Um, Osama didn't declare war on 'terror'. It seems he was declaring it on US forces in Saudi Arabia.

At first glance I thought that it was written by 'injusticebuster', top-heavy as it was with wild rhetoric flinging, but the subject matter was different.

[PolyNewbie]

If it was really a war on terror they would have shut down the borders - like FDR in ww2.

All they have done is inact a police state and go on a war path around the world.

[theloniusfleabag]

Now that I think a bit more about it, yeah, declaring a 'war on terror' is folly in so many ways. For instance, in a 'static war', you don't wait for the enemy to attack if you can help it. If you are stronger, prepare to attack. If you are weaker, prepare to defend. (Sun Tzu said something along these lines). Therefore, the US should attack the terror before it strikes.

[August1991]

Mark Steyn has this old column up on his web site now and it seems relevant to this thread:

Unlike Malaya or the Mau-Mau or the IRA, this is a global counter-terrorism operation across widely differing terrain, geographical and psychological. We need to be able to kill, constrain, coerce or coax as appropriate. Kill terrorists when the opportunity presents itself, as 1,200 “insurgents” were said to have been killed in one recent engagement on the Syria/Iraq border the other day. Constrain the ideology behind Thursday’s bombing by outlawing Saudi funding of British mosques and other institutions. Coerce our more laggardly allies like General Musharraf into shutting down his own section of the Saudi-Pakistani-Londonistan Wahhabist pipeline. And coax moderate Muslims into speaking out. We can take steps to prevent Islamic terrorists killing us, most of the time. But Islamic terrorists will only stop trying to kill us when their culture reviles them rather than celebrates them. There are signs in the last week’s Muslim newspapers, in London and abroad, that some eminent voices are beginning to reclaim their religion. At such a moment, Britain should be on the side of free speech and open debate. Instead, the state is attempting to steamroller through a grotesque law at the behest of already unduly influential Islamic lobby-groups. One of its principal effects will be to inhibit Muslim reformers. Shame on us for championing Islamic thought-police over western liberty.

Steyn's basic point is that our Western multiculti, open-minded, benefit-of-the-doubt, maybe-I'm-wrong approach is wrong for the situation. By adopting it, all we do is give an opening for the extreme Islamists to cow the moderates.

Also, rather than pass laws restricting individual freedom, we should be openly direct in stating that the problem comes from some Muslims and some Islamic States.

[Shady]

Um, Osama didn't declare war on 'terror'. It seems he was declaring it on US forces in Saudi Arabia

Um, you might want to read the entire declaration. And no, of course Osama didn't declare war on terror, he declared a war of terror.

Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajakestan, Burma, Cashmere, Assam, Philippine, Fatani, Ogadin, Somalia, Erithria, Chechnia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watch and hear, and not only didn't respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its' allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves.

All false claims and propaganda about "Human Rights" were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took place against the Muslims in every part of the world.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

Nobody has declared war. They have just decided to have one. Check the facts people and tell me the Congress has declared war, they haven't. The Commons hasn't in Britain either. There is no war. We all know there is but the simple truth is that there is no war. Administrative heads of state have acted in the interests of their military industrial complex's to use a bunch of bombs and bullits. The military industrial complex employs hundreds of thousands of people and generates billions of dollars of revenue. The tax payer is footing the bill for this war on terror, it is our blood and our money that we are giving to our governments to "protect us" from the big bad terrorists.

Don't get me wrong, these terrorists need to be dealt with. But there needs to be a declaration of war in order to justify taking away all of our rights and costing us a hell of money to wage this war. This will not happen for a number of reasons, but the most important one being that some of the money the government spends on armament will have to be spread around some. The military industrial complex wouldn't like a piece of their pie shrinking so they have gone about things to protect their interests. That is bad news people, our own governments are playing a game with us that we can't win and they can't lose.

[newbie]

Seems to me this so called war on terror has turned into a full blown misadventure. This isn't just about American and coalition troops anymore. Sectarian violence in Iraq is just a nice name for what is really happening - Civil War.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1683117.htm