It was the biggest anti-terrorist surveillance operation ever mounted in the
For more than a year, police and security service officers had tracked a large group of people they were convinced were plotting to blow up transatlantic aircraft in mid-flight.
The detectives allowed the alleged plot to continue for as long as they dared. They followed the young Muslim men's movements in
Luckily liberals didn't find out about this, or they would have called the NYT and there would have been 7 front page stories about it for a week about how Muslims civil liberties are being taken away. Then we would have had 10 planes blown up and many lives taken away.
Please people, start seeing what is at stake. We can't have the emotional, do what "feels good", bleeding hearts in charge. I want my govt and EVERY govt to do whatever it takes to make sure I don't get blown up. If we hurt a few people's feelings, so what. If the govt tracks bank records or listens to phone conversations, good. Liberals don't get it, their actions constantly help terrorists.
Muslim fanatics are willing to do anything to blow us up, we need to do everything we can to preserve innocent life. I know, I know liberals, someone might "feel bad" if they are inconvenienced for 5 minutes at the airport, or people might "feel upset" if the govt keeps a list of phone records (oh wait, they would never even know that if it was not for the NYT)...
But I would rather have a few people be sad for a minute than thousands be dead and millions live in a world of terror.
Again, stick to solving global warming and save the whales or free Nelson Mandella or whatever you want that doesn't increase the chance of me being blown up. Leave the important stuff to people with the balls to handle it.
Posts
29 comments:
Preach it!
I think the difference is that some see this as a global movement, and others see this as a crime operation-- it is our fault, and we need to change ourselves, not others.
The 'our fault' theme is common in lefty circles, which is why I was excommunicated like Lieberman.
If a terror attack gets through, then Bush Knew! and it is a Rovian plot, and possibly a Jewish plot.
If a terror attack is foiled, it is conspiracy by Bush and the Mossad to irrationally scare the stupid masses into supporting candidates who stand against the global jihad. Everything is our fault with the left.
Of course, when terror funding for New York was about to be cut, the Michael Moore crap about the war on terror not being real goes out the window, as they got howlin' mad about not being protected.
That shows Democrats know deep down that the global Islamist movement is real, but to consciously recognize it, as I mentioned before, would require an examination of their beliefs about Iraq, multiculturalism, Bush, Blair, Gitmo, Israel, diplomacy, and a host of other deeply felt commitments.
Bullshit.
I don't usually swear on the blogs, but this is bullshit.
You can edit that out if you want, Game, but it's bullshit.
This, for example: Luckily liberals didn't find out about this, or they would have called the NYT and there would have been 7 front page stories about it for a week about how Muslims civil liberties are being taken away.
That's bullshit. The NYT, WaPo, USAToday, and others have all demonstrated, repeatedly, that they do not and will not report on active investigations. The NSA articles at NYT revealed no details other than that the president broke the law by going aorund FISA; the WaPo story on renditons and torture withheld, at the administration's request, the location of CIA prisons in Europe; even NYT's story on monitoring finances revelaed nothing that a solid Googling couldn't turn up--as several of us proved to you at the time. (The right-wing NYPost, in the other hand, did blow an active investigation last month with the tunnel-bomber story.)
When you write, "If the govt tracks bank records or listens to phone conversations, good," you imply that the "do what 'feels good', bleeding hearts" (that's us liberals) don't think the government should wiretap or monitor financial records. This, too is bullshit. No liberal, not even including the ACLU or its members (like me), have ever said we cannot or should not do the kind of policework done by the British in this case. Ever. Period. I will personally give you $100 if you can find me one liberal in this country who believes police should not use "surveillance [. . .] stakeouts, tips and wiretaps" (as the WaPo reported) to track suspected terrorists. Dems and libs support the use of wiretaps through FISA, the law of the land that four presidents followed without complaint. To say we don't is also bullshit.
I'm sorry that you're too scared to demand that your government follow the rule of law. I'm sorry that you're too chicken to tell the truth about Democrats and liberals.
God, Jay, what a breath of fresh air you are! I get tired of saying exactly this time and time again. Thanks for helping out.
And Bullshit is the appropriate word.
Have you noticed that the Republics are having a fit about this foiled terrorist plot? This plot involving British citizens?
And you know why? Because it shows that the war in Iraq and the "war on terror" ARE NOT CONNECTED.
So they desperately need to re-make their fabricated connection between the War on Terror and the Iraq invasion. That's why they accuse Lamont of being the al-Qaeda candidate because he opposes the war.
Clever, but in so doing they are calling over 60% of Americans supporters of terrorists, and that's not going to play well with them.
Shows their desperation, doesn't it?
wow, you guys got really mad...when girl stole my cell phone at school she yelled and screamed really loud too...then she confesed to stealing it later...
Nice try, Game. (Not really). Falling back on the "mad liberals" meme. Doesn't work. And it makes you look rediculous.
We're not mad. We're right.
And you must be on drugs.
Jim--
All I can ask of you is to read Sayyid Qutb and other Islamist intellectuals. Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism is a worthwhile read too. Berman is a Democrat.
We aren't fighting crimes, but a principled movement. We often hear about root causes-- well, I'm providing them, and the only replies I hear are "Republicans are desperate, la la la la la la la Bush lied people died!"
Too many people today cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They can't analyze ideas, derive implications from those ideas, or test those ideas against evidence.
If you think the Islamist violence in Thailand, India, Russia, Spain, the UK, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kenya, Tanzania, Israel, Indonesia, Argentina, Turkey and forth has no unifying philosophical foundation, then you don't understand the world we live in today. The Islamists act calmly on ideas-- sick ideas, but ideas nonetheless. Terrorism simply isn't a rabid thoughtless frenzy.
The Leninist master narrative about noble brown people fighting armies controlled by a conspiracy of oilmen needs to be jettisoned. That simply is not what is going on.
jason - your point seems to be that Islamic fundamentalists are, er, Islamic fundamentalists. I'm afraid we're already aware of that.
The issue is why are increasing amounts of people being driven towards these extreme ideologies. The answer is clearly apparent in Lebanon today where support for Hezbollah is sky-rocketing under Israeli bombs.
Popular movements are rarely driven by philosophy or religion. People flock to revolutionaries and terrorists because they provide an antagonist to those who are destroying their lives, not because they read a book telling them to.
And I think you're both right -- that the answer is somewhere in the middle.
However, I've never known people other than the "supposed" Al-Qaeda group (and I say "supposed" because I've never seen out-and-out proof of it other than the edited Bin Laden tapes) pull terrorist attacks on the U.S. We were attacked @ Pearl Harbor at the beginning of WWII, but that was a different attack (supposedly -- if you ask me, the Japanese were just as much terrorists as these assholes now are with their surprise attack rather than forewarned blatant attack; as are the rapists, murders, etc. in our very own streets).
Methinks it's a combination of both of your ideologies that makes this current "threat" (if it is a permanent one, and I still have yet to see that proven) what it is, not one or the other's.
Look, folks, if we were to honestly get after terrorism and "evil-doers", we'd start right here in the U.S., then work our way out from there. There are plenty of terrorists of all different sorts right here. To me, that's a fine place to start, not half-way (or more) around the world. To think that from clear over there that's the place to start, you got another thing coming.
The Homeland Security Department was established to "Protect the Homeland", not to protect Iraq, or anyone else.
I'd like to see it start doing what it says, and do just that -- protect what is right here first, and then after that's done, go from there.
Not to mention that without evil, there can't be good, and won't be, for then no one would know the difference.
We'd always be "at war with terror" if we went constantly after anything that's bad. War would never stop, for what most profess to be "evil" will never stop.
BTW Jason:
Thank you for your mention of Buddhism earlier in this thread. To date, I've never seen anyone give it any kind of credence whatsoever.
I also think re: wire-tapping, and tracking financial dealings that suspected terrorists & suspected criminals should be the only ones who are tapped & tracked, and that the law should be set up so that it is this way. Leave the innocent people alone. There's a good compromise for you. The U.S. people have enjoyed their freedom, right to privacy, and right not to be tapped or tracked when innocent for too long to give up that right now. :)
Jason,
I haven’t read Berman’s book, but I did look it up on Amazon, read an overview and some of the reviews on it.
I honestly don’t think there is anything there that I or any other informed person (read liberal) would disagree with.
Where most liberals disagree with the Bush administration is not that there is a radical Islam movement, not that many of those involved in the movement are rabid killers, not that they want to force their radical Islam beliefs on the rest of the world, and not that they should be eradicated. Most informed people disagree with this administration’s APPROACH to fighting and eradicating the radicals.
There are something like 1.5 billion Muslims today. Some of them, the radicals, are a very serious danger to the world. All informed people, including liberals, recognize that. Many Muslims recognize that, too, for radical Muslims have killed more Muslims than Christians or Jews.
But the danger of radical Muslim's terror tactics is more than just killing Christians and Jews. They use terrorist tactics against the West NOT SIMPLY to kill westerners, but to get the West to react. Why? Because it is the reaction of the West that recruits many more of those 1.5 billion to join the radicals in their movement.
Do you think that the attacks of 911 were carried out merely to kill masses of Americans and make the survivors crouch in fear? If so, you have a very simple view of the event. And as such, that event would have been a massive failure. I’m not trying to minimize the tragedy of the death and destruction of 911, but only 3,000 out of 300,000,000 Americans were killed and only a few buildings were destroyed and damaged. And only a few Americans, like Game, are crouching in fear. The rest of us go about our daily business with a heightened awareness of danger, but with little fear.
On the other hand, as a means to get the US to react, the 911 attacks were a massive success. The invasion of Iraq has recruited many more Muslims to the support of the radicals than we could ever hope to kill. Do you think that al-Qaeda is so stupid that they didn’t know that the US would react to a homeland attack by invading Iraq? The neocons were writing about it and pushing it for at least a decade before 911. And PNAC virtually assured the world that Iraq will be invaded should a Pearl Harbor-like attack occur. Do you not think that Bin Laden prayed every day to Allah that George W. Bush would become president of the United States? And did everything in his power to ensure his re-election in 2004?
I don’t believe that 1.5 billion people in this world get born hating civilization and wanting to kill westerners. They have to be taught that, and they have to have a reason to believe in it. You will NEVER stop people from using terror tactics as long as there is a 1.5 billion and growing supply of people to incite and recruit. And the best way to incite and recruit them is to get the West to do the job for them.
You can’t stop terrorism by bombing one fourth of the worlds population into vapor.
So, “understanding” your enemy or "understanding" terrorists has nothing to do with sympathy and has nothing to do with being soft on terrorism. It has to do with knowing what their goals are, what their strategy is, and figuring out how to thwart both through intelligent policies, effective strategies, and competent execution, none of which the Bush administration has been able to offer or demonstrate. The Bush administration has shown no desire nor capability to provide the kind of leadership that would ever give us hope of success against the threat of radical Islam.
That’s why those who truly understand what the “war on terror” is all about are against the war in Iraq, are against the policies of the Bush administration, and are obviously more capable of waging an effective fight to preserve our country, our rights, and our way of life.
Dedanna --
I think you're right. I see the issues Jason raises as being enabling factors for terrorism, but the reason that Hezbollah is gaining support is not because people agree with their overall ideaology - otherwise they would have been supporters before the Israeli invasion- but because they see Hezbollah as defending them from harm or, in extreme cases, as carrying out the revenge they wish upon Israel. Christian groups in Lebanon are declaring support for Hezbollah - this cannot be due to agreement with fundamentalist Islamic principles.
I don't believe that Islamic fundamentalism would disappear if the US and Israel halted their current actions, but it would become an increasingly isolated position.
In the end terrorism has to be fought with ideas, not more violence.
What I'm saying though, is this:
Who cares if it stops or not? It's going on in their countries, with their cultures, not in ours. So let them do as they will. We take care of our own.
I think this is the main reason that people go around saying that the U.S. has a desire to rule the world, is because the U.S. isn't taking care of its own -- it's butting into other people's conflicts, etc., with virtually little or no business doing so.
Let me put it to you this way: you have two children that you are "babysitting" who are someone else's children. They each are independently minded. They have their own ideas, their own opinions, their own ways of life. They get into a fight over their ideas/opinions/ways of life. Are you going to take sides, and scold one or the other for having their opinions/ideas/way of life? Hell no, this is blatant prejudice against the child you scold.
To the contrary, you stay out of the fight, and let them learn to settle it on their own.
'nuff said?
"Who cares if it stops or not"
I do. Along with a lot of others who care about the loss of innocent life, even if those lives are not American, believe it or not.
"We take care of our own"
This is an apt description of what the US is doing in the Middle East. It is attempting to further its own economic/military interests. The groundwork for the current Middle East strategy was outlined by the Project for a New American Century in the nineties: a focus group headed up by the people who are currently running America. Have a look at their website for more info.
Jim--
I agree with you in that I believe the invasion of Iraq was a bad decision. Given the dollars and blood it will take in the end to make regime change work, airstrikes against Hussein would have been a better option. I also agree with you completely that the Bush administration has bungled many things over and over again. It is quite frustrating.
However, there is a new approach being supported by Democratic activists that is a complete 180 from the Clinton approach I supported in the 1990s. This new approach opposes all preemption and all unilateral moves.
A classic case is Operation Desert Fox in 1998. Saddam Hussein was jerking around the UN inspectors. President Clinton didn't give him the benefit of the doubt, so he bombed Saddam's NBC facilities. Republicans tried to blame this on Monica, which really pissed me off, given this was the right thing to do. Clinton did this preemptively and unilaterally. Now such a position can get you defeated by a bozo like Ned Lamont.
Why has there been this change? Well, there are three reasons.
One, after 911, many people were puzzled. Why do so many Muslims, like the Paris subway bombing in 1995, or the Pali that shot seven people on the Empire State Building in 1997, want to kill westerners?
Bush isn't the most articulate nor intelligent person in the world, so people like Michael Moore stepped up to the plate. It is our fault for what we did during the Cold War, for using violence today, and if we would stop using the stick and use only carrots, Muslims will chill out. So the theory goes.
Second, moral relativism has taken its toll -- people can't tell the difference between civilization and its discontents. Hitler is just as good or bad as Blair-- I've seen Democrats refer to Bush as Hitler repeatedly.
Lastly, thanks to Hollywood, Academia, and the Media, many people like Comrade Ned here believe Marxist theories about imperialism-- any military action the west takes is necessarily "hegemony" to benefit capitalist cronies, and brown people are justified in their "resistance."
Whether we agree about pulling out of Iraq or not troubles me less than these more fundamental conceptions.
Jason said:
many people like Comrade Ned here believe Marxist theories about imperialism-- any military action the west takes is necessarily "hegemony" to benefit capitalist cronies, and brown people are justified in their "resistance."
Please provide any source/link whatsoever which would prove that Lamont has any such belief or said anything remotely espousing such a position. Then show me a source proving that any Democratic or liberal LEADER takes this position.
Please provide any source showing Democrats (other than a very few fringe types) who have "referred to Bush as Hitler repeatedly." This is simply false. Everytime someone suggests that certain political tactics used by the Bush administration are similar to those used by the Nazis to gain total control over Germany, the right says, "OOOOOhhhhh, they're saying Bush killed 6 million jews." That's just so much horse shit.
By "take care of our own" I mean "take care of our own country. This means protect it as well. At our own borders. Don't let these assholes in here -- and blow them away then on sight when they try to get in.
We're sure in the hell not doing a lot of good in Iraq or Afghanistan to protect ourselves, let's protect our own people for once, not someone else's.
We can't do anyone else much good if we don't.
Jason said:
We took care of our own in the 1930s, and it only allowed fascists to get stronger.
Yeah, because then, like now, we were everywhere else in the world but here in the U.S.; fighting other people's wars.
The fascists can have their countries, so long as they don't come into mine.
ben:
I've been to the PNAC website hundreds of times. It's the same b.s. every time I go there again. I have no desire to visit an evil's site anyway.
We'd be a helluva lot better off if we fixed the U.S. first before we go around trying to fix everyone else. There are plenty of people right here in the U.S. who need protecting -- so do the borders here from others. I honestly don't think doing anything in the Middle East is going to do a doggone thing for anyone in the U.S. or anywhere else.
If you have so much compassion for others in other countries, then concentrate on advocating to fix the U.S. so it can help others more effectively.
BTW Game: Having to use this word verification thing for every single post is getting mighty tiresome, is unnecessary, and is another reason I don't post much here any more. GET RID OF THE ANNOYING DAMNED THING, WILL YA? Most who can blog know how to read anyway --
dedanna, blogger requires the letters thing..more "security". Game nor anyone on blogger can do much about it. Admittedly it is annoying.
Clint, Jim understands the terrorists, their methods,ways and what will frustrate their efforts far better than you ever will. At least from what I read here.
Clint what can I say, at least that is simple enough for you to understand.
I guess Catholics and Protestants haven't been fighting and killing each other for centuries.
In no way did I ever suggest that 3,000 American's death was not an immense tragedy for this country and the world. I was putting it in terms of how Bin Laden would view it. I know, that makes me a terrorist sympathizer, doesn't it? That's obviously lost on you because it's not simple enough.
And in no way did I ever suggest that we do nothing about attacks. The Clinton administration never did NOTHING about terror attacks. They pursued the perpetrators of every incident and captured and jailed most of them. He even bombed Iraq.
He just didn't invade Iraq.
Sorry this is all too complicated for you, Clint.
Ron said:
dedanna, blogger requires the letters thing..more "security". Game nor anyone on blogger can do much about it. Admittedly it is annoying.
Then why isn't it on your blog?
When Iraq runs out of oil...
Dedanna--
There are millions of Muslims already here, though there is something about America that deradicalizes most immigrants.
My concern is with fascist governments and paramilitary organizations. Pearl Harbor shows the lack of wisdom required to advocate leaving them alone.
Jim--
Go read the DailyKos to see what Red Ned represents.
No, what Pearl Harbor proved was improper and inadequate protection of the U.S. by the military.
Same goes for the rest --
And I mean improper and inadequate protection within the U.S.. Hell, the U.S. was so busy looking anywhere & everywhere else, that it didn't (again) see what was coming right in front of it's nose.
I read DailyKos every day. The posters there generally support a broad variety of Democratic candidates from Webb to Lamont to Nelson to Ford to Obama to Casey and many, many more. All of them believe in a strong and effective fight against radical muslims.
Call them red, and you show your partisan ignorance.
Strangely enough I rarely if ever read Daily Kos..I tried for a while but it just felt like I wasn't getting much out of it. I read Glenn Greenwald everyday..and the comments on the posts. Both are very insightful and fullfilling for me. Digbys Hullaballo is my other fav. Everybody has a different style of communication and I guess those just rang my bell.
Post a Comment