9-11, the ultimate political football.Follow

Because one of the core Democratic beliefs is that aggression doesn't solve differences, it only deepens existing ones and creates more.

Instead of simply being pissed about 9/11 and wanting vengeance, why not actually examine why it happened in the first place?

i understand WHY it happened in the first place. a **** poor foreign policy whrere we trampeled on other peoples rights and religions in our continuing effort to dominate the world economy, particularly the vast oil producing reagon in the middle east.

and yet........

i still have an overwhelming urge to see the mountains bin laudin is hiding in turned into a giant glass lined crater.

im not excusing our leaders for our failed foreign policy mind you. but neither will i excuse the butchering of innocent americans in answer to our leaders blundering policies.

7 years and he still breaths air.

unacceptable.

Yes, and?

This was why the terrorists attacked America. It was the last, and personal straw, on the back of a long and consistent history of the USA government financially and materially backing the overthrow of democratically elected governments around the world, by military juntas and dictatorships, who go on to suppress all opposition for decades via widespread dissappearences, torture and murder of their own citizens.

I REALLY hope you don't miss the historical significance of America and 9/11, before the terrorist attacks ever happened on American soil in 2001. I'm not entirely sure if the terrorists were referring to that earlier incident, when they picked their date, but I wouldn't be in the least surprised if they did.

I don't in any way shape or form think that the 9/11 terrorists MEANS were any less than revolting, repugnant, inhumane and unjustified. But if you think that human beings out there don't have a REASON for wanting to attack America, and don't understand that some of those people would see the 9/11 attack as a completely deserved eye-for-an-eye serving of "Justice", then you have your head in the sand. [I would not label 9/11 as justice so much as revenge] And YES these people thought killing innocent uninvolved US civilians was justice, because these people are upset and distraught over the killing of innocent, uninvolved civilians that has gone on in their own countries, that the USA government has been a party to in the chain of causation.

What we are left with, is the question, if Saudi and other Middle-Eastern terrorists killed American citizens on USA soil in a terrorist attack, because they wanted USA armed forces out of Saudia Arabia, and the Middle East in general, and they generally saw the USA as The Great Satan, yadda, yadda, yadda, Why the HECK did we invade Iraq this second time? Iraq wasn't the 9/11 terrorists, no matter if some people in Iraq cheered when it happened.

Iraq the nation didn't step up and say: "We commend the 9/11 attacks on America, and we call on America to remove it's troops from Saudi Arabia, and it's Trade Sanctions against us, or more of that's coming."

As for the entire WMD furfy, pretty much everyone outside of America could see it as a furfy right from the outset. You can't logically prove a negative. It wasn't up to Iraq to prove they didn't have any, because that's an empirically impossible requirement. It was up to the UN to prove they had some. The UN was stepping through the process, and coming up blank. The US steps in 2 weeks before the UN final report, says the UN process isn't' good enough, pulls out a power-point presentation almost entirely made up of COMPUTER GRAPHICS, not PHOTOGRAPHS, for evidence, my god, and goes to war on the pretext that Iraq has violated it's cease-fire treaty.

The few satellite photographs of trucks and buildings we were shown aren't justification for an invasion. Who the @#%^ can tell what's in a truck or building from 15 km up in the air? And where the @#%^ was a pattern of unjustifiable and aggressive behaviour from the government of Iraq to international citizens or nations, that might have justified us protecting ourselves or other people from them? Iraq was thoroughly flattened militarily from the first Gulf War. Everyone knew it. Saddam Hussein was a credible ongoing threat to his own citizens, but nobody else's.

Let's say it one more time:

Terrorism is a tool that can be used by private citizens for political purposes, or it can be used by armies in a war.

If terrorism is used by private citizens, it's a police matter. The terrorists are murder suspects, and the justice system is fully equipped to convict and deal with murderers, including mass-murderers. If terrorism is used by armies in a war, it's a military matter.

The military wing of AL Quaeda is an organization of private citizens, and arresting them is a police matter. An enormous and well funded police matter if it has to be. If a nation state or government gets in the way of arresting murder suspects, and endorses the murders that they committed in another country, and/or backed them financially or materially in order to commit those murders or after such a heinous attack (which would demonstrate agreement with that action) THEN that terrorist attack by private individuals becomes an attack by one sovereign nation on the citizens of another sovereign nation, and it becomes a military matter, and a justifiable reason to go to war.

This is somewhat why many people view the Afghanistan invasion as justifiable but the Iraq invasion as unjustifiable, and why, on the election of new parties to power in the Coalition countries, Coalition troops have been pulled out of Iraq, but kept or increased in Afghanistan.

Yes, 9/11 was a reason to call in the national security guys. The international spies and so forth. Yes, spy investigations would be justified in this case as well as police investigations. Then the whole mess has to be dumped back out to the justice system or the military system, if it's not going to be handled by one set of national agents offing an enemy set of agents.

Liberal position: Given the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden and everyone in Al Quaeda who participated in planning and/or carrying out the hijackings, murders and destruction of property are legitimate targets. Given 9/11 Afghanistan is arguably a legitimate target, because of the ties between Al Quaeda and the Taliban government of Afghanistan at the time. Given 9/11, Iraq is not a legitimate target. The 9/11 terrorists might have been acting partially on behalf of what they perceived to be Iraq's interests, but they weren't Iraq. They didn't officially represent Iraqi citizens and they didn't officially represent Iraqi government. They might have had private Iraqi citizens who sympathized with them, which would be a diplomatic PR matter, and they might have had private Iraqi citizens who participated somewhere in the chain of events, which again is a police matter.

Edited, Sep 12th 2008 3:22am by Aripyanfar

Edited, Sep 12th 2008 3:44am by Aripyanfar

They don't believe Jews have the right to a state in the midst of the Holy Land, where they haven't had a country of their own since Biblical times. That is their beef with the West, and in a way I can understand.