“I’d say they were cowards. Suicide isn’t an act of bravery.”
R U Kidding, I agree in this particular case.
If they had lived, we would have caught them and slowly tortured them to death. They were taking the easy way out by dying. Similarly with palestinian suicide bombers. By dying they avoid the treatment they’d get as prisoners of the israelis—they get off easy.
“I still remember a kid who hit me from behind on the street once, because he was too much of a pussy to come up to my face about it.”
He was expressing his feelings. Did he tell you he was too scared to face you? You might have misunderstood his intentions. At any rate, modern war often involves a surprise attack. When your intention is that the other guy wind up dead and you wind up alive, why give him any advantages? Neither the USAF nor the israeli air force typically announce their airstrikes ahead of time.
If the kid you remember had intended to kill you, it would make perfect sense for him to attack you from behind and kill you as quickly as he could, rather than give you anything like an even chance to kill him instead. But he bravely left you alive to respond however you chose to. If he had killed you properly you wouldn’t have found out who did it before you died. You owe your life to his courage.
“But to those who can’t comprehend the possibility that the so-called overreaction might have saved lives, consider that Al Quaeda was escalating attacks until it got the desired response: war. And what, pray tell, do you think the next level of escalation would be, that would one-up the thousands killed on 9/11? Nuclear terrorism, maybe. Biological terrorism.”
AQ had a number of guys trained as infantrymen, and about 10% as many trained for espionage. We rolled up their spies and saboteurs real fast. We maybe got a bunch of innocent arab-americans at the same time, but we got most of the ones we were looking for.
When we invaded afghanistan we got a lot of the infantry guys too. They could possibly have been a threat to saudi arabia—trained dedicated infantry fighting saudis and mercenaries might have done a lot of damage—so that’s maybe a plus. There’s no particular reason to think AQ could have “escalated” after our police and counterintelligence guys hit them. The army thing was more for US public relations than anything else—the public wanted a war so the US government gave them one. We gave AQ what they wanted, against most strategic sense, because they persuaded the US public to want what AQ wanted, and Bush also saw the chance to gain US public approval.
I think. I can’t be entirely sure what Bush was thinking. I assume he was rationally looking at his own advantage, but he may not have been thinking at all.
“You’re letting your hatred of Bush prejudice your interpretation of events.”
Well, no. My disgust at Bush came from the events. Not so much the other way round.
I know this comment is very old, but I’m a bit incredulous at this.
If they had lived, we would have caught them and slowly tortured them to death.
If they had lived, they would have been among the highest profile prisoners America has ever seen. Torture is officially illegal in the United States, and whatever we get up to out of sight and off our turf, the government doesn’t like to show the public how we torment our hated enemies.
Timothy McVeigh got a lethal injection, one of the most painless methods of execution which we can contrive. This was, controversially, allowed to be witnessed on broadcast by those closest to the victims of his attack. Perhaps one might argue that torturing the bombers to death for preventative or retributive reasons would have been a good idea, but it’s simply not realistic that we would have done it.
“I’d say they were cowards. Suicide isn’t an act of bravery.”
R U Kidding, I agree in this particular case.
If they had lived, we would have caught them and slowly tortured them to death. They were taking the easy way out by dying. Similarly with palestinian suicide bombers. By dying they avoid the treatment they’d get as prisoners of the israelis—they get off easy.
“I still remember a kid who hit me from behind on the street once, because he was too much of a pussy to come up to my face about it.”
He was expressing his feelings. Did he tell you he was too scared to face you? You might have misunderstood his intentions. At any rate, modern war often involves a surprise attack. When your intention is that the other guy wind up dead and you wind up alive, why give him any advantages? Neither the USAF nor the israeli air force typically announce their airstrikes ahead of time.
If the kid you remember had intended to kill you, it would make perfect sense for him to attack you from behind and kill you as quickly as he could, rather than give you anything like an even chance to kill him instead. But he bravely left you alive to respond however you chose to. If he had killed you properly you wouldn’t have found out who did it before you died. You owe your life to his courage.
“But to those who can’t comprehend the possibility that the so-called overreaction might have saved lives, consider that Al Quaeda was escalating attacks until it got the desired response: war. And what, pray tell, do you think the next level of escalation would be, that would one-up the thousands killed on 9/11? Nuclear terrorism, maybe. Biological terrorism.”
AQ had a number of guys trained as infantrymen, and about 10% as many trained for espionage. We rolled up their spies and saboteurs real fast. We maybe got a bunch of innocent arab-americans at the same time, but we got most of the ones we were looking for.
When we invaded afghanistan we got a lot of the infantry guys too. They could possibly have been a threat to saudi arabia—trained dedicated infantry fighting saudis and mercenaries might have done a lot of damage—so that’s maybe a plus. There’s no particular reason to think AQ could have “escalated” after our police and counterintelligence guys hit them. The army thing was more for US public relations than anything else—the public wanted a war so the US government gave them one. We gave AQ what they wanted, against most strategic sense, because they persuaded the US public to want what AQ wanted, and Bush also saw the chance to gain US public approval.
I think. I can’t be entirely sure what Bush was thinking. I assume he was rationally looking at his own advantage, but he may not have been thinking at all.
“You’re letting your hatred of Bush prejudice your interpretation of events.”
Well, no. My disgust at Bush came from the events. Not so much the other way round.
I know this comment is very old, but I’m a bit incredulous at this.
If they had lived, they would have been among the highest profile prisoners America has ever seen. Torture is officially illegal in the United States, and whatever we get up to out of sight and off our turf, the government doesn’t like to show the public how we torment our hated enemies.
Timothy McVeigh got a lethal injection, one of the most painless methods of execution which we can contrive. This was, controversially, allowed to be witnessed on broadcast by those closest to the victims of his attack. Perhaps one might argue that torturing the bombers to death for preventative or retributive reasons would have been a good idea, but it’s simply not realistic that we would have done it.