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ThatDamnedPanda -> RE: Violation of another Nations Sovereignty (5/17/2009 2:46:33 PM)
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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent
Get your troops out of someone else's back garden, and stop meddling in the politics of the region. Until you do that, then you're fair game, regardless of how many ventures you undertake to track down those opposed to US actions.
"Those opposed to US actions?" That's a remarkably benign descriptor for a terrorist organization that hijacked 4 airplanes, killed thousands of people, tried to blow up another airliner in midflight, and issues frequent and repeated threats to do more of the same as soon as they get a chance.
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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent
When your neighbour builds a fence in your part of the garden and claims some of your garden, what are you going to do? Take it up the arse or do something about it? And, when you two reach an agreement that you respect one another's land and the fence should lie in the middle, then you may want to settle down and co-exist in peace. I know I would.
What does that analogy have to do with Al Qeada/Taliban? If my neighbor and I have a property dispute, we'll work it out as two neighbors would work out a property dispute. If my neighbor murders my child, hides in his brother's house, and shouts out the window repeated threats to come back and kill my other children as soon as my guard is down, I have no interest in reaching an agreement with him. I'm going in there and blow the cocksucker's head off (assuming, for the sake of this analogy, that there are no police available to apprehend him), and if his brother considers that unreasonable, that's just tough shit. He should be more careful in his choice of brothers.
I am vehemently opposed to many aspects of America's interventionist foreign policy over the years, but that's a separate issue. If a terrorist organization - whatever their motivation - attacks you from a safe haven, and promises to keep attacking you from that safe haven, you have no alternative. Your choices are to continue to suffer their attacks, or root them out of their safe haven. There is no third option. What you're suggesting is that a group oif terrorists can do whatever they like, wherever they like, to whomever they like, as long as they can make it back to Pakistan before they get caught. And the rest of the world has no right to do anything to defend itself..
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ORIGINAL: NorthernGentThey represent Al-Quaeda, of course, who are a loose connection of religious zealots and political idealists who span the globe, and probably aren't in contact with one another. They share an idea but they're not an organisation in the sense the IRA was an organisation. Be honest, you know nothing of them - their tactics, their structure, their aims. You have no idea where they are or how many there are; all you 'know' is based on newspaper reports, which may or might not be accurate. They could have been rounded up by a sustained police investigation, but, no, the US government (and willing executioners) had to go and spread 'democracy', or was it detect and destroy WMDs, or was is it remove a despot: the story changes every day, and the chances are that it has nothing to do with the aforementioned.
Really. And which police force would have been serving the arrest warrants in Afghanistan?
Edit: Although I have to add, in case you haven't read enough of my posts to pick up on this, that I agree with your larger point that most of the fight against Al Qeada would have been much better conducted as a criminal investigation than as a primarily military operation. Most of the "organization", if you can call it that, could have been dealt with much more effectively by internationally coordinated police investigations. But the leadership, the core group that planned and launched the 9/11 attacks and have taken refuge on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, have to be rooted out by military and paramiltary operations. No Pakistani detective is going to take a 3-week mule trip into the mnountains to arrest bin Laden.
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