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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[10ebbor10]

You can't negotiate with terrorists, not even once. Soon as you do that, you'll encourage others to use violence as leverage to get what they want. If terrorism and randsoming gets shit done more people will resort to using it. If the only thing it accomplishes is a violent death by the hands of the authorities, then that takes a lot off the table from the terrorist's perspective and less extreme groups will be less likely to use violence to air their grievances.

Negotiations with regular criminals is probably sound policy, then again I don't think I've ever seen a hostage taker have their demands met, unless they are asking for food or water during the stand off. It's used more as a distraction, I think. You can't do this with actual terrorist groups.

The actual terrorist groups consider you as their enemy, and will fight / die for their ideals. Not because they want to (ie, well, the majority doesn't want to die), but because they believe that is the only remaining possibility to get something done. These kind of organisations recruit from people who got little to loose, who feel like they're completely uncapable of judging what happens with their lives and their surroundings, and yet want to change things. A lot of things are needed before a human decides to suicidebomb some location.

Instead, when you open negotiations. (Something you'll be doing from a position of power), you can give them hope of a different solution, a more resilient peace, and a direct end to violence. It's the hope that counts, and while negotiations certainly won't be easy, it offers a solution.

Unlike the returning of violence, which just results in an escalating cycle of violence, of attacks and counterattacks which in turn results in a further radicalization of both parties, as well as increased support for the terroristical organisation you tried to fight.

[Bauglir]

@MetalSlimeHunt
So, what if we're not dealing with immoral lunatics? What if we're dealing with, say, grief-stricken people who've turned to the only organization who seems to share their disgust for the military that murdered their family, who expect to be shot down in cold blood, who in fact hope for it because they have nothing left, and want to serve as yet one more example to motivate their people into action against the monsters who refuse to accept that they're anything more than collateral?

What if there are no hostages? What if the lives we're hypothetically saving are the civilians who'd be killed by crossfire? What if they're soldiers? What if they're the next people to have their families taken from them?

Because, seriously, you're arguing for helping the immoral lunatics who actually set out to make terrorism a thing. And those people aren't usually the ones on the streets, killing and dying for the cause.

@DWC
You're assuming a lot there. Most importantly, you're assuming terrorism is a decision arrived at rationally. Trust me, blowing yourself up in a crowd (to list a dramatic example) isn't something you do because you've carefully weighed your options and chosen the best strategy in the long run. This is an emotional problem - if solving it makes terrorism attractive to people looking for a logical way of creating policy, then a different solution needs to be adopted for those people, yes. But right now, those people are so rare as to be negligible.

[Scoops Novel]

I was wondering how the circuses are over there. I realize this may not be the best place to ask, but does it seem to be satisfying anyone? I was curious as to whether more people then usual are paying some attention to politics.

How is wikileaks blowing up now? I saw something for a documentary, though who made it and what their agenda is (not particularly objective looking), and i recall i haven't heard much about Assange. Is he still being given asylum?

[Reelya]

I'm sure that some of the rank and file are like that, but I'm just as sure there are plenty of true believers. We should be using more precision strike weapons, but other than that their reasons don't really change anything. Once you've gone as far as to join the Taliban, the only way it ends is in death, sooner or later.

This just isn't true.  There are plenty of ex-Taliban members out there.

This would be the first time I've heard of it.

There  are also countless people bombed into shit that never were members of the Taliban, but are righteously angry at America now. To dismiss all arabic / islamic protesters as Al Qaeda or Taliban is pretty dense.

One example, is that the are at least two major currents in insurgency - those fighting against a dictator, and those fighting for a religion. Political insurgents, and religious insurgents. Two groups with very different aims. Now, they may ally if there is some mutual enemy. Examples of this are those who were fighting Saddam, Mubarak in Egypt, and The Saudi dictatorship. What all these have in common, is that they were U.S. client states. That's something which groups like Al A Qaeda use to convince the local insurgents to support their cause - each of those dictatorships was propped up by the same shadow figures - the USA. It wouldn't take much to convince an insurgent against a dictator that a strike against the superpower who backs the dictator could help their cause.

This is the specific reason why so many of the 911 terrorists came from Egypt and Saudi Arabia - a blow against America was seen as a blow against the dictators which oppressed their home countries.

In Iraq, it's a bit messier, USA is now propping up guys who were rebels against Saddam as the legitimate elected government - the exact same guys the west used to call terrorists when Saddam was our best friend. Hell, these guys (the two biggest parties in Iraq) trained alongside the Iranian commandos (who are clearly terrorists, every last one of them), i don't see how Iran's best-friends who trained and worked alongside them are suddenly squeaky-clean as long as they let USA corporations pump oil out for cheap. So, those particular terrorists are good guys now, backed up with US tanks and planes against any who oppose them :/ Some of the top politicians in Iraq that America now props up were involved in bombing US and French embassies in the early 1980's. So cal me cynical for not buying the "tough on terrorists" line when America uses force to keep known terrorists in power when it suits them.

[Owlbread]

Alright, so you would have suggested that we blow up Gerry Adams and his family back in the 1980s like the example I gave earlier? War is war.

I'm not sure who you're talking about, but the only Gerry Adams I can find is not dead, and the only attack on him mentioned by that article was some guys shooting at his car.

What if it isn't a school or a mosque? What if it's the guy's house or bunker where he lives with his family?

Maybe. You'd have to weigh the value of eliminating the target against the near-certain noncombatant deaths. If this is someone who's demise will prevent the carrying out of operations that would probably kill more people, than it would be acceptable to kill their family along with them because it causes fewer deaths overall. In a situation where all outcomes mean somebody dies, you have to take the utilitarian approach.

That is the same Gerry Adams that I'm talking about. I was saying that US drone attacks are the equivalent of us blowing him up with a rocket, killing his entire family back in the 1980s because he was an IRA leader. The international outrage would be huge, but that's because he and his family are white.

But yes, you say that killing 200 children (more than any single American civilian has killed with an "assault weapon") is justified if it is in the name of protecting civilians?

[SalmonGod]

Simply put, dealings with immoral lunatics are always wrong because it enables them to do further horrible things.

Are you willing to acknowledge that U.S. forces may be indistinguishable from immoral lunatics from the perspective of an innocent civilian harmed by their operations?  If so, why would you expect them not to use this exact same logic in dealing with us?  And if that's how they perceive and respond to us, are they still immoral lunatics or are they no different from you?

[Nadaka]

Simply put, dealings with immoral lunatics are always wrong because it enables them to do further horrible things.

We do this all the time in America, we just call them republicans instead of terrorists. By "we" I mean people other than me. I have no qualms calling them terrorists.

[SalmonGod]

I fully believe that the "War on Terror" has been deliberately carried out so as to make it self-perpetuating, providing never-ending profit for the military-industrial complex.  Collateral damage is unspokenly intended.  I've seen plenty of testimony and behavior to indicate that at the very least, U.S. military leaders don't really care much about collateral damage and push their soldiers to behave in ways that will obviously result in it.  Anyone who thinks I'm being too cynical about this should go watch the Winter Soldier testimonies.

On that, would it be better under a Republican? Voting for Obama is a lesser of two evils. Seriously, do you genuinely think, that voting for a non-libertarian conservative would make the situation better?

I do, actually, at this point. Because then the Democrats would have been cast in the role of the opposition, and the outcry could have potentially ended with them putting forward an actually decent candidate. Instead, we have the Republicans having to fill the role of the voice of reason, which is going about as well as you'd expect. For all their flaws, they AND the democrats all tend to be far more reasonable when a Republican is in power, because the Republican radicals lose a lot of their rhetoric and ability to influence the party, and the Democrats have a reason to exhibit a tiny bit of backbone and stand against poor legislation (rare as it is for them to actually do so even then).

I don't know anymore if Obama was the lesser of two evils. As far as I'm concerned, he's effectively declared war on the concept of democratic government, because without an informed populace there is no Democracy, only a farce. And he has fought at every turn to leave the American public unenlightened and powerless, while attempting to placate them so they don't complain about it.

This is pretty much exactly what I was telling people during the 2008 election season.  It's impossible to generate the kind of meaningful opposition to Obama that would have been really easy to generate against Romney.  It seemed that even most republicans hated Romney, and only voted for him to oust Obama.  I think many would have turned on him as soon as he was in office.  Few democrats can bother to get roused against their own guy, and hold onto the belief that everything bad that his administration has done is purely the result of an obstinate legislature.

[Reelya]

Simply put, dealings with immoral lunatics are always wrong because it enables them to do further horrible things.

Actually that kind of "zero tolerance" for "enemies" was extremely counter-productive in Iraq's reconstruction - the Americans banned anyone who'd every been a Ba'ath party member from working in the new administration - basically making a huge mass of the country's technocrats, managers and engineers unemployable, wasting a lot of potential man-power, and creating a class of well-educated, organized people who felt they had no personal future in an American dominated Iraq. And the fact is, Iraq being a one-party state, Ba'ath party membership in Iraq was pretty much a requirement for any sort of job advancement.

Ok let's take a litmus test - how does America deal with right-wing terrorists? Including the type who like to chainsaw young children into pieces for a "laugh"? (Bush Jnr backed an amnesty without any jail time, for the right-wing death squads in Colombia to disarm). Apparently, these types can be easily and safely rehabilitated into society, even if they publicly profess to killing 100's of people. But heaven forbid you ever read Marx or the Koran - in which case the only solution is to hunt you for life to the ends of the Earth.

There was a single para commander in Colombia who admitted to personally ordering killing over 4000 people - that's as many people who have reportedly died in battles with FARC in 20 years (and nobody ever suggests offering an amnesty or reduced sentences to FARC to disarm) - and he got a grand total of eight years in prison. Meanwhile, presidents in Colombia call for zero-tolerance against any left-wingers, even locking up scholars indefinitely just for writing "terrorist articles" that criticize military policy. Notable in this thread because America's political elite always take the side of the Right Wing in Colombia.

[Leafsnail]

I'm sure that some of the rank and file are like that, but I'm just as sure there are plenty of true believers. We should be using more precision strike weapons, but other than that their reasons don't really change anything. Once you've gone as far as to join the Taliban, the only way it ends is in death, sooner or later.

This just isn't true.  There are plenty of ex-Taliban members out there.

This would be the first time I've heard of it.

Then I suggest you do some research on the matter before continuing to debate this topic.

[Nadaka]

I'm sure that some of the rank and file are like that, but I'm just as sure there are plenty of true believers. We should be using more precision strike weapons, but other than that their reasons don't really change anything. Once you've gone as far as to join the Taliban, the only way it ends is in death, sooner or later.

This just isn't true.  There are plenty of ex-Taliban members out there.

This would be the first time I've heard of it.

Then I suggest you do some research on the matter before continuing to debate this topic.

I am sure there are. But do they publicly declare themselves as such in Taliban held territory without facing retribution?

[Owlbread]

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/afghanistan/121204/afghanistan-taliban-peace-council-nato-us-withdrawal-civil-war

A much needed article for those interested in Taliban defectors.

[Leafsnail]

Abdul Salam Zaeef is probably the most major defector, he wrote a book about it even.  He fled Afghanistan recently but that was more because he was scared of US drone strikes than Taliban reprisals

[misko27]

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/afghanistan/121204/afghanistan-taliban-peace-council-nato-us-withdrawal-civil-war

A much needed article for those interested in Taliban defectors.

It is really fun attempting to figure out what that is about by the link. So far I got the Taliban's peace Council is asking the US to withdraw before they cause a Civil war (as opposed to now?)

[DWC]

You're assuming a lot there. Most importantly, you're assuming terrorism is a decision arrived at rationally. Trust me, blowing yourself up in a crowd (to list a dramatic example) isn't something you do because you've carefully weighed your options and chosen the best strategy in the long run. This is an emotional problem - if solving it makes terrorism attractive to people looking for a logical way of creating policy, then a different solution needs to be adopted for those people, yes. But right now, those people are so rare as to be negligible.

Plenty of terrorism is calculated and rational. Maybe their cause isn't rational, but their methods are simply a form of warfare and warfare is an part of politics. Notice you don't see too many terrorist groups running around nabbing hostages like back in the 60s-80s and terrorists are no longer issuing demands. Only the fringe advocates of a cause are out murdering people, if there was some sort of moderate approach that produced results for these people, if authorities were cowed and backed down to terrorism, there would be more instances of terrorism as it would be an even easier and more productive way of forcing a policy change.

Ex-terrorists usually cite the futility of using violence and the danger it presents to them. The policy should be to make terrorism pointless, not emboldening extremists by caving in to demands.