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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

[misko27]

How about Luis Posada Cariles then? GW Bush's favorite terrorist. The dude actually boasts about terrorist attacks on innocent civilians, and they let him walk around America because he's a right-winger / ex-CIA.

Ohh Cubans.


I don't think the right ever really got over Castro.

[GlyphGryph]

But we are discussing how to defeat Terrorism, not why they do it.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry, I really don't.

I phrased that poorly, but the point stands.

No. No it doesn't. I'm... not even in a position to argue this right now, really, I just feel incredibly bad for you. That this is the way you see things. Imagine for a minute if you heard someone take the stance "We don't care why people do drugs. Illness, recreation, a life of despair, it doesn't matter. It's not relevant to a discussion of how to stop them." Do you really not see how much a denial of reality this viewpoint is? You're letting your ideology and hatred and emotion cloud your ability to react rationally. You're better than this.

"Why" people do something is always relevant if you want that something to stop happening, because taking away the why is the only thing that actually works. You can't cure a disease by treating the symptoms - the best you can manage is getting lucky enough that it goes away on it's own in the meantime.

[misko27]

But we are discussing how to defeat Terrorism, not why they do it.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry, I really don't.

I phrased that poorly, but the point stands.

No. No it doesn't. I'm... not even in a position to argue this right now, really, I just feel incredibly bad for you. That this is the way you see things. Imagine for a minute if you heard someone take the stance "We don't care why people do drugs. Illness, recreation, a life of despair, it doesn't matter. It's not relevant to a discussion of how to stop them." Do you really not see how much a denial of reality this viewpoint is? You're letting your ideology and hatred and emotion cloud your ability to react rationally. You're better than this.

"Why" people do something is always relevant if you want that something to stop happening, because taking away the why is the only thing that actually works. You can't cure a disease by treating the symptoms - the best you can manage is getting lucky enough that it goes away on it's own in the meantime.

You are missing the point Terrorism Stops being about the original thing so very quickly. There are NO easy cures for the Disease. No one alive today can cure what ails the world. In terms of terrorism, once it starts, there is a very strong, powerful urge for it to continue. Much like how the real danger of the Cuban Missile crisis wasn't politicians blowing up the world, it was the military getting carried away. It didn't matter why we were upset.


Simply put, just because the world is bad doesn't mean we should ignore the symptoms of it. I agree a hundred percent on why, but it doesn't stop the fact that these people are going to kill civilians if we don't stop them. We cannot wait for politics to fix things to save lives.

[DWC]

I was responding to you line about groups who "go right around and massacre people that have nothing to do with whatever grievances they claim to trying to rectify". Can you really claim the people in Hiroshima were personally responsible for the war? Or did were "massacre people that had nothing to do" with starting the war as an expedient way of ending it?

Anyway now you're claiming it's OK to massacre Japanese civilians who had no direct involvement in the war, because of what some Japanese soldiers (totally different people to who the USA bombed) did in China?

Then is it ok to massacre some random town in America because of Hiroshima?

I was thinking more in the line of terrorism and not total war, but right, if the Japanese were to retaliate with a nuclear bomb in return during the war, that would be expected and (at the time) a legitimate act of war. There were civilians fueling the war effort there against the Americans and were complicit in that regard and total war doesn't make much distinction between soldiers throwing bombs and the civilians manufacturing those bombs.

So an Afghan that kills Us soldiers isn't not considered a terrorist, but an Afghan that kills some civilians is. That's sort of the point I was trying to make.

[GlyphGryph]

But we can't just "stop them as they pop up" either, because there's always going to be more to replace them until we deal with the reason why people become terrorists to begin with. You're effectively arguing that we shouldn't waste time investing in fire prevention systems because we're too busy fighting fires, and that fire prevention problems are irrelevant to the problem of constant fires anyway.

It's madness.

[Reelya]

Yup, if you don't address causes, you only treat symptoms, and the disease persists.

A big part of the problems now, are because America created and trained Al Qaeda in the 1980's to do terrorist attacks against the secular socialist government in Afghanistan. The Islamists big gripe against the government was attempts to modernize the laws and culture to make the feudal system which held sway obsolete. Yeah, and America thought supporting radical Islamists in their "back to the middle ages" campaign, and training them in bomb-making was a smart move? :/

I remember how the Mujahedeen (many of whom were the nucleus of Al Qaeda) were uncritically praised on Western TV during the war as heroes.

[Nadaka]

Because Obama was getting hammered so hard for his Benghazi, leak investigation and IRS scandal, the administration of course had to concoct some news story to distract the media from the right wings totally non-hypocritical outrage. So they used their magical weather machine to murder 24 people in Oklahoma with a mile wide tornado!

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/oklahoma-tornado-conspiracy-theories/65499/

[Zangi]

Because Obama was getting hammered so hard for his Benghazi, leak investigation and IRS scandal, the administration of course had to concoct some news story to distract the media from the right wings totally non-hypocritical outrage. So they used their magical weather machine to murder 24 people in Oklahoma with a mile wide tornado!

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/oklahoma-tornado-conspiracy-theories/65499/

Oh Jah....  People are dumb...
maybe in Equestria

[Owlbread]

Because Obama was getting hammered so hard for his Benghazi, leak investigation and IRS scandal, the administration of course had to concoct some news story to distract the media from the right wings totally non-hypocritical outrage. So they used their magical weather machine to murder 24 people in Oklahoma with a mile wide tornado!

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/oklahoma-tornado-conspiracy-theories/65499/

Spoiler: Earthquake and weather machines are serious threat to glorious free peoples. (click to show/hide)

[misko27]

Interestingly, Obama's approval rating is the same as it was a month ago, before any of this happened. I suspect Economic pressures are lifting it up.

EDIT: Oh wow, the comments on this page. I will sum it up using a single comment on the page

Wow, look at all the stupid people on the right, some of whom say "this is just a false story about Alex Jones to discredit conservatives" and others going "Alex Jones is right on the money"

Seriously. It's these type of people arguing in the comment's section.

[SalmonGod]

The last couple pages are seriously disturbing to me.  So many of the arguments used to justify the fight against terrorism are the exact same arguments I would imagine myself using to justify my actions if I were a terrorist, and I very nearly BSOD trying to understand how these matters of perspective can be so easily handwaved.  I've been immersed in this same argument regularly for at least 10 years, and I still find it mind-boggling.

[Zangi]

Being hardline based on emotions like fear and anger... and basic needs of survival is a popular pasttime of humanity.

[DWC]

The last couple pages are seriously disturbing to me.  So many of the arguments used to justify the fight against terrorism are the exact same arguments I would imagine myself using to justify my actions if I were a terrorist, and I very nearly BSOD trying to understand how these matters of perspective can be so easily handwaved.  I've been immersed in this same argument regularly for at least 10 years, and I still find it mind-boggling.

That's just human conflict and warfare in general. Sure the justifications are going to sound similar because people end up fighting for similar reasons, in general, for the benefit of whatever group they identify with.

So you have to look at the character of the entities fighting, their ideology or belief system or what have you if you want to pick a side in a war.

Warfare/ terrorism/ politics are just a means to an end. So look at the end state they are trying achieve. I can't really identify with any terrorist organization I can think of because most seem to bluntly state in so many words that they are working for a global tyranny of some sort because some book says so.

[misko27]

Justify? Are you saying it not justified? W

Seriously, Terrorists are almost uniformly bad for everyone. They are pretty much single-handedly the reason for the Rise of Stalin, instead of a Democracy there (third to last Tsar was assassinated immediately after signing a new constitution, and about to found the Duma. Guess what his son did. If you guessed revoked it and started a reign of terror, You were right.) Justify, Justify. It's one thing to question the means, but the concept? You're questioning whether we should fight terrorists?


I mean seriously. You're playing with peoples lives here. Ask anyone on the streets of the middle east, where bombs go off all the time, whether they think we should be listening to them. It's not just murder, it's terror. What they instill in human beings is a atmosphere of fear, one where they no longer know whether they'll get home that night. That's Psychological warfare on Civilians, and it is unacceptable. Just because people are forced into something bad by circumstance, or ideology, or WHATEVER, doesn't make what they are doing something we shouldn't stop.

The last couple pages are seriously disturbing to me.  So many of the arguments used to justify the fight against terrorism are the exact same arguments I would imagine myself using to justify my actions if I were a terrorist, and I very nearly BSOD trying to understand how these matters of perspective can be so easily handwaved.  I've been immersed in this same argument regularly for at least 10 years, and I still find it mind-boggling.

That's just human conflict and warfare in general. Sure the justifications are going to sound similar because people end up fighting for similar reasons, in general, for the benefit of whatever group they identify with.

So you have to look at the character of the entities fighting, their ideology or belief system or what have you if you want to pick a side in a war.

Warfare/ terrorism/ politics are just a means to an end. So look at the end state they are trying achieve. I can't really identify with any terrorist organization I can think of because most seem to bluntly state in so many words that they are working for a global tyranny of some sort because some book says so.

Well, there's many. Environmental terrorist, Anarchists (they only Identify with the Anarchist's Cookbook!), the US militias, various Independence organization resorting to violence, One for every religion, Black/white/Whatever Supremacists, Socialists, Fascists, etc.


Odds are there are some out there that endorse what you believe. But you don't plan on murdering Civilians now do you?

[SalmonGod]

I think my whole point is that we should stop picking sides in this war.  The leadership on both sides are fighting for their own selfish purposes, with zero honesty or concern for the people they're using to fight for them.  Of course, the same could be said for just about any war throughout history.

Given that this is my view on the American side of the conflict

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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.

And my view on the terrorist side is that the religious fanaticism mainly comes from the leadership, while the bulk of the fighters are recruited from people who only wish to strike back at an entity they have legitimate reasons to be angry at.

And this is why it's insanity to marginalize the importance of understanding both sides.  If people would bother to do so, they'd realize they have no reason to identify with and fight for either group.