AirTran emergency lndg.

[CatYaaak]

In order to attain what? Cheaper oil?

Last I heard, the Middle East Naval Brigadeer Adjutant General still hasn't got their 50 carrier navy that they wanted, nor has their amphibious assault ship program started. So I think the border is safe for now. They haven't come to Boeing or Antonov with purchase orders for strategic bombers yet either.

So tell me again, what is the deal? People want cheap gas and they won't play the game, so we're going to nuke them?

Oh, I get it, untill they buy a bible and show up at the Assembly of God's house, we're going to murderize them? Suits me fine, just who's paying the bill? Your kids and their kids...I'll be long gone by then.

I think Lear70's question was with regard to convincing them to quit targeting/attacking us, and getting the fence-sitters to "take care of their own".. not getting cheaper oil.

My most important reason isn't oil, but to stop them from getting nukes. Oil comes into play because with petro-dollars, despots (secular or religious) with nuclear aims can get them a lot quicker and more easily than a backwater like North Korea, which despite their poverty and Stalinist, isolated regime, suceeded anyway.

You're mistaken on one major point FNFAL, with regards to "paying the bills". It's only now that we're going to begin paying the bills for the misapplied policies of containment/appeasement towards despotic regimes like North Korea and Iran while all along we knew their aims.

You'll still be living in the world when they develop the delivery systems to at least lob one in our general direction. Frankly, I'd rather have 20,000 Soviet warheads trained on me for reasons of paranoia, than a handful controlled by madmen in Tehran and Poynang wanting to be Mice that Roar.

 

[CatYaaak]

Bummer.


So what do you think WILL work? We've tried basically everything SHORT of glassing their entire country, including appeasement, and we're STILL getting attacked... Not that I want to create martyrs or become known as the country who chose bombing as the solution to everything, but I don't want my kids to be born, grow up, grow old, and die and we're still fighting this thing and I don't want to convert to Islam either...

Screwed either way, why not try something more direct?

I don't think anything will unilateraly work completely. and the only thing I can see is to get the world on board in a common goal. Until nations that keep pretending to be our allies grow some cajones, or at least begin to accept their part of the responsibility they have for the conditions in that part of the World they deliberately created, we're going to be the goat. If those countries can't send force, they could at least not torpedo the U.S. diplomatically and through state-run media at every turn in an effort to conceal their cowardice while making a play to lead some sort of neo-Europe with themselves at the helm.

Remember the movie the Caine Mutiny? Fred MacMurray played a sh1t-stirrer who would play the Naive against the Insane, and then lie back and watch from the periphery, reaping benefits from the resulting drama. Well France has been that character on the world stage not only for the current situation but most of the last century, with half the world acting as a Peanut Gallery.

If I were unlimbering nukes, I'd begin with Paris. Their antics after WW1 gave rise to Hitler, their ideology spawned Hussein, post-war French Indochina, Algeria, etc. etc. and despotic African Francophiles are still butchering people. As a Cause, France was a bigger threat to "Peace" than Iraq was...and that's saying a lot. Even during recent events Lebanon, they had to be arm-twisted again to merely commit to a promise made a week prior. Like I said, "sh1t-stirrers", but unlike the movie lots of people have died from it.

When the U.N is nothing more than a pick-and-choose-your-intervention circle-jerk...avoiding tough places like Rawanda and Iraq....but keeps acting as it it were a World Government, it needs to get back to concentrating on things like eradicating malaria or disband. When people use phrases like "Illegal War" and "World Court" with a straight face, you know the propoganda has taken hold. When the media plays along with staged "Protests" and manufactures "news", it's nothing more than an arm of Propoganda designed to inflame the Arab Street..no better than Hitler's staged parades and SS-produced movies. When a son of colonial previledge like Kofi Annan begins to moralize and people actually take him seriously, you know it's time to dismantle the entire facade of the U.N. as a place to resolve problems.

It's time to reasses that whole U.N. membership situation. Why attend a party where you're reviled and even your so-called "friends" aren't? With no USSR around, that's the way it's becoming, no matter what we do. It's become a useless body with inflated self-importance.

I'd say lets begin with those two subjects.

 

[BSkin]

Frankly, I'd rather have 20,000 Soviet warheads trained on me for reasons of paranoia, than a handful controlled by madmen in Tehran and Poynang wanting to be Mice that Roar.

Amen to that! What we're facing now makes the Cold War seem like child's play -- at least we knew what we were up against then, now?

 

[CatYaaak]

Bummer.


So what do you think WILL work? We've tried basically everything SHORT of glassing their entire country, including appeasement, and we're STILL getting attacked... Not that I want to create martyrs or become known as the country who chose bombing as the solution to everything, but I don't want my kids to be born, grow up, grow old, and die and we're still fighting this thing and I don't want to convert to Islam either...

Screwed either way, why not try something more direct?

It should also be noted that within countries like Saudi Arabia, the tolerance for the extremists has dropped enormously after the spate of internal attacks a few years ago and the divide between non-Muslim and Muslim victims was erased. They see the extremists as a threat just as we do, and in Saudi alone a couple hundred of their security forces and police have died attempting to root them out. Those are the people considered martyrs with streets named after them, not the OBL's. They've also tried to address the religous side, re-aligning and tempering the more inflamatory mullahs and such. Slow progress is being made.

In Jordan the Zarquawis are reviled for killing Jordanians except maybe in his home town, and in Egypt the extremists assasinated Sadat, and incidents like those at Luxor where you have dozens of machine-gunned tourists only serve to destroy their tourism based economy. Even the very poor don't want that. Half of Lebanon would like to see Hezbollah disappear and the Lebanese Army replace them in defense, and of course they also hate Syrian interference. The U.S. does have nominal allies in the region...strong allies if you compare them to France.

A lot of Arab Middle Eastern countries won't come out and say it, but they are breathing a sigh of relief that Hussein is gone. Shiite-Persian Iran with nukes would be one of their worst nightmares. They CERTAINLY don't want Iranian nuclear aspirations to come to fruition.

 

[Lear70]

A lot of Arab Middle Eastern countries won't come out and say it, but they are breathing a sigh of relief that Hussein is gone. Shiite-Persian Iran with nukes would be one of their worst nightmares. They CERTAINLY don't want Iranian nuclear aspirations to come to fruition.

Then they'd better get off their collective butts and DO something about it, 'cause the Iranian nuclear program is getting closer every day to having weapons-grade plutonium in medium-range missiles at their fingertips.

I don't disagree *completely* with your assessment of France's part in all this, although I think it's a bit strong even though they DO bear a large responsibility for their past actions.

But, conversely, I don't know what getting Europe united behind us would help do against religious millitants. There's only so much that economic sanctions and non-military action can do.

Additionally, there are so MANY middle-Eastern ethnic groups scattered throughout Europe, that the lines are WAY too blurred for any kind of meaningful internal action. Same problem we have here in the States, you don't know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, so what kind of "action" can you take without turning it into a police state?

Don't get me started on the U.N. I haven't seen a positive thing out of them since I was in early High School.

 

[Lear70]

Oh yeah... any more news on the emergency landing?

lol - talk about a thread hijack...

 

[CatYaaak]

Then they'd better get off their collective butts and DO something about it, 'cause the Iranian nuclear program is getting closer every day to having weapons-grade plutonium in medium-range missiles at their fingertips.

I don't disagree *completely* with your assessment of France's part in all this, although I think it's a bit strong even though they DO bear a large responsibility for their past actions.

But, conversely, I don't know what getting Europe united behind us would help do against religious millitants. There's only so much that economic sanctions and non-military action can do.

Additionally, there are so MANY middle-Eastern ethnic groups scattered throughout Europe, that the lines are WAY too blurred for any kind of meaningful internal action. Same problem we have here in the States, you don't know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, so what kind of "action" can you take without turning it into a police state?

Don't get me started on the U.N. I haven't seen a positive thing out of them since I was in early High School.

Arab countries can't do a lot about Iran, even collectively without help. They couldn't do anything about Hussein after he gave up attacking Iran and began attacking them. And Hussein couldn't take out Iran in an 8 year war. Besides Baathist Iraq, Syria, and Israel, most Middle East countries have very small military forces, and even then they are geared for defense and internal security rather than waging an offensive war.

Before GW1, close to 40% of Iraq's GNP was used for military spending. Except for the two others mentioned, no other Middle East countries come close to that. I don't think we'd want them too either.

But Iran getting nukes might just spur them to historic action in some way. By now most of them I think realize that Israel probably won't use theirs unless given good reason. Most have learned to live with that nominal nuclear threat. My guess though, is they think Iran probably WILL use them if they get them, for duplicitous reasons involving Israel dovetailing into an attempt to dominate the Muslim world. And China..with long ties to Iran.. might just like to see it all happen.

I should have been clearer about getting people on board. You're right, there's only so much non-military pressure and sanctions can do. But I was referring more to tacitly sanctioning, appeasing, and sometimes handing those wanting to kill us ready-made propoganda that furthers their cause and helps their recruiting.

France's very-public, pack-leading anti-American stance in the U.N. is something that emboldens terrosists and served as an attempted whipsaw tactic against new entries coming into the EU in 2003. They make no bones about wanting to be it's unofficial heavyweight. We know they did it for oil and oil contracts for Total/Elf/Fina. We know German construction firms were busy making money designing and building Saddam's bunkers and palaces. We know Russia loved him as a military hardware customer. Their backpedaling tactics, torpedoing support, and encouragement to resist our endeavors has a cost. They don't care about American soldier's lives...not in the least. It's a huge mistake to think they do.

Very public, diplomatic treachery by our supposed allies does sanction those wanting to harm us. The Arab street are TV news, and more importantly, conspiracy and rumor junkies. I hate to tell you this, but the Euro-media and press, along with even some of our own, serve as bigger propoganda tools than even their own for the extremists. They don't need OBL making videos when they have The Guardian to read. I personally experience, hear, and read far more Anti-american vitriol in Europe than I do in the Middle East.

I certainly come across more smug, ignorant types who believe themselves to be geopolitical experts by birthright rather than education and experience simply because they're European, and therefore "sophisticated". Certainly they believe this relative to "Dumb Americans". This overinflated sense of self-importance is something I've never experienced in all my contacts with Arabs in the middle East, who in that respect are far more honest.

I think I've gone easy on France, and would ship the Statue of Liberty back to them tomorrow without blinking an eye.

The U.N....if airliners were being driven into buildings, that was the appropriate target.

 

[FN FAL]

Japan was an island nation...not a religion.

Japanese were easy to find...they wore uniforms and looked Japanese.

There were fronts and theaters in WWII.

You could blow up all of Iraq and Iran with A-bombs and still face hoards of terrorismodromic Islam people. Maybe even people who aren't Islamic, but don't like A-bombings.

 

[CatYaaak]

Japan was an island nation...not a religion.

Japanese were easy to find...they wore uniforms and looked Japanese.

There were fronts and theaters in WWII.

You could blow up all of Iraq and Iran with A-bombs and still face hoards of terrorismodromic Islam people. Maybe even people who aren't Islamic, but don't like A-bombings.

The Japanese were, if anything, more bloodthirsty and fanatical than our current terrorists. Ask anyone from a nation occupied by them. They were certainly more numerous and could do more damage. They even invented planned, suicidal attacks with airplanes. They loved beheading prisoners when they didn't use them as slaves. The Rape of Nanking was not just a metaphor. They regarded everyone not like them as subhuman.

And yes, there was a quasi-religous aspect to why they acted as they did, and why they were pacified so abruptly.

The Japanese Empire was a far, far bigger problem than handfuls of Islamic terrorists. To compare the two in terms of being an actual threat to our nation is silly.

The terrorists big mistake is this. If they ever DID become a real threat to the very survival of our nation, and we really DID move to a true, war footing, raise and equip an army of millions like in WW2, and concentrate on wiping them out and anyone associated with them....we could. And if it ever came to that, with "terrorist hordes" attacking us, we will.

And if that STILL didn't work, we'd begin to nuke whatever we thought was necessary and go the "total war" route, instead of nitpicking and worrying about collatoral damage as we are now.

Therin lies their lack of understanding us, and their stupidity. The Japanese were once that way too.

Why on earth would we nuke Iraq now? Hussein is gone. Killing insurgents (especially foreign ones) trying to destablize the country and giving a new government breathing rooom is the name of the game, not wiping it out. I don't neccesarily agree with this, but they are quite capable of destroying themselves without our help.

We don't need to nuke Iran either, just take out thier nuke-bomb making capability. Of course it would be a good idea to let them know that if they unleash terrorists in retaliation we'll just add them to the list of nuke-able spots. Certainly we'd actively work to destroy the regime, and let's not even pretend we'd get into nation-building afterwards. Any new one could not be more dangerous than the one they have.

If there was a way to attack Israel and plausibly frame France for it, I'd add that to the mix. It would be fun to sit back and watch it escalate out of control. As a bonus, they both have nukes, and we're upwind from both of them.

 

[PanPan]

Here's a poster idea: "You must be retarded if you can't spell you're"

I have an idear for ya Catfish. Wy donts ya take isue with an idear of mine, rather than nit pick my typin/spelin skils.

Ya, your write. that might take thinkin. Opps, I meen think'ne.

One last thing. Shudnt their be a period at the end of that sentence? Welcome to the retard club!