9/11: An open letter

Wow ._. Tom is best troll in OTC officially :D

....ANYWAY, can I say my own opinion even though I'm not American? o-o

Just because somebody has a different opinion doesn't mean that that person is a troll. Anyway, everybody else has jumped in to spout their piece, why the hell not?

edited 12th Sep '11 6:13:20 AM by Kino

Major Tom has every single controversial military opinion I have seen o-o Also, the post date text.

But yeah, I think that spending 3.3 trillion dollars on "retribution" isn't really something that should be celebrated.

First off, Tom, that was a really stupid ass thing to say.

Anyhow, moving on. It's time to declare the "War On Terror" over and start pulling out of Afghanistan the way we have started to pull out of Iraq. We got Osama, spent tons of money, killed tons of Taliban and AQ folks, we're done here. I hate the Taliban, I hate radical Islam in any form and I believe it to be extremely dangerous to the free world, but we wouldn't be a target in the first place if we weren't meddling so much in the affairs of others.

One thing that always got to me was the name, "War on Terror"; really now, who the fuck came up with that. War on Islamic extremists in Afghanistan responsible for 9/11 might be too specific.

Hi. I'm new here. I'm also not American. So, sorry, if I sound stupid. But isn't the cause of 9/11 less 'it's the US fault for meddling in {country's name} affair' and more 'Osama Bin Laden was an insane madman whose actual reason for attacking the US is because the US liberated Kuwait'? I mean, a sure, US foreign policy might have a correlative relationship with 9/11, but there is no definite proof whatsoever that this is a casual relationship. What does make a casual relationship, is, however, the bruised ego and pride of the middle-eastern Arabs because their once great empire was destroyed and colonized, with 9/11. Once of the proofs of this is that 9/11 is the date when the Austrian forces in the Siege of Vienna received reinforcements. I'm just speaking as a cold-blooded analyst, here. The fastest way to destroy all terrorist cells within the Middle-east is therefore not to boost their ego, but to utterly crush it as to avoid the golden mean fallacy. Also, does anyone here realize that there has been 17000 deadly terrorist attacks committed by Muslim extremists since 9/11? And they barely get press. I am honestly confused as to how Americans think.

edited 12th Sep '11 8:36:15 AM by greedyspectator

Sorry, I thought you said for a moment that the reinforcements of the Siege of Vienna was a cause of 9/11.

Which I suppose it was, indirectly.

Correlation, not cause. I'm sorry if I seem insistent, but the difference is really important. Let's say that the Siege of Vienna is A, and 9/11 is B. Since they are perpetrated by people with similar ideals (Islam, whether true Islam or not), they are correlated. However, A can cause B, and B can cause A (given a time machine is available) and A and B can be caused by an entirely different element, C. I am merely pointing out that the correlation is proof that the 9/11 attacks are caused by bruised ego. Again, seems a bit complicated.

edited 12th Sep '11 8:59:59 AM by greedyspectator

It also helps that the US pretty much directly let extremists in Afghanistan have their way with the nation as soon as the Soviets left, instead of keeping our support of the moderate elements of the resistance.

I also don't understand why you think that attacks by muslim extremists don't get press. Even that dumbass in Detroit that lit his underwear on fire dominated the news for a week or so, let alone things like fort hood.

edited 12th Sep '11 12:17:14 PM by YoungMachete

Thread Hop: fuckin' A, Kino, fuckin' A.

Tell them what's what.

Kino was angrier than usual that day.

17000 terrorist attacks is one hell of a stretch, unless you're trying to count every single attack by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan since the wars started.

Osama Bin Laden wasn't motivated by what we did for Kuwait in the first gulf war, the main motivation of people like him is (tangibly) our support for Israel and (not so tangibly) the idea that Western values are corrupting the middle eastern people, those two subjects are the main motivations for Islamic Terrorism(if you don't count our current actions in Afghan and Iraq, as those are both definitely motivators themselves).

The Middle East, as a broad spectrum of peoples and cultures, don't all uniformly hate the West. Those that do don't have any one unifying reason for their hatred. Those that do milk every angle they can, from tangible politics to religious fervor, in order to recruit more followers.

edited 12th Sep '11 2:50:48 PM by Barkey

Rufus, you fail Political Warfare for life. For the last time a Nuclear Strike WOULD NOT INCREASE THE RISKS OF A NUCLEAR COUNTERSTRIKE. Nuclear Proliferation is already saturated so any after effects of a strike would be totally redundant. Tom is right and wrong, while there would be nowhere near the Tom Clancy-like upheaval you suggest for using a Nuke, a nuclear response would not work because NUKES DON’T WORK ON NG Os You need a Government that has an ostensible duty to its people a centralized command, a capital, territory etc. For all the nuances of Nuclear Blackmail/ Brinkmanship to work. You can’t use the Big Red Button on an asymmetrical enemy, that's why we lost Vietnam despite the vast tech leap. (There was also the Soviet Nukes backing China and NK up, but a nuclear strike wouldn’t work anyway, unless it was aimed at the larger states backing NK up, which was Mac Arthur's plan, which would've failed due to the impossibility of a guarantee of non-reprisal.) The Godzilla Threshold Theory is a myth. The reason we don’t use Nukes is due to A) The Fact that that snot what they’re current primary use is (they’re a deterrent not a weapon) B) Due to the damage the are VERY rarely feasible and C) Nobody is stupid enough to warrant one. There is no Geo-Political Nuclear taboo, THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS AS TABOOS IN GEO-POLITICAL WARFARE.

Key points capbolded.

edited 12th Sep '11 6:05:06 PM by JusticeMan

Yeah forget nukes, we got MOA Bs. Pretty destructive, yet none of the political fallout!

^^

While I agree that a nuclear strike on an NGO is ineffective as they generally lack a centralized location they operate in, I disagree with you completely on a nuclear counter-attack being a myth.

No attack goes unpunished, and the punishment is most likely to be of the same or greater intensity to the original attack.

Yes, but you have to recognize that in the vent of a Nucler Strike; there are very nil odds that we'd be targeting a Nuclear Foe, and even less nil odds that anyone with Nukes would be on their sides; couple that with the ridiculously strict imposations on Nuclear proliferation right now®

edited 12th Sep '11 10:32:10 PM by JusticeMan

Since this thread has become a shouting match over what would or wouldn't happen following a first-strike nuclear attack, it's ceased to serve any useful function.

Locking.