Paris :(Follow

^^^This is why I only made the one post^^^

Yes, it is true for whoever Beats the Drums.


Specially for those that beat the drums from their armchairs.

I wish that anytime we decide to send our troops to War, we would budget for the rebuilding of what we destroy.

And your point is?

This sums up my feelings of how to respond to Terrorist.

Paris You Don't Want to Read This

Apparently, this guy was just nominated for dad of the year award.

I am not sure I could lie to my kid like that.

What is interesting is in all of this to me is that PL's current leadership decided to use attacks as an excuse not to take in more refugees.

While this will surely be used as a pretext, it really is a valid concern that overloading administrative overhead around refugees is about the ideal way to move operators into somewhere you want them to be if you are a guerrilla force. That's unfortunate, and unfair to the wild majority of potential refugees, but it exists and can't be hand-waived away. I'd be ok with the added risk, but there absolutely is added risk.

*sings* Tell me why does it have to be so complicated?

I am not drunk.

Interesting. Do you remember Afganistan in the 60s? It was not that bad back then. What changed?

I would question your assertion that the west is winning the 'cultural war'. The steady rise of ISIS and its militants seem to indicate otherwise.

I would also question the premise that the 'west' 'sit[s] around peacefully trading and talking'. For example, TTP and the lawyers do a lot of damage. It is a war by other means. There is just a lot less blood.

As for the cultural conflicts, are you really sufficiently blind not to see the close parallel between what you said and what is being propagated in US ( sold as epic us vs them struggle )?

As for the validity of the strategy itself, I am willing to admit that I am not smart enough to consider all the options. I also cannot foresee the future. I do, however, think that a culture propagated by ISIS cannot survive long without cannibalizing itself and simply imploding. I fully acknowledge that I may be wrong and I readily state that I am glad I am not at the helm making this decision now.

Who knows if 9/11 would have happened if we didn't **** around everywhere.. I am just saying.

Edit: Also, "let's not do what we're doing!" approach seems a lot more sensible when the alternative visibly did not ******* produce results that were expected.


Edited, Nov 17th 2015 6:57pm by angrymnk

Edited, Nov 17th 2015 6:59pm by angrymnk

I was born in 1968, so I obviously don't remember it directly. Kinda not the point though. What changed was the rise of a global economy, and with it a spread of predominantly western cultural ideas, which spread even to such remote areas of the world as Afghanistan. Afghanistan in say the early 90s was the locus of the most dogmatic Islamic government specifically because it was remote and that's where the Muslims who became increasingly disaffected with their own political leaders inability to stave off the cultural shift went. It's where they went to plot and plan and try to figure out how to reverse the cultural changes they were seeing in their own lands. McDonalds in Mecca has more to do with this conflict than US troops in Baghdad. Their kids growing up listening to US pop music. That's what they are fighting against. Not who's soldiers are where.



It indicates a culture that can't win a direct culture war and has switched to violence as a means to enforce itself on the rest of the world. If their culture could win against the West, they wouldn't need to strap bombs onto themselves to make a point. Think about it.



Whatever you want to call it. My point is that the physical conflict itself is just a symptom of the real conflict. That conflict is about culture. The west is certainly proactive when it comes to spreading culture, but has been purely reactive with regard to physical conflicts. We can debate specifics if you want, but the general trend is pretty clear.



I'm not sure what you mean by this. I'm going to guess that you're talking about the conflict between cultural inclusion (aka: Melting Pot) versus minority identity and exclusion (black/latino/whatever communities). Assuming that's the case, you are correct in that it is somewhat similar. Maybe not as extreme, but the ultimate issue of "I don't want to be a part of a larger culture, so I'll lash out at it" is similar.



Sure. But that's like saying that you don't really think the Reich can survive for a thousand years, so there's no sense is fighting against that Adolph chap (too much? Godwins?). Regardless, it's somewhat irrelevant in terms of a western response to this.



Oh. It absolutely would not have happened. It's quite certain that if the western nations simply adopted Islam as their state religions and required everyone to comply with the most extreme interpretations of said religion, that there would be no need for violent conflict. I'm not sure that's a great solution though. Even not going that far, you're basically arguing that if only we weren't like we are, then people who aren't like we are would like us better, so we should change so as not to offend them. Um... But isn't that kind of the same as them forcing us to be more like them?

It's the nature of a cultural conflict that one culture will tend to win out over time. Personally, I like my culture which allows people to be diverse and whatnot, over one that requires everyone to comply with a single dogmatic vision. If that's not worth fighting for, then what is?



One could argue that it was producing the results that were expected, until Obama pulled us back on every front, thus giving the enemy room to rebuild and attack. Which is precisely what is happening now. How did we go from a point in 2011/2012 where Obama was declaring Al-queda dead/defeated, and the threat eliminated as justification for withdrawing, to today where violence is erupting all over the place? We pulled out of Iraq, turning a hard fought victory into a defeat. We failed to act in Egypt, and nearly got an Islamic state there, until our connections with the military changed things. We failed to act in Libya, and turned what could have been a pro-west revolution into a shaky environment filled with anti-west Islamic groups. We failed to act in Syria, and turned (again) what could have been a pro-west revolution into a drug out civil war, in which our vacuum has allowed anti-west Islamic groups to thrive, and in conjunction with our retreat from Iraq, allowed ISIS to exist in the first place. And heck, while we're on the subject, our success in Iraq was so great that at one point, young people in Iran were taking to the streets and primed to revolt against their government as well. And then, as with the others, we failed to act, allowing a potential world changing pro-west movement to be quashed.

Oh. And when I say "we", I really mean "Obama". You want to know why Paris just suffered that attack? Failure of the Obama administration to actually follow through with our actions in the previous administration. Agree or disagree with Bush's strategy, it was working. And to just abandon it halfway has resulted in global catastrophe. Once you make a decision to act, you really ought to complete the action. Else it will blow up in your face. Like it is right now.

The idea that this would not be happening if not for Bush and his evil violent policies is belied by the fact that 9/11 happened well before any of those supposed evil policies were enacted. As I mentioned above, western military actions are always in response to these sorts of attacks. Trying to put the effect before the cause is somewhat absurd. The people who engage in these sorts of attacks will engage in them against any opposition at all. Whether that's someone drawing a picture, or a military invasion of a nation is only a matter of scale. Saying we should just draw pictures but not fight is a doomed strategy. Without fighting, we'll eventually lose the ability to engage in any other non-Islamic activities. Is that what we should be doing? That just seems monumentally stupid.

Time has not historically chosen their "man/person of the year" based on the idea that said person is an awesome cuddly bundle of neato.

They choose them because said person is said to have been "highly influential" in some way. Hitler was pretty fuggin' influential that year.

What's your point? Do you think anyone in 1938 thought Hitler was a good guy, outside of Germany at least? Stalin was Man of the Year later, do you think we were smiling approvingly at him? Kruschev? Khomeni?

It's not about approval. It's about impact.