Osama Bin Laden is Dead

Started by Remiel, May 01, 2011, 10:42:08 PM

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MagicalPen

Nothing is more barbaric then man killing man.

I agree that things like Nukes and Gas should be eliminated from war, but the size of the bullet that you use to kill some one with should not be. I rather think its crueler to intentionally wound some one (the NATO round) then it is to kill them - causing them grievous bodily harm, pain and suffering.

But lets keep this talk about Osama's death.

I would love to see the official report on his death and the events surrounding it. The Muslim World has apparently verified his death now as they are having Mourning sessions and the like. But I think its possible to see how effective his death is/was since there have been no retaliations or demonstrations in the streets over it yet.

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HairyHeretic

If you're dealing with a conventional war, I kill a soldier and he's dead. End of story.

I wound him and you have to take care of him, draining your resources. Either way he is still removed as a combat effective, but I tie up more of your side in medical needs.
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You too one day shall die
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Pointless Digression

Quote from: Vekseid on May 02, 2011, 07:05:47 PM
"Kill them all, the Lord will know his own." is still remembered today as "Kill them all and let God sort them out." Gnosticism in general has a long history of persecution, beginning with giving too much respect to women. Considering that Gnosticism holds some of Christianity's most compelling mythology, it's certainly spoken of.

It's a fair point, but I face obvious problems in referencing a belief system or idea that has been genuinely forgotten about. I used the example of the Gnostic belief systems to point out how those religions, once practiced by thousands, are now relegated to historical footnotes and intriguing bits of trivia.
         

MagicalPen

Quote from: HairyHeretic on May 03, 2011, 04:18:25 PM
If you're dealing with a conventional war, I kill a soldier and he's dead. End of story.

I wound him and you have to take care of him, draining your resources. Either way he is still removed as a combat effective, but I tie up more of your side in medical needs.

But how much does that happen? In conventional warfare, everyone has a Medic. I would think that seeing your buddy killed is more demoralizing then seeing him injured.

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Zakharra

Quote from: Brandon on May 03, 2011, 04:03:35 PM
The reason for the rules of warfare that was created during the Geneva convention was to take a lot of the barbarism out of war. If conflicts in both world wars, the korean war, and desert storm did not go by those rules we would see a lot of things done by both sides that we would consider atrocities right now.

Simply put, the rules of war are there for a reason and I would never want to see a world where war was conducted with out them

The problem with that is the rules of war only work when you're fighting another nation. If you're fighting a movement like Al-Queda, who does not fight by those rules, you end up hampering yourself a lot if you follow every rule.

Wars are won by getting down on the level of the enemy and fighting them at their level. You can bemoan the people you are killing while you do it and afterwards, but sadly, sometimes it is necessary.  The last wars we fought without any real rules was WWI (the first use of machineguns in a war, nerve and poison gas attacks) and WWII (nuclear bombs, carpet and fire bombing of enemy cities). The Korean and Vietnam wars were fought with rules and we lost or ended up in a stalemate of sorts. Desert Storm was a curb stomp through better technology and equipment and even that ended up being a stalemate for 10 years.

Oniya

Quote from: Eeyore on May 03, 2011, 04:59:50 PM
But how much does that happen? In conventional warfare, everyone has a Medic. I would think that seeing your buddy killed is more demoralizing then seeing him injured.

That would depend on how he was injured.  Severe burns, mangled limbs, and the like may not kill, but every single time you see your buddy, you have to deal with the results of his injury.  He has to deal with the results of his injury every day.  At the time I left DC (part of that job included delivering computers to WRAMC), we were still devoting time and resources to Gulf War Syndrome, which doesn't even have the same sort of visible impact as amputations or burn scars.
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Zeitgeist

Quote from: Zamdrist of Zeitgeist on May 02, 2011, 06:01:32 PM
That said, closing Gitmo may have denied us a crucial piece of intelligence that led us to the compound in Pakistan.

Quote from: Vekseid on May 02, 2011, 07:05:47 PM
Gitmo is still open. What are you talking about?

You read what I wrote, right? Note my usage, and emphasis of may and the tense of my words. One of Obama's official declarations was to close Gitmo. Ultimately that effort was defunded, and Gitmo was not closed. But had Obama had his his way, it may have been, and as a possible result we may (note: may) not have had the intelligence that lead to this success.

That is what I meant.

Oniya

I'll admit, the phrasing was puzzling to me as well.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Inerrant Lust

Had Gitmo never been made into the kind of place it is, we might not have also fueled anti-american sentiment that created far more insurgents than any Al Qaeda propaganda could.

Had we never gone into Iraq, we might have been able to focus all our attention on Afghanistan and found Osama years earlier.

Zakharra

Quote from: Inerrant Lust on May 03, 2011, 06:07:45 PM
Had Gitmo never been made into the kind of place it is, we might not have also fueled anti-american sentiment that created far more insurgents than any Al Qaeda propaganda could.

Anything we do will fuel anti-american sentiment. It's a lose-lose situation no matter what we do. We fight back, we are the evil Americans. We don't fight back, we are the evil and weak Americans.

HairyHeretic

Things like Gitmo are what ruins your reputation in the eyes of your allies, and those who are neutral towards you. Your enemies are going to hate you no matter what.
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You too one day shall die
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Fair fame of one who has earned it.

Jude

Last I heard as a result of a senate committee delving into the matter, this information was obtained by the use of normal interrogation techniques, not torture (or so called EITs).  You don't need GITMO to interrogate terrorists, the reason that place has a black eye is because of supposed systematically inhumane treatment of inmates.  There is no evidence that such treatment lead to this disclosure.

Obama's plan basically was to relocate GITMO to Illinois and treat the inmates better, not get rid of it entirely.  It was largely a PR move to make US allies more comfortable and comply with international regulations.

Callie Del Noire

Quote from: HairyHeretic on May 03, 2011, 06:57:35 PM
Things like Gitmo are what ruins your reputation in the eyes of your allies, and those who are neutral towards you. Your enemies are going to hate you no matter what.

Agreed. More oversight, and the concern that what was happening there after the incidents in Iraq did nothing for our national standing overseas. Gitmo was an illplanned mistake that could have been done a LOT better.

gaggedLouise

#63
Quote from: Zakharra on May 03, 2011, 06:25:54 PM
Anything we do will fuel anti-american sentiment. It's a lose-lose situation no matter what we do. We fight back, we are the evil Americans. We don't fight back, we are the evil and weak Americans.

Okay, so people around the world are just against America out of envy for American wealth and power? So inevitably conflict ensues, and if those others aren't strong enough to defeat you, then they deserve to be stepped upon, 'cause war is war.

If you strip off the moral hokum (war is war, right!) and resolve to judge only by military professionalism, how does this outlook reflect back on Pearl Harbor? Expert action, a daring raid  that was brilliantly executed and with great impact. Gotta admire those Japanese, don't we? And they had been provoked and treated less than fairly by the U.S. in the decades before 1941, no doubt about that. What could be wrong about the Japanese not wishing to be seen as weak anymore?

You could move the parallel a good deal closer in time, too. Seriously, I'm not anti-American but the main reason the battle of Fallujah (with bombings and attacks with self-flammable phosphor on civilians etc) isn't perceived as just as barbaric as 9/11 is that nobody saw it happening on live tv and much fewer people read about it in the morning papers.

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MagicalPen

Not quite sure I agree with your Pearl Harbor statement. The Japanese didn't commit it out of hatred for the Americans. They committed a well executed (and we won't get into conspiracy theories here) surprise attack on their only major threat to their Pacific Empire Expansion. The Americans had imposed an Oil Embargo on the Japanese due to the Japanese expansions in Asia - namely, their war of expansions against the Chinese (after that famous railroad incident in Manchuria). Japane was a growing threat to Western Interests in the area, which were all invaded during WW2 by the Japanese. Post Pearl-Harbor, the hatred was used as propaganda, to make the Japense inhuman and evil. Japan had also long been trying to turn itself into a country styled after the Western Countries, so one could say they were envious of the United States.

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Vekseid

Quote from: Zamdrist of Zeitgeist on May 03, 2011, 06:03:25 PM
You read what I wrote, right? Note my usage, and emphasis of may and the tense of my words. One of Obama's official declarations was to close Gitmo. Ultimately that effort was defunded, and Gitmo was not closed. But had Obama had his his way, it may have been, and as a possible result we may (note: may) not have had the intelligence that lead to this success.

That is what I meant.

Hassan Ghul was captured in 2004 in Iraq, and was never sent to Guantanamo Bay. He was interrogated normally, and revealed al-Kuwaiti's identity a few years later - before Obama was elected. The reason the raid occurred now was because Wikileaks released the courier's identity a week prior, which meant that Obama had to act on the information or risk Osama running off somewhere again.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8489866/WikiLeaks-Bin-Ladens-courier-trained-911-hijack-team.html

Of special note is that Khalid Sheik Muhammad never released the al-Kuwaiti's identity, despite the amount of waterboarding the US put him through.

Guantanamo did not work. Simple as that.

gaggedLouise

#66
Quote from: Eeyore on May 03, 2011, 08:10:52 PM
Not quite sure I agree with your Pearl Harbor statement. The Japanese didn't commit it out of hatred for the Americans. They committed a well executed (and we won't get into conspiracy theories here) surprise attack on their only major threat to their Pacific Empire Expansion. The Americans had imposed an Oil Embargo on the Japanese due to the Japanese expansions in Asia - namely, their war of expansions against the Chinese (after that famous railroad incident in Manchuria). Japane was a growing threat to Western Interests in the area, which were all invaded during WW2 by the Japanese. Post Pearl-Harbor, the hatred was used as propaganda, to make the Japense inhuman and evil. Japan had also long been trying to turn itself into a country styled after the Western Countries, so one could say they were envious of the United States.

Well, the U.S. (or the British) were not looking into plans to go to war with Japan on behalf of the Chinese, or out of concern over what the Chinese people were going through. They were looking to their own interests. And up to Pearl Harbor, Japan had not made much of a direct attack on Western bases in the Far East. The real underlying conflict was about trade and empire; the Japanese - the leading guys over there at least - wanted to secure bigger and better markets and corner some countries they could exploit, just like the Western powers had long been exploiting China and India and getting free (or very underpriced) labour and goods from them.. To get there, the Japanese figured they had to break down the imperial ambitions of the English and the Americans: they assumed they were doing what the U.S. had done with Spain forty years earlier, overrunning a weak empire. Of course they underestimated their enemy across the Pacific but who dares wins.

In the film The Last Emperor, there's a scene set in the mid-1930s where a high-ranking Japanese puts it to the emperor Pu Yi (whom the Japanese have assisted, but also made a puppet emperor of Manchukuo/Manchuria) that "if a man steals a little he is called a thief. If he steals a lot, he is called a hero. If he's an Englishman he may even get knighted. India has always had to pay for its conquerors; so must Manchukuo". That's imperialist logic and I don't think Teddy Roosevelt or even Winston Churchill would have denied that statement on principle, though they wouldn't have wanted it turned against their own countries.

I admit the ideology and the methods of the Japanese were openly racist on a quite different scale than anything the Americans (or the English post-1900, note I'm talking about concepts and strategies, and not just the actual magnitude of massacres etc) were doing, but the underlying idea that if you want an empire, a wide sphere of influence where you can set the rules of the game, then that want excuses kicking at everybody's butt and trying to subjugate anyone who is in your way - that idea has been just as much at home in American policymaking sometimes as it was in Japan then, and not just back in the days of WW2.

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Zakharra

Quote from: gaggedLouise on May 03, 2011, 07:06:39 PM
Okay, so people around the world are just against America out of envy for American wealth and power? So inevitably conflict ensues, and if those others aren't strong enough to defeat you, then they deserve to be stepped upon, 'cause war is war.

For the most part, that's right. Right now we are the only superpower in the world. Everything we do is scrutinized and commented on. From business, to politics, economics and more. Something happens, we get yelled at. A disaster happens and we have people screaming at us to help, which we do. We're a damned generous nation even to our enemies (after the Iran earthquake, we sent in aid). More so than any other nation.

Hell, we even give back land we've conquered in the last century. Otherwise we'd have Cuba, the Philippines, France, parts of Germany, Italy, North Africa, Kuwait, Iraq and other places. Instead, we have not claimed the land as ours, but gave it backto the people of the land.

If someone is trying to take us over, which is a goal of many radicals  (radical muslims are included because they use that as their focal point in attacking us and they get a LOT of support from fellow muslims), we should fight them.

gaggedLouise

#68
Quote from: Zakharra on May 03, 2011, 08:52:16 PM
For the most part, that's right. Right now we are the only superpower in the world. Everything we do is scrutinized and commented on. From business, to politics, economics and more. Something happens, we get yelled at. A disaster happens and we have people screaming at us to help, which we do. We're a damned generous nation even to our enemies (after the Iran earthquake, we sent in aid). More so than any other nation.

Hell, we even give back land we've conquered in the last century. Otherwise we'd have Cuba, the Philippines, France, parts of Germany, Italy, North Africa, Kuwait, Iraq and other places. Instead, we have not claimed the land as ours, but gave it backto the people of the land.

If someone is trying to take us over, which is a goal of many radicals  (radical muslims are included because they use that as their focal point in attacking us and they get a LOT of support from fellow muslims), we should fight them.
Establishing military bases and interfering with the groundwork of the economy of a country can be just as effective, or an even better option, as actually adding it to your land empire. You don't have to take responsibility for the safety of the people who live there or take charge of things like public health or the legal system, but the advantages fall to you anyway. Especially if your military is much more powerful and well-equipped than the armed forces of the country itself, and independent of the communications lines that others get to use.

In 1990 when Saddam had invaded Kuwait, a bunch of American diplomats and military men went to Riyadh to try to get the Saudis to allow them setting up U.S. military bases and airfields as a brotherly gesture of alliance to strengthen both Saudis and Americans against Saddam - and against others too. After some hesitation, the Saudi king agreed, but on strict condition that the bases would be temporary only and would be evacuated when the war was over (from Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies). Twenty years later the bases are still there and have been expanded. Saddam and bin Laden had nothing to do with each other, but you don't think this "elbowing yourself in" strategy provided al-Qaeda with some great arguments to add to their recruitment talk? It's all quite typical.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Jude

Quote from: gaggedLouise on May 03, 2011, 07:06:39 PM
Seriously, I'm not anti-American but the main reason the battle of Fallujah (with bombings and attacks with self-flammable phosphor on civilians etc) isn't perceived as just as barbaric as 9/11 is that nobody saw it happening on live tv and much fewer people read about it in the morning papers.
The fact that you seem to believe the italicized portion disproves your statement in bold.  There is zero credible evidence that WP was ever used against civilians.

The major source of your claim is a documentary that aired on the Italian state-run Television station which was later shown to be full of holes big enough that you could drive an aircraft carrier through.  "Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre" includes footage that the film makers claim is WP distribution onto a civilian population via helicopters.  There's just one problem:  you can't deliver WP that way -- that's not how WP is used.  They're probably countermeasures for blocking targeting of aircraft via surface to air weapon or illumination flares.  The film also has an ex-American serviceman testify that Fellujah was "just a massive killing of Arabs."  Amazing, after a bit of research it came out that he wasn't even present firsthand during the fight.  And that doesn't even begin to get into the "body" evidence which is also spurious.

During the battle of Felujah around 100 American Soldiers were killed, about 1300 Insurgents, and around 800 civilians.  On 9/11 about 3000 civilians and 19 terrorist hijackers died.  If you can't see the difference between those two, I find that stunning

Callie Del Noire

Quote from: Eeyore on May 03, 2011, 08:10:52 PM
Not quite sure I agree with your Pearl Harbor statement. The Japanese didn't commit it out of hatred for the Americans. They committed a well executed (and we won't get into conspiracy theories here) surprise attack on their only major threat to their Pacific Empire Expansion. The Americans had imposed an Oil Embargo on the Japanese due to the Japanese expansions in Asia - namely, their war of expansions against the Chinese (after that famous railroad incident in Manchuria). Japane was a growing threat to Western Interests in the area, which were all invaded during WW2 by the Japanese. Post Pearl-Harbor, the hatred was used as propaganda, to make the Japense inhuman and evil. Japan had also long been trying to turn itself into a country styled after the Western Countries, so one could say they were envious of the United States.

Fun note..the Japanese Naval Academy had put the question 'How would you attack Pearl Harbor?' on their exams for DECADES before the attacked it. The Japanese saw them as chief rivals for resources in the Pacific. And institutionally they never liked the smack in the face that Perry had given them. LONG memory.

gaggedLouise

#71
Quote from: Jude"Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre" includes footage that the film makers claim is WP distribution onto a civilian population via helicopters.  There's just one problem:  you can't deliver WP that way -- that's not how WP is used.

Agreed that what's shown in those particular clips could be a different kind of weapon, but that doesn't disprove that white phosphorus was used; and no one denies much of the town was levelled with many civilians buried under the rubble or smashed for life. There was minimal media presence during the entire battle, tv teams are not freely invited to that kind of fighting, and that was the main point of my argument. When a massacre or an atrocity is shown on live tv and primetime news for all to see it incites a much more powerful response, and governments and army staff know about this and adapt to it. So what gets shown on tv and what is kept off becomes a matter of importance.

QuoteThe film also has an ex-American serviceman testify that Fellujah was "just a massive killing of Arabs."  Amazing, after a bit of research it came out that he wasn't even present firsthand during the fight.

Jeff Englehart, the ground soldier you're thinking of, wasn't an eyewitness inside the city but he had been with the forces just outside and had been in touch with people who had gone in, or who had been higher up in the chain of command during the battle. So he may very well have acquired his information from other soldiers. There's nothing surprising about how soldiers who had seen ugly things committed by USAF first-hand would not want to talk openly to outside reporters about it.

QuoteDuring the battle of Felujah around 100 American Soldiers were killed, about 1300 Insurgents, and around 800 civilians.  On 9/11 about 3000 civilians and 19 terrorist hijackers died.  If you can't see the difference between those two, I find that stunning

It's the kind of attack and the fact of its indiscriminateness that matters, not simply which number is the larger one. I could have brought in Hiroshima but I wanted to keep to events that had happened in the last ten years and so Fallujah was the most obvious instance. Bombing was indiscriminate in Afghanistan during 2001-02 as well, thousands of civilians who had never had anything to do with al-Qaeda must have died - or perished during the cold winter months after their houses, crops and villages had been blown out.

Many of the victims in Fallujah were civilians and they had certainly not done anything in order to be roasted or maimed.The number of dead is not dependent on whether phosphorus was used, plus numbers of casulaties in this kind of thing are uncertain as a matter of course.

Even the people who were fighting in Fallujah were engaged in a perfectly legitimate effort to drive out the occupying power. They were not motivated simply by any support for Saddam but by a legit wish to become a part of the future of their country: the U.S. had not presented a viable future (I know you will contest this, Jude, but tough luck!). You don't have to share the political ideals of a given resistance group to see that their cause may be legitimate inasmuch as they're opposing a forceful occupant that's killing their friends and exploiting their country - isn't that part of the basic American idea of freedom, that a people has the inalienable right to kick the butt out of anyone trying to oppress them?

And by the same token, criticizing American policies or misguided acts of U.S. warfare, torture etc is not the same as being anti-American or even "un-American".

Before we get into a free-for-all about the Iraq war here I would point out that I didn't invoke Pearl Harbor and Fallujah to say Bush was bin-Laden or that FDR was Tojo, but to show that it doesn't work too well to defend all kinds of measures of war or vengeance, all in one, by saying "I've got a right to kick anyone I want to bits, that's what anyone does and if you're opposing it you just don't get why the USA is great".

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Will

Quote from: gaggedLouise on May 04, 2011, 12:58:42 AM
Agreed that what's shown in those particular clips could be a different kind of weapon, but that doesn't disprove that white phosphorus was used; and no one denies much of the town was levelled with many civilians buried under the rubble or smashed for life. There was minimal media presence during the entire battle, tv teams are not freely invited to that kind of fighting, and that was the main point of my argument. When a massacre or an atrocity is shown on live tv and primetime news for all to see it incites a much more powerful response, and governments and army staff know about this and adapt to it. So what gets shown on tv and what is kept off becomes a matter of importance.
It isn't up to others to disprove your claim.  If you make a claim, the burden of proof is on you.  You can't act as if it's a given that chemical weapons were used, when the only evidence for it you've given
has turned out to be thin.  Your point is that media aren't invited to that kind of fighting?  What makes you so sure it even was that kind of fighting?  Other than this video, that is.

QuoteBefore we get into a free-for-all about the Iraq war here I would point out that I didn't invoke Pearl Harbor and Fallujah to say Bush was bin-Laden or that FDR was Tojo, but to show that it doesn't work too well to defend all kinds of measures of war or vengeance, all in one, by saying "I've got a right to kick anyone I want to bits, that's what anyone does and if you're opposing it you just don't get why the USA is great".
That much, I agree with completely.  I just don't know if it applies to the situation you describe.  Or to the original topic.
If you can heal the symptoms, but not affect the cause
It's like trying to heal a gunshot wound with gauze

One day, I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
- Jack Kerouac

gaggedLouise

#73
Quote from: Will on May 04, 2011, 01:12:05 AM
It isn't up to others to disprove your claim.  If you make a claim, the burden of proof is on you.  You can't act as if it's a given that chemical weapons were used, when the only evidence for it you've given
has turned out to be thin.  Your point is that media aren't invited to that kind of fighting?  What makes you so sure it even was that kind of fighting?  Other than this video, that is.

I pointed to the use of WP as an example of the severity, the barbarity even, of the fighting - and also to hint at the crushing superiority of the US military vs those who were defending the city. My argument doesn't hinge on whether white phosphorus was actually used, though I think it's likely given the facts. WP isn't my smoking gun here. The real weight of what I'm saying is in the numbers of civilians killed and the fact that the methods of fighting blew the city and a large part of its population to bits. And it was typical of the Iraq war as a whole.

Quote from: gaggedLouiseBefore we get into a free-for-all about the Iraq war here I would point out that I didn't invoke Pearl Harbor and Fallujah to say Bush was bin-Laden or that FDR was Tojo, but to show that it doesn't work too well to defend all kinds of measures of war or vengeance, all in one, by saying "I've got a right to kick anyone I want to bits, that's what anyone does and if you're opposing it you just don't get why the USA is great".

Quote from: WillThat much, I agree with completely.  I just don't know if it applies to the situation you describe.  Or to the original topic.


Well, there's some posts above that pretty much say "if we can hit someone we don't like in the head and they don't manage to hit back at once then we're entitled to do so, normally we're nice guys but everybody hates us", Zakharra for instance. I don't think that's helpful in understanding where terrorism - or wars of liberation - comes from, and that's why I replied. As someone put it, "my eight year old son understands that the heroes of the first Star Wars trilogy are terrorists": what they're doing could be described (on the tv channels of the baddies) as terrorism.

I agree this isn't what the thread was originally about but the death of OBL raises these issues again, because of everything that's happened around the "war on terrorism" since 2001.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

RubySlippers

We should have kept Saddam in power he killed terrorists and was supporting us now they have another base to operate out of.

And who cares about the whys and wherefores in a clean, effective and skilled raid by our Navy Seal teams they got and eliminated OBL and the government collected the evidence of it that I SAY release photos of him getting shot, dead, on the ship and his funeral at sea with the test results run by several parties to be sure including Interpol. Was it just to do this - yes.

As for collateral damage in battle its war folks and civilians die in war like I said I would not have gone into Iraq the bastard was evil but contained and was helping us by not letting terrorists base there at least without him resisting it. That was a horrible move our enemy was in Afghanistan and by defualt Pakistan.

As for the Japanese they attacked Pearl Harbor, targeting civilians and military there and acting like animals to our troops and our allies during the war they deserved to get the first atomic bombs dropped on them. Did you forget the Battan Death March, Rape of Nanking, did human experiments on our soldiers and the murder of our soldiers by the Japanese when we tried to liberate islands. What did they think was going to happen? They got off lucky we helped them rebuild and now are an allie time proved Truman and our leaders right the use of the bombs and spared many more lives lost on both sides.