I'm No Fucking Buddhist
Alright, I gotta respond to my boy Retro's post concerning the concept of fighting terrorism. I completely disagree that you cannot fight terrorism because it is a tactic, and not a defined group of people. Let's try and lay this out logically.
The USA is the World Police, right? You say it, I say it, we all know it. Like it or hate it, agree or disagree with this policy, but our military is dispersed around the world enforcing our brand of law. So let's take that basic premise and liken it to your local police force.
Nobody ridicules your local cops from using the phrase 'fighting crime'. Crime is not a defined act, just a catchall phrase that describes a huge variety of misdeeds. And just as those misdeeds can enumerated and described individually, so can the acts of terrorists be enumerated and described as terrorist acts. So if the notion of fighting terrorism is preposterous, so must be the notion of fighting crime.
Those who commit crime are also not a defined group of people. And of course we know not who they might be, or what crime they might commit, before it occurs. But that doesn't stop our local police from attempting to pre-empt criminal acts. Likewise, the inability of our World Police Force to define the exact group responsible for a given terrorist act should in no way dissuade them from attempting to pre-empt terrorist acts.
And when you local coppers pull you over, do you submit because you agree with their ideology? Do you stand in the street and start fires and throw rocks because they're butting into your life and your affairs? Does it really matter what you think? The distinct and sole purpose of local police is to enforce rules; To interject themselves into your personal affairs and enforce upon you the law, whether you dig it or not. You don't have to respect the police. You don't have to agree with what they say. But yer gonna do what they say or be swamped with physical trauma.So when we dispatch our World Police to other parts of the world where the local police have no control and genocide is the norm, it really doesn't matter whether they want the World Police there or not. It's completely irrelevant whether you or I or they believe our military should even BE the World Police. They're there, and you better fuckin' submit or be swamped with SERIOUS HURT.
And what about talking and reasoning with these undefinable 'criminals/terrorists'? What about changing your own practices and ideologies to appease those who so violently oppose you? If your local police used these methods, they'd be negotiating with murderers and crackheads and gang members and child molesters. Your local coppers would be having roundtable meetings to figure out what THEY did to turn these downtrodden innocents into criminals. We'd be looking for root causes while coddling people who've violated laws and committed violence upon others.
Yes, after arrests are made, I too believe in providing help to people who would like to 'reform' and become a civil member of society. And yes, there may be root causes which could compel somebody to turn from regular to criminal. But the bottom line is still this: Break law, cop put you in jail.
Why is it so difficult for those haters here in our own country to grasp the concept that is equally simple: Shoot at American Soldier, you get killed. Our soldiers are not inciting violence by continuing to attack people who don't want us controlling them any more than the police are inciting violence by continuing to enforce laws upon people who don't want those laws enforced upon them. If that logic held true, we could reduce crime in the worst neighborhoods simply by removing police from those communities. Leave 'em alone, and they'll all go back to their peaceful lives, just like before the cops came in.
And the notion that our leaders are too stupid or dense to understand why the numbers of insurgents keeps increasing is also missing the point. It doesn't really matter whether there's more insurgents or less insurgents, just as it doesn't matter whether there's more criminals or less criminals. The goal isn't really to eradicate the criminals/terrorists/insurgents, but to get them to STOP KILLING PEOPLE. And if YOU saw somebody kill another person, would you say to yourself, "Leave him alone and he'll probably just stop killing."?
Really, what it boils down to is Americans who have such shame in themselves and their country because they truly believe America is, has been, and always will be responsible for the ills of the world. People who are forever looking for the root cause of the root cause of the root cause of the root cause while ignoring basic laws of humanity: There are some Bad, BAD, BAD people out there who kill because they can. And they've been killing for alot longer than our piddlyshit country has been in existence. And even after we're gone, they'll continue to kill because that's what their God tells them to do to infidels. Ya can't reason with that any more than you could reason with Charles Manson or Ted Kaczynski. But I'm sure that won't stop these sad, sorry multiculturalists from trying to figure out what WE did wrong to make Manson kill Sharon Tate...
The USA is the World Police, right? You say it, I say it, we all know it. Like it or hate it, agree or disagree with this policy, but our military is dispersed around the world enforcing our brand of law. So let's take that basic premise and liken it to your local police force.
Nobody ridicules your local cops from using the phrase 'fighting crime'. Crime is not a defined act, just a catchall phrase that describes a huge variety of misdeeds. And just as those misdeeds can enumerated and described individually, so can the acts of terrorists be enumerated and described as terrorist acts. So if the notion of fighting terrorism is preposterous, so must be the notion of fighting crime.
Those who commit crime are also not a defined group of people. And of course we know not who they might be, or what crime they might commit, before it occurs. But that doesn't stop our local police from attempting to pre-empt criminal acts. Likewise, the inability of our World Police Force to define the exact group responsible for a given terrorist act should in no way dissuade them from attempting to pre-empt terrorist acts.
And when you local coppers pull you over, do you submit because you agree with their ideology? Do you stand in the street and start fires and throw rocks because they're butting into your life and your affairs? Does it really matter what you think? The distinct and sole purpose of local police is to enforce rules; To interject themselves into your personal affairs and enforce upon you the law, whether you dig it or not. You don't have to respect the police. You don't have to agree with what they say. But yer gonna do what they say or be swamped with physical trauma.So when we dispatch our World Police to other parts of the world where the local police have no control and genocide is the norm, it really doesn't matter whether they want the World Police there or not. It's completely irrelevant whether you or I or they believe our military should even BE the World Police. They're there, and you better fuckin' submit or be swamped with SERIOUS HURT.
And what about talking and reasoning with these undefinable 'criminals/terrorists'? What about changing your own practices and ideologies to appease those who so violently oppose you? If your local police used these methods, they'd be negotiating with murderers and crackheads and gang members and child molesters. Your local coppers would be having roundtable meetings to figure out what THEY did to turn these downtrodden innocents into criminals. We'd be looking for root causes while coddling people who've violated laws and committed violence upon others.
Yes, after arrests are made, I too believe in providing help to people who would like to 'reform' and become a civil member of society. And yes, there may be root causes which could compel somebody to turn from regular to criminal. But the bottom line is still this: Break law, cop put you in jail.
Why is it so difficult for those haters here in our own country to grasp the concept that is equally simple: Shoot at American Soldier, you get killed. Our soldiers are not inciting violence by continuing to attack people who don't want us controlling them any more than the police are inciting violence by continuing to enforce laws upon people who don't want those laws enforced upon them. If that logic held true, we could reduce crime in the worst neighborhoods simply by removing police from those communities. Leave 'em alone, and they'll all go back to their peaceful lives, just like before the cops came in.
And the notion that our leaders are too stupid or dense to understand why the numbers of insurgents keeps increasing is also missing the point. It doesn't really matter whether there's more insurgents or less insurgents, just as it doesn't matter whether there's more criminals or less criminals. The goal isn't really to eradicate the criminals/terrorists/insurgents, but to get them to STOP KILLING PEOPLE. And if YOU saw somebody kill another person, would you say to yourself, "Leave him alone and he'll probably just stop killing."?
Really, what it boils down to is Americans who have such shame in themselves and their country because they truly believe America is, has been, and always will be responsible for the ills of the world. People who are forever looking for the root cause of the root cause of the root cause of the root cause while ignoring basic laws of humanity: There are some Bad, BAD, BAD people out there who kill because they can. And they've been killing for alot longer than our piddlyshit country has been in existence. And even after we're gone, they'll continue to kill because that's what their God tells them to do to infidels. Ya can't reason with that any more than you could reason with Charles Manson or Ted Kaczynski. But I'm sure that won't stop these sad, sorry multiculturalists from trying to figure out what WE did wrong to make Manson kill Sharon Tate...
posted by BWIII | 5:03 PM
2 Comments:
Allow me to retort as well.. and I AM a "fucking Buddhist." :)
The reason you cannot draw a parallel with fighting crime in this situation is because in the "war on terrorism", our military believes they can "win". You CAN fight crime, but to assert that at some point you'd defeat it altogether is as preposterous as the notion that you can defeat terrorism. I should have been clearer in that regard, for it's not simply fighting against these people that I think is impossible, it's WINNING.
That's the real problem I see - there's no end in sight, no victory to be had - yet the Bush cartel would like you to believe that we can defeat them, and that we'll be safer here by destroying their country. I would propose that by getting involved in the first place, we have brought more negativity our way (and they way of the British peoples).
If America's government were learning from their mistakes, then they'd realize that not every bad situation needs to be remedied by our military. Yes, one cannot argue that Saddam was a good person who treated his citizens well - but if we overthrew HIS regime of genocide and secret police, then what about Africa? I know I'm REALLY sounding like a Buddhist now, but I didn't forget that Bush was supposed to be "hunting terrorists" when he began blowing up Iraq.
It's the rationale for war that people forget about. Nevermind that we're already over there and have been, if anything, aiding in the growth of al Qaeda and anti-American sentiment in general. Their recruitment has gone through the roof, largely because people's relatives are being killed, and once some or all of their families are dead, they want to fight back. I don't blame an American solider for shooting back - I blame the moronic leadership that put him in that position in the first place. It's been proven six thousand different ways by now - there was no tie between 9/11 and Iraq - especially Saddam.
Another thing that disgusts me is the elevation of "American lives" over anyone else's. Just because someone opposes our way of thinking doesn't mean we are right and they are wrong. If there were an entire country organized around cannibalism, for example, and they weren't really bothering anyone else ... why get involved there?
I'd never make the assertion that we could refrain from foreign politics enough to draw all the world's hatred away from us. I think enough disdainful acts have been carried out in the name of America that people everywhere have legitimate reasons to dislike her. This CAN'T be making things better for us.
To top it all off, this particular campaign just reeks of mismanagement. For fuck's sake, we GAVE Saddam weapons of mass destruction during the Iraq-Iran conflict of the 1980's. George Bush Sr.'s Gulf War may have been in the name of liberating Kuwait, but from the very first assertion that Iraq was tied to al Qaeda, all of us alligned against the idea knew this was pointless.
If we are going to "fight terrorism", not forgetting that we will not ever win, it doesn't need to include the destruction of entire cities, detaining and torturing thousands of innocent people, drumming up more opposition for us by continuing to kill, and BY BEGINNING IN THE WRONG COUNTRY! It should be blatantly obvious by now that we dove head first into this conflict without the slightest bit of insight.
Finally, the notion that you can get people to stop killing other people by killing THEM is absurd. Violence only breeds more violence, and when you read accounts of Iraqis who have had family members killed in this conflict, especially in cases where they weren't fighting back, you can only imagine what having that as motivation would drive you to do.
I'd also like to add that I know I made some spelling and grammar mistakes here. It's 8am and I'm groggy!
Also, I intended to suggest that our (potentially failing) intelligence services should be used in this "war on terror", rather than the overt military action that has started a cycle of violence which may never end. If we want to learn where these terrorists are, we need to leave Iraq, which we already know had no real terrorist infrastructure to begin with. Then we need to embed intelligence agents in these groups, taking our time, and find whatever structure exists.
A lot of foreign journalists have reported that many suicide bombs and other attacks that gave credit to al Qaeda do not have any real ties with the group. They are using that name to make their group seem larger in size than it really is.
One very upsetting problem with this is that we have a president who's unwilling to admit he made a mistake. There are days when it seems like the only motivation left in fighting this 'war' is his own pride. I say an alternative approach is needed in order to suppress those who wish to harm us.
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