Post #15,566
10/29/01 11:48:54 AM
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Agreed.
If Taliban-allied forces got control of Pakistan, given their current actions re: mounting anti-aircraft batteries on people's houses, I seriously doubt they would have no qualms about using nukes against U.S. staging areas... Maybe 1-2 to get our attention, and then threatening to use more at "undisclosed targets" to try and get us out of there.
Frankly, I hope our response wouldn't be "nuclear" - fuel air explosives can do just about as much damage as a small-medium sized nuke, and don't carry the political heat that nukes do.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #15,587
10/29/01 3:03:37 PM
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Re: Agreed.
You know, what I do not get is how bin Laden and the Taliban figure it is a good idea to kill mass numbers of Americans. What would prevent us, after having suffered a nuclear hit, from nuking someone just make us feel better. I'm not advocating such a thing, but we are armed up to our eyeballs.
I presume the calculus is that we are such nice guys we wouldn't do such a thing. Truman looked into an abyss too and we know what he did. Do we (a) take a really big mass hit and do nothing, or do we (b) figure that only a massive show of how many we are willing to kill will show the enemy we mean business too.
If this is the crazy train we are on (and I don't know that we are), just for the sake of argument, how do we get off. It seems the only way to get off is to accede to the Islmo-Nuts and do what they say. But that would mean the destruction of our whole economy and way of life. Uh...I don't think we are going to do that. They are really playing with fire.
Gerard Allwein
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Post #15,594
10/29/01 3:49:01 PM
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The more I see of this thing . .
. . the more I think thr 50 years estimate from England is way low, and that we're being way optomistic about what we will have to do to end this. Scenarios: - We do nothing (already too late for that). Islamics say "We hit the evil Americans hard, but they were too cowardly to hit back". Result: we take hit after hit until we just can't take it any more and nuke half the world.
- We respond from strength. Islamics say, "We must avenge the wrongs done to us! Death to all Americans! Death to anyone who cooperates with them!". Result: they attack us until there are none of them left.
We are not the ones being given the choice of whether or not vast numbers of people will be killed. Our only choice is if it is us, or them, that gets killed. What we are facing is the necessity of annihilating an entire culture - a culture that has us built in to its deepest levels as an evil to be destroyed at all cost. The alternative to that annihilation is to accept periodic slaughter of thousands, then 10s of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of our own, from bombs, biological and nuclear weapons. It would be best to do this with as little loss of life as possible, but I think any "peaceful" scenario is hoplessly unrealistic. These people will not accept our existance, and will only increase their attacks from here on out. Even abandoning Israel will do no good - Israel is just a convenient excuse, and they'll find another if they need to. If everything goes right, we might be able to do the job with killing only a few tens of thousands of people. If everything goes wrong, we will end up killing tens of millions. In any case, it is going to be a long process, and very unpleasant. [link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #15,609
10/29/01 6:43:17 PM
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Re: The 1st targets of mass attack
Would have to be
1st Pakistan (to secure their nukes)
2nd Indonesia (IF we go at Pakistan, Indonesia will go amok)
3rd would be anyone's guess as the list would escalate so quickly
It is worrying isn't it.
As I said days back - I sure as sh** hope our leaders had a sound & viable exit strategy from Afghanistan.
Cheers
Doug Marker
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Post #15,641
10/29/01 10:20:21 PM
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As heard on Stern (a massive audience who agrees with him)
any more attacks here turn kabul into a parking lot, vaporise it. Then politely ask if anyone has any objections, then give them a day or 2 to evacuate bahgdad and vaporise it, not one brick upon another, ask if anyone else has a problem, politely.
I hope the poor simple folk over there understand that we are not at war with Islam, but if invited repeatedly to do so we will fsck some folks up.
Scary link, from the bbc about the fundies in pakistan,
[link|http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/from_our_own_correspondent/newsid_1595000/1595806.stm|scary sumbitch]
thanx,
bill
tshirt front "born to die before I get old"
thshirt back "fscked another one didnja?"
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Post #15,663
10/30/01 1:04:30 AM
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Fortunately Stern does not run our foreign policy.
Destroying major cities would just destroy the people most likely to be agreeable with us, leaving the most radical and dangerous untouched and even less controlled - and everyone else really pissed off and ready to support all and any attacks on us.
We must destroy the ignorant culture that spawns the Taliban and their like, but if we start by killing the most educated, then we must commit to killing every person of Islamic faith in the world.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #15,670
10/30/01 1:46:21 AM
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Yep.. our instincts were honed in the OK Corral
Instant six-gun relief at the drop of a smarl.
And not in the artful defuzing of YAN theological fantasy about ~ Thou gettest to sin now, whilst I gettest to sin later, and enjoy watching thee drawn & quartered repeatedly, for mine amusement at thy suffering yada yada
We're down to one Rich-folk simplistic-reward fantasy of the Cosmos VS a nasty variant of simplistic-vengeance fantasy; the latter held by some humongous number o' Poor-folk.. (and accumulated from years of watchin the revelry through that glass window: from outside in the snow.)
And here we are stuck.. without any Ministry of Propaganda at all! except Wag-Ed and the Merchants Corps. N'all they know about is: sellin stuff on credit cards to pushovers.
Odds?
A.
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Post #15,758
10/30/01 2:07:16 PM
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Disagree on 3rd
1st Pakistan (to secure their nukes)
2nd Indonesia (IF we go at Pakistan, Indonesia will go amok)
3rd would be anyone's guess as the list would escalate so quickly Don't entirely agree. I believe there would not be a 3rd. After having anihilated[sic] the two most radical Islamic states, with extreme predjudice and without compunction, the other states would be very interested in not being 3rd on the list. I believe this because after having smacked Khaddafi around, he has been a non-issue. I think that a massive show of unrestrained force (should it come to that), along with the message that there is plenty more where that came from, would be sufficient deterent. Now, of course, there will be some dufus somewhere that will "want to test the resolve", yada, yada, yada. So long as we are willing to exercise that resolve, the situation shouldn't escalate. (This doesn't, of course, address the side effects of such a course of action...that's probably fodder for another thread.) jb4
(Resistance is not futile...)
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Post #15,775
10/30/01 4:40:15 PM
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Problem with your logic . .
. . is that the "countries" (as in governments) do not control the terrorists, nor do they necessarily know who they are or where they are. Those persons are perfectly happy to have us flatten the cities, which are rife with Western influences and "backsliding" Muslims anyway. It will just harden the remaining people to their cause.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #15,811
10/30/01 9:44:50 PM
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fsck it pull the plug
make the khyber pass a plain one heavy on Tikrit, Bagdad and all the palaces, one 5 kiloton on Bethlehem, Mecca and Jerusalem at the same time, then sit back and say we aint prejuidiced, anyone else want some.
Last resort if a nuke goes off Stateside.
thanx,
bill
tshirt front "born to die before I get old"
thshirt back "fscked another one didnja?"
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Post #15,799
10/30/01 7:23:36 PM
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Re: Other trouble spots that would follow
Bangaldesh (they would be fodder for suicide attacks as country is to poor to do anything)
Malaysia would overthrow Mahattir but can't be sure what they could achieve
Iraq would have internal riots - hopefully Saddam would only be able to rattle his sword
Saudia Arabia might topple then things get nasty as we would have to go in to sieze the oilfields
Gulf States & Oman would probably manage to keep out
Algeria would become a trouble spot
Egypt could fall apart
By this time the Arab & Muslim world would be seething.
Would have to be start of WWW 3
Doug
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Post #15,692
10/30/01 7:14:39 AM
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Ever read Douglas Adams?
In particular, in the third book of the five book trilogy (things got out of hand), entitled, "God, the Universe, and Everything", he explains how a small race of people in a small planet in a dust cloud with their single sun, once learned about the rest of the Universe and how it had to go. So they, the Krikkiters, built war space ships and war robots and proceeded to eliminate every other civilization.
Judiciary Prag, at the trial, reasoned that they were never going to stop, always coming at you. Thomas Friedman has an editorial on the NYT site explaining how little Saudis in school (not the rich ones who are sent overseas to schools) are being taught that Muslims must always stick together and always consider an infidel to be an enemy.
I think that Douglas Adams had a model for modern Islam that is becoming too difficult to deny. And Friedman made the point that we need to tell the truth about Islam to Islamics and to ourselves. Then we and they must decide what to do about it.
Gerard Allwein
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Post #15,734
10/30/01 11:51:33 AM
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Was that "Life, the Universe, and Everything?"
Or did the U.S. censorship Nazis change that one over here? Just curious...
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #15,768
10/30/01 3:47:19 PM
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Re: Was that "Life, the Universe, and Everything?"
You are correct, it is "Life, the Universe, and Everything". My memory slips at times.
Gerard Allwein
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Post #15,604
10/29/01 4:53:25 PM
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Part of his goal
Part of bin Laden's goal is to die a martyrs death. He wants to trigger a general uprising by all Muslims against the West. Of course he doesn't want to die till he's achieved his goals, he's not going to make it easy for us but neither is he going to go away or give up.
Continually provoke the US with greater and greater acts of violence, because each greater response creates more Muslims willing to fight for him. It's a rather twisted reasoning, but logically sensible.
Jay
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