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Originally Posted by usafreedom3
Been a few days, and I have really enjoyed your arguments. There are many brave men and women overseas fighting to protect our rights to say these things freely, without Government persecution.
I will make this long (which I suppose will make some of you unhappy), but the one part that was discussed that struck me is the debate about emboldening our enemies.
We all have our points of view, but I think world events prove things better than anything and I will point to three of them involving Iran.
1) The original 444 day hostage taking in 1979. We appeared weak and impotent under Jimmy Carter, and they were testing our resolve to see what consequences there would be , if any. Our hostages stayed there for 444 days under Jimmy Carter, and do you rememeber the day they were realeased? Inauguration day for Ronald WIlson Reagan. Coincidence? HMMMMMM I feel very certain that the rhetoric coming from Reagan as he was campaigning compelled them to release our people as they did not want to mess with him. This taught them something about us, and about us under certain leaders, and this was really the beginning of terrorism in the modern day form we see today. They saw us as weak under Carter, and it emboldened them.
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I am sorry, but what a steaming load. You are correct that the inaguration date for release was no coincidence, but it was a middle finger salute to the outgoing advesary, not a quaking in their boots response to the incoming candidate.
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2) September 1987 when the Iranians were attempting to lay mines to blow up our naval ships. Instead of jacking around with UN type diplomacy (sometimes diplomacy is the right method), Reagan went on the offensive and attacked the mine laying ships. Message sent and crisis averted.
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Yes, true. But you seem to have conveniently misplaced the muscular US response to the bombings of our marines in Beiruit by Iranian backed hezbollah, between 1978 and 1987. Was there EVER a move that emboldened the Iranians more than that?
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3) This recent capture of British folks is a direct result of the enemy being emboldened. They are emboldened by a lot of the political and media rhetoric here and in Britain (and in Europe), and they perceive Bush and Blair as politically weakened (weakened from within). One needs to look no further than the "retreat and surrender act of 2007" that was just passed by a Democratic controlled congress as one of the main examples of our innate weakness under certain types of leadership.
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I basically agree that they see the US and Britain as being in a weakened position to respond, however I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on WHY the US is in a weakened position... specifically I think we are weakened because we are currently in a state of suspended animation due to our largely no-win positioning in Iraq. We are clearly using ALOT of "political capital" (for lack of a better term) to just stand still there, we don't have much effort or influence (or for that matter, resources) left over to engage in another large operation right now. The cat is pretty much fully occupied right now, giving the OTHER mice alot of room to mess around as they please.
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Bottom line is talking and negotiating is all well and good, but these regimes and the terrorists they support are flat out "evil" and the ONLY THING they respect is power. This may be a simplification for some of you that analyze these things, but it is the truth (in my opinion). It is tiem the world community stand up to terrorism now or we will be dealing with this for many, many years.
Oh yeah, there was a question to me that went something like "how many terrorists do we have to kill"? The simple and complex answer is "as many as it takes". There are many children who are being brain-washed and indoctrinated in the Madrassas to hate Jews and Americans, and thinking Jihad leads them to paradise. We need to put a stop to this, but in the meantime we can make a big dent on terrorism by killing them , staying on the offensive, and not relenting to their evil. We need to show the type of backbone we had under Reagan, and under GW, and not let the left in this country degrade our will to fight.
God bless our troops and the USA and please pray for the safe release of the British sailrs and Marines[/QUOTE]
and here once again we sort of agree and disagree as well. I agree that we need to stand firm and not bow down to terrorists in general. ANd frankly I think there is a LOT of cause for the Britts to approach the Iraninans under the table (ie out of the glare of the spotlights/media) and say we have had enough: you have 72 hours to release our soldiers or we will announce IN the spotlight of the media that they view these actions as an act of war, and are willing to begin to respond in a manner commenserate with an act of war. However it is important for that type of posturing to be initially behind closed doors, to give the Iranians a CHANCE to accept it somewhat on their terms vis-a-vis their OWN media and elctorate. It would feel good to publicly draw a line in the sand and then stare down the little punk, but it would also GREATLY reduce the liklihood of success... which is, after all, the actual objective.
also the question "how many terrorists do we have to kill"? has a HUGE endogenous component. The world was not just endowed with X number of terrorists... how many terrorists there are left out there depends not just on how many we mange to wipe out, but the rate of generation of terrorists, which we ALSO have an effect on. I think it is hard to argue that there are fewer islamic individuals who harbor enough ill-will against the US (and/or the west in general) to take the terrorist route than there were on September 10, 2001. On the other hand I think it would have been EASY to make that argument in March 2002, after we had invaded Afghanistan (with broad international support), but before we had invaded Iraq (with contrived international "support", with the exception of the UK).
We are killing 'em right now, but if we do it in a way that spurs the generation of more of them than we are killing, then we are running hard up the down escalator, and losing ground in spite of our efforts. To put it in other terms, yesterday Sunni death squads set bombs that killed about 100 Shiites... do you think that lessoned the overall level of anti-Sunni firepower centered in Shiite neighborhoods ?