…

Just how “exagerrated” is the threat?

I start my timeline for being personally aware of Jihadist Islam in 1983. Six funerals are hard to ignore, so I thought “what the Hell, might as well read up on these bastards”…

I served with a staff sergeant who was among the guests of the Ayatollah. He had some interesting reminisces, to say the least.

Our enemy is a fundamentalist movement – a movement sometimes anchored in and/or serving as proxies for a limited number of despot states. Case in point was the Taliban of Afghanistan, who not even the Left could really defend (though that didn’t stop some from trying); Iraq might not have had squat to do with 9/11, but that regime was already marked for change, as an official U.S. policy, long before Bush was sworn in the first time. Granted, nobody, certainly not the Democrats, held any misconceptions about Clinton actually following through on such a policy.

The Bush Doctrine isn’t about empire, Ken. It’s not about oil and it’s not about hegemony – beyond achieving the U.S. government’s constitutional duty to defend the nation. It’s a product of an honest understanding of history, tempered by the optomism inherent in a leader who understands and more importantly believes in democracy and representative, constitutional government. It’s about defuzing a ticking bomb that will turn several hundred million muslims into air pollution. That’s going to be the future hard option siezed at the point after some obscene, but much smaller cumulative body count, of infidels hits the air currents first, of course.

Ken, you don’t see ANY national threat; you refuse to countenance even the steps we are trying to take now in our defense. I wake up everyday dreading to hear the EWS tone on my bedside radio. I wake up wondering why there are any living soles in Warzistan, Pakistan, if that’s where we know both al Q and the Taliban remnants to be holed up.

Between the two of us are several hundred million Americans (assuming you’re a citizen) , all with opinions somewhat different than either of ours, who will all weigh in on national policy, as is their right, every two, four, six years.

What seperates us from them is that their message of death and destruction is mostly bluster punctuated by senseless horror and meaningless carnage. The day that we go to an election with “We’ve had it with these barbarians” as the result, the next day will bring death on a scale that would make Curtis LeMay blanche.

We cannot impose governments that will make democracies of holes like Afghanistan or Iraq or Saudi or Iran… but we can work in good faith with the people of those places to build their own. And it must be their own efforts and sacrifice in the long run, because that’s how democracies really work – from within.

We began tossing out our nascent socialists in 1980 and the process has continued, in fits and starts and with minor lapses (hey, it was the end of history. And it was the economy, stupid)… ever since. In recent years

The process will continue in 2006, too, because there are probably more people who fit your “shallow” label than you think, even in your worst nightmares.

Have a fine one.

I believe the terrorists in Guantonimo were caught on the actual battlefield fighting our soldiers. How much more proof do you want? They were caught red handed. You liberals would probably take into account their deprived childhoods and let them off.

Ken

Where is this police state I have seen no sign of it.

Yep. A disaster indeed.

You don’t need a military to destroy a country – especially a liberal democracy.

You just have to make it impossible for the people inside to live free – which is the strategy of fundamentalist Islam.

Go ask a frenchman or a spaniard. They’ve already given up. Britain still hangs in the balance but it’s not looking very good. Ask The Van Gough’s family.

The objective isn’t “U.S. out of the mideast”, either, it’s “Islam worldwide”. Their words. I take them at their word; how is it that the party of the bestest and brightestest won’t?

Islamists don’t have traditional armies or weapon systems, true. Without oil wealth they would have been assimilated into civilization a long time back; assimilated, obliterated, or reduced to a low-rung ecotour destination. But that’s not how the geography worked out. But they’ve been killing westerners who do for over fifty years now, and have just hit their stride in the last decade or so. Meanwhile the west has advanced to the point where sizable minorities seem to think that individual freedoms, representative government, and a life unmarked by violence or repression by state or criminal elements is normal. Normal to the point that employing force to protect said blessings is somehow immoral.

Here in this country they’ve taken the party that won World War II by the shorthairs and run it off a cliff.

I tell ya, the party of the little guy just can’t seem to understand that the little guys have figured out that the party could give a rat’s rearend about them. Dems aren’t being overwhelmed by a JeebusFundie tidal wave. Not even close. It’s just voters with jobs, families, and freedoms who object to being taxed to death and then killed outright by medeival barbarians that are the real problem.

I’ve got the 2006 campaign slogan for them:

“We Surrender”.

As usual, Republicans are unable to address the blindingly obvious paradox in this bill, that those held are not terrorists, but suspected terrorists. It never enters there mind that the numerous reports of browned-skin people being in the wrong place at the wrong time and subsequently held and tortured for years deserve to hear the evidence against them, deserve some basic fundamental human rights, rights that separate us from the dictators and warlords that govern other areas of the world. For, if the Bush Administration is so completely sure that those held are indeed terrorists, so sure that no evidence is needed to hold them, then why bother with a trial at all? The purpose of the trial is to determine their guilt, based on evidence, but evidence is no longer required to hold them. They live or die at the behest of the President, in his vague, ill-defined and never-ending war.

What a sad day in our country’s history, and we can thank th Republicans for once again proving the depths to which they will sink to hold on to power. Luckily, the public isn’t buying it anymore, and our long national nightmare will soon be over.

Anyone who believes America is in a “life and death” struggle
with a scattered collection of jihadists with no army,navy or air force is certifiable. Can militant Islam eventually reduce America’s
presence in the Middle East? Yes. Does it threaten the nation
itself? Only to a certifiable paranoid .

Well, if you were paying attention the Bill amends the War Crimes Act and defines what is off limits. I would have added it was torture to listen to liberal dribble for more than thirty minutes a day – but that is just me.

AJStrata

What limits in the ‘war on terror’ would you absolutely fight for as a matter of principle, if the Bush admin tried to exceed them?

Unlimited torture of prisoners? All the way down to actually ripping off body parts, using disease, chemicals, electricity, etc.?

Starvation all the way to killing them?

Rape of detainees by object, other prisoners, animals, etc.?

Torturing friends and family of prisoners in front of them?

Bombing their villages, killing masses if they won’t talk?

Having zero constraints on our forces having to prove they’re guilty of anything, indefinite imprisonment secret from courts?

I’d like to hear the list not of what you’ll ‘compromise’ to leave off the table, but what you absolutely will fight for on principle.

Of course, if you list *anything*, you are subject to the same attacks that you are coddling the terrorists and/or endangering America.

i think you’ve lost track of my point. let’s review:

Strata: “[the bill] one directed ONLY at terrorists”

upyernoz: “no, it’s directed at anyone who is detained. the whole argument is how the hearings will be held to determine whether the detainee is a terrorist.”

Strata: “the bill doesn’t apply to US citizens”

you’re right that it doesn’t apply to u.s. citizens, but as you can see, that doesn’t address my point at all. you said that it only applies to terrorists. so unless you think all non-u.s. citizens are terrorists, then your last response was simply off point.

as i said, the bill doesn’t just apply to terrorists. the entire point of the bill is to set up procedures to determine who is a terrorist and who isn’t, because that’s what the supreme court required.

that’s what i meant by getting your facts straight

The “loyal opposition” grows more deeply DISLOYAL every week. You’d think they’d consider putting a sock in it for five weeks, seeing as how an election is coming up. Or have they been spewing their crap for so long at this point that it has just become an unthinking habit?

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The Senate on Thursday endorsed President Bush’s plans to prosecute and interrogate terror suspects, all but sealing congressional approval for legislation tha…