What happened to the war on terror?

[a_unique_person]

The war in Iraq was supposed to be part of the war on terror.

It doesn't appear to have achieved much in that direction, except stir up the hornets nest, without even attacking the hornets.

I don't think that a direct attack approach is the right one anyway, but the 'war on terror' justification for the attack on Saddam doesn't appear to have any justification.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/05/13/bombings.reax/index.html


Graham: Saudi bombings 'could have been avoided'
Feingold faults administration's handling on war on terror
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Bob Graham, a Democratic presidential candidate, accused the Bush administration Tuesday of laxity in the war on terror, and said its failure to dismantle al Qaeda contributed to the deadly attack against U.S. citizens in Saudi Arabia.

"It could have been avoided if you had actually crushed the basic infrastructure of al Qaeda," said Graham, repeating his long-standing criticism that the Bush administration should not have gone to war with Iraq until al Qaeda and other terror groups had been properly dismantled.

[a_unique_person]

I do have to ask, though, how could a car bomb have caused so much destruction to concrete buildings?

[Captain_Snort]

and here was me thinking that the war on Iraq was to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in unpopular military regimes. So that answers my question why packistan hasn't been invaded yet...

[arcticpenguin]

The war on terror will be over soon, right after we finish the war on drugs and the battle of the sexes.

[Gem]

I seem to recall a phrase from princess leia in Star Wars, when she was taken abroad the Death Star
"The more powerful you get, the more system will join the rebel and side against you."
While the general replied
"Nope, when they will see our power, they will not think twice and surrender."

The War on Terror is just like the War on Drugs. If you can't attack the enemy's base of operation, you'll never win. It happened in Viet-Nam. War on Drugs was the same thing.

I'm not saying we shouldn't stop them, I'm just saying that this kind of war isn't like Gulf War 2.

Gem

[athon]

Personally I 'love' the rhetoric that gets spewed out on this topic.
Calling them terrorists is like calling the US 'bombists'. The west needs an enemy that has a face and a name. No offence, but the US is the worst when it comes to this - they have always needed an enemy to define themselves by.

Terrorism is a weapon of war, and an effective one at that. Yes it is sickening, but to me any time one nation tries to exert influence or pressure in an intimidating fashion it is sickening. Innocents died in Gulf War II - they were called collatoral damage. I fail to see the difference.

The best one is labelling terrorists as 'cowards'. Knowing you will die (rather than might die) for your beliefs is perverse, but not cowardly.

Athon

[Cain]

Nicholas D. Kristof made a few interesting observations in a column some months ago:

Is it fair to present the war on terrorism as a parable of good (us) versus evil (them)? Grenville Byford reflected the skeptics' view in a Foreign Affairs essay, arguing that moral clarity is more apparent than real and that "the sooner the rhetoric is retired the better." Highly nuanced intellectuals tend to poke three kinds of holes in moral clarity:

1. Terrorism is in the eyes of the beholder. President Reagan declared the African National Congress a terrorist group not long before its leader, Nelson Mandela, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Meanwhile he described Jonas Savimbi, who everybody else thought of as a terrorist, as Angola's Abraham Lincoln. Oops. And speaking of our national heroes, what about our radical forebears in the American Revolution who burned the homes of British loyalists? Were they terrorists?

2. Wiping out terrorists is sometimes unhelpful. Even if we could agree on what constitutes terrorism, it's often not obvious what we should do about it. Pakistan has done more than Iraq to support terrorism (in Kashmir), but instead of invading Pakistan, Mr. Bush has quite sensibly sent aid -- for bolstering President Pervez Musharraf is the best hope for ending the violence. Circumstances vary, so sometimes we kill those engaged in terrorism, and sometimes we invite them for state visits.

3. In crude military terms, terrorism often works. New methods of killing people initially provoke outrage but eventually are often accepted. Henry V used longbows at Agincourt, outraging the French. British redcoats marching in neat columns were appalled by sneaky Yankees hiding behind trees. After Guernica, aerial bombing was condemned as barbaric, and in World War II the West condemned Germany's V-1 and V-2 missiles as terror weapons.

Likewise, in pessimistic moments I fear that Al Qaeda-style terrorism could become another terrible "advance" in military history. Other radical groups are no doubt enormously impressed that for only about $400,000, Al Qaeda inflicted hundreds of billions of dollars' damage on the United States. Vietcong military theorists predicted something like Qaeda-style urban guerrilla warfare, and there's a risk that it is what the future looks like.

-- "A Toast to Moral Clarity" Dec. 27, 2002

Bill Maher lost his show for saying something patriotically incorrect -- that the terrorists who crashed the planes into buildings were not cowards. Dropping a bomb from 20,000 feet isn't supposed to be cowardly. But I remember commentators initially describing the "Beltway Sniper" as a coward.

[Lemastre]

There is no war on terror -- other than what should have been longstanding standard procedures. Perhaps our intelligence services here and overseas have been instructed to look out for sources of attacks, but I assume they've been up to that for many years, although maybe not all the effectively. Otherwise, the only avenue to identify and disable sources of gorilla attacks seems to be through diplomacy to enlist help from nations where they may be. U.S. diplomacy is not doing all that well with moslem nations, so that aspect of the war on terror promises little. I'm reminded of the war on terror mostly when a car bomb goes off somewhere, such as in Saudi Arabia, and George Bush feels obliged to assert that the war isn't over.