...we're sure making a substantial difference and gaining ground in the war on terror.

One less terrorist free to roam the globe will make the world that much safer. Likewise, one less drug dealer, rapist or kidnapper on the streets will make the public that much safer...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp..._qaida_arrests


...wouldn't you agree?

 

I would agree kind of. The problem is for every 5 terrorists we capture or kill there are 25 more being molded in the islamic schools in the tribal regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. We now have a presence in the 2 most holy sites that there are in the islamic religion. This is not viewed well in many muslims eyes. We ridded the world of one terrorist (Saddam) but we have created many more with the subsequent war that was fought to get rid of him. It's a double edged sword if you ask me. We have to fight this now that we are in it though. Even if we get burned again.

 

To this, I would definitely say no. Has the War on Drugs actually helped? One thing it does do effectively is incarcerate most black men between the ages of 18-24. Who wants black men roaming the streets anyways? :sarcasm:

I can only hope that we look at failed policy measures such as our War on Drugs and change our tactics so that they actually work. (And btw, the War on Drugs is not a Dem / Rep issue... both parties need to shoulder equal blame)

 

Where do you get these outlandish facts? :baffled:

You can speculate all you want about what Muslims may be thinking and what they may do in the future but it doesn't make it fact.

Here's the way I think about the war on terrorism...

Let's say Pre-Sept 11, 2001 is the equivalent to not having pulled weeds (terrorists) in your backyard for 228 years. Then on Sept 12th and everyday after that you decide you're going to pull weeds and maintain the weed population the best you can. You use Round-up and weed cloth (Department of Homeland Security & a completely revamped CIA, FBI, Military and Allied relations for the same cause) to prevent further weeds. You know you're not going to be able to destroy all the seeds or roots but you're going to trying as hard as you can to keep the yard clean. As long as you stay optimistic and don't get complacent in your habits to pull weeds, your yard will stay maintained (but not 100% rid) for many years to come.

 

A`nal´o`gy
n. 1. A resemblance of relations; an agreement or likeness between things in some circumstances or effects, when the things are otherwise entirely different. Thus, learning enlightens the mind, because it is to the mind what light is to the eye, enabling it to discover things before hidden.
2. (Biol.) A relation or correspondence in function, between organs or parts which are decidedly different.
3. (Geom.) Proportion; equality of ratios.
4. (Gram.) Conformity of words to the genius, structure, or general rules of a language; similarity of origin, inflection, or principle of pronunciation, and the like, as opposed to anomaly.

 

:Applause:

I am glad that you learned what this means. From here on out, when you make analogies they can be relavent to the subject at hand.

If, for instance, I want to take about the failings of the War on Terror, I would make an analogy to the the War on Drugs... did you not eat breakfast this morning or something?

 

I was making the point on the war on crime, not just drugs but thanks for butchering my original quote with ellipses when I clearly state kidnappers and rapists. I just choose those three examples when I could have easily replaced them with burglars, murders and molesters, okay?

The fact that we have a police force to reduce crime is generally the same thing as the war on terror. We can effectively control terror based on the sheer numbers of terrorists we've captured thus far. Likewise, a police force can effectively reduce crime by putting more bad guys in jail.

Why is this so hard to grasp? This isn't rocket science... if you weed-out the retards in the classroom you're left with a classroom full of "normal" kids, right?

Believe it or not but the 1998 thriller, Fallen with John Goodman and Denzel Washington was a fictitious movie! It's not like there's an evil "radical Muslim spirit" possessing each terrorist, jumping from body to body and doubling in size as they're captured -or- killed.

 

You can speculate all you want about what Good this war on terror is doing but that doesn't make it fact either. I for one am not that naive. I believe we are making a dent but there is no way to measure how many people al Qaida is recruiting. Most analyst's will tell you that their membership has actually grown since the beginning of the War in Iraq.

Here's something for you. Islamic children in the poorest tribal regions of Pakistan are taught that America is the Great Evil Same as the madrassas in Saudi Arabia. Do you think it was a coincidence that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi? It is in their textbooks at their madrassas. Here is one story from Newsweek.

Saudi Arabia is still funding hate-filled Islamic schools known as madrassas all over the world. The Saudi government claims that it does not directly fund these jihad factories, but the Saudi religious foundations that do fund them have close ties to the royal family.

Where is the directive from the folks who hold the purse strings of the madrassas to change the curriculum? And where was this on Cheney’s agenda? (If it was raised in private, why can’t we know?). The vice president was apparently so busy trying to drum up support for action against Saddam Hussein and laying the groundwork for a meeting between President Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah on the Middle East that he neglected some of the true “root causes” of September 11. Many lie in Saudi society.

This is a hard thing for the U.S. government to confront. Every American president since Franklin Roosevelt has kissed the fanny of the Saudi royal family to help assure a constant supply of oil. The Bush administration has particularly close ties to the Saudis through the oil business. Cheney himself oversaw more than half a dozen Saudi subsidiaries when he ran Halliburton, Inc.

It sometimes feels as if the United States is taking its eye off the ball in the war on terrorism. Yes, removing Saddam is important and more justified all the time. But let’s not pursue these aims to the exclusion of fundamental change in the Arab education system and hate-filled media that condition and encourage terrorism. That must be on every agenda for all high level talks — stressed publicly and privately — no matter what else we want to accomplish.

 

We can sit here till the end of time blowing smoke up eachothers *******s about speculations.

This is ALL I've been trying to say...

 

Roger that! But the change needs to come at the highest levels of these governments and it needs to happen to their whole way of teaching and thinking. Check out this article on MSNBC/Newsweek.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3540599/

Admit it though we all love to see the little clips of warfare on TV. Hell I was glued to the set when the shock and awe thing started but we need to know when to take a different approach to changing the world. We can't always do it by brute force because that will just make more enemies for us.