to all overzealously MACHO patriots (edited)

[loch]

let me preface this by saying that i believe that a sustained, well-intelligenced and strategically targeted use of military force focused on identifiable agressors is necessary in response to what has happened. war, unfortunately, is a necessary evil.

to all the nay-sayers that say "war is not the answer--give peace a chance"; well, any reasonable person would try to adopt peaceful resolutions first. however, such idealism (peace) does not always work, especially not in this case, when the enemy, according to its manifests, has clearly declared war on america and its citizens. i can go on about this, but it is not the point of my post.

that having said, to all the "overzealous-macho-arrogant-misplaced-patriotism-guns-ablazin-ignorant-misinformed-propaganda-believin-trigger-happy-nuke-the-entire-ethnic-group-and-their-country-and-categorically-make-widesweeping-generalizations-and-racist-remarks-all-caps-writing-with-multiple-exclamation-points" posters on CP:

GET a clue. GAIN some perspective. KNOW your facts. QUESTION what you are told. RESEARCH the issues. BE INFORMED of the causes & effects. REALIZE the consequences & repercussions. REASON.

i don't claim to know everything because i will admittedly say i don't. but i do claim to reason. i do hope and quite optimistically believe that they have so far, that our government do the same.

greatness is the ability to entertain a thought without actually considering it (aka reason). we all should do the same. God bless HUMANITY.

[note: edited to tone down language so as to not incite drama]

[Xpander]

A lot more people should probably read this and consider it well...

[loch]

my last attempt to quell some misplaced anger and patriotism. *bump*

[lavkrap]

very well put.

[Guest saleen351]

I question absoulty nothing from our lead and president and commander in cheif, in my eyes, his words are fact not fiction and I will obey those words!!! Its our duty as Americans.

[highmay]

loch's right people...becoming intelligent more intelligent isn't that hard...

[vixenfoxxy]

Loch, thanks for that.

As for following every word the president says, c'mon now. If there's a bigger cheesewad ever to pull the strings of nepotism straight into the whitehouse.... So far so good but uh, I am not holding my breath. I just hope he's not a-loadin' the guns into the pick-up for the wrong reasons.

[stronut]

I agree with you. I think we oughtta know what the facts are b4 we go about beating some one or some people/country. I think that the media spreading lots of bs while on air and people being eager to hear some news get excited; and all the shit happens. Just yesterday I heard the news that some one shot an Indian dude in Arizona. Few peeps got jumped in NY/NJ. We all have to be patient and logical. WAR IS WAR but when we know who our enemy is. PEACE:cool:

[mugwump]

Amen bro!

((((((((HUGZ)))))))))

[happykittn]

Subject: Letter from an American Afghani writer

Dear Friends,

The following was sent to me by my friend Tamim Ansary. Tamim is an Afghani-American writer. He is also one of the most brilliant people I know. When he writes, I read. When he talks, I listen. Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we are in.

-Gary T.

Dear Gary and whoever else is on this email thread:

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done." And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what’s going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters. But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they’re starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan—a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans. They don't move too fast - they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban - by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time.

So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done," they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people.

Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that, folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West. And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he’s got a billion soldiers.

If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong - in the end, the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

[tastyt]

Originally posted by saleen351

I question absoulty nothing from our lead and president and commander in cheif, in my eyes, his words are fact not fiction and I will obey those words!!! Its our duty as Americans.

I'm not quite sure how to interpret this... are you being sarcastic??? Because if not... do you realize that what you wrote is the exact opposite of Democracy? As citizens of a democracy our DUTY is to NOT blindly accept our government's actions, but to question them and try to change anything we think is wrong...

[Xpander]

Originally posted by saleen351

I question absoulty nothing from our lead and president and commander in cheif, in my eyes, his words are fact not fiction and I will obey those words!!! Its our duty as Americans.

Hypothetical situation:

Somewhere in (fundamental) Islamic school, Afghanistan, circa 1999...

Young child:

"I question absoulty nothing from our leader Bin Laden, in my eyes, his words are fact not fiction and I will obey those words!!! Its our duty as Muslims."

[Guest saleen351]

Concerning my words:

You have to question everything out of DC except in times of need and this is one of them, if you don't have confidence in the leader and in his words then you might as well buy a bomb shelter and hide, but as for me I hate Bush, I didn't vote for him, I think Gore was more " Presidential" but the fact remains we got Bush for 3 more years at least, so speak up when it is time to vote, but don't be a dissenter in times of need...

xpander, good example, I don't have a comback for it...

[Xpander]

I don't want Bush in the White House.

But he's been (at least publicly) more rational than a lot of other people in this country.

see:

50 bias crimes in NYC in last week

Arizona man of Sikh faith mistaken for Muslim, shot to death.