Alright, the liberals have been crying, lighting candles, giving blood, donating money to multibillion dollar airline corporations, writing poems, and singing songs for over a week and a half now.

I turn on my boobtube tonight and it seems they have pre-empted all regular programming for some kind of musical love-fest. All for 6000 people and a couple of buildings. Do they know how many people die in this country EVERY YEAR because of liberal policies?

It's time to blow the fuck out of Afghanistan, arm all Americans, and get back to business. Dubya wants us to spend that $300 tax refund, and it happens to be just enough for everybody to buy a good gun.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), September 22, 2001

Answers

It ain't bad music.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), September 22, 2001.

It's not every day that you get to see Al Pacino singing along side Willie Nelson.

I thought it was a wonderful thing. And wow that song by Paul Simon...

-- (cin@cin.cin), September 22, 2001.

They're all a bunch of crybaby liberals. You should probably go join them Cin. See how "wonderful" it is when the jack-booted thugs you people keep begging for lock you away in a work camp. The rest of us will be defending our Consitutional rights like true patriots.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), September 22, 2001.

nnnnyeah, Cin, bombing is our right, see? nnnyeah...

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), September 22, 2001.

Kind of like the old Little Rascals or Andy Hardy movies... Hey, gang, let's put on a show in the barn!

Look, what else do we got to do all day, this makes us feel good. Nobody is buying records or going to movies. What does it take, I go on TV, sing a little song, give a little sanctimonious soliloquy, have a few pseudo-religous candles on the set, its a way to associate myself with poor victims, get some face-time action. I give a few minutes, I feel good, we're all good people. It's not like I have to drop one of the Bentleys in the pot.

-- MickeyandJudy (Oyf@987.235423), September 22, 2001.

So tell me...what have you done to help, aside from offering your divine wisdom, hmm?

I am neither on the right side, nor the left. I am on God's side. Don't become bitter old men, so full of hatred and anger that you can't see the good in anyone or anything. Life could end at any moment. Do you really want to die that way?

-- (cin@cin.cin), September 22, 2001.

And accomplish what, ya frigging moron? The middle east is a great big "House of Cards" just waiting for you and your congenital idiot, hick conservative bretheren and President to come along and just pull ONE card out of the Tippy Tower of Disaster, so the whole shittin' mess can come down on you (and me) just like the WTC came down on those inside it. Power vacuums ALWAYS get filled. Who's gonna fill Afghanistan's, if we topple them? Pakistan? Iran? You, ya conservative jack off?? Conservatives love this (it's better than the XFL!), are keeping it going, and are going to get us ALL blown to kingdom come, because they are stupid, small thinking shitheads. IMHO, of course.

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 22, 2001.

Zzzzz--

What do you suggest?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 22, 2001.

PREPARE to meet your maker, then go fishing!!!!

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), September 22, 2001.

Cin,

I have no desire to lock you into a work camp. Libs are idiots on the other hand.........

-- Jack Booted Thug (governmentconspiracy@NWO.com), September 22, 2001.

Actually, I kinda like al-d's idea. I think I'll do that tomorrow. It's not like any of us little folk have any input on this anyway, now is it?

Lars: If I'd had my druthers (if they'd elected ME Big Kahuna) I'd have stalled the American public for a week or two, somehow, while I VERY quietly sent about 100 Special Op's teams into Afghanistan (with whatever indiginous support I could muster or buy, and with a Mission Impossible style warning that their ass was on their own if they got caught) and told them to take that wonderful man out and bring back just his head, for the rest of us to admire.

Maybe Bush is doing that very thing, while he rattles our military sabre for distraction and effect...I can't know. If he is I may revise my opinions of the man, or his advisors, but I'm still gonna take after every conservative I see with a stick, just on principle. My therapist says it's a good way to vent all my deep frustrations...

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 22, 2001.

zzzzzzzz--

I think your last paragraph may be the deal. It's a ploy, all these troops, ships, planes and TV are meant to distract Osama (and us) while the men in black quietly take him out. I hope.

I whupped 7 Liberals today with a stick. I hope you weren't one of them.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 23, 2001.

Nanner, nanner, ya missed me! ;-)

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 23, 2001.

Maybe I'm just nuts. I can't know. I'm sure that if I am I'd be sure I wasn't, and I'm not, I don't think, tho I can't be sure, so it's pretty hard to say, either way.

I just think that Bush COULD have been a bit more discreet from day one - when the first word out of his mouth was War. He should have focused our attention on other things for a while, by sheer force of will, if need be; presidents are supposed to be able to do that. And he could have conducted his snatch and grab, or snatch and snuff operations in the quiet time, before pandering to the American hunger for the instant gratification of punishment and retribution, and all the talk of war.

In one thread I see the deal about the Saudi's now publicly forbidding that we use that spiffy new combat air control and coordination center we built over there to launch attacks that are not directly necessary for Suadi defense. That's the way these people work. They had NO problem with us using it that way at all, so long as we were very discreet about it. But when our press blabbed it to the whole world they were forced to take a public stand, too, and say they simply could not allow it.

I don't doubt for a minute that the Afghan's would have also turned a "blind eye" to our covert op's people being in their country for a little while, knowing exactly why they were there, and for just how long; it would have been in their best interests to quietly allow it, in the long run, and that's not lost on them. But when Bush challenges them directly and publicly, and even accuses them of willful complicity, they HAVE to respond, or totally loose face. Duh...

And is bin Ladens head not enough? Isn't that all we really want, anyway? These spec op's teams know the game. If it's Mission Impossible Rules, fine. No problem. That would be quite the feather in any soldier or spook's cap, believe me. Well worth the risks. If they ask me, I'd grab the opportunity. Bet the pot or get off it, I figure.

Arm me and a few friends to the teeth with the finest American technology, weapons, maps and intelligence on the guy, give me a pocket full of Krugerrands and I'll buy my own indiginous support and intel, and give me a radio and a pickup point, that's all we'd ask.

You wanted the whole guy, sir? Oh. Gee. Well, we tried. We miraculously hit the jackpot and actually found the dude, took out a hundred of his bodyguards, and were bringing him back, but he got frisky along the way, jumped me, and I put a half a clip into his chest before I could snatch my finger off the trigger. I'm sorry. I'll never do it again, I promise. The reason we only have his head is cuz it was soooo far to walk back to the extraction point, with that heavy body, and the desert was just sooo hot, and the mountains just sooo high, we just decided to take the head and leave the rest; it was better than nothing...

As it is, what we have here, now, is something much different, and much more volatile. We're moving briskly into lose-lose territory here, now, for all involved.

I was watching CNN the other day and heard the uproar Bush caused when he stated "We're gonna carry this crusade right to the terrorists themselves, and all those who support them..." He actually used the word "crusade", for crying out loud! Every cleric and politician on the entire planet winced, cringed, and put their hands over their heads. My God. Is the man blind to the fact that that very word "crusade", the word itself, translates directly into Jihad over there? Just what they wanted to hear. Bush is a man that needs to stick strictly to the carefully crafted scripts his speech writers hand him, and keep his flapping mouth shut the rest of the time, I think. He has no brain of his own, apparently. And certainly no appreciation of the mind of the middle easterner.

So, maybe I'm just nuts, but that's what I'd have done...

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 23, 2001.

Just for pure entertainment, let's assume that the Bush administration people aren't all pure fools. Let's assume for fun that they know something we don't, and must be senstitive to political pressures we don't, and maybe even have somewhat different goals than zzzz does.

One possible response would be purely surgical (and let's also assume we could do this if we tried). We identify the terrorists, sniff out their cells, and quietly take them all out. OK, we have now snuffed every organized, funded terrorist in the world. Is this what we want?

Maybe not. For one thing, the American public must take some politician's word for it that we've done so, which is unlikely. In the meanwhile, there is overwhelming political pressure to DO SOMETHING, and for this strategy to be effective it must be VERY quiet, so it LOOKS like the goverment is doing nothing.

For another thing, this is a hopelessly short-sighted and temporary solution. Kind of like taking out the New York Yankees by offing every player, manager, scout, and owner in the organization. I guarantee you, next year a New York Yankees team will take the field. They may not be very good for a while, but they'll be very real. You simply don't discourage terrorISM by killing terrorISTS.

So another response is to wage an effective public military campaign (again assuming we have this ability). We probably won't kill many terrorists, but that might not be important because they have proven to be eminently replaceable. However, we do wreak a lot of destruction, kill a lot of people, and with luck even make Taliban- type fanatics think twice about providing the kind of support that a terrorist organization can't function without.

This approach also has problems. We know from experience that killing religious fanatics doesn't affect fanaticism itself. We also know that fear of prison sentences doesn't have much deterrence effect against criminals. If terrorism is part of some theocracy's effective political platform, all we accomplish is to boost the bomb-proofing of their meeting places.

Possibly a truly overpowering military response would strike fear into the appropriate political sensibilities. Something like BIG nukes, neutron bombs, carpet bombing with poison gas, where any target at all is considered fair military game. This may or may not be effective in discouraging the support for terrorists, but it would surely antagonize nearly everyone -- this cure is very likely worse than the disease.

In any case, in practice we fall far short of any ability to assassinate all the terrorists or wage targeted conventional military war against organized religious conviction. Such conviction is too abstract an enemy for bombs to make much sense. Do we really think a Creationist will suddenly accept evolution if we put a gun to his head? This is a *medical* problem, not a military problem.

So, everything considered, the best *political* response is to do something, *anything* that's big and public and destructive. This stone kills several birds. It might slow some Arab governments down (in terms of active support of terrorists), it might actually kill some terrorists, it surely generates a hell of a lot of domestic political popularity, and it might even help us spend ourselves out of a recession. A win-win situation all around, provided we let the American public know that this is going to be a long, expensive, difficult operation. We have a nice, permanent, self-perpetuating war, renewed ("it's not over yet") with every act of terrorism. Who could ask for more?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 23, 2001.

It's going to be just like his Daddy's war, but it will last longer. People were impressed with Desert Storm but they wanted more.

People like watching all the buildings and babyfood factories being exploded on CNN during working hours so that they don't have to do their jobs. Gives them an excuse to stand around with their thumb up their ass and bullshit with fellow office workers, and this way they can say they are being "patriotic". Got to show "support" you know.

It's good target practice for our fighter jocks too. Once they take out the SAM sites, they can go in and shoot up all the empty buildings. Of course if they miss and hit some civilians, well that's just part of the learning curve. We will be told that those situations are lies by Afghanistan because our pilots are capable of nothing less than surgical accuracy.

Dumbya has a big challenge ahead of him. His father put on a pretty good show, and now Bin Laden has put on an even more spectacular one. In order to come out of this looking like the tough cowboy that he always wanted to be, the man who saved the world, he's going to have to make it look real good. He should probably hire someone like Francis Ford Coppola to help him call the shots. "Apocalypse Now" was a good movie, but the American people will expect more this time.

-- (here comes @ Dumbya's. summer blockbuster), September 23, 2001.

A blatent, disgusting display of cowboy-phobia.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 23, 2001.

No, not afraid of cowboys. The fact that the fate of our country has been trusted to an idiot is more than a little worrisome though.

-- (god@help.us), September 23, 2001.

That were'nt the real moreinterpretation. JUst some doofus imposter.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), September 24, 2001.

Flint, is your 9th paragraph (So, everything considered, the best *political* response is to do something, *anything* that's big and public and destructive...) presenting a different option than your 5th (So another response is to wage an effective public military campaign...)?

It looks like the same thing, worded differently. Don't know if you meant it to be or not. If not, please explain what you meant the differences to be.

The cowboy side of me would like to start smashing things, starting with most of Kabul. The pragmatic, machiavellian side wants to react with stealth, using diplomacy and military subterfuge to take out the cells violently while keeping a pan-arabism from arising out of misguided religious outrage. The compassionate side of me is jumping on board with the pragmatic side, because the means can be overlooked for now if the ends are better than the alternative - widespread death of innocents. And if you say "there are no innocents there", then you will be a member of a very small minority, both in this country and especially abroad.

Remember, we will forever have to live in the world we make in the next couple years.

Another thing to keep in mind is that our reactions will be determined by the response of the Taliban, or whoever is harboring Bin Laden now, to our evidence - if they turn him over and provide good info on the other cells under his umbrella, then we will undoubtably show a great deal more mercy on them personally.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), September 24, 2001.

Bemused:

Yes, those sound similar. The distinction I was trying to draw was between an *effective* military campaign (i.e. one with clearly defined military goals, where victory or defeat would be obvious, like WWII), and just a *visible* military campaign, lots of photo ops of bombs blowing up and broken structures, as a spin exercise.

Personally, I think this is almost entirely a battle of perceptions. I doubt that terrorism can be shot with bullets, but nonetheless the destruction done in the US has set the standards for proportion -- *something visibly equivalent* must be inflicted on someone somewhere, or the political backlash will paralyze us worse than Watergate did.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 24, 2001.

Flint: how about the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur? They're in a predominantly Muslim country; they're just as big as the WTC was; there's two of 'em, side by side, just like the WTC. What could be more perfect for the purposes of demonsrating the "standards for proportion" required and also meeting the *something visibly equivalent* must be inflicted on someone somewhere, or the political backlash will paralyze us worse than Watergate did. part? Perfect!

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 25, 2001.