OT: War Bill, write your congress......

[Askan Nightbringer]

quote:

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Originally posted by Saxon:
I would be interested to know the name of the Congresswoman who was so bold to stand and remind both the politicians and the people that one of the strengths of America is that it is a free and open society where the head of state is, and must be, accountable to the people.

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Her name was Barbara Lee, a democratic from Berkley. My new hero in american politics (never knew I had one).


Askan
"A million monkeys typing at a million keyBoards will not produce Shakespeare, just look at the internet" - Source Unknown
(my new favourite quote)
http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad.html
(for some story on why Afghanistan is a really crappy place to be)

[Antonin]

quote:

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Originally posted by capt_spoogy:
Her vote wasn't against taking action - but to remind Mr.Bush that he has to go through Congress next time there needs to be military action.

Listen carefully to her speech.

I commend her for standing up and not letting emotions take full control of the situation.

While I want the terrorists to be killed/captured - I don't more innocent people to suffer - whether they are American or Afghani or whatever.

"An eye for an eye makes the world go blind"

Destroying some third world despot country will not bring back the victims of this tragedy.

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Excellently said. Thank you.

[dogscoff]

Heard a good opinion on this yestrday.

Rather than bomb the already starving ppl in Afghanistan, how about if NATO responded by filling up their bombers with food and dropping *that* on them. Put a big American flag and a few words in Afghanistani (arabic?) on each parcel so there can be no mistake as to who it's from.

See how many suicide bombers Bin Laden can recruit after *that*.

Obviously it's not a perfect plan (I think you'd need to arrest / assasinate a few leading terrorists as well, just to satisfy the need for justice / revenge) but it's certainly an interesting idea.

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EDIT: dodgy keyboard

[This message has been edited by dogscoff (edited 18 September 2001).]

[disabled]

That's going to confuse the hell out of someone!

But it's not a bad idea. I just hope another somolia doesn't happen.....

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HADRIAN T. AVENTINE
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Administrator | SpaceEmpires.org

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by dogscoff:
See how many suicide bombers Bin Laden can recruit after *that*.

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The old "Hearts and Minds" tactic 'eh? Well, it's a wonderful idea on a purely humanitarian level, but it isn't going to have an effect on global terrorism.

The Black Tuesday Hijackers weren't poor Afghanis. At least most of them weren't. I haven't examined every name on the list. The notable ones were Saudi and Egyptian nationals. And they weren't even poor. At least a couple of them were actually believed to have been commercial airline pilots at one point. Now maybe Egyptian and Saudi Airline pilots don't make as much as American airline pilots, I really don't know. But I doubt they were on the level of starving poor dirt farmers before Bin Laden pulled them out of their squalor and sent them against the Great Satan America.

For that matter Bin Laden himself is from a rich oil family.

Poverty and starvation doesn't breed terrorism. Hatred does.

Geoshmo

[Saxon]

Poverty doesn’t lead straight to terrorism and extremism, but it can make the trip a lot easier. The very poor don’t know any different, but those reasonably well off in a poor society feel the poverty more acutely. A lot of terrorists have come from middle class families and they want to help the worse off. Living here in Kenya, I have a much better feeling for injustice and poverty than I ever did in Canada. Perhaps these pilots saw the poverty at home and the riches elsewhere and got upset about it.

Hearts and Minds might not stop everyone, but 40 billion of reconstruction and food would earn a lot of good will in Afghanistan. Next time someone gets up to preach against America, people might not listen so closely or they might even stand up in the back row and say “Shut up bin Laden, those guys built the school my kids go to.” It would probably also end up taking out the Taliban, as their form of extremism wouldn’t stand up too well against material affluence. Saudi Arabia has some serious problems, but social unrest is not one of them.

One can look at the treatment of Germany after WWI and Hitler’s rise on the back of resentment to the Versailles Treaty. One can compare that to Germany after WWII and the Marshall Plan. I think Hearts and Minds can work, but it has to go all out. Not one or two million here and there, but a serious financial kick in the ***. And not just food and drugs, but serious construction, things that people see every day. Hospitals, schools, sewers, roads. Match that with Dogscoff’s assassinations (which are an excellent, low key way to punish the wrongdoers and not upset everyone else) and I think we would get somewhere.

Sure, it might not work, but we also have no guarantee that the military options will work either. As such, try and give lots of the contracts to US companies, so at least jobs are created and a lot of the cash goes back in to US economy as taxes. Not all the contracts, you also want to create jobs in Afghanistan, but lots.

Anyway, I will get back to my Technicolor world of dreams…

[geoschmo]

I wish it were as simple as that. And I am sure that spending that amount of money on a country the size of Afghanistan would result in some very real short term improvements. But long term would it do any good?

There is some debate over whether the money spent in the Marshall plan was actually the cause of the spectacular resurrection of post-war Europe. A case could be made that the re-arranging of their political systems had more to do with it. That the increased freedoms of living in democratic, capitalist societies allowed them to help themselves more than the money we gave them helped.

Of course this is not something we could do easily in Afghanistan, unless the current power were removed. That sort of "American Imperialism" is the very thing that the terrorist organizations despise most about us I believe.

Geoschmo