Twelve Years and One Year After

[jordan179]

Twelve years ago the Terrorists launched an unprovoked strike against the United States of America.  As the first part of this attack, they interned over 200 American civilians aboard four aircraft, whereupon they deliberately murdered these people who under international law they were bound to protect, as part of the attack which killed almost

Comments

[sp23]

Yes, but what happened in WWII will never happen again, because we no longer are allowed to wage all-out war. When you set out to *not* win a war, well, you just won't win it.

And I'm sorry to say, but I have such little faith in the American people anymore that I expect someone just as bad or worse to be elected. Or for Obama to just go ahead and declare himself Dictator for Life and be hailed by his toadies in the Press and Congress and the blue states and on college campuses for doing that and gladly tossing the Constitution into the trash heap.

[benschachar_77]

I swear to God, if we go to war for Al Qaeda and/or Al Qaeda sympathizers I and a lot of others are going to be severely angry.

[prester_scott]

You/we will be angry and do what? Nothing, that's what.

[benschachar_77]

I don't know. There are a lot of soldiers, officers, and generals who would react poorly to the knowledge they will be fighting for Al Qaeda.

[prester_scott]

I wish you were right about that.

[prester_scott]

I know you hate hearing from me because of it, but my vote of no confidence in the United States stands.

I would further add that I see our government's transparently contrived and ridiculous stance on Syria as one of the desperate last gasps of a weak and sick former superpower; and that if the Republicans take over I expect no significant change in direction on this or any of our most important policies.

In our present form, we will never recapture our former glory. We have a very painful transformation, some very painful lessons, to endure before progress is possible. I find it hard to accept that this isn't obvious.

[lostboy_lj]

I hope American conservatives can find a way to look past Paul-pere's admittedly walleyed FP and give Rand Paul a chance to make his Madisonian case for peace and prosperity. Small-l libertarianism is presently the most sane course of action, and really the only one that might possibly lead us off the course of ruin. Even Christian conservatives must now realize that the only way to preserve their culture is to completely disconnect it from the State.

[jordan179]

If we withdraw from the war and go home, our enemies will follow us home and continue the war on our own soil. The only way to avoid this would be massive expenditures on highly-intrusive degrees of border and port security and major deployment of missile defenses. The rest of the world, and in particular the part of it that's actively trying to kill us, won't stop because we decide to stop fighting back.

[lostboy_lj]

Sorry to break it to you, but we already withdrew from "the war", and started waging it on our own soil long before we pulled our forces out of the Iraqi theater

[jordan179]

The war is quite real, and using scare-quotes only shows yourself to be not very serious about the issue. We haven't completely withdrawn from it yet, despite the fact that our current President is flailing about cluelessly: even though this is largely because he is so incompetent that he doesn't even have the will to order a cessation of military operations (something he could do at a word).

In particular, we are still launching attacks against the enemy command infrastructure, which limits their freedom of action and inflicts attrition upon the personnel they can least afford to lose. We are also still fighting, even under insanely-restrictive rules of engagement, in Afghanistan. You may complain that this isn't enough to defeat the foe, and it isn't: but it's better than nothing.

If we went back to doing nothing, as we were under Clinton, the enemy would be able to openly and freely organize their top echelons, extort or solicit contributions, and assemble strikes against us. What's more, absent American action in the field

[cutelildrow]

*puzzled* I thought Hasan was supposedly sentenced to death. Why do you say he hadn't stood trial?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/28/fort-hood-shooter-sentenced-death

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2404766/Fort-Hood-shooter-Major-Nidal-Hasan-sentenced-death-2009-shooting-rampage.html

I'm honestly puzzled as well, if Obama were so despised by the non-Democratic left, why then did they not vote him out of office? Or do the Democrats now simply outpopulate the rest? It's not as if America did not have already an example of his misrule (and I use that word deliberately, instead of 'mis-governance', given the behavior of the various branches of government and government offices) to hold up against.

What happened?

[jordan179]

I'm guessing I was just a bit behind the times on Major Hasan then -- I'm glad he was given a death sentence, though I suspect we'll take our own sweet time working through appeals. We always do these days.

Mitt Romney let himself be mischaracterized as a callous rich man, by a media which was actively working for Obama. And too many people still trust that media, or lack the curiosity needed to seek out the truth from other sources.

It severely shocked me when Obama was re-elected in 2012 -- did you notice that in the couple of months after that election I almost stopped posting, save for updates regarding Fantastic Worlds? I almost lost hope entirely in the remaining sanity of our citizens -- it's been coming back, slowly.