Understanding terrorism

[richlevy]

Urbane, you seem to be splitting up your posts. Is this one for each personality?

As for denial, you are the one who seems to be whipsawing back and forth between Al-Queda and Saddam. My point was that the war in Iraq was not part of the war on terror. You seem to agree with that point and criticize my opinion at the same time.

Want to fight tyrants? Let's make a list and throw in Myanmar, Congo, and at least a dozen more. We'll leave off North Korea and Iran, since they may actually have nukes and paradoxically cannot be invaded by us. It's sort of like the idea of only loaning money to people who don't need it. You can only invade countries which threaten you with nukes if they don't actually have them.

I love your sterotype of liberals. At the same time that you go into a harangue about the concept of everyone thinking every neo-con is stupid enough to believe the Saddam-9/11 connection, while that is what your post appeared to support, you of course paint liberals with a broad brush.

My personal preference is that instead of 30,000 soldiers in Afghanistan looking for Bin Laden and 160,000 in Iraq, we have 200,000 soldiers in Afgahnistan looking for Bin Laden. My way would probably result in getting the 'tyrant' who actually attacked us. That's hardly being 'soft' on tyrants.

I support and defend my Constitution. I hold my leaders accountable. I do not sit on my ass humming patriotic tunes and playing "don't ask, don't tell" with politics. A soldier does his duty by following orders. A citizen does his duty by questioning authority and insuring that Congress has the consent of the governed. You seem to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about every tinpot foreign tyrant in the world. I worry about us raising one here, or setting the stage for one in the future.

If it were only your ass on the line, I'd love to let you dress up and go out there to shoot something. Unfortunately, there are a quarter of a million men and women who are expecting to be sent to the right place at the right time and with the right equipment and support. We let them down this time. They did not have to go to Iraq. There were no weapons pointed our way. We have changed their mission and they are doing the best that they can with where we have placed them.

Right now you can say it was worth it. I wish you were younger and had a classification where you actually got shot at, so you could come back and tell me if that is really true.

For some reason you have become infected with Heinlein syndrome. This malignent disease results in the idea that veterans are automatically better citizens than civilians.