thedrifter
10-11-05, 06:24 AM
War Without End
Written by Bob Parks
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
No matter how many times it's brought up, one still has to marvel at the legendarily short attention span of the American people and those who use that short span for their own purposes when referring to the War on Terror. For some out there, here is a brief review of some of the more notables incidents, courtesy of the State Department:
Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Homeland, September 11, 2001: Two hijacked airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Soon thereafter, the Pentagon was struck by a third hijacked plane. A fourth hijacked plane, suspected to be bound for a high-profile target in Washington, crashed into a field in southern Pennsylvania. The attacks killed 3,025 U.S. citizens and other nationals. President Bush and Cabinet officials indicated that Usama Bin Laden was the prime suspect and that they considered the United States in a state of war with international terrorism. In the aftermath of the attacks, the United States formed the Global Coalition Against Terrorism.
Attack on U.S.S. Cole, October 12, 2000: In Aden, Yemen, a small dingy carrying explosives rammed the destroyer U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 others. Supporters of Usama Bin Laden were suspected.
U.S. Embassy Bombings in East Africa, August 7, 1998: A bomb exploded at the rear entrance of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, killing 12 U.S. citizens, 32 Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs), and 247 Kenyan citizens. Approximately 5,000 Kenyans, 6 U.S. citizens, and 13 FSNs were injured. The U.S. Embassy building sustained extensive structural damage. Almost simultaneously, a bomb detonated outside the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 7 FSNs and 3 Tanzanian citizens, and injuring 1 U.S. citizen and 76 Tanzanians. The explosion caused major structural damage to the U.S. Embassy facility. The U.S. Government held Usama Bin Laden responsible.
Khobar Towers Bombing, June 25, 1996: A fuel truck carrying a bomb exploded outside the US military's Khobar Towers housing facility in Dhahran, killing 19 U.S. military personnel and wounding 515 persons, including 240 U.S. personnel. Several groups claimed responsibility for the attack.
The list, incidentally, is quite long. We only hear about the more impressive bombings that involve European tourists or major metropolitan acreage. But these terrorists seem to not only enjoy killing Americans, but to cause any mass death that will give them the publicity they crave. So the big question: how do we end this terrorism?
I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce terrorism, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, abort every Muslim extremist in this world, and your terrorism rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your terror rate would go down. So these far-out, far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.
Couldn't resist....
Obviously, to the sheer denial of the left, sitting down and talking with them won't work. We've all witnessed “the word” of terrorists in Israel. Every time the Israelis came to some kind of truce, cease fire, “peace”, the Palestinians would send in another suicide bomber, set of another car bomb, or launch a few mortars into the most densely populated areas possible. So as much as there liberals who think a nice chit chat would smooth things out, are there any volunteers?
In fact, we've all heard the complaints, the chants, the slogans, the laments, and the demands from everyone from Cindy Sheehan to Barbara Lee, yet they offer no solutions. These self-centered types seem to have no realization that terrorists would target them, then again, why would they? Liberal mouthpieces are doing more for terrorist morale than setting off a dirty nuke in Atlanta.
Last week, President Bush gave a speech at the National Endowment for Democracy. Some say the speech was lame, others used the word “brilliant”. In my opinion, he just told it like it was.
“All these separate images of destruction and suffering that we see on the news can seem like random and isolated acts of madness. Innocent men and women and children have died simply because they boarded the wrong train or worked in the wrong building or checked into the wrong hotel.
“And while the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil but not insane.
“Some call this evil Islamic radicalism. Others militant jihadism.”
Some in this country call them the victims. Some here consider the United States the catalyst for evil in the world. Just saw yet another relative of a fallen soldier here in Massachusetts, interviewed, and asking the President where the Weapons of Mass Destruction were? Maybe we should again just come out and say it: our young men and women are stupid, brainwashed kids, who just signed up to get a skill from the military and had no idea that the US Army and Marine Corps actually intended to send them into a war zone.
continued...
Written by Bob Parks
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
No matter how many times it's brought up, one still has to marvel at the legendarily short attention span of the American people and those who use that short span for their own purposes when referring to the War on Terror. For some out there, here is a brief review of some of the more notables incidents, courtesy of the State Department:
Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Homeland, September 11, 2001: Two hijacked airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Soon thereafter, the Pentagon was struck by a third hijacked plane. A fourth hijacked plane, suspected to be bound for a high-profile target in Washington, crashed into a field in southern Pennsylvania. The attacks killed 3,025 U.S. citizens and other nationals. President Bush and Cabinet officials indicated that Usama Bin Laden was the prime suspect and that they considered the United States in a state of war with international terrorism. In the aftermath of the attacks, the United States formed the Global Coalition Against Terrorism.
Attack on U.S.S. Cole, October 12, 2000: In Aden, Yemen, a small dingy carrying explosives rammed the destroyer U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 others. Supporters of Usama Bin Laden were suspected.
U.S. Embassy Bombings in East Africa, August 7, 1998: A bomb exploded at the rear entrance of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, killing 12 U.S. citizens, 32 Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs), and 247 Kenyan citizens. Approximately 5,000 Kenyans, 6 U.S. citizens, and 13 FSNs were injured. The U.S. Embassy building sustained extensive structural damage. Almost simultaneously, a bomb detonated outside the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 7 FSNs and 3 Tanzanian citizens, and injuring 1 U.S. citizen and 76 Tanzanians. The explosion caused major structural damage to the U.S. Embassy facility. The U.S. Government held Usama Bin Laden responsible.
Khobar Towers Bombing, June 25, 1996: A fuel truck carrying a bomb exploded outside the US military's Khobar Towers housing facility in Dhahran, killing 19 U.S. military personnel and wounding 515 persons, including 240 U.S. personnel. Several groups claimed responsibility for the attack.
The list, incidentally, is quite long. We only hear about the more impressive bombings that involve European tourists or major metropolitan acreage. But these terrorists seem to not only enjoy killing Americans, but to cause any mass death that will give them the publicity they crave. So the big question: how do we end this terrorism?
I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce terrorism, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, abort every Muslim extremist in this world, and your terrorism rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your terror rate would go down. So these far-out, far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.
Couldn't resist....
Obviously, to the sheer denial of the left, sitting down and talking with them won't work. We've all witnessed “the word” of terrorists in Israel. Every time the Israelis came to some kind of truce, cease fire, “peace”, the Palestinians would send in another suicide bomber, set of another car bomb, or launch a few mortars into the most densely populated areas possible. So as much as there liberals who think a nice chit chat would smooth things out, are there any volunteers?
In fact, we've all heard the complaints, the chants, the slogans, the laments, and the demands from everyone from Cindy Sheehan to Barbara Lee, yet they offer no solutions. These self-centered types seem to have no realization that terrorists would target them, then again, why would they? Liberal mouthpieces are doing more for terrorist morale than setting off a dirty nuke in Atlanta.
Last week, President Bush gave a speech at the National Endowment for Democracy. Some say the speech was lame, others used the word “brilliant”. In my opinion, he just told it like it was.
“All these separate images of destruction and suffering that we see on the news can seem like random and isolated acts of madness. Innocent men and women and children have died simply because they boarded the wrong train or worked in the wrong building or checked into the wrong hotel.
“And while the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil but not insane.
“Some call this evil Islamic radicalism. Others militant jihadism.”
Some in this country call them the victims. Some here consider the United States the catalyst for evil in the world. Just saw yet another relative of a fallen soldier here in Massachusetts, interviewed, and asking the President where the Weapons of Mass Destruction were? Maybe we should again just come out and say it: our young men and women are stupid, brainwashed kids, who just signed up to get a skill from the military and had no idea that the US Army and Marine Corps actually intended to send them into a war zone.
continued...