"War on Terror" Apparently Over

[Zen Curmudgeon]

I've been away for a while, and so had to catch up with the news. This bit from the Christian Science Monitor caught my eye:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0728/dailyUpdate.html
posted July 28, 2005 at 11:30 a.m.

The 'rebranding' of the war on terror

Bush team wants to play down military aspects and focus on the 'struggle against violent extremism.'

I guess "war" isn't perceived as the best word now, almost 4 years after 9/11. I also guess changing the name won't brings our troops back home any sooner.

The "struggle against violent extremism" could be waged right here.

Titles of essays from the Reverend Fred Phelps site, www.godhatesfags.com:

* Thank God for the bombing of London's subway
* Thank God for IEDs!
* All nations must immediately outlaw sodomy (homosexuality) & impose the death penalty!

Pleasant little "love thy neighbor" type, huh? He also pickets the funerals of service- men and -women killed in the line of duty.

From the Christian Gallery regarding Paul Hill, a former Presbyterian minister and leader in Defensive Action who killed a physician and bodyguard outside an abortion clinic; he wounded the wife of the bodyguard. He was sentenced to both life imprisonment on federal charges, and execution on state charges:

http://www.christiangallery.com/hill.html

His public witness was one which not only testified to the humanity of the child in the womb and to the love we are to show our neighbors who are being delivered over to death; his deed was also a testimony against the judges of the land. Yes, he displayed the judgment which every prosecutor and judge ought to be processing against all the childkillers from Atlantic to Pacific. [emphasis added]

"the love we are to show our neighbors"? Assassination as an expression of God's love for us all? That's a novel defense: "Jesus made me do it".

From a CBS News story about Eric Rudolph, bomber of the Atlanta Olympics and abortion clinics:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/18/national/main709777.shtml

Eric Rudolph declared Monday that abortion must be fought with “deadly force” as a judge sentenced him to life in prison for setting off a remote-controlled bomb at an abortion clinic that killed an off-duty police officer and maimed a nurse.

This self-righteous cop-killer managed to avoid the death penalty. I guess the prosecutors weren't so Christian as to want him executed.

The FBI collects numbers on hate crimes. There's a lot of those. . . look for "Uniform Crime Statistics".

Anyone with patience and Google can come up with lengthy lists of American "violent extremism" people and organizations. If this phrase isn't just a focus-grouped PR tactic by the Bush admininstration then it seems to me we have ample opportunity to deal with extremists right here at home.

Of course, if the real idea is to divert attention from how poorly we're doing in the "war on global terrorism", then it's merely another lie in a long series that began with "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and "Saddam Has Links to Al-Quaeda", and then moved onto "The Insurgency Is In Its Death Throes".

Either way, it's only a re-branding, not a re-thinking. We're still a long way from leaving Iraq a peaceful democracy, and we still haven't found Osama. Four years after the Twin Towers, the best Bush and Company seem able to come up with is another marketing campaign to stir up support for a military conquest that so far has cost over 1,800 American lives, and maybe 25,000 Iraqi civilian deaths.

Talk about "violent extremism".

Take Care -

ZC

[large]

Gee, Zen, you ought to get out of your neighborhood and look at the World! Just so you could write your letter in English and say whatever you choose, over 6000 men lost their lives on June 6, 1944, just to land a force . . . You'd think we would have the guts to at least finish what we started . . or at least make an attempt . .

And you, like many, whine about "not finding Osama" . . who gives a Damn whether we find him or not . . when Karl Marx died, Communism didn't . . . when Hitler died, neither Naziism nor Facism has died, and is, as a matter of fact, alive and well . . matter of fact, the Wahabisist Facism is exactly what Osama bin Laden preaches and the Madrassa's in Pakistan teach a form of Islamic Facism/Nazism . . . IT'S NOT A PERSON, IT'S AN IDEA . . of which about 12 to 20% of 2 billion people embrace . . . worldwide . . .

Go on, blame the "Bushies", after all, they inherited the problem from Clinton . . who did nothing . . but who inherited it from the other Bush, who inherited it from Reagan, who inherited it . . well you get the idea (I hope) . . let's just hope before it's all said and done, nobody blows up any subways, trains, or malls in our country . . .

And as I've said on other forums with little success, quit whining, come up with a solution that won't have you speaking Arabic and kneeling to the East five times a day in another 20 years!

[Zombiewire]

Very well stated Mr Large.


They say this in the Army " Drive On"


Gee, Zen, you ought to get out of your neighborhood and look at the World! Just so you could write your letter in English and say whatever you choose, over 6000 men lost their lives on June 6, 1944, just to land a force . . . You'd think we would have the guts to at least finish what we started . . or at least make an attempt . .

And you, like many, whine about "not finding Osama" . . who gives a Damn whether we find him or not . . when Karl Marx died, Communism didn't . . . when Hitler died, neither Naziism nor Facism has died, and is, as a matter of fact, alive and well . . matter of fact, the Wahabisist Facism is exactly what Osama bin Laden preaches and the Madrassa's in Pakistan teach a form of Islamic Facism/Nazism . . . IT'S NOT A PERSON, IT'S AN IDEA . . of which about 12 to 20% of 2 billion people embrace . . . worldwide . . .

Go on, blame the "Bushies", after all, they inherited the problem from Clinton . . who did nothing . . but who inherited it from the other Bush, who inherited it from Reagan, who inherited it . . well you get the idea (I hope) . . let's just hope before it's all said and done, nobody blows up any subways, trains, or malls in our country . . .

And as I've said on other forums with little success, quit whining, come up with a solution that won't have you speaking Arabic and kneeling to the East five times a day in another 20 years!

[Digger Dan]

Terror seems to always be the final solution for fanatical truebelievers regardless of what cause they espouse--it is the darkest side of human behavior. It has always been with us--it just emerges in different forms. Unfortunately for us Americans and the rest of the world our government seems to wait until we have to expend the lives of large numbers of our youth to curtail it. The killing of the innocent by forethought is always terrorism, regardless of who is commiting the act , and whether it is the loss of one life or millions. Terrorism is the ultimate act of cowardice.
In today's world we have too many good people hooked into believing that terrorism has its roots in poverty. If that were so, why then do the vast majority of terrorists not belong to the "poverty" class. All adult humans are responsible for their own acts and are thus guilty of those acts regardless of the outcome. People don't seem to whine when they are guilty of doing good--then why do they whine when they are guilty of harm--they are cowards--plain and simple. Those who fail to act on behalf of good, regardless of their reasoning, are cowards. The "war" on terror didn't just begin, it has always been with us--we have been playing with words throughout much of our history by failing to comprehend that terror by any other name is still terror.

[Zombiewire]

Very well put! I would rather fight the war on Terror over there then in our back yards.
"Drive On"



Terror seems to always be the final solution for fanatical truebelievers regardless of what cause they espouse--it is the darkest side of human behavior. It has always been with us--it just emerges in different forms. Unfortunately for us Americans and the rest of the world our government seems to wait until we have to expend the lives of large numbers of our youth to curtail it. The killing of the innocent by forethought is always terrorism, regardless of who is commiting the act , and whether it is the loss of one life or millions. Terrorism is the ultimate act of cowardice.
In today's world we have too many good people hooked into believing that terrorism has its roots in poverty. If that were so, why then do the vast majority of terrorists not belong to the "poverty" class. All adult humans are responsible for their own acts and are thus guilty of those acts regardless of the outcome. People don't seem to whine when they are guilty of doing good--then why do they whine when they are guilty of harm--they are cowards--plain and simple. Those who fail to act on behalf of good, regardless of their reasoning, are cowards. The "war" on terror didn't just begin, it has always been with us--we have been playing with words throughout much of our history by failing to comprehend that terror by any other name is still terror.