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Good points except for... > an undefined and secret enemy Just this month alone... - Islamic terrorists gun down over 60 people in a shopping mall in Kenya.

• corin_ 13y ago
  That still doesn't define who they are. Are you one of these terrorists? Am I? It maybe helps justify the US' actions, but as far as "undefined and secret enemy" it is only one step further than saying "Who are we targeting? The... bad guys!"
  • chii 13y ago
    "No matter how hard he digs at his memory, Winston is uncertain whether a time existed when Oceania was not at war with someone." --1894
    • Andrew_Quentin 13y ago
      1984
• grey-area 13y ago
  Islamic terrorists is not a defined enemy; many people are Islamic, and any of them could be terrorists. The list of who is considered a terrorist is secret and we are not privy to which people or even organisations are considered enemies in this war on terror. The US is also frequently attacked by Christian terrorists. Terror aims to scare a population, but more importantly to drive a wedge between a government and its people by pushing the government into ever more repressive measures in an attempt to winnow out the terrorists, who can melt back into the population. The aim is precisely to force the government into ever more draconian measures which alienate the population and build support for the terrorists - to force the government to try to fight a war on the terrorists' terms. A great illustration of this from another era is the film The Battle of Algiers - torture, repression, removal of civil rights, and extra-judicial killing by the government in response are exactly what terrorism aims to achieve. Killing innocents in cafés is not the goal of terrorism, it's a means to an end, and that end is to force the government to adopt terror in response. The correct response to terror attacks is careful police work to track down the killers and bring them to justice, so that they can't continue to plant bombs. This can be done within our existing legal frameworks. The wrong response is to declare war on the the terrorists' terms, oppress your citizens, and kill yet more innocents in the cross fire as you target people on suspicion. Extra-judicial killing outside of war is as wrong as terror attacks, and as damaging for the parties involved, and eventually it comes to resemble terror itself.
  • consonants 13y ago
    Yup, it's been stated over and over by terrorist organizations that this is one of their intended goals. Thinking about where we were as a country around the time of the 1998 embassy bombings and where we are today would be jarring if I wasn't so desensitized to it.
    • yapcguy 13y ago
      It's not so much desensitization as media sanitization where images are pixelated, videos blurred, contextual information stripped from news reporting... leaving many in a soporific state. If the true horrors of violence were shown without censorship, all day, every day in the news media, so nobody could escape facing the world as it is, I have faith the public would be so disgusted and so outraged that they would move heaven and earth to find a solution. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bae_1304490155 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bae_1304490155 Watch and cry.
• Retric 13y ago
  Over it's 200+ year history the US has killed more civilians than that in the average week. Does that make us 4x as bad as Islamic terrorists?
  • ams6110 13y ago
    No, because even if that were true you need to look at motivations and intent.
    • TheZenPsycho 13y ago
      Genocide, imperialism, establishing delivery routes through foreign owned land, oil, and racism? The list goes on.
    • andyhmltn 13y ago
      Killing is killing. Drone strikes hit incorrect and innocent targets ~90% (needs citation) of the time. Are you saying that's any better?
      • spangled 13y ago
        (needs citation) You won't find one, given that it's not true. Are you saying that's any better? Are you actually asking if accidentally killing innocent people is better than routinely and intentionally killing innocent people, like this: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013%5C01%5C11%5Cstory_11-1-2013_pg1_1 http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013%5C01%5C11...?
        • andyhmltn 13y ago
          >You won't find one, given that it's not true. Really? :) http://presstv.com/usdetail/189661.html http://presstv.com/usdetail/189661.html >Are you actually asking if accidentally killing innocent people is better than routinely and intentionally killing innocent people, like this: An innocent person dead is an innocent person dead. Regardless of whether it's an accident or intentional its still wrong. 'Accidentally killing' hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the name of 'all that is good and great' is disgusting.
• jrockway 13y ago
  Islamic terrorists sent mail bombs to a bunch of scientists, bombed the Olympics in Atlanta, and destroyed that federal building in Oklahoma City, too, right?
  • colinb 13y ago
    Clearly not. But those were a while back. And the people who seem to be doing the most killing of civilians these days identify themselves as muslims. Yes, I understand that most, perhaps very nearly all muslims don't want anything to do with these nut-jobs. However, if you're looking for the group of people most likely to be in to this kind of thing _right now_, then it seems that the nearest crazy-horse mosque might be the place to go. No, not the mosque around the corner from you right now [for most values of 'you'], but such places exist, and its right for law enforcement to investigate them. Don't misunderstand me. Killing civilians with secret orders via remotely piloted drones, with no trial, no public investigation and no accountability is broken. Obama has certainly given me hope. Just as Bush did before him. I _hope_ that the next holder of office is a little more responsible. But, there is a war. And I'd rather the liberal democracies won it. [hint - if the nut-jobs who attached the shopping mall in Nairobi had their way, my children and I would be executed in a flash]
    • vdaniuk 13y ago
      Liberal democracies dont win when people are being killed without a trial. Government organizations that produce a visage of a liberal democracies win and they are two very different things.
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  • yapcguy 13y ago
    You've picked out data points in the USA. Check out what's going on in Burma, Thailand and the Philippines. Step back and look at events around the world, you'll see a clear pattern.
• ZoFreX 13y ago
  I don't know the global stats, but in Europe, 0.5% of terrorist attacks are committed by people who identify as Muslim. Christians and atheists commit way more.
  • colinb 13y ago
    0.5% ? Really? Can you back that up with a reference please.
    • ZoFreX 13y ago
      Sorry, my bookmark for the actual data is now a 404 :( It was from Interpol data, 2009 or 2010 I believe. Interestingly while searching for that data I stumbled across some for the USA: In the 1980 - 2005 period, 6% of terrorist attacks on American soil were carried out by Islamic extremists. 6%!
  • vdaniuk 13y ago
    I would very eager to hear about terrorist acts committed by people who identify as atheist.
    • cac04 13y ago
      I believe the first suicide bomb attacks were committed by Tamil Tigers.
      • singlecomment17 13y ago
        ... who were Hindus. As an aside, they also carried out attacks against Tamil Muslims in areas they claimed as theirs (Tigers').
        • cac04 13y ago
          Erm, no. The Tamil Tigers were avowed atheists. Here's one citation, you can probably find many others: http://preview.tinyurl.com/p6s9n9k http://preview.tinyurl.com/p6s9n9k
• steve19 13y ago
  Wow, this guy got downvoted fast and unfairly in my opinion. He stated a fact. I don't know what the Nigeria attack is, but in the three other attacks he listed the enemy is known and in two of those attacks they wore uniforms. Drones have been used against at least one of those groups. I think people don't like the term "Islamic" being used, but they were done by groups claiming to be Islamic, and reported in the media as Islamic. I am tired of the constant straw man arguments "but we have killed more people", "but christians are also terrorists" etc. Debate the issue at hand instead. Who are our enemy (if anyone) and how do we deal with them?
  • joshuaellinger 13y ago
    Replace the word "Islamic" with "Poor and Black/Brown" and you've selected the same group of people. Imagine being in Northern Ireland 20 years ago and stating the fact that all of the terrorist attackers were performed by "Catholics". Or in the Deep South 40 years ago (or today) and saying that all of the people charged with stealing are "Black". Or that most of the people with AIDS are "Gay". Unfortunately, the blanket targeting of a single group is really part of the problem. Pretending that it is tied to religion is just weakly hidden fear-of-the-other. The down-votes are just the quick-and-easy way to show that the community doesn't accept the cheap shot and sees it for what it really is.
    • yapcguy 13y ago
      > Pretending that it is tied to religion is just weakly hidden fear-of-the-other. The killers are quoting from religious text and openly declare they are fighting a religious war. If there were only one or two people doing this, you could claim they were mentally ill, but you have thousands of people doing this, all over the world. You can't tar everybody with the same brush, but it's obvious that religion is part of the problem.
      • droope 13y ago
        why do you say islam is part of the problem? I ask because I genuinely don't understand...
• pygy_ 13y ago
  Let's kill each and evey (presumed) muslims then! Roughly one fifth of humanity. BTW, are you a secret muslim?
• beedogs 13y ago
  Last I checked, none of those were America.
• czottmann 13y ago
  Counter argument: - Catholics worldwide have, over decades, mistreated and abused hundreds and hundreds of children put in their care, scarring them for life I am, of course, talking about the priests we heard about in the news. I wouldn't dare to generalize that their absolutely abysmal moral compass is indicative for the religion as such. Just saying. Generalization is bad, mmkay.
• alexqgb 13y ago
  Over one billion people are Islamic. That's about as unspecific as you can get.
• baltcode 13y ago
  And this justifies assassinations and executions without open and fair trials?