America vs. al Qaeda

[cryptophreak]

Our political leaders are still fighting an enemy that doesn't exist. They think, in a rather racist way, that the Muslim world is mad at Americans because we have freedom, and liberty and women in the workplace; and not because we are the unflinching supporters of Israel, because we support the Saudi police state, because we have troops in the Arab Peninsula, in Iraq and other places. So really no matter how big the intelligence community gets in the United States, as long as U.S. foreign policy remains what it is, the enemy will continue to grow in numbers and probably lethality. [...] If you listen to President Obama or former President Bush, it's still that they hate us for our freedoms and our liberties, and we're going to kill them or capture them one at a time. And yet we killed Usama bin Ladin in this age of celebrity; we think that ended a big part of the war. Well, while we focused on Bin Ladin, al Qaeda expanded from basically being an Afghanistan-centric group to being still in parts of Afghanistan, in a big part of Pakistan, in Yemen, across North Africa, Somalia, Iraq and Palestine.

I estimate that al Qaeda is here to stay, because the West is provoking and growing them all the time. I further predict that the next few decades will, at a birds' eye view of global history, essentially be the story of America vs. al Qaeda. Who do you think will win, and why?

 

[Benfica]

It is not America vs Al Qaeda, but rather vs Islamic Imperialism.

It's a fight between 2 undeclared empires. The US empire is 70 years old, Islamic is 1400.

What contains the fight and keeps it "low intensity" is the US-Saudi petrodollar agreement. I don't want to see the day when the US stops being able to pull money out of thin air.

 

[-Jes-]

Thus proving why the 'war on terror' is even more ridiculous than the war on drugs.

 

[DRT-Maverick]

It is not America vs Al Qaeda, but rather vs Islamic Imperialism.

It's a fight between 2 undeclared empires. The US empire is 70 years old, Islamic is 1400.

What contains the fight and keeps it "low intensity" is the US-Saudi petrodollar agreement. I don't want to see the day when the US stops being able to pull money out of thin air.

Most people who are islamic do not have an imperialistic view, in fact they are accepting of christianity and other religions. The islams that give islam a bad name are the Minority.

 

[Zur]

Yeah, contrary to what warmongers would have you believe, most people just want to be left alone.

 

[Big-Al]

It's all just bad politics. Lies, deceit, money, corruption & lobbying.

Nothing really new, nothing really old.

greed, power... same old same old.

Anyways, it's a shame humans can't just be happy getting along with one another.



^Sex can cause all the above too.

 

[Gir]

It is not America vs Al Qaeda, but rather vs Islamic Imperialism.

Yeah it hurts me every time when I see Al Qaeda hate on the internet. The nice ones never make the news, which is why you've never heard of them catholic Al Qaeda for example. They're like Hawaiians, they're all lovely.

 

[Zur]

The enemy is not outside, he is inside.

 

[Godfrey.Payans]

Who do you think will win, and why?

The non-terrorists will win. Terrorism isn't a big game winning strategy.

That leaves the bigger cultural clash that some people reckon is going on, between Islamic culture and everyone else. If it exists, I think might cause some more heavy responses, but otherwise it'll fade over time as it gets diluted. There are just too many other people, too much stuff for the moderates to lose, and too much potential lethality in the rest of the world.

 

[Plumb_Drumb]

Nobody will win.

You have alwhatever fighting against the US, and the US fighting against Al.

That's the fight.

On the upside, um, there is no upside.

 

[Gir]

Nobody will win.

You have alwhatever fighting against the US, and the US fighting against Al.

That's the fight.

You have to admit though. Of the two, Usians are more socialist.

 

[Plumb_Drumb]

It doesn't matter what I admit, it's not my fight.

 

[Gir]

Hippie.

 

[cryptophreak]

The non-terrorists will win. Terrorism isn't a big game winning strategy.

Why do you think that? They've only grown in power since we started going after them in a big way. In fact, that's rather the point, isn't it? There's nothing to go after; they're a distributed lot with loose ties to one another. Trying to fight terrorism according to the modern US definition of the word, namely "anybody who who opposes us", seems to me an exercise in futility.

The more people you bomb, the more will violently oppose you, and the more the whole exercise becomes less The War on Terror and more The War on The Public, and perhaps eventually The War on All Publics, which sounds like an ill-fated venture to my way of thinking.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Terrorism will probably win. This isn't that odd a situation. The key to practically every empire falling in the past was internal strife. Whether that was caused by external terror or internal terror, it always led to the same outcome.

The US just needs to go back to isolationism. We can get involved in things other nations that we are allied with are dealing with, but we should stop policing the world. Outside of perhaps UK and France, who despised the US in the 19th century?? It wasn't until the Cold War that we started getting involved in the Middle East and screwing our allies that we lost our reputation. Even Bin Laden was a product of us muddying our hands, and 9/11 is a direct result of that.

 

[SkaarjMaster]

Al, I know him.

EDIT: what happened to your sports avatars?

 

[Al]

Me too.

 

[Godfrey.Payans]

Why do you think that? They've only grown in power since we started going after them in a big way.

Have they grown in power? Seems to me that they've cost their allies deeply and been kicked around a lot.

However, the main thing is that terrorism can't be a form of government over enough people to take on a big nation. Eventually it has to transform into something that isn't terrorism any more to take the struggle to the next level.

The war on the public is definitely happening, but that's not the terrorists winning, that's just predatory human nature doing what it does.

 

[Wormbo]

Happy 12th anniversary of the western world's victory over unnecessary personal freedoms.

 

[cryptophreak]

Have they grown in power? Seems to me that they've cost their allies deeply and been kicked around a lot.

They've spread across the region like wildfire. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, drone strikes in Pakistan -- all of it really pissed a lot of people off. Recruitment went through the roof.