I wonder what you do if your enemy isn't a nation, but an organization?
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Cheers, www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
People who make personal attacks are useless.
I killfile them no matter who they are insulting.
> > More than terrorists who crash our planes into our densely populated
> > buildings at will?
> It's the combination of both that's worrying. If the whole thing escalates
> and there are many more similar events in retaliation to whatever the
> American does next, then that could be far worse than what's happened so
> far.
If 5 such events are stretched over a decade, every 2 years another 10K
people playing the skyscraper lottery, then people like myself will be
asking why we didn't deal with it the 1st time? How could such repeated
attacks possibly be preferrable to identifying and destroying the enemy? We
aren't being terrorized by China, who could end the world over such idiocy.
We're being terrorized, surely, by some cheapass outfit who seizes planes
with butter knives and whistles dixie when we demand who has done this.
If they have better weapons of mass destruction than Boeing, then in time
they will use them. We must face this now, it isn't going away.
--
Cheers, www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
People who make personal attacks are useless.
I killfile them no matter who they are insulting.
> >Unless they seize another window of opportunity in coming months, before
> >security changes are made, I don't think they're going to take over any
more
> >planes with only knives and box cutters. The m***of the story may be
that
> >if the hijackers don't have guns, you'd better fight them. It is
possible
> >that USA airports will become like European airports, with soldiers with
> >machine guns walking around.
> Excuse me? What "European airports" would be like that? At least not
> the ones I've seen in e.g. Denmark, France and UK.
- Robert
> >Unless they seize another window of opportunity in coming months, before
> >security changes are made, I don't think they're going to take over any
more
> >planes with only knives and box cutters. The m***of the story may be
that
> >if the hijackers don't have guns, you'd better fight them. It is
possible
> >that USA airports will become like European airports, with soldiers with
> >machine guns walking around.
> Excuse me? What "European airports" would be like that? At least not
> the ones I've seen in e.g. Denmark, France and UK.
--
Cheers, www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
People who make personal attacks are useless.
I killfile them no matter who they are insulting.
> >> We cheered when we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
> >I don't recall us being at war with Palestine.
> Of course not, since there is no such country as "Palestine".
> From what I read in news, it seems many Palestinians see Israel and US
> as one entity due to how US always backs up Israel. (Not that I agree
> with that of course.)
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Cheers, www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
People who make personal attacks are useless.
I killfile them no matter who they are insulting.
At Heathrow the guard was strolling around with alert military discipline in
the same area I was waiting for my plane. That's not "in the background,"
that's "we're ready to shoot things." Do you mean they keep more in the
background at smaller airports?
--
Cheers, www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
People who make personal attacks are useless.
I killfile them no matter who they are insulting.
> > Heathrow has guards (probably SAS) walking around with Scorpion
> sub-machine
> > guns. Not sure about other airports because I don't fly all that much,
but
> > my Dad used to work for British Airways. I think security is pretty much
> the
> > same in most airports but the presence is likely to be seen more in a
> major
> > airport like Heathrow. I suspect that these guys keep in the background
> most
> > of the time so as not to worry people.
> At Heathrow the guard was strolling around with alert military discipline
in
> the same area I was waiting for my plane. That's not "in the background,"
> that's "we're ready to shoot things." Do you mean they keep more in the
> background at smaller airports?
- Robert
>> >Unless they seize another window of opportunity in coming months,
>> >before security changes are made, I don't think they're going to take
>> >over any more planes with only knives and box cutters. The m***of
>> >the story may be that if the hijackers don't have guns, you'd better
>> >fight them. It is possible that USA airports will become like
>> >European airports, with soldiers with machine guns walking around.
>> Excuse me? What "European airports" would be like that? At least not
>> the ones I've seen in e.g. Denmark, France and UK.
> Heathrow has guards (probably SAS) walking around with Scorpion
> sub-machine guns. Not sure about other airports because I don't fly all
> that much, but my Dad used to work for British Airways. I think
> security is pretty much the same in most airports but the presence is
> likely to be seen more in a major airport like Heathrow. I suspect that
> these guys keep in the background most of the time so as not to worry
> people.
> - Robert
Z.
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Please remove my_pants when replying by email.
And it's ironic that in the UK where you don't see people carrying guns
(because they are illegal now) that this is where we see airport security
openly carrying machine guns. Not so in America, where the public are far
more likely to be packing.
- Robert
To assume that it's going to be that easy is *extremely* naive. Look at all
the historical precendents, particularly Northern Ireland before assuming
you can just "win" this without any thought.I would like to see a valid
proposal for how the "enemy will be defeated", so easily. In fact, I expect
it would be extremely difficult and would almost certainly result in far
greater casualties.
- Robert
It's not WW3. It's a Middle-Eastern terrorist 'spectacular' on a
hitherto unprecedented scale, but along political fault-lines that have
been established for decades.
Victory for them means the annihilation of the state of Israel. They
don't want compromise, and they can neither win nor be defeated
militarily. One thing that will come of this is that Palestinians in
general (although it's unlikely that this attack came out of Palestine)
will be pushed further back behind the barbed wire. Their current
Intifada had already gone far towards assuring this anyway, but world
opinion will fret less about it now.
There will be US strikes at 'terrorist bases'. If any nation is
fingered as masterminding the attack, there will be significant strikes
at its military and economic infrastructure, and lasting economic
sanctions.
- Gerry Quinn
Religion just provides one more 'difference' in conflicts, I think. The
more differences you can tot up - language, religion, colour, culture,
geographical distance - the more people and especially civilians you can
kill before it goes, as somebody put it, "off the scale".
But we've all got a scale and know well how to use it.
- Gerry Quinn
> >Another worrying thing is that the current president has been compared to
"a
> >monkey in a cowboy hat with his finger on the button".
> Probably by the same people who would have no problem sympathising with
> the dancing Palestinians.
It's not WW3 but it's a *major* incident that will have *major*
repercussions. And it won't just be the US vs whoever, there will be many
other countries involved in whatever happens.
This is all probably very likely, but if the Muslims are driven to terrorism
now because they see themselves as oppressed then what will happen if the US
actively targets them? When British troops went into Northern Ireland, it
didn't stop the troubles, that's when the shit really hit the fan. There are
undoubtedly a lot more Muslim extremists world-wide than there are Irish
paramilitaries.
- Robert
> And bombers don't need God (IIRC, didn't McVeigh expressly profess his
> aethism?)
If you want to have a war/massacre then you need to demonise the enemy.
Otherwise the troops will realise that the "enemy" is just the boy/girl next
door and not fight. Religion is still one of the best ways to do this, "we
hate them because they did xyz to our ancestors 1,000 years ago", and so on.
It's not belief in god that's the problem, it's the organised religion, with
it's history or future prophecies that's the problem.
- Robert
> And bombers don't need God (IIRC, didn't McVeigh expressly profess his
> aethism?)
> Religion just provides one more 'difference' in conflicts, I think. The
> more differences you can tot up - language, religion, colour, culture,
> geographical distance - the more people and especially civilians you can
> kill before it goes, as somebody put it, "off the scale".
