• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Explosions at the Brussels Airport

We've conducted a limited war and gotten the limited results we should have expected. The American public doesn't presently have the stomach for creating a lasting peace with these idiots, so we have to deal with our actual choices. These folks shoot their women for the crime of reading. American women are reading target coordinates on their safe houses. I think we are the good guys, without apology. We won't be able to #coexist with these people. We should either extricate ourselves completely from this mess (domesticating and alternating our energy sourcing would be fine any time you are ready, Mr. President), or flatten the place, or both. Since option 1 is the only thing we have the political capital to do, get on with it.

Does option 2 not also annihilate the same women being punished for reading? Are you comfortable with that? At what point do the consequences of tactics abandon the morality of the mission?
 
i dunno, the British Navy dominated the globe for an era with some pretty brutal means

Yeah, but then the US and USSR armed all the natives with automatic weapons and flooded all the biggest trouble spots with readily accessible high explosives.

Kind of sucked for the hegemons when the guys waging asymmetrical warfare got their hands on the good stuff and thus the means to inflict pain on the guys with the big navy.
 
Does option 2 not also annihilate the same women being punished for reading? Are you comfortable with that? At what point do the consequences of tactics abandon the morality of the mission?

You are correct, and no, I'm not comfortable with it (I would much prefer that the bad guys upgrade to the moral compass of a drunken Rottweiler). We consent to the terror attacks by not flattening the place. That's part of our bargain with our conscience. We're not going to flatten the place, these attacks will continue and the best we can do is manage it. The Drone program is one of the best ways to do that, given our buffet of bad choices. I don't believe we are creating any more terrorists (on the margin) compared to the fine work of the radical clerics. A camel takes a dump in a field and it's the Great Satan's fault.

With what our choices presently are, I'm for drastically reducing our profile in the region, radically re-shaping our energy sourcing to undercut their funding, wishing Israel the best if they insist on persisting in engaging and striking the nodes of gravity necessary for them to pose an international threat. The best we can do in terms of "slowing the tide of creating more terrorists" is putting an Islamic face on counterterrorism. If a country fails to take the threat of radicalism seriously (*cough*, Saudi Arabia, *cough*), let them be the first to feel the effects of our shrinking diplomatic and economic footprint.
 
Yeah, but then the US and USSR armed all the natives with automatic weapons and flooded all the biggest trouble spots with readily accessible high explosives.

Kind of sucked for the hegemons when the guys waging asymmetrical warfare got their hands on the good stuff and thus the means to inflict pain on the guys with the big navy.

im not really following here but Britain's hegemony didn't end until Europe was bankrupted by WWI. That had little to do with natives with weapons.
 
im not really following here but Britain's hegemony didn't end until Europe was bankrupted by WWI. That had little to do with natives with weapons.

it was mostly a joke, but the point is, it's a lot harder for any country to enforce a Pax {insert hegemon}icus these days because of the advances in technology. Ideas (such as political propaganda and blueprints for bombs) go around the world at the speed of light. Even the most pitiful wannabe terrorist has access to automatic weapons that can kill dozens at a time, as opposed to spears or muskets. Other large countries may not have the military capability of the US but they have enough to make open warfare too costly to imagine, so the US has to tread lightly if those countries oppose its hegemonic desires (see, e.g., Syria, Charles Krauthammer's wet dreams notwithstanding). Hegemony is a lot harder these days than it was when Winston Churchill charged the Dervishes at Omdurman.
 
Next time we have a mass shooting by a young white guy, are we going to run the same calculation?

Only if someone is trying to stereotype all white guys as mass shooters and demonizing their communities for not stopping them before the fact.
 
When does it just become the acceptable norm? I feel like no matter what you do there are going to be people that want to do bad things. Crime never ceases to exist you can't stop all of and that appears to be where we are headed with terrorism. With the occurrence of crime the easiest way to protect again crime is to avoid high crime areas, in the USA we have the luxury of having this be completely feasible in regards to terrorism and I think this is why you see such a push in regards to immigration and muslims ala BSF4L.
 
We gotta find a way to keep guns out of the hands of nutjob young white guys.
 
Only if someone is trying to stereotype all white guys as mass shooters and demonizing their communities for not stopping them before the fact.

Thank Gawd no one stereotypes white males.*

*Why don't I think this is really the distinction?
 
PiBSOFe.jpg
 
Back
Top