It may work fine for the military, but civilians die because of it. That's the point. Open-sourcing it will make matters worse. Consider the civilian kill-rate of the army versus the civilian kill-rate of terrorists. You will find that as terrorist attacks go up because of Army transparency the number of civilian deaths actually goes way up. Sure our Army might end up killing slightly less civilians but overall it's a loss for everybody.
I sympathize with your desire to weed out corruption but this isn't the way to do it. Bureaucratic transparency shouldn't come at the price of human lives. Also please note that this isn't a purely American problem. Many other armies all over the world have dealt with this problem and they have done so without the Wikileaks approach you are advocating. If they can do it, so can we.
In order for deterrence to work the ENEMY must have a very good idea of the capabilities of their opponent. If you keep all of your fancy weapons secret the enemy won't know about them so they'll have no deterrence value. Israel speak publicly about their NBC stockpile because they're in violation of numerous treaties, but they certainly wink and nod about them. This 'deterrence' hasn't worked very well. They're still the subject of constant attack. Not true. The enemy needs to think you have some weapon. They don't need to know any specifics or real information for deterrence to work. Israel's deterrence worked great for years until the UN and US started "expressing concern" whenever they tried to take out terrorist groups. Ever since then their deterrence power went down the drain.
Deterrence reduces the amount of real violence you have to use but obviously it doesn't work if you don't respond to attacks time and time again. Eventually your enemies will think you're bluffing. No one is expecting Israel to nuke its neighbors to prove its point but it is expected to at least hit back with smaller weapons when attacked.
And 'deterrence' can backfire. The main point of torture is deterrence, "Mess with us and we'll torture you." Of course, this kind of belligerence can also foster resentment and ATTRACT attackers. Someone walking around heavily armed is "looking for trouble". Nobody accuses Sweden of being fascists. No one is using torture as deterrence. We're talking about concealing the size of your army, your military capability or your willingness to respond to any attacks by your enemies. If Iran believes that nuclear development leads to invasion Iraq-style they will think twice before continuing. In fact, both Syria and Iran did stall their support of terrorism in the first couple of years after 9/11 but then went right back into it once they saw how much crap the US was taking from the international community.
And who writes that summary? People in the Pentagon a.k.a. professional liars. The specific military details need to be leaked because the Pentagon is dishonest when dealing with the American people and Congress. There are plenty of NGOs that read the papers in full and publish their own summaries. Individuals don't need the kind of information you're asking for. They don't understand enough about the military to interpret the data, though the NGOs I mentioned do.
What counts as "doing something wrong"? Does "pissing away money" count? Because if it does, it should be fine to point out virtually everything the military does because almost all of it involves pissing away large sums of money. Anything you can do, the Pentagon can do it half as well for three times the cost. Every government in the world pisses money away. Breaking news about how your particular government does it does not justify risking the lives of our soldiers to do it. Lives are worth more than this. Secondly, the citizens know how much the army is spending as a black-box. If they don't like the amount they can always pressure their representatives on this point. Again, civilians don't know enough about the military to judge for themselves what is proper use of the money. How am I supposed to know whether spending $200 million on a particular Jet is normal or pissing money away?
This is simply wrong, there are plenty of non-military analysts that can process this information. And that's the whole point: INDEPENDENT analysis. The Pentagon can't be trusted. You need to stop being so paranoid. Independent NGOs don't need to know specifics about how we got our intelligence (i.e. who are our sources) or what is the specific working schedule of our military. Yes, they need to know what is going on on a bigger picture (i.e. we spent $1 billion on 50 jets of type X, we have 20,000 troops on the ground, etc) but that's where it stops.
If the American army is about to attack "terrorists" in MY village I would like to know. So i can't get the fuck out before they come in and kill half the village. Uh, right. I'm not going to answer this kind of rhetorical point. I would love to see you prove that 50% of all American army "kills" are civilian.
If I live in a "soft spot" and the gov know it the most surrly the terrorist know it too. I would like to know too, for obvious reasons. 1) It's not your right to know, nor should it be. First of all, you're not a citizen of the country whose army is protecting you. Second of all, even in cases where a country's own army is protecting local cities I'd love for you to show me a case where they openly announced "soft spots". No country in the world does this!
2) You assume that just because the Army knows its own soft spots, terrorists know it too. This is clearly not the case. You're not trying to imply they have ESP do you? Sure they know of *some* soft spots, but not all of them, and you're implying we should be publishing them all.
You can't mount a decent psychological or intelligence-based warfare against an enemy if you publish what you're going to do every step of the way. I'm not trying to advocate censorship here but I'd love to hear a *serious* answer as to how you expect any country to mount this sort of effort under the limitations of full disclosure. There is no such thing as "decent psychological or intelligence-based warfare". The notion that we SHOULD be terrorizing and torturing Iraqis for information and then using that information to kick down more doors and terrorize and torture more Iraqis is wrongheaded. It can't work. It won't work. There must be a political settlement in Iraq which means making concessions to the jihadis. Our current strategy of handing the nation over to Iran and the Shite militias is not a good one. I wasn't talking about Iraq specifically. Deterrence is an example of a decent psychological or intelligence-based warfare that you can't make use of if citizens insist of being told every minute detail of our military capability. Many wars were prevented by virtue of deterrence during the cold war and in recent history of the middle-east. There is absolutely no value in declassifying this sort of information.
"The terrorists" already know. They do have eyes, you know. None of the information posted to Wikileaks is a secret to Iraqi residents. There is a difference between having eyes and being told the exact schedule and capability of military personnel. Regardless of whether they can find this out or not it serves absolutely no positive purpose being posted online.
What is the point of publishing real-time army positions and schedules to the public? To inform the American public about how THEIR military is being utilized. Again, the Iraqis have eyeballs. They already know where the troops are deployed. John Smith does not give a rat's ass about specific military details. He cares for a general summary of how well we're doing and if we did anything wrong. It is fine for whistle-blowers to point out if our troops do anything wrong, but doing so does not necessitate revealing sensitive information.
Again, wrong. The US government has a long history of LYING to the American people about the manner in which military forces are deployed in their name. Every American citizen has a RIGHT to know every detail of how the American military is deployed. It is incumbent upon the military and government to demonstrate, in each individual case, that it is absolutely necessary to not to reveal that information because it could lead to the deaths of American servicemen. The level of information you are asking for is utterly useless to anyone without a military background. Again, as a citizen I'd like to know if we're doing anything wrong and if we are give me some proof this is actually taking place, but there is no need to reveal specific operational details to do this.
Those "citizen groups" are right
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WikiLeaks Under Fire
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You can't mount a decent psychological or intelligence-based warfare against an enemy if you publish what you're going to do every step of the way. I'm not trying to advocate censorship here but I'd love to hear a *serious* answer as to how you expect any country to mount this sort of effort under the limitations of full disclosure.
Some specific points I'd like to discuss:
- What is the point of publishing Coalition "soft spots" to the public? Aren't you just begging for terrorists to attack them? It makes perfect sense to publish this to a limited group of trusted people that can fix the problem but not to the general public. Again, I understand there are times where publishing this information might be appropriate, but for the vast majority of the time it is not.
- What is the point of publishing real-time army positions and schedules to the public? Is anyone benefiting from this except from the terrorists?
etc.
My point is that Wikileaks or others have published certain information in the past that has absolutely no benefit to anyone except the very people trying to kill our troops. It's one thing to publish information which embarrasses governments or big companies, it's another thing altogether to publish information whose sole use is the killing of our people.
How about not placing artillery and missile positions in densely populated civilian neighborhoods? That way you don't get bombed.
Well, unfortunately the guys placing the artillery are not necessarily the ones who live there, and the ones who do live there will get a gun pointed at their family if they ask for it to be moved.
Which is not to say that civilians getting caught in the middle between two warring sides is anything new or novel, but the least we could do is not try to dismiss it by implying they deserve to get killed. They don't deserve to be killed but nor do our guys. Our obligation is to do our best to hit the terrorists without harming the civilians. If that becomes impossible then it is perfectly acceptable to go ahead with the strike. Terrorists will embed themselves in civilian centers this way so long as it pays off. That is, so long as it prevents governments from attacking them or it gives those governments a bad name once they do the terrorists will continue to do this. We need to stop practicing double-standards which make it impossible for Western governments to win this war.
Case in point: when the Lebanese army went into a Palestinian camp in 2007 and took out terrorists alongside civilians not a word of condemnation was uttered. Hundreds of civilians died yet the UN, US and all surrounding Arab states defended their actions. When Israel did the exact same thing in 2002 (with a very low civilian death count) there was no end to the condemnation they received.
Here is an example of what I mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Defensive_Shield \-> Palestinians murder hundreds of Israeli civilians in a matter of a month \-> Israeli go out and kill the terrorists \-> They are accused of genocide. The media, UN and all major rights groups estimate the death toll into the thousands. \-> Months later the UN publishes a report which affirms what Israel has been saying all along: "Fifty-two Palestinian deaths had been confirmed by the hospital in Jenin by the end of May 2002. IDF also place the death toll at approximately 52. A senior Palestinian Authority official alleged in mid-April that some 500 were killed, a figure that has not been substantiated in the light of the evidence that has emerged." http://www.un.org/peace/jenin/
Attitudes like this ensure that terrorism is hear to stay for decades to come.
The Sun guys rewrote their plugin to operate in a separate process as you mentioned -- it's a heck of a lot faster [1]. I agree with you, however, that FireFox should really be doing this work, not each individual plugin developer.
Because cutting off people's arms is counter to Western values. Pretty much all Muslim countries (Wahabis or not) practice that one. As are many Sharia laws for treating women.
Don't say another word. Your ignorance is showing. Let's see:
So what? Aren't they allowed to express their opinions and influence their country of residence by democratic means? I don't know about Canada, but British common law is very open to such things. Sikhs or Jews have been doing it for a long time, why should Muslims give up that right.
You are probably amalgamating consensual Sharia law as it appears in the Islamic tradition with the much-publicized bastardized version of the Wahabis and their croonies. If you happen to be British and don't like your laws, then I suggest you try and pass new ones. Slandering a group of people based on their faith for the sole purpose of doing so, is not the most constructive attitude.
Because cutting off people's arms is counter to Western values. Pretty much all Muslim countries (Wahabis or not) practice that one. As are many Sharia laws for treating women. There is nothing wrong with anyone wanting to follow their own laws *so long as they are compatible with existing laws*. It is just plain wrong immigrating to a Democratic country after bitching how bad the situation was back in your old country, then importing all your problems with you. When you immigrate to a new country you're supposed to leave your negative baggage behind. If you're not willing to do that, don't immigrate.
Either these people reflect the view of the majority or the "silent majority" is sitting back and letting its nut-cases run the show. Either way you can understand why people are pissed.
Not a day goes by without people being killed, tortured, abducted and jailed under dictatorships. That you don't hear about it is simply because you haven't tried hard enough. I am a Muslim and have been in plenty of marches and rallies to denounce terrorism, but are yet to see any coverage of any of them in the dominant US media outlets. As a progressist, I have been oppressed and censored every time I try to change things. It's not like I can go and stage a coup because: 1) they have all the weapons (which your country probably sold them to) and there is no tolerance for gun possession. 2) I don't believe in violence. Like I said, I live in Canada and in my many years of living here I have never heard of your so-called counter-protests but I *did* witness both on the news and first-hand an extremely large number of extremist supporters hold rallies. The fact of the matter is that if moderate rallies exist they are by far a small minority.
In your post you do not differentiate between civilians killed in the course of targeting terrorists vs terrorists who target civilians on purpose. I'm not here to debate the difference, just point out that anytime that non-Muslims have targeted civilians on purpose they were jailed for their actions and/or declared terrorists if they died.
Let me guess, you think Fox is actually a news program? Did you miss the video of muslim clerics forcing themselves bodily between the Danish embassy and an angry mob who were throwing stones at it, all the while the clerics were preaching nonviolence? Did you miss the hundreds of clerics speaking in interfaith councils around the world and denouncing all violent acts as against the will of allah? Maybe you should try the BBC, or any real news program. I guess I missed that in the *sea* of Muslims protesting that Britains should have their head cut off for offending Islam. Where was the counter-protest there? For every 100 anti-West protests by Muslims I see one pro-West protest. If these people are supposed to be the minority then the majority has a lot to explain.
Another example is the University I attended in Canada where there were countless violent protests by Muslims but not a single counter protest by their so-called moderate majority. This is my first-hand experience, unfiltered through any so-called biased news organizations.
While I agree and understand your position, it's certainly the case that the "few" is actually "a great many". Furthermore, it's also there to a greater degree.
If you attribute all violent acts by muslims as "muslim extremism," but do not count all violent acts by christians as "christian extremism" then you get a very skewed picture of what is happening.
If those same Christian extremists claimed they were committing horrific crimes in the name of Christianity and this kept on happening over and over again then yes I would attribute it to Christianity, especially if the so-called moderates did not crack down on them. The fact of the matter is that many of these terrorists are claiming to be doing it in the name of Islam and the so-called moderates are either dead quiet or excuse their behavior in one form or another. Very often we get lip service but no action.
When Christians, Jews or whomever else do something wrong, we stick them in jail immediately. We then denounce their acts in a very public way and we also teach all the kids in school that what they did is wrong. The same, unfortunately, can't be said of Islam. There are hundreds of streets dedicated to suicide bombers all over the Muslim world.
Oh come on! If that wasn't true, Muslims immigrating to Canada, UK and other countries wouldn't be demanding the institution of Sharia Law, yet they are!
Either these people reflect the view of the majority or the "silent majority" is sitting back and letting its nut-cases run the show. Either way you can understand why people are pissed.
Ever wish you could go back and edit your slashdot posts?:) I posted the wrong subject line above. I guess that teaches me to not post anything late at night!
Judaism does not interpret the written Torah (what you call the Old Testament) literally. Instead, one uses the oral Torah (oral tradition passed down through the generations) to interpret it. Wikipedia explains this in greater detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_Torah
The main point is that some passages, such as "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" are not meant to be interpreted literally. Also, more importantly, it is nearly impossible to carry out a death sentence in Judaism because you have to:
1) Have two unbiased witnesses that saw a person do something wrong 2) Went up to him and warned him what he is doing is wrong 3) He acknowledged he is aware what he is doing is wrong and acknowledge he is aware of the consequences 4) The witnesses report this to the Sanhedrin (Supreme Court) and if the person is found guilty, the witnesses must be the ones to carry out the sentence -- this made most witnesses reluctant to report. 5) Rabbinic attitudes concerning the death penalty are also reflected in statements such as "a Sanhedrin that effects an execution once in seven years is branded a destructive tribunal." Rabbi Elizer Ben Azariah said "once in seventy years." Source: http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/Death%20Penalty
I could go on. In short, Judaism does not take the attitude you mentioned above.
My understanding is that the main problem of Islam is their attitude towards people of differing religions. Specifically, Jews don't go out of their way to convert non-Jews to their faith nor do they hold non-Jews in some form of disdain. They don't believe that non-Jews go to hell or that they are immoral in any way. Jews believe that they have been assigned extra responsibilities above and beyond other religions -- so Jews are supposed to follow the 613 laws whereas non-Jews are supposed to follow only a subset of those laws (7 to be exact). This is discussed in more detail here: http://www.jewfaq.org/gentiles.htm
It is my understanding that Muslims who convert away from the faith (even to securalism) are sentences to death. I find that kind of problematic. It is also my experience that Muslims do not believe the Koran is open to interpretation, and this rigid mentality leads to some problematic results. It's fine and good so long as everyone holds a moderate interpretation of the Koran, but radical Islamists are going around preaching their violent interpretation instead and telling their followers that anyone who interprets it differently is committing Blasphemy and must be killed.
Islam is a very young religion in the grand scheme of things so maybe it just needs to be given time to mature. Hopefully one day it will be more accepting of "the other" and put this conflict to rest. Until that day (which could be thousands of years away) we're going to need to take more proactive measures to defend ourselves. Islam's "silent majority" is either unwilling or unable to crack down on its extremists.
Every single country in the whole world is under terrorist attack nowadays, including your cuddly neighbor to the north Canada. I missed the recent terrorist attacks on Canada. I guess being Canadian our news has kept quite and intercepted the news coming over the border so we don't know about them. Here are two recent events that come to mind, but there have been others:
Iran suspended it's nuclear weapons program in 2003. If you accept this then you must also accept the fact that they developed nuclear weapons covertly for years. If you read past the report's summary into the actual details you will find that while they have suspended *some* aspects of their weapons program, they have accelerated others. Once all the other parts are complete they could build a nuke in a matter of months. You will note that they have continued development of powerful rocket boosters to extend the range of their rockets all the way to Europe (ask yourself, why?). You will also note they admitted to acquiring nuclear weapon schematics on the black market. You will also note that they refused to send back spent-fuel from civilian nuclear power plants once it's used. The only reason any country would want to retain the spent-fuel is to further enrich it for nuclear weapons -- there is no other use for it.
That aside, either all sovereign nations have a right to possess nuclear arms, or none do; this "we can have them but you can't" thing will not work in the long term. If the U.S. doesn't want Iran to have nuclear weapons, it has to start fulfilling its obligations towards disarmament under the NPF. Absolutely not. By your logic should we begin handing out guns to random people on the street? Even to convicted criminals? Having nuclear weapons (or weapons of any kind for that matter) is not a Human Right and the world exercises careful control of who gets access to them -- for good reason. As far as I'm concerned, this is reason enough to deny Iran nuclear weapons: http://plateauofiran.wordpress.com/2007/10/05/ahmadinejad-wipe-israel-off-the-map-is-it-true/
and it's coming on the heel of decades of such actions by Iranian's leaders. Do you want to be responsible for the deaths of millions of people because of some Utopian ideal?
The people that the US installed in Iraq also don't seem to be all that popular among the people there. Just like with Palestine, the people in that country would rather have someone that we really don't like. So do we give the people what they want (who's an enemy to us), or impose someone of our choosing on them who they hate, leading to civil war? That's because people are demanding an unrealistically short time-frame. When dealing with Iraq or the Palestinians there is no way anyone could have resolved the situation in less than a decade. In the latter case, the US keeps on trying to push through one-year timetables which are simply not realistic. Both Hamas and Fatah are extremely evil groups with their own terrorist wings. Neither is moderate in any shape or form. The correct approach would be to negotiate with all moderate forces and exclude the extremists even if right now the moderates have no political force. The US' mistake has been negotiating with extremists because they're simply not willing to accept the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will take very long to solve. Sorry, but the world doesn't work on our time frames:)
I think in the case of Iraq the situation is actually improving a lot recently (the casualty figures can attest to that). Another thing the US might want to consider, regardless of political pressure to the contrary, is splitting Iraq across ethnic lines. I think it's fair to say that the Kurds could declare independence in the north and do well quite fast if we were to offer them some protection from Turkey (in return they'd have to promise to stop-border attacks). The question is whether the same is true of the Sunni and Shia.
Talk != Action. Saying that Israel should be wiped off the map of the world is different from sending your tanks in to do that.
Neither they nor the terrorist groups deny this fact (in fact, they openly boast about it) because they claim these groups are honorable "resistance groups" and there is no shame in funding them.
I'm aware of Iran's support of Hamas. There is still a fine line between proxy wars and actual wars. The Soviet Union and the US fought many proxy wars, yet made damn sure that none of their own troops were involved. That's because both were aware of what the immediate escalation would look like.
Finally, besides the diplomatic implications of unilateral escalations, there are the practical military ones that won't go away until Iraq changes significantly. As in, becomes something similar to Saudi Arabia.
#1: An invasion would accomplish nothing, as the US will not be able to stay. And I can guarantee you that this will not be like invading Germany or Japan, where the populations were either tired of their dictators, or accepted the implications of having been defeated on a battlefield. This will be the equivalent of Israel invading Lebanon.
#2: The US is currently not capable of fighting a large scale war in Iran. Not without completely abandoning Iraq.
Why do you think the current provocations of Iran - which, by the way, are technically far closer to acts of war than supporting Hamas - go unanswered? It's because everyone knows that there is not a damn thing anyone can do about them.
The only thing that could trigger a full-scale response by the Allied forces is an actual invasion of a country. The reason for this is that only a full-on invasion would cost the US more to let it slide than to tackle it head-on.
I appreciate your desire to eradicate bad people and to secure the world from terrorist acts. However, ultimately, it's all a cost-benefit analysis. And the cost-benefit analysis is so dramatically skewed against invading Iran that anything short of Iran dropping a nuke on Israel will not have any positive outcome. And that's counting externalities like saving the world from evil.
As I've already pointed out, Iran has done much more than just "talk" about wiping Israel off the map.
How can you stomp them if you don't know who is responsible? By them, I meant Iran. We're already pretty much at war with the entire Muslim war over a measly 3,000 deaths that happened almost seven years ago. Talk about missing the big picture. We are at war with radical Islam because they *murdered* 3000 of our civilians and tens of thousands other civilians worldwide (a great many of them Muslim themselves). We are at war with these people because of their disgusting ideology and want-on murder they continue to perpetrate. Good to know how little you care.
If a nuke went off here, we be nuking Iran and everyone involved knows that. If that was true, Israel and the US would have bombed the crap out of half the middle-east by now. No, unfortunately many people in the international community would rather we commit suicide before defending ourselves. Even if someone were to nuke us you would find very heavy international resistance to nuking them back. The world has a very short attention span and never follows conflicts to their well-deserved end. If they did terrorism wouldn't pay and no one would bother resorting to it. Right now terrorism pays because the West is spineless in their response. No one would nuke any country in response to a terrorist attack.
As for your two points, you left out another option: work with Iran (not Iraq) so that it isn't a problem that they have a nuke. The problem with war is that it is unilateral, highly costly, and can be imposed on your nation just as easily as the other way around. I have no problem with that if you can make it happen. Unfortunately the Iranian government has been none-too-friendly with any Western country since the Islamic revolution. Even many of their middle-eastern neighbors such as Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are on war terms with them.
Iran has not declared war against England, has not invaded Israel or committed any other act of war. Sure it has: http://plateauofiran.wordpress.com/2007/10/05/ahmadinejad-wipe-israel-off-the-map-is-it-true/
It funded bombings of American and Jewish targets around the world and more specifically in Israel they fund Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah. Neither they nor the terrorist groups deny this fact (in fact, they openly boast about it) because they claim these groups are honorable "resistance groups" and there is no shame in funding them. More than just funding them, they also train them in Iran and all of them have multiple offices in Iran. Coupled with the "Wipe Israel Off the Map" speech mentioned above, if that isn't a declaration of war, I don't know what is.
Last question: how do you know that a nation will turn into Nazi Germany before it actually does? If you do, I've got another word for you: thoughtcrime. Somehow, I suspect you're part "of those people" who would love to preemptively punish pre-criminals because they fit a certain profile. There's a word for those people - fascists. Welcome to Nazi Germany in the US, Kamerade. I don't have to punish them based on their thoughts, their actions speak a thousand words and then some. As I said above, there is overwhelmingly proof from multiple worldwide governments, including Iran's own government, that they have funded terrorist attacks against us.
If you want to avoid war with Iran then you should be in favor of diplomatic action to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons which could be a pretext for such a war.
Everyone has nukes, who cares? Why exactly is that any of our business? Even if they could claim plausible deniability by clandestinely giving a nuke to a terrorist, they know we'd stomp them anyway, so why would they do that? Oh yeah, they're crazy Islamofascists bent on subordinating our women and eating our babies. We'll all be speaking Farsi or some stupid bullshit. How can you stomp them if you don't know who is responsible?
I'm against installing dictators at the heads of any of these countries. I believe the past governments who did that were wrong to do so.
But that's the way the US deals with other governments it doesn't like. It's done it numerous times in the past; why would the future be any different? Wishful thinking?
I'm not here to represent some future United States government. All I'm saying is that right now it is justified for the US to put diplomatic and even military pressure on Iran and people should have nothing to complain about. The second there is even a hint of the US planning to install a dictator there or anywhere else then people would be justified in complaining, but not before. Contrary to your claims, the current US government did not do this in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Bullshit. WWII has no relation to the current situation, and everything is different today anyway.
Right. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. If you look up newspapers from the 1930s on the topic of Germany you will find that people were saying the same thing then about Germany as they are saying today about Iran. Back then we didn't have the foresight of WW2, today we have no excuse. History is very much repeating itself.
1) We now have nuclear weapons. Any large states with imperial/expansionist goals would be suicidal to invade America for that reason alone. This wasn't the case before WWII. It honestly doesn't matter if the entire rest of the world become one big evil empire under China or Islam, because the US has enough nukes to decimate the world's population, serving as a deterrent for invasion. If we had so many nuclear weapons during WWII, we wouldn't have needed to get involved in that war.
Nothing prevents a rogue country with nukes from giving some to terrorists who smuggle them into our country and detonate it locally. Nukes do not deter stateless terrorists.
2) The "enemies" now are Islamic terrorists, who are pissed that we're getting involved in their affairs. So, we keep sticking our noses into their affairs (mainly because there's a lot of oil in the region), and they get more pissed off. What sense does that make? We're not getting involved in other peoples' affairs, like in Sudan, because there's no oil there. All we have to do is pull out of the mideast, and they won't bother us. Just don't let them immigrate in like they do in Europe, because then they'll be causing problems here, murdering those who "dare to insult Islam", etc. And if a few nuts still come over here to stir up trouble, terrorism isn't that hard to deal with, as long as you have decent security measures in place, and allow people to carry guns with them: ask the Israelis about that, as they have significant experience in that regard.
1) America's immigration policy has always been very open. What you are proposing would be very difficult to do (change the country's culture) and might cause a huge amount of harm in its own right. America benefits a lot from its immigrants.
2) We can stick out heads in the sand but if Islamists take over nuclear-armed Pakistan then we are in trouble. They have shown they are more than willing to sacrifice their own people for the sake of striking at the "big satan".
3) Not all conflicts with Islam are oil-related. They are causing trouble all over Europe totally because of cultural differences. Islamists will always find an excuse people who are different because the root of their belief centers around the fact that anyone non-Muslim must be made to convert to Islam and anyone who converts away from the religion must die. All other major religions accept the right of other religions to exist, radical Islam does not.
You can't "defeat" an ideology, unless you exterminate all its followers. That's genocide. Is that what you're willing to do? If so, you're no better than they are.
I never proposed wiping out all Muslims but I am in favor of
The US has been doing much worse and for far longer. You haven't included thebest parts of the US in thee Middle East.
Iran used to be a DEMOCRATIC nation, one of the first to do so. But they didn't want to bend over for the US. So the US supported the overthrow of that government to put the Shah into power. The Shah was a ruthless dictator who was sort of like Saddam, only less cuddly.
When the people finally rose up against the Shah and took back their country, they made it very clear that the US was not welcome. Well, we can't have that now can we? So we helped put yet another ruthless dictator into power, Saddam Hussein. We gave Saddam military support and weapons to help fight a proxy war for us with Iran. That was quite a bloody mess. And that eventually lead Kuwait and the Iraq wars. More death and destruction.
Don't worry, the US still has Iran beat in regards to the killing people. They're amateurs compared to the US.
I'm against the actions of prior governments who installed dictators anywhere in the world and I would be against them doing it in the future. See, we have this thing called Democracy which means our leaders get changed every couple of years so just because an American president did that 20 years ago does not mean our current government has the attitude. The same can't be said of the dictatorships in the middle-east where the same leader is in power for his entire life and if you get stuck with a real nut-job you're in trouble for 60 odd-some years.
If you think the Iranians dislike their government, they dislike the US a whole lot more. If one thing can be said for the Middle East, its that they have long memories. We've been screwing over that area of the world for the better part of a century now, and I think it is easy to see that the remember all to well the actions of our past. That's debatable. Many sources argue that Iranians are not a fan of all US action but they hate their government *much* more. You've got to remember that many of them are secular and identify with Western values a lot more than they do with their own government. Like I said before, I disagree with the past decisions of installing dictators in the middle-east and I think we should apologize for that but this doesn't mean we should be prevented from doing the right thing going forward.
And who's to blame for the current Iranian government? The USA! We're the ones who installed the Shah there, and the people hated him so much they overthrew him.
Maybe we should have left them alone to begin with. If we go to war again there, it'll be another mess, since we'll just install another bloodthirsty dictator like we always do, and thousands upon thousands will die, at our hands. I'm against installing dictators at the heads of any of these countries. I believe the past governments who did that were wrong to do so.
If we want to avoid war, we just need to mind our own fucking business. How hard is that? It doesn't work. It didn't work in WW2 and it won't work in today's global-jihad world. Other people's problems become your own problem very easily. Every single country in the whole world is under terrorist attack nowadays, including your cuddly neighbor to the north Canada. We need to defeat the ideology of radical Islam. This isn't a US vs the world thing either: everyone on the West agrees this needs to be done. The only disagreement is on how to do this. I personally believe this needs to be done on many levels. There is no such a thing as a purely military or purely diplomatic solution to this conflict, it has to be tackled on all levels.
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I sympathize with your desire to weed out corruption but this isn't the way to do it. Bureaucratic transparency shouldn't come at the price of human lives. Also please note that this isn't a purely American problem. Many other armies all over the world have dealt with this problem and they have done so without the Wikileaks approach you are advocating. If they can do it, so can we.
Dear friend, you cannot open-source the military. Security by obscurity actually works just fine in the physical world.
Deterrence reduces the amount of real violence you have to use but obviously it doesn't work if you don't respond to attacks time and time again. Eventually your enemies will think you're bluffing. No one is expecting Israel to nuke its neighbors to prove its point but it is expected to at least hit back with smaller weapons when attacked. And 'deterrence' can backfire. The main point of torture is deterrence, "Mess with us and we'll torture you." Of course, this kind of belligerence can also foster resentment and ATTRACT attackers. Someone walking around heavily armed is "looking for trouble". Nobody accuses Sweden of being fascists. No one is using torture as deterrence. We're talking about concealing the size of your army, your military capability or your willingness to respond to any attacks by your enemies. If Iran believes that nuclear development leads to invasion Iraq-style they will think twice before continuing. In fact, both Syria and Iran did stall their support of terrorism in the first couple of years after 9/11 but then went right back into it once they saw how much crap the US was taking from the international community. And who writes that summary? People in the Pentagon a.k.a. professional liars. The specific military details need to be leaked because the Pentagon is dishonest when dealing with the American people and Congress. There are plenty of NGOs that read the papers in full and publish their own summaries. Individuals don't need the kind of information you're asking for. They don't understand enough about the military to interpret the data, though the NGOs I mentioned do. What counts as "doing something wrong"? Does "pissing away money" count? Because if it does, it should be fine to point out virtually everything the military does because almost all of it involves pissing away large sums of money. Anything you can do, the Pentagon can do it half as well for three times the cost. Every government in the world pisses money away. Breaking news about how your particular government does it does not justify risking the lives of our soldiers to do it. Lives are worth more than this. Secondly, the citizens know how much the army is spending as a black-box. If they don't like the amount they can always pressure their representatives on this point. Again, civilians don't know enough about the military to judge for themselves what is proper use of the money. How am I supposed to know whether spending $200 million on a particular Jet is normal or pissing money away? This is simply wrong, there are plenty of non-military analysts that can process this information. And that's the whole point: INDEPENDENT analysis. The Pentagon can't be trusted. You need to stop being so paranoid. Independent NGOs don't need to know specifics about how we got our intelligence (i.e. who are our sources) or what is the specific working schedule of our military. Yes, they need to know what is going on on a bigger picture (i.e. we spent $1 billion on 50 jets of type X, we have 20,000 troops on the ground, etc) but that's where it stops.
2) You assume that just because the Army knows its own soft spots, terrorists know it too. This is clearly not the case. You're not trying to imply they have ESP do you? Sure they know of *some* soft spots, but not all of them, and you're implying we should be publishing them all.
You can't mount a decent psychological or intelligence-based warfare against an enemy if you publish what you're going to do every step of the way. I'm not trying to advocate censorship here but I'd love to hear a *serious* answer as to how you expect any country to mount this sort of effort under the limitations of full disclosure.
Some specific points I'd like to discuss:
- What is the point of publishing Coalition "soft spots" to the public? Aren't you just begging for terrorists to attack them? It makes perfect sense to publish this to a limited group of trusted people that can fix the problem but not to the general public. Again, I understand there are times where publishing this information might be appropriate, but for the vast majority of the time it is not.
- What is the point of publishing real-time army positions and schedules to the public? Is anyone benefiting from this except from the terrorists?
etc.
My point is that Wikileaks or others have published certain information in the past that has absolutely no benefit to anyone except the very people trying to kill our troops. It's one thing to publish information which embarrasses governments or big companies, it's another thing altogether to publish information whose sole use is the killing of our people.
Well, unfortunately the guys placing the artillery are not necessarily the ones who live there, and the ones who do live there will get a gun pointed at their family if they ask for it to be moved.
Which is not to say that civilians getting caught in the middle between two warring sides is anything new or novel, but the least we could do is not try to dismiss it by implying they deserve to get killed. They don't deserve to be killed but nor do our guys. Our obligation is to do our best to hit the terrorists without harming the civilians. If that becomes impossible then it is perfectly acceptable to go ahead with the strike. Terrorists will embed themselves in civilian centers this way so long as it pays off. That is, so long as it prevents governments from attacking them or it gives those governments a bad name once they do the terrorists will continue to do this. We need to stop practicing double-standards which make it impossible for Western governments to win this war.
Case in point: when the Lebanese army went into a Palestinian camp in 2007 and took out terrorists alongside civilians not a word of condemnation was uttered. Hundreds of civilians died yet the UN, US and all surrounding Arab states defended their actions. When Israel did the exact same thing in 2002 (with a very low civilian death count) there was no end to the condemnation they received.
Here is an example of what I mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Defensive_Shield
\-> Palestinians murder hundreds of Israeli civilians in a matter of a month
\-> Israeli go out and kill the terrorists
\-> They are accused of genocide. The media, UN and all major rights groups estimate the death toll into the thousands.
\-> Months later the UN publishes a report which affirms what Israel has been saying all along: "Fifty-two Palestinian deaths had been confirmed by the hospital in Jenin by the end of May 2002. IDF also place the death toll at approximately 52. A senior Palestinian Authority official alleged in mid-April that some 500 were killed, a figure that has not been substantiated in the light of the evidence that has emerged." http://www.un.org/peace/jenin/
Attitudes like this ensure that terrorism is hear to stay for decades to come.
The Sun guys rewrote their plugin to operate in a separate process as you mentioned -- it's a heck of a lot faster [1]. I agree with you, however, that FireFox should really be doing this work, not each individual plugin developer.
[1] https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html
Don't say another word. Your ignorance is showing. Let's see:
Nigeria: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/688639.stm
Iran: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2008/01/EC3B38A0-00AF-4743-9943-5D00E920249F.html
Afghanistan: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1127048
Indonesia: http://www.indonesiamatters.com/994/hand-amputation/
Red Cross documenting the practice: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0999/is_7207_319/ai_55670121/pg_2
Wikipedia documenting the practice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia
Shall I go on?
Because cutting off people's arms is counter to Western values. Pretty much all Muslim countries (Wahabis or not) practice that one. As are many Sharia laws for treating women. There is nothing wrong with anyone wanting to follow their own laws *so long as they are compatible with existing laws*. It is just plain wrong immigrating to a Democratic country after bitching how bad the situation was back in your old country, then importing all your problems with you. When you immigrate to a new country you're supposed to leave your negative baggage behind. If you're not willing to do that, don't immigrate.You are probably amalgamating consensual Sharia law as it appears in the Islamic tradition with the much-publicized bastardized version of the Wahabis and their croonies. If you happen to be British and don't like your laws, then I suggest you try and pass new ones. Slandering a group of people based on their faith for the sole purpose of doing so, is not the most constructive attitude.
Not a day goes by without people being killed, tortured, abducted and jailed under dictatorships. That you don't hear about it is simply because you haven't tried hard enough. I am a Muslim and have been in plenty of marches and rallies to denounce terrorism, but are yet to see any coverage of any of them in the dominant US media outlets. As a progressist, I have been oppressed and censored every time I try to change things. It's not like I can go and stage a coup because: 1) they have all the weapons (which your country probably sold them to) and there is no tolerance for gun possession. 2) I don't believe in violence. Like I said, I live in Canada and in my many years of living here I have never heard of your so-called counter-protests but I *did* witness both on the news and first-hand an extremely large number of extremist supporters hold rallies. The fact of the matter is that if moderate rallies exist they are by far a small minority.
Another example is the University I attended in Canada where there were countless violent protests by Muslims but not a single counter protest by their so-called moderate majority. This is my first-hand experience, unfiltered through any so-called biased news organizations.
If you attribute all violent acts by muslims as "muslim extremism," but do not count all violent acts by christians as "christian extremism" then you get a very skewed picture of what is happening.
If those same Christian extremists claimed they were committing horrific crimes in the name of Christianity and this kept on happening over and over again then yes I would attribute it to Christianity, especially if the so-called moderates did not crack down on them. The fact of the matter is that many of these terrorists are claiming to be doing it in the name of Islam and the so-called moderates are either dead quiet or excuse their behavior in one form or another. Very often we get lip service but no action.When Christians, Jews or whomever else do something wrong, we stick them in jail immediately. We then denounce their acts in a very public way and we also teach all the kids in school that what they did is wrong. The same, unfortunately, can't be said of Islam. There are hundreds of streets dedicated to suicide bombers all over the Muslim world.
Oh come on! If that wasn't true, Muslims immigrating to Canada, UK and other countries wouldn't be demanding the institution of Sharia Law, yet they are!
Either these people reflect the view of the majority or the "silent majority" is sitting back and letting its nut-cases run the show. Either way you can understand why people are pissed.
Ever wish you could go back and edit your slashdot posts? :) I posted the wrong subject line above. I guess that teaches me to not post anything late at night!
Anyway, sorry for the typo!
Judaism does not interpret the written Torah (what you call the Old Testament) literally. Instead, one uses the oral Torah (oral tradition passed down through the generations) to interpret it. Wikipedia explains this in greater detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_Torah
The main point is that some passages, such as "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" are not meant to be interpreted literally. Also, more importantly, it is nearly impossible to carry out a death sentence in Judaism because you have to:
1) Have two unbiased witnesses that saw a person do something wrong
2) Went up to him and warned him what he is doing is wrong
3) He acknowledged he is aware what he is doing is wrong and acknowledge he is aware of the consequences
4) The witnesses report this to the Sanhedrin (Supreme Court) and if the person is found guilty, the witnesses must be the ones to carry out the sentence -- this made most witnesses reluctant to report.
5) Rabbinic attitudes concerning the death penalty are also reflected in statements such as "a Sanhedrin that effects an execution once in seven years is branded a destructive tribunal." Rabbi Elizer Ben Azariah said "once in seventy years." Source: http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/Death%20Penalty
I could go on. In short, Judaism does not take the attitude you mentioned above.
My understanding is that the main problem of Islam is their attitude towards people of differing religions. Specifically, Jews don't go out of their way to convert non-Jews to their faith nor do they hold non-Jews in some form of disdain. They don't believe that non-Jews go to hell or that they are immoral in any way. Jews believe that they have been assigned extra responsibilities above and beyond other religions -- so Jews are supposed to follow the 613 laws whereas non-Jews are supposed to follow only a subset of those laws (7 to be exact). This is discussed in more detail here: http://www.jewfaq.org/gentiles.htm
It is my understanding that Muslims who convert away from the faith (even to securalism) are sentences to death. I find that kind of problematic. It is also my experience that Muslims do not believe the Koran is open to interpretation, and this rigid mentality leads to some problematic results. It's fine and good so long as everyone holds a moderate interpretation of the Koran, but radical Islamists are going around preaching their violent interpretation instead and telling their followers that anyone who interprets it differently is committing Blasphemy and must be killed.
Islam is a very young religion in the grand scheme of things so maybe it just needs to be given time to mature. Hopefully one day it will be more accepting of "the other" and put this conflict to rest. Until that day (which could be thousands of years away) we're going to need to take more proactive measures to defend ourselves. Islam's "silent majority" is either unwilling or unable to crack down on its extremists.
Firebombing and kidnapping: http://www.canada.com/globaltv/quebec/story.html?id=485fefb7-fc25-44a0-8ff1-8a69c7ebf600&k=97449
Plots to behead Canadians: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/terrorism.php?id=1386210
\-> Jump down to "the Canadian connection"
and it's coming on the heel of decades of such actions by Iranian's leaders. Do you want to be responsible for the deaths of millions of people because of some Utopian ideal?
I think in the case of Iraq the situation is actually improving a lot recently (the casualty figures can attest to that). Another thing the US might want to consider, regardless of political pressure to the contrary, is splitting Iraq across ethnic lines. I think it's fair to say that the Kurds could declare independence in the north and do well quite fast if we were to offer them some protection from Turkey (in return they'd have to promise to stop-border attacks). The question is whether the same is true of the Sunni and Shia.
I'm aware of Iran's support of Hamas. There is still a fine line between proxy wars and actual wars. The Soviet Union and the US fought many proxy wars, yet made damn sure that none of their own troops were involved. That's because both were aware of what the immediate escalation would look like.
Finally, besides the diplomatic implications of unilateral escalations, there are the practical military ones that won't go away until Iraq changes significantly. As in, becomes something similar to Saudi Arabia.
#1: An invasion would accomplish nothing, as the US will not be able to stay. And I can guarantee you that this will not be like invading Germany or Japan, where the populations were either tired of their dictators, or accepted the implications of having been defeated on a battlefield. This will be the equivalent of Israel invading Lebanon.
#2: The US is currently not capable of fighting a large scale war in Iran. Not without completely abandoning Iraq.
Why do you think the current provocations of Iran - which, by the way, are technically far closer to acts of war than supporting Hamas - go unanswered? It's because everyone knows that there is not a damn thing anyone can do about them.
The only thing that could trigger a full-scale response by the Allied forces is an actual invasion of a country. The reason for this is that only a full-on invasion would cost the US more to let it slide than to tackle it head-on.
I appreciate your desire to eradicate bad people and to secure the world from terrorist acts. However, ultimately, it's all a cost-benefit analysis. And the cost-benefit analysis is so dramatically skewed against invading Iran that anything short of Iran dropping a nuke on Israel will not have any positive outcome. And that's counting externalities like saving the world from evil.
As I've already pointed out, Iran has done much more than just "talk" about wiping Israel off the map.
In any case, it seems to me this article is quite relevant in the context of our discussion and touches upon many of the points I am trying to make: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1167467762531
It funded bombings of American and Jewish targets around the world and more specifically in Israel they fund Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah. Neither they nor the terrorist groups deny this fact (in fact, they openly boast about it) because they claim these groups are honorable "resistance groups" and there is no shame in funding them. More than just funding them, they also train them in Iran and all of them have multiple offices in Iran. Coupled with the "Wipe Israel Off the Map" speech mentioned above, if that isn't a declaration of war, I don't know what is. Last question: how do you know that a nation will turn into Nazi Germany before it actually does? If you do, I've got another word for you: thoughtcrime. Somehow, I suspect you're part "of those people" who would love to preemptively punish pre-criminals because they fit a certain profile. There's a word for those people - fascists. Welcome to Nazi Germany in the US, Kamerade. I don't have to punish them based on their thoughts, their actions speak a thousand words and then some. As I said above, there is overwhelmingly proof from multiple worldwide governments, including Iran's own government, that they have funded terrorist attacks against us.
Everyone has nukes, who cares? Why exactly is that any of our business? Even if they could claim plausible deniability by clandestinely giving a nuke to a terrorist, they know we'd stomp them anyway, so why would they do that? Oh yeah, they're crazy Islamofascists bent on subordinating our women and eating our babies. We'll all be speaking Farsi or some stupid bullshit. How can you stomp them if you don't know who is responsible?
I'm against installing dictators at the heads of any of these countries. I believe the past governments who did that were wrong to do so.
But that's the way the US deals with other governments it doesn't like. It's done it numerous times in the past; why would the future be any different? Wishful thinking?
I'm not here to represent some future United States government. All I'm saying is that right now it is justified for the US to put diplomatic and even military pressure on Iran and people should have nothing to complain about. The second there is even a hint of the US planning to install a dictator there or anywhere else then people would be justified in complaining, but not before. Contrary to your claims, the current US government did not do this in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Bullshit. WWII has no relation to the current situation, and everything is different today anyway.
Right. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. If you look up newspapers from the 1930s on the topic of Germany you will find that people were saying the same thing then about Germany as they are saying today about Iran. Back then we didn't have the foresight of WW2, today we have no excuse. History is very much repeating itself.
1) We now have nuclear weapons. Any large states with imperial/expansionist goals would be suicidal to invade America for that reason alone. This wasn't the case before WWII. It honestly doesn't matter if the entire rest of the world become one big evil empire under China or Islam, because the US has enough nukes to decimate the world's population, serving as a deterrent for invasion. If we had so many nuclear weapons during WWII, we wouldn't have needed to get involved in that war.
Nothing prevents a rogue country with nukes from giving some to terrorists who smuggle them into our country and detonate it locally. Nukes do not deter stateless terrorists.
2) The "enemies" now are Islamic terrorists, who are pissed that we're getting involved in their affairs. So, we keep sticking our noses into their affairs (mainly because there's a lot of oil in the region), and they get more pissed off. What sense does that make? We're not getting involved in other peoples' affairs, like in Sudan, because there's no oil there. All we have to do is pull out of the mideast, and they won't bother us. Just don't let them immigrate in like they do in Europe, because then they'll be causing problems here, murdering those who "dare to insult Islam", etc. And if a few nuts still come over here to stir up trouble, terrorism isn't that hard to deal with, as long as you have decent security measures in place, and allow people to carry guns with them: ask the Israelis about that, as they have significant experience in that regard.
1) America's immigration policy has always been very open. What you are proposing would be very difficult to do (change the country's culture) and might cause a huge amount of harm in its own right. America benefits a lot from its immigrants.
2) We can stick out heads in the sand but if Islamists take over nuclear-armed Pakistan then we are in trouble. They have shown they are more than willing to sacrifice their own people for the sake of striking at the "big satan".
3) Not all conflicts with Islam are oil-related. They are causing trouble all over Europe totally because of cultural differences. Islamists will always find an excuse people who are different because the root of their belief centers around the fact that anyone non-Muslim must be made to convert to Islam and anyone who converts away from the religion must die. All other major religions accept the right of other religions to exist, radical Islam does not.
You can't "defeat" an ideology, unless you exterminate all its followers. That's genocide. Is that what you're willing to do? If so, you're no better than they are.
I never proposed wiping out all Muslims but I am in favor of
Iran used to be a DEMOCRATIC nation, one of the first to do so. But they didn't want to bend over for the US. So the US supported the overthrow of that government to put the Shah into power. The Shah was a ruthless dictator who was sort of like Saddam, only less cuddly.
When the people finally rose up against the Shah and took back their country, they made it very clear that the US was not welcome. Well, we can't have that now can we? So we helped put yet another ruthless dictator into power, Saddam Hussein. We gave Saddam military support and weapons to help fight a proxy war for us with Iran. That was quite a bloody mess. And that eventually lead Kuwait and the Iraq wars. More death and destruction.
Don't worry, the US still has Iran beat in regards to the killing people. They're amateurs compared to the US.
I'm against the actions of prior governments who installed dictators anywhere in the world and I would be against them doing it in the future. See, we have this thing called Democracy which means our leaders get changed every couple of years so just because an American president did that 20 years ago does not mean our current government has the attitude. The same can't be said of the dictatorships in the middle-east where the same leader is in power for his entire life and if you get stuck with a real nut-job you're in trouble for 60 odd-some years. If you think the Iranians dislike their government, they dislike the US a whole lot more. If one thing can be said for the Middle East, its that they have long memories. We've been screwing over that area of the world for the better part of a century now, and I think it is easy to see that the remember all to well the actions of our past. That's debatable. Many sources argue that Iranians are not a fan of all US action but they hate their government *much* more. You've got to remember that many of them are secular and identify with Western values a lot more than they do with their own government. Like I said before, I disagree with the past decisions of installing dictators in the middle-east and I think we should apologize for that but this doesn't mean we should be prevented from doing the right thing going forward.
Maybe we should have left them alone to begin with. If we go to war again there, it'll be another mess, since we'll just install another bloodthirsty dictator like we always do, and thousands upon thousands will die, at our hands. I'm against installing dictators at the heads of any of these countries. I believe the past governments who did that were wrong to do so. If we want to avoid war, we just need to mind our own fucking business. How hard is that? It doesn't work. It didn't work in WW2 and it won't work in today's global-jihad world. Other people's problems become your own problem very easily. Every single country in the whole world is under terrorist attack nowadays, including your cuddly neighbor to the north Canada. We need to defeat the ideology of radical Islam. This isn't a US vs the world thing either: everyone on the West agrees this needs to be done. The only disagreement is on how to do this. I personally believe this needs to be done on many levels. There is no such a thing as a purely military or purely diplomatic solution to this conflict, it has to be tackled on all levels.