Science Undecided on Room Temperature Superconductors

[Seth]

What ought to have been done in the aftermath of 9/11/2001?

Bomb Saudi Arabia' Madrassas. Liquidate the Saudi princes. Stop Raegan from arming the Mujahadeen.

Reagan was President from 1980 to 1988, and arms were provided to the Afghans at that time in order to fight off the Soviet Union which had invaded the country in a war of conquest. That's not the "aftermath" of 9/11/01.

And those arms were provided at the explicit request of the Afghan government and the Mujahadeen, such as it was, just like the troops that went to Vietnam went there at the request of the South Vietnamese government, an ally of ours, and just as our entry into Iraq in GW I was justified by Saddam's attack on our ally, Kuwait, and just as our re-engagement of hostilities with Saddam in GW II was justified by Saddam's intransigence and refusal to abide by the cease-fire agreement upon which we agreed to suspend hostilities, and just as we entered WW I and WW II at the request of European governments under duress, and just as we provided weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua at their request to fight the Communists.

We don't invade other nations with the intention of taking them over and colonizing them, we invade them when they force us to do so by their belligerent actions against other nations whom we have chosen to ally with or when the despotism and tyranny within a country is so grave and unacceptable that action must be taken to prevent crimes against humanity by despots and tyrants.

And when those goals are achieved, then we go home.

[Seth]

tl;dr. Invading Iraq was wrong. Invading A'stan was arguably a waste of time. Saudi Arabia is the giant elephant in the room. Nothing gets sorted in the middle east till SA gets cut off the teat.

O.k., what would you suggest would have been right to do to Saudi Arabia in late 2001-2002, and/or the ensuing years? And, what's the basis for such action? Saudi Arabian WMD? Was Saudi Arabia behind 9/11/01? (and if so, what's the evidence for it?)

"Evidence"? Lol. Umm, Iraq. Ideally no one would have been bombed or invaded, but money trails from the Saudis should have been investigated with a microscope and frozen and seized and then sanctions placed on the Saudis.

Um, you mean Afghanistan don't you? Iraq was invaded because Saddam invaded Kuwait, an ally of ours. Get your history straight.

Osama, while being a Saudi, operated out of and took refuge in Afghanistan and Pakistan because he was persona non grata in SA. He ordered the 9/11 attack, and others, because he was mad about the US having troops in Saudi Arabia, his homeland, which he considered to be a defilement of sacred ground, which is what got him tossed out of SA.

But yes, SA has plenty of people funding Islamic terrorism within the country and they need to be held to account. It's the most-strict Wahabist Muslim nation on earth and the center of Islam to begin with. But, the simple political and economic reality is that nobody's going to fuck with the Saudis as long as they control OPEC and the bulk of the world's oil supply. That's certainly a moral failing on the part of the whole rest of the planet, but an understandable one given the consequences of OPEC cutting off the oil.

And that's why the US oil and gas industry is so important to the Saudis, and why they are trying desperately, and to their economic harm, to kill off the American shale-oil industry...because the US has become the largest producer of oil and gas in the world outside of SA, and SA feels very threatened.

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

And those arms were provided at the explicit request of the Afghan government and the Mujahadeen

Not the government, it was working with the Soviets...

[Seth]

What ought to have been done in the aftermath of 9/11/2001?

Bomb Saudi Arabia' Madrassas. Liquidate the Saudi princes. Stop Raegan from arming the Mujahadeen.

Reagan was President from 1980 to 1988, and arms were provided to the Afghans at that time in order to fight off the Soviet Union which had invaded the country in a war of conquest. That's not the "aftermath" of 9/11/01.

Yes, and in doing so gave Islamic fundamentalism muscle in the region. No, that's not the aftermath of 9/11. Just one of the biggest contribution one could imagine to enabling the trouble and strife besetting that region now. Supporting the enemy of one's enemy always seems to backfire, and nobody seems to learn from past mistakes. Another one was "regime change". What the fuck were the President and the Secretary of State thinking would happen when they eliminated the strongest bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism, the dictator Saddam Hussein and his army?

Irrelevant. We had no choice. He invaded Kuwait, who is our ally and with whom we have a defense treaty. We were obligated to respond to Saddam's belligerence.

You'd suggest a better course of action than going after the culprits of 9/11/01 in the location where the culprits were located would be to have just murder children in Islamic schools in Saudi Arabia?

The madrassas I speak of are not schools in which little children are imparted with knowledge and wisdom. They are breeding and training grounds for Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. The teachers are nothing more than Wahabbi zealots.

Indeed they are. And the only way to stop them is for the people of the region to put a stop to it.

The madrassas that are said to have focused on warring against infidels developed mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan, by the way.

Financed by the house of Saud right up to the level of the current king, and this is not about to change any time soon.

True enough. Do you like walking? I hope you like walking because if the world takes on the House of Saud, we'll be walking when the oil ceases to flow. Do you think the Saudis will go quietly into that night? No, they will spike the wells out of spite if they have to. They are after all Wahabbist Muslims.

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

And those arms were provided at the explicit request of the Afghan government and the Mujahadeen

Not the government, it was working with the Soviets...

The titular puppet government the Soviets set up was. That's why I said "such as it was," by which I meant the legitimate government-in-exile.

[Seth]

We were helping our friend fend off an invasion. Would it have been moral to let them be conquered?

The US was doing no such moral thing. It saw an opportunity to inflict some serious damage on its arch rival and took advantage of it. That's all there was to it. You fucking well know it too, so don't try to bullshit me.

Well, yes, of course. The US was at the time engaged in a luke-warm conflict with the Soviets, who were actively trying to dominate the entire world and the US, particularly under Reagan, was determined not to allow the Soviets the conduit to Pakistan and thereby access to a warm-water southern port system on the Indian Ocean, among other strategic benefits, like a border with Iran that would facilitate invasion and takeover of Iran's oil fields. So it's not quite "all there was to it" at all. Your grasp of international geopolitics is somewhat lacking and colored by your evident hatred of the US.

That's a bit rich. Not only has the US materially supported any and every dictator it found advantageous to support,

As if every other country hasn't done the same, including the UK. International geopolitics is a very complex game and sometimes you make alliances with bastards in order to prevent a bigger bastard from taking over. Sometimes you don't. The US looking after US interests both domestically and abroad is hardly a condemnatory action, given that every other nation on earth tries to do the same thing all the time throughout all of modern history.

As it happens, the Shah of Iran, while a dictator, was a benevolent one (although not very adept at running the country) as compared to the regime that has replaced him, so our alliance with him was perfectly reasonable and rational because we knew exactly what Iran would become if the Shah was deposed, and that's what happened. It's unfortunate that it happened under Jimmy Carter, the most cowardly, pusillanimous and ineffectual excuse for a President we've had in modern history, who was taken by complete surprise by the Shah's overthrow because he refused to listen to his intelligence sources about the growing unrest in Iran, which began as far back as 1953 when Communists tried to take over.

Then again, it was partly the Shah's adherence to western culture and particular US influences that made the Whabbists mad, so his overthrow was in fact just one of the beginning shots in the Islamic jihad towards the Caliphate that has been brewing for 1400 years.

but it also has repeatedly toppled democratically elected governments and replaced them with dictatorships.

Examples please? I think you're full of shit on that one.

[Seth]

The commission has quite rightly been criticised on a few issues.

Mostly by liberal nitwits who think they know something the Commission doesn't. They don't.

The FBI is not even supposed to be concerned with international policy.

Where did you get that silly idea? The FBI is a criminal investigative agency and it has jurisdiction to investigate crimes against Americans or America anywhere on the planet.

As for the CIA, I trust it, the Pentagon and any other official or quasi official organisation connected with foreign policy to always say in public whatever is in the interest of the USA while preparing comprehensive reports concerning what it really knows in secret, to be seen only by a select few. Very occasionally the truth does come out. Remember Daniel Ellsberg?

And what leads you to the narcissistic conclusion that "the truth" ought to come out at all? Why on earth would you think that every government secret deserves to be "free" like that motherfucker Edward Snowden did? Governments cannot operate, particularly internationally, without keeping secrets from it's enemies and indeed the public as well. You don't think that the Communists or the Islamists or anybody else tells the people everything do you?

The public doesn't have a need to know many things and the revelation of classified information by, for example, the Rosenbergs and Snowden, have caused incalculable harm to actual people. There is no way of knowing how many of our covert assets in countries hostile to us were compromised by Snowden and have been killed as a result. We do know that hundreds of covert CIA operatives have been "outed" and are now compromised and of little use to the CIA.

The notion that something nefarious is always going on when government keeps secrets is just plain idiocy spouted by people who are just too stupid to be allowed to participate in the process at all. But we let them vote...

[Seth]

Heck, money from CAIR is suspected to go to Islamic radicals, too. Do we seize their accounts and bomb their offices?

Yes we should seize their accounts and no we should not bomb their offices, but we should arrest every single one of them in the US and charge them with treason.

[pErvinalia]

tl;dr. Invading Iraq was wrong. Invading A'stan was arguably a waste of time. Saudi Arabia is the giant elephant in the room. Nothing gets sorted in the middle east till SA gets cut off the teat.

O.k., what would you suggest would have been right to do to Saudi Arabia in late 2001-2002, and/or the ensuing years? And, what's the basis for such action? Saudi Arabian WMD? Was Saudi Arabia behind 9/11/01? (and if so, what's the evidence for it?)

"Evidence"? Lol. Umm, Iraq. Ideally no one would have been bombed or invaded, but money trails from the Saudis should have been investigated with a microscope and frozen and seized and then sanctions placed on the Saudis.

So, you have evidence of these money trails? You know they exist, and have not been addressed via counterterrorism methods?

Would there have been UN support for military action or sanctions against Saudi Arabia? If not, should the US have "gone it alone?" Why didn't Australia take such action, if it was clear that Saudi Arabia was funding Al Qaeta? Did Australia seize or freeze bank accounts?

Nice red herrings.

It's widely know SA funds Islamic terrorism. Apparently it's not widely known in Merca land where you guys are firmly ensconced up the anus of the Saudis.

[pErvinalia]

What ought to have been done in the aftermath of 9/11/2001?

Bomb Saudi Arabia' Madrassas. Liquidate the Saudi princes. Stop Raegan from arming the Mujahadeen.

Reagan was President from 1980 to 1988, and arms were provided to the Afghans at that time in order to fight off the Soviet Union which had invaded the country in a war of conquest. That's not the "aftermath" of 9/11/01.

Yes, and in doing so gave Islamic fundamentalism muscle in the region. No, that's not the aftermath of 9/11. Just one of the biggest contribution one could imagine to enabling the trouble and strife besetting that region now. Supporting the enemy of one's enemy always seems to backfire, and nobody seems to learn from past mistakes. Another one was "regime change". What the fuck were the President and the Secretary of State thinking would happen when they eliminated the strongest bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism, the dictator Saddam Hussein and his army?

In the early 1980s, nobody thought the Afghanis had anything against the US, and they were our friend. We were helping our friend fend off an invasion. Would it have been moral to let them be conquered?

"friend"

[pErvinalia]

We were helping our friend fend off an invasion. Would it have been moral to let them be conquered?

The US was doing no such moral thing. It saw an opportunity to inflict some serious damage on its arch rival and took advantage of it. That's all there was to it. You fucking well know it too, so don't try to bullshit me.

Both may exist together. Afghanistan was not the enemy of the US, and the US had an interest in helping Afghanistan. The Soviet Union was the US's enemy in the cold war, and the Soviet Union conducted an unprovoked invasion of Afghanistan and annexed it. What's the moral thing to do?

What's all this bullshit about US foreign policy being about morals?!? How naive can you get?

[pErvinalia]

I suppose what they were thinking was that Saddam Hussein's regime was a rogue, totalitarian dictatorship, which was guilty of a host of international crimes

That's a bit rich. Not only has the US materially supported any and every dictator it found advantageous to support, but it also has repeatedly toppled democratically elected governments and replaced them with dictatorships.

As has the Brits - who were very big on supporting dictators and toppling governments throughout the 20th century.

Tu quo quo fallacy. Someone call the waaambulance!

[pErvinalia]

tl;dr. Invading Iraq was wrong. Invading A'stan was arguably a waste of time. Saudi Arabia is the giant elephant in the room. Nothing gets sorted in the middle east till SA gets cut off the teat.

O.k., what would you suggest would have been right to do to Saudi Arabia in late 2001-2002, and/or the ensuing years? And, what's the basis for such action? Saudi Arabian WMD? Was Saudi Arabia behind 9/11/01? (and if so, what's the evidence for it?)

"Evidence"? Lol. Umm, Iraq. Ideally no one would have been bombed or invaded, but money trails from the Saudis should have been investigated with a microscope and frozen and seized and then sanctions placed on the Saudis.

Um, you mean Afghanistan don't you? Iraq was invaded because Saddam invaded Kuwait, an ally of ours. Get your history straight.

Get your reading straight. Coito is referring to post 9/11.

But yes, SA has plenty of people funding Islamic terrorism within the country and they need to be held to account. It's the most-strict Wahabist Muslim nation on earth and the center of Islam to begin with.

Please tell Coito that. He doesn't seem to get it.

[rainbow]

...exactly the same argument being used by ISIS to justify their extreme behaviour.

Yes, but your moral equivalency argument fails because those against whom we take military action are, by their own actions and intentions, fundamentally and irredeemably evil cocksuckers who have no legitimate moral or ethical justification for what they do.

You have no legitimate moral or ethical justification for what you do.
Bombing villages that contain civilians can't be justified.

[Brian Peacock]

And yet it is justified on the basis of a declared military objective (with the qualifier that they will try very hard to keep non-combatant casualties to a minimum), and the military objective is justified on the basis of its capacity to achieve a declared political/policy objective (to bring peace to the region, to protect civilians at home or abroad, etc). That's how we end up terrorising and killing innocents in far away places in their homes. Or we just declare all group members (all Muslims, all Chechens, etc) fundamentally antithetical to our values or representing an automatic existential threat, and therefore fair game (and they only have themselves to blame).