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Pariah said:
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r3x29yz4a said:
and you don't think that fucking with a government has any effect on the average citizen of a country?
it's all wrong. you can't justify coups for oil rights anymore than you can justify suicide bombing.
In the case of the Middle East, they only fucked themselves up when we did a regime switch. In fact, Ayatollah was the only one holding the most extreme grudge for the incorportion of the west into their society.
The Ayatollah was a byproduct of the CIA's 1950's coup.
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the G-man said:
How so?
their whole revolution was against the Shah and his regime which were kept in place by the CIA. It was well known (over there) that he had been backed by the CIA and there was a lot of anger in that.
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r3x29yz4a said:
The Ayatollah was a byproduct of the CIA's 1950's coup.
First of all: They didn't know that it was backed by the CIA until awhile later til they dethroned the Shah.
Second of all: Whether he knew about it or not does not dispel the fact that the people were not suffering from the placement of the Shah--Which was your point. The people suffered due to Ayatollah's lunacy, not from the regime switch.
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Quote:
Pariah said:
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r3x29yz4a said:
The Ayatollah was a byproduct of the CIA's 1950's coup.
First of all: They didn't know that it was backed by the CIA until awhile later til they dethroned the Shah.
Second of all: Whether he knew about it or not does not dispel the fact that the people were not suffering from the placement of the Shah--Which was your point. The people suffered due to Ayatollah's lunacy, not from the regime switch.
Pariah, you're either lying or ignorant. Either way you're wrong. Everybody knew. Hell, I knew and I was just a young man who read the LA Times daily. Life under the Shah was no pik-nik either. Just ask any middle aged Iranian what they think of Savak. Do some research I'm not lying.
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Are you saying that you knew the CIA assisted the Shah exactly when it happened and exactly when Ayatollah was excommunicated?
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Pariah said:
Are you saying that you knew the CIA assisted the Shah exactly when it happened and exactly when Ayatollah was excommunicated?
That would have been difficult P, since I wasn't born yet! But it was common knowledge in the mid '70s. I think the domestic turmoil started with the lavish party he through for himself to celebrate 3 millinea of the Persian Empire. It had an effect on people not unlike l'affair de collier 2 centuries prior in France. The whole affair (Iran's) was rather messy as I recall. But that is when I first heard of the CIA backed coup that led to the Shah's father's rise to the throne. Before the Shah's removal from power and prior to Khomeini's return from exile.
I don't know where you got the Ayatolla's excommunication from. It's the first I've heard about it. Are Muslim's subject to excommunication? Beats me. Khomeini was a Grand Ayatolla and I doubt there was anyone with the authority to do such a thing. It would be akin to excommunicating the Pope.
There was of course a flood of information after the Shah's exile. He found himself a very ill man who was persona non grata in every country in the world. The public anger over his admission to the USA was what led to the Hostage Crisis. That was really a financial dispute, too! But that's another story.
Good night.
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There's the intepretation problem then. I know that everyone knew later on. However, when Ayatollah came back from his banishment and performed a successful coup whilst the Shah was gone, he didn't know about it then.
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Okay, maybe I'm wrong here. When was the coup exactly? I can't remember anymore.
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1978-1979, I believe. Could be wrong though. The hostage crisis began in '79.
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Quote:
Pariah said:
Amazingly enough, I have to agree with Dave here.
However, I do find the distinct difference that modern terrorists target innocent civilians whilst those resistances were both response to military occupation rather concerning. So I'm kind of a swing voter.
I agree with you. I have thought about this a lot over the years. Military targets are fair game - the bombing of USS Cole, for example, and the deaths of the hundreds of US marines in Beirut all those years ago. Civilians are not - that is criminal. In 9/11, the Pentagon would have been a fair target except that it involved the death of the people on board that flight. They were not fair targets. Obviously neither were the occupants of the WTC, the people of Dresden, nor the inhabitants of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki (why an atomic bomb wasn't dropped on someplace symbolic like Mt Fuji I do not know).
I'm very hawkish on struggle for change. Time and time again we see that armed resistance achieves results. See for example the US War of Independence. Unilateral disarmament is the same as bearing your throat, and its no surprise that Hamas and Hezbollah won't do it. The IRA has only recently done it because money from Boston dried up post 9/11 (forcing them to rob a bank last year for funding).
(The examples of South Africa, and people power in the Philippines, Thailand, and more recently in Ukraine and the other former Soviet republics are the surprising exceptions.)
But it should be armed resistance against military targets, not civilians.
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Captain Sammitch said:
1978-1979, I believe. Could be wrong though. The hostage crisis began in '79.
1979
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First Amongst Daves said:
I agree with you. I have thought about this a lot over the years. Military targets are fair game - the bombing of USS Cole, for example, and the deaths of the hundreds of US marines in Beirut all those years ago.
Yeah, those were real noble causes and acts, Dave.
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Depends on your perspective, doesn't it? You're an American patriot, and a proud one, so you have your own articulated view on it.
The families of those soldiers and sailors killed had their lives shattered. But the soldiers and sailors were deployed with a view to, in the case of Beirut, military intervention, and in the case of the Cole, keeping the Persian Gulf an American pond. As military personnel, there is a good risk they might die in the service of their country. If they didn't want to run that risk, they shouldn't have enlisted. You join the military, you might die, because you're a target, and indeed a valid one to your opponents. My point is that killing civilians is on the contrary not warranted by any stretch of the imagination.
History is written by the winners. If Europe ends up as an Islamic caliphate, the people responsible for both will be viewed as freedom fighters who sacrificed thier lives for good cause. If not, they'll be viewed as terrorists.
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I look at whether or not the "fighters" are recognized by a legitimate government, and what their end goal is.
In the case of American rebels during the Revolution, a government was agreed upon, and thier goal was independence from a government that was oppressing them.
In the case of the U.S.S. Cole, bin Laden's fanantics were behind that...hardly a noble cause, and not a real recognized government.
With Beirut, I always understood that the Marines there were a peace keeping force, and that again, terrorists with unpure motives and no recognition took it upon themselves to commit an attack.
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First Amongst Daves said:
But the soldiers and sailors were deployed with a view to, in the case of Beirut, military intervention, and in the case of the Cole, keeping the Persian Gulf an American pond.
Shouldn't the leaders of the countries we were "intervening" in then at least had the decency to declare war on us before we were attacked?
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Quote:
the G-man said:
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First Amongst Daves said:
But the soldiers and sailors were deployed with a view to, in the case of Beirut, military intervention, and in the case of the Cole, keeping the Persian Gulf an American pond.
Shouldn't the leaders of the countries we were "intervening" in then at least had the decency to declare war on us before we were attacked?
First, no one has declared war on anyone since WW2, and international law now recognises that no formal declaration is necessary as a precondition to a state of war.
Second, are partisan guerrillas (freedom fighters or terrorists) necessarily aligned with a state? Al Qaeda certainly doesn't appear to be.
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Perhaps not a strict "declaration of war" sense, but when the leaders of a particular nation (Bush, Blair, etc.) announce they are sending troops that is a hell of a lot more official than what Al Quaeda does.
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Quote:
MisterJLA said:
I look at whether or not the "fighters" are recognized by a legitimate government, and what their end goal is.
In the case of American rebels during the Revolution, a government was agreed upon, and thier goal was independence from a government that was oppressing them.
In the case of the U.S.S. Cole, bin Laden's fanantics were behind that...hardly a noble cause, and not a real recognized government.
Lets just compare these two.
In the first scenario, you had a England as an occupying power over a colony that had declared independence, leading to guerrilla warfare.
In the second scenario, al Qaeda at least at that point in time was concerned primarily with the existence of infidel military bases in the holiest of holy lands, Arabia (which contains two of Islam's holiest sites, Mecca and Medina), leading to a guerilla attack on an infidel vessel in adjacent (Yemeni) waters.
The only significant difference is that the War of Independence was economic and political, whereas for al Qaeda's supporters it was a matter of offence against their faith. You should feel free to correct me on the War of Independence, by the way - I know next to nothing about it.
The real shame about al Qaeda is that just before 9/11 the US Govt was going to abandon its Prince Saud Airbase facility and move to Oman, but then that was put on hold indefinitely because that would be seen as giving in to terrorism. Too bad it wasn't better publicised - 9/11 might have been considered unnecessary by bin Laden.
But perhaps that is wishful thinking.
It seems to me that if you want to achieve sweeping change, violence is the way to do it. Lets face it - the Persian Gulf hasn't been crawling with a carrier group for decades for no good reason.
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Actually, there is another big diff or two.
In the first scenario, you had a government (England) setting up a colony and, after many years, the colonists asked to be set free. The government refused and so the colonists attacked the government, after a formal declaration of Independence.
In the second scenario, you had a goverment (House of Saud, etc.) allow another government to put up bases on their land. At some point a group of religious zealots decided they did not like that. Rather than petition their own government for redress, or even to declare their independence from said government, they decided to attack the troops who were essentially invited there by the local authority.
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Successfully petitioning the House of Saud would require a much larger bomb. The regime is not known for listening to its citizens' requests, to say the least. The Sauds incidentally have been supported by the US government, by supply of personnel, intelligence and hardware, since FDR's agreement with them in the 1940s.
I'm still failing to see a clear difference. You call the bombers of the Cole "religious zealots", but do not use the same loaded terminology ("ideological zealots") for your nation's founding fathers?
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the G-man said:
Perhaps not a strict "declaration of war" sense, but when the leaders of a particular nation (Bush, Blair, etc.) announce they are sending troops that is a hell of a lot more official than what Al Quaeda does.
Why are al Qaeda, as a private group of individuals, obliged to declare war? They are not bound by international law - those precepts only bind states. And does it really make a difference to your argument?
I hasten to add that I do regard al Qaeda as criminals, but I do understand why they attacked the Cole, and with the greatest of respect to the victims' families it was a legitimate strike.
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At some point, Dave, and with all due respect, you need to put aside your natural tendency to view everything in politcally correct, morally relativistic, terms.
Are or are not Bin Laden and his followers "religious zealots" and, if not, are you saying they represent mainstream Islam?
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Quote:
First Amongst Daves said:
I'm still failing to see a clear difference. You call the bombers of the Cole "religious zealots", but do not use the same loaded terminology ("ideological zealots") for your nation's founding fathers?
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magicjay38 said:
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Captain Sweden said:
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the G-man said:
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the G-man said:
In theory I'd like to think that a Freedom Fighter is someone who targets primarily oppressive governments and a terrorist is someone who intentionally targets noncombant civilians.
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r3x29yz4a said:
both have the same goals, just different beliefs in how to carry them out. The modern islamic terrorists started by just targeting the corrupt governments, but then felt the people's lack of support made them just as guilty.
so, essentially it's all a matter of what they consider "innocent."
Also, keep in mind, they all see it as war. When we bombed Germany and Iraq we bombed innocents as well as the military. It didn't matter in war time to us.
In Germany and Iraq, innocents were "collateral damage," not the primary target.
Actually, Arthur "Bomber" Harris, chief of Royal Air Force Bomber Command during WWII, did indeed want to bomb civilians. He thought that it would break the moral of the German population. However, it just made the Germans more willing to fight. USA tried first to only bomb strategic targets such as factories and military targets, but around 1944, USAAF adopted the British strategy. USA also bombed Tokyo and other Japanese towns, with houses mainly built with wood, with incendiary bomb (which killed more than the A-bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
You underestamate the viciousness of Gen. Harris. In in Dresden, a town with no military value, USA & UK created a firestorm, which either incinerates or suffocates all that are near. USA did the same to Tokyo.
I'm fully aware of Dresden, I just didn't mention it. But yeah, bombing Dresden was a war crime, like it or not. Bombing purely civilian targets is in most cases inexcusable IMO. Bombing military targets, dams, the war industry and the like is acceptable tough. I can also tolerate Dolittle's Tokyo Raiders, since USA needed a moral boost after Pearl Harbour, and as cynical it is, the use of A-bombs, since it ended the war and saved American soldiers who would've otherwise invaded. (Not to forget the idea of a situation with half or all Japan being occupied by the Soviet Union...)
BTW, I also have heard that the bombings over German towns (in general) didn't affect the war industry, or not much, 'cause Germany kept equipment underground. Not that it has relevance for the morality of bombing factories IMO.
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r3x29yz4a said:
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Captain Sweden said:
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the G-man said:
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r3x29yz4a said:
Kennedy never had a war.
The Vietnam war, as we know it, for all intents and purposes, began under Kennedy, in 1961.
That's debateble. Some say it was Ike Eisenhower who started it. This is an academical question for the Vietnamese, since USA just continued France's war.
Not that I'm defending JFK or anything.
Eisenhower sent in the first troops, though granted he didn't intend for it to be a war. And JFK started to withdraw the troops before his death.
If anything, it was Johnson's war.
But even Johnson realised that the war had to end, if too late. Nixon, after fooling North Vietname that he would end the war if he became president, continued the war for four more years, and bombed Cambodia as well.
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Captain Sammitch said:
The firestorm, I am pretty sure, was not purely intentional. I don't think they could have predicted the degree to which the winds would have generated the inferno that resulted. Sure, they set out to burn some buildings. But I doubt they knew the Dresden firestorm was even possible beforehand, much less intended it to happen. Of course, I don't have access to all the information on the Dresden raids, so you're more than welcome to correct me if I'm wrong.
If you're using fire bombs on civilian targets, you're planning to kill civilians. If you want to destroy factories, you'll use TNT bombs.
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