Is there not even ONE 'brave' soul on DU (or *anywhere* on the left) .....

[Stinky The Clown]

..... who wants to deny there are bad people all around the world who would do whatever it takes to kill Americans and American allies?

Anyone?

I didn't think so.

Is there even one 'brave' soul on our side who would allow terrorist groups to plot, plan, and then execute an act of terror on anyone anywhere?

I didn't think so.

But ya see, here's the deal. They continue to conflate the plain-as-day fact that terrorists exist and are real and are hell bent to get us with their stupid fucking oil drenched occupation of Iraq.

And what that's done is muddy the idea that we 'would do things differently'.

On Iraq, specifically, when any idiot Dem pol says "I would have run the Iraq War differently", they deserve a foot squarely placed in their sphincter (or sphincterette, as appropriate).

In the argument being waged on Main Street, that hurts us more than helps.

Because, without the intentional conflation, that is *exactly* the right answer for dealing with the terror bad guys.

But this seems to be an argument we can easily lose. Unless, rightnowtodaythisminute, we hear people on our side harping on this point non-stop. The public knows the deal about the UK bust. They **know** no shots were fired and no guys with humvees and night scopes on intimidating helmets and dessert cammo were involved.

But until we can unconflate (Is that a word? If not, it is now, cuz you know what it means.) Iraq and terrorists, we have a very hard time getting our message out there on how fucking STUPID they've been and how much smarter *anybody* else would be ...... including the fucking Cub Scouts led by a Den Mother, fer krissakes.

Rightnowtodaythisminute, we can start to disconnect the two, if only because **we** could capitalize on and politicize the same damn thing Rove can.

The UK busts ..... talk about it ...... Rightnowtodaythisminute!

[LincolnMcGrath]

1. K & R Rightnowtodaythisminute!

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

2. Usually, I like your posts.

This one, not so much. It's nearly incomprehensible.

[Stinky The Clown]

5. I reread it ....

*I* know what I said. Why don't you?? :)

Lemme try the short version:

War on Terror conflated with Iraq War

"I would have done it different" is a bad messgae for Iraq/good message for WOT

With UK Bust being fresh, we have a good opportunity to politicize the bust for OUR benefit - if we act right now.

I hope that clarifies. (Thanks for the kind words, too!)

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

8. Here's what I don't understand

Why is "I would've done it differently" such a bad message for the Iraq War?

On one level, I can understand it - you should be saying it shouldn't have happened at all, but unfortunately, a lot of politicians don't have that luxury, being that they voted for it. Not to mention, the war did happen. I don't see the harm with running with a supposition that has roots in reality and saying that if it happened under you that you'd have done it a lot better.

I also don't agree that it's bad that the WOT and Iraq War have been intermingled anymore. Bush's Iraq numbers have plummetted and his terrorism numbers are now following suit, largely because people see it like this:

Iraq + Quagmire = Republicans suck at fighting terrorism

[Stinky The Clown]

9. Its a bad message because it implies that there was a reason to be there .

... in the first place. There never was.

Now, along the way, it might have been okay to say 'I would have done it differently', but only if prefaced by "Because the reality is that our Republican Asshole President put us there we have to deal with it .... "

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

10. Again though, a lot of those Dems voted for IWR.

It really doesn't fly to use that argument because it would effectively lead to the debate getting sidetracked into the dead-horse argument of whether or not we should be there instead of getting to the more positive argument of what we can do to get us out.

I do agree though they could use some variation of "Bush shouldn't have put us in this position in the first place".

[Stinky The Clown]

13. Actually, the essential, tiny, very narrow kernal of my point was .....

.... we should politicize the UK bust by saying it was effected by normal, patient, good police work.

Edit to clarify ..... 'my point' *in this entire thread* not just the response to you.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

20. Well that I won't disagree with.

:toast: I had a feeling when we came down to it that we'd agree.

[Nimrod2005]

12. Very good answer, very good thread!!!

Well done...

[skeeters2525]

3. fFirst Vietnam, Then Main Street

We heard the same BS since the beginning of time. If we don't fight them in Vietnam. They will march into downtown Los Angeles. Well we lost Vietnam. Where are they?

Here's my solution to fighting terrorism. Impeach Bush. Problem solved. We all live together.


We will always have enemies. Because the Pentagon needs enemies. Otherwise we may look at how moronic they really are.

My advice.

The media is in on it as well as the White House. Ignore every stupid word you read about terror.

Get out and talk to people about what this Country should be about. People are sick of this stupid war, and wasting billions that should be spent here.

Ignore every code whatever color. Ignore the Bin Laden tape which will be released once a week up to the election.

SCREW THE WARMONGERS. THEY HAVE MADE AMERICA EVIL WHILE THEY PROFIT.

[NMDemDist2]

4. "we'd have been better off with Kerry's plan of intensified police work

than Bush's 'premptive war'. All these terrorist plots have been stopped by good police." is what I'm saying most days.

:hi:

[welshTerrier2]

14. that's much better but still not good enough

i totally agreed with Kerry's "policing" approach and still do ...

but even that totally fails to address the root causes of terrorism ... some of it is, of course, US support for Israel ... i'm not arguing against that but obviously endless militarism, with Israel as a proxy, creates more terrorism and anti-US sentiment ... we need to put more emphasis on how to solve the "Israeli-Palestinian" conflict ...

and we cannot ignore our imperialistic history ... the assassination of Mossadeq in Iran in 1953 and the subsequent installation of the Shah as a tyrannical, genocidal US puppet is no small reason for all the terrorism we see ... and we continue to support the barbaric Saudi regime ... and we gave endless aide and comfort to Saddam Hussein during the 1980's ...

until our party speaks out on all this imperialism and militarism, not even good police work is going to resolve the problems we face ... this is what i constantly object to with the current crop of Democrats - they correctly criticize bush's tactics but then call for inadequate remedies and fail to get at the root causes of the problem ... it's the exact same thing we see in Iraq ...

calling for policing instead of invasion and occupation is great ... i couldn't agree more that it's a much better approach to what currently exists ... but it will not solve the problem ... does anyone believe we can just arrest all the terrorists? until we recognize that "we have met the enemy and they are us", nothing will change ...

[NMDemDist2]

17. agreed, but I am just talking to voters trying to get the NeoCons out

one step at a time IMO

It's gonna take a revolution to get rid of corporate power and that won't even work if history teaches us anything (look at China and the Soviets)

I can only plug away, one voter at a time in my little universe trying to make a difference. Like today I have sorted my recyclables into 5 (count em FIVE!) different bags to take into the recycle center. They make the $$$ and I do the work, but it's part of my commitment to the Earth

:shrug:

[welshTerrier2]

18. no problem there ...

plugging away one voter at a time is great ...

that, of course, should not preclude our participation in policy formulation nor should it preclude pushing our representatives to really solve the problem of terrorism ...

your response focuses on the politics ... nothing wrong with that ... my response focuses on really trying to solve the problem of terrorism ...

and speaking of recycling, my town just widely expanded its recycling program (curbside pick-up) but now doesn't care if we don't sort anything ...

what's up with that? we used to separate paper from plastic ... now, they just heave the whole mess into the big truck ... seems like it has to get sorted somewhere so why not have the residents do it?

[NMDemDist2]

22. policy is made by the Corporate needs, not the people's needs

until we can take the big $$$ out of politics I fear it will be extremely difficult to get true representation of people's rights

Elections should be federally or state funded would be a heck of a start. only then can we get policy representatives who can and will look at the underlying issues of terrorism and imperialism

and i can only wish that I could get curbside recycling out here, but it ain't gonna happen anytime soon LOL

[Stinky The Clown]

23. To veer further off topic .......

....... they can do all sorts of separation automatically these days. Our town, too, just said its okay to not sort paper from plastic form aluminum from steel.

The paper from residential recycling, for the longest time, has just been separated as 'mixed paper' ... the lowest grade. Offices have to separate by grade, but they deal in much high volumes than each house ever could.

For the various metals, google 'eddy current' to understand how that's done. Glass is sorted by gravity. The paper is sorted from everythng else by air.

But these are far from the only ways to do automated sorting.

[welshTerrier2]

25. Eddy Current?

i have tickets to see him in concert this weekend ...

and about this "glass sorted by gravity" business ... does this mean that the serious glass is separated from the less serious glass?

uh oh ... wt2 caffeine indicator alert ... shit ... i can't believe i set that damned thing off again ... sorry about all this ... if i can get this under control before the edit period expires, i'll try to restore this to a semblance of rationality ...

[Stinky The Clown]

26. Whoa! Yer missus needs to haul your young sorry azz to da doc!

NOW!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Viva_La_Revolution]

30. Most people won't sort

They will just throw it in the trash. It makes more "sense" to pay 10 guys min. wage to sort 5 times more product.

[welshTerrier2]

31. here's how my town did and now does recycling

the old way was that we had to have separate bins for our recycling stuff ... trash in one bucket; recycling in the other ... and the recycling had to separate into two separate buckets paper/cardboard from glass/plastic/metal ... i'm not sure if there was a fine if you threw recycling out in the trash ... probably not enforced if a fine even existed ... there were no user fees for trash pickup ... the cost was covered by the property tax ...

now, all that's been changed ... now we have to buy special garbage bags for our trash ... i think there's a limit on how many bags you can throw out per week ... i don't think there's a limit on recycling volumes ... and we no longer have to separate the recycling ...

it seemed to me that people were doing a good job separating stuff and that most people were not "just throwing their recycling in the trash" ...

they changed to a fee system solely to raise more money for the town ... it really had nothing to do with waste management ... i suppose you're right, though, it must be cheaper to collect one big bucket and sort it later than to have to have a truck that keeps everything separate and load multiple buckets into it ... if the process wasn't cheaper, they wouldn't have opted for it ...

[sandnsea]

6. Bin Laden is a CIA operation

Yes, there are people on DU who would deny that there are terrorists or bad people wanting to kill Americans. Far too goddamned many of them.

Otherwise, I'm with the poster above, not following the point of your post.

[Jed Dilligan]

7. I'll deny that the "War on Terror"

should be the priority that it is.

Did we declare a "War on Weather" after Katrina?

There are much worse threats on the horizon than the madmen scheming to blow things up. Those come in all colors and exist in every city. If we allow them to distract us they win.

[Stinky The Clown]

11. I won't argue with you ......

.... you're not denying the problem exists. You're suggesting it isn't a top priority. Those are two different things.

You and I could talk about what priority it should be given (I also think it should not be **the** top priority). That's a reasonable conversation by reasonable people and perfectly in order.

[Jed Dilligan]

16. Peak oil and climate change

Are guaranteed to ravage us as no terrorist could ever dream of doing if we stay on this schedule. If we simply don't act on these issues, we are guaranteed, if not a ghastly death, an impoverished and anarchic world.

I don't think they should stop screening passengers on airplanes, nor do I think international police authorities should stop tracking down international terrorists. Beyond that, I really don't see anything we can do to stop terrorism--fixating on it does not seem to help (cf. London and Madrid subway bombings).

There's the better foreign policy argument, but I don't really buy that either. As long as modernity persists there will be malcontents that want to turn its machinery against itself and blow the whole thing sky-high. If we do stop using oil and mucking around in Mideast politics, the terrorists won't be Arab or Muslim anymore, but there will be some other kind of terrorist with some other beef.

[lgn19087]

29. I think that

there are people out there who want to kill us. I see them holding banners marching in the streets about it every day on TV. However, 99.99999% of these people have no money, no jobs, no training, no nothing. I hardly think that they're any kind of threat. Let's assume for a minute that 9/11 really was perpetrated by terrorists. Who did it? Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda- forces that America not so long ago funded itself. We're missing the real enemies here- global warming, poverty, rascism, and the corpratists who run the world.

Just look at what happened in Israel- the most that Hezbollah could do to Israeli citizens is lob a few rockets across the border and hope they hit something.

The real threat to the world is not "terrorists" but the international corporations who exploit, rape, and pillage the entire planet.

[LittleClarkie]

15. Wouldn't it be more effective

and make more sense, if you'd ask the question, wait for a response, not get one, then say "I thought so"?

Or else why ask the question?

[Gregorian]

19. And they further confuse it by adding facets of distraction.

We keep "moving on" and "putting it behind us". Or rather, they do. Whether it's runaway brides, amplification of the illegal immigration, or stem cells.


When the very first Iraqi looting took place (which in itself was questionable), and the Code of Hammurabi and all of the world's most valuable antiquities were completely ignored by the US troops, while the Ministry of Oil was baracaded, it was OBVIOUS where our interests lay.

We were not there as liberators.


My suggestion is that we hold their feet to the fire. We continue to spend our energies focused on their illegal activities. Iraq was not an imminent threat. Bottom line.

PS- We have been. But this latest war is more of a distraction from their previous crimes.

[AntiFascist]

21. Most of the idiots who support WOT don't even realize...

that its our need for oil which is stirring up terrorism in the first place. Simple cause and effect, yet they are all brainwashed into believing we are on the verge of the End Times and that there is an evil and widespread Islamo-conspiracy out to get us no matter what we do.

[alvarezadams]

24. Can you express your thoughts a little clearer please?

I'm not too sure what you're on about.

[Stinky The Clown]

27. See my post #13, above .......

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2778823#2778868

[many a good man]

28. Democrats want to be "nice" to the terrorists and hope they go away.

Voting for Democrats emboldens the terraists because they only want to cut and run away from the war on terror.

That's their whole argument. That's all Republicans have to run on. By conflating Iraq with terrorism they make anti-war Dems seem like they are afraid to fight terrorism.

Democrats need to take EVERY OPPORTUNITY to shove that meme up their ASS!!!