9-11-14: Better or worse than 9-12-01?

Explain yourself in reference to what I posted.

 

Well figure it out and get back to me.

 

Baron, ISIS sprang up because their was a power vacuum. You know this.

When our troops were there, there was no absence of power. Prior to our troops being there, Sadam was the power.

Once we were gone: no power.

Now, I realize you will argue that it's our fault in the first place, blah, blah, blah.

But, it remains that if our troops had not completely pulled out, there would not have been the power vacuum that there was once we left.

 

You just explained why I'm right in your fourth paragraph. There is a power vacuum there because ... we destroyed the guy that was in power, based upon a naive notion by certain people, who had no clue about the geopolitics of the region, that we would be greeted as liberators

You're also forgetting that ... the people who lived there, and were in power, wanted us to pull out. It was even agreed to by our guy who had put our troops in there.

Come on, think beyond your talking points.

 

You got me Baron!

 

Pretty sure those same people would prefer our troops never left now. But I doubt you're smart enough to understand that.

 

Irony thou art Baron ...

 

I was thinking about this on my bus ride home from work today. It's like that quote by Faulkner about Lee's defeat at Gettysburg and how the South - at the time - never moved on from that day. With the endless series of bloodbaths in the Middle East, this eternal recession, we've been living in this one moment ever since. In a way, that first place could have hit that first tower this morning.

I know that sounds incredibly depressing. And as someone who lost nobody that day, I have absolutely no leave to talk. But as much as the dead, our ghosts, deserve to be remembered, maybe it's time to give them a little peace, to let them lie still, for just a little while?

 

Pretty sure those same people only cared about having our troops there so they would be able to bully their minority opposition in revenge for their own bullying of them for decades thanks to the dictator in charge. And now, both sides find themselves getting fucked over by a third group of bullies and can't get along well enough to team up against a common enemy.

But I doubt you're smart enough to understand that.

 

Yeah, pretty ironic that on a day to remember when we were attacked, we're discussing a war that was a response to those attacks against a country that didn't attack us.

 

In my doctoral program, there was a guy -- a former Marine officer, I think -- who, for his dissertation, proposed a mathematical model to decide on the optimal number of attack helicopters (or some such thing) to put in play under various scenarios. It wasn't my area, I wasn't really interested in it, etc., etc. What I remember about his dissertation proposal is that after he did his little song-and-dance, the examining committee kept throwing out various scenarios, to see how his model would behave. What was striking was that his model always -- and by always, I literally mean always -- said that the optimal number was three. Scout's honor, if 100,000 troops were attacking from three different quadrants, the recommendation was three. If four platoons were waiting to ambush from five miles way, the recommendation was three. If what-the-fuck's-his-name from Virginia was shooting up a live remote, the answer would have been three. I swear, at one point people on the committee were about to herniate themselves to keep from laughing.

As re: anything leading to, or following, the attacks on 9-11 ... Baron, you're that guy. No matter what facet of it, no matter what perspective on it, you believe you are the fount of all wisdom. And the answer's always the same: The bad guys did dumb things (that were obviously dumb, and maybe for nefarious reasons) and they questioned your patriotism because you thought they were fucking up.

Baron ... you're not that smart, and the answers aren't that obvious.

 

And, in answer to the question posed in the thread ... As divided as "we" are, this is baby-shit compared to the days/weeks/months that followed 9/11. What's easy to overlook is that "it" didn't end with 9/11, it began. There were the anthrax attacks, and the Beltway shootings. Maybe I remember those months as especially gruesome because that was when my father began to waste away with the cancer that killed him. But I don't think so. I was scared shitless by stuff that wasn't 9/11 ...