"or we can kill 200k civilians in 2 wars, lose more than 3k, and then get him, while bankrupting the nation.

you know, lust for revenge made alot of people do alot of very stupid things, in fact most murders are crimes of passion."
-MrK

OK see this is a clear example of screwing up the cause/effect relationship going on here.

Where to start?

First - if you believe the wars were simply motivated by revenge then unfortunately there's not much help I can provide. Think black, crude and purified into a liquid that goes in your car. This is the US motivation for these wars - the emotions and passions of the citizens are/were manipulated by GWB to justify the Iraq war. The Afghan war I would argue was more strongly motivated by reprisal and a desire to attack a country that was clearly a haven for terrorists. I wouldn't call that motivation revenge entirely regarding Afghanistan. I will agree that revenge was a part of it but national security was definitely also a major interest as well.

To simply say that this amount of death was all done to kill or capture OBL is completely foolish. I will definitely say it has a real emotional impact on people directly affected by 9/11 and a symbolic meaning as I described in the other post on the overall fight against terrorism but I think at best it is tangentially related to the wars, and certainly not in the top 10 reasons for why the US military has been at war in the middle east for 10 years. (Top 5 would all be related to $, political power, and national security probably in that order)

The wars most certainly did NOT bankrupt the nation, that is incredibly simplistic, and in fact I would bet economists would agree that the wars DELAYED the economic collapse and have had an overall stimulatory effect on the economy overall. GREED, wall st excess, and lack of rules/oversight in the financial markets caused the economic collapse to say the war caused the financial crisis tells me you basically know nothing about economics.

Wow guys, awesome thread, great read. My favorite part was where the failed atheist claimed to have special knowledge of how God works in the world directly due to his failed experience consisting of at minimum a sincere doubt that God works in the world, or more traditionally a total certainty that God does not work in the world due to the lack of a God. This is one of those times where a failure cannot be made into a strength. At least not without a whole lot more detail into the insights derived.

My second favorite part was tmz. Totally awesome. Me I was just streaming a couple of news channels at leisure, you know cnn, bbc, al jazeerah (english), hey their surprisingly decent... though they did say Obama instead of Osama thrice. With visible "please don't fire me today" cringes. It probably would have been way more relaxing to have been watching the apprentice.

My third favorite part was the summary of 1400 years of Islam as bloody infighting. No mention that this is totally analogous to the other religion as well. Nor of either characterization being so simple that it must be incorrect. My favorite takes-the-cake touch points are the crusades and the inquisition. Maybe I could just point out that educated people from the Islamic empire, with the help of the remnants of the Byzantine church, preserved, compiled, improved on and disseminated a lot of the key knowledge that helped spark the renaissance. For that the only negatives here are that this kind of focus wasn't sustained.

My fourth favorite part is the assertion that the killing of two specific individuals (Saddam and Osama Bin Laden) is an infinity net plus overriding any other consequences of the undertakings, particularly the ones already brought up, and of course all future possible points of argument.

So side stepping here for a moment, Saddam was captured and tried for one crime out of many... he was probably killed a little prematurely as there was likely a lot of other insight into past criminal activity undertaken at multiple levels of his government, leaving many other probable collaborators uninvited, free, possibly even participating in current civic life unhindered and unafraid.

And directly going at this argument of how profoundly these two men should never be allowed to live and act the way they did, lets agree and ask then, wouldn't it all have been even better then had there been some consideration of the consequences when each had been placed and/or propped into their positions originally to serve American interests?

I mean, sure, if you argue that no consequences compare, then the answer is "Fuck no mother-fucker." But I'm just putting it out that that consequences are exactly how we got here in the first place.

Personally, I know I'm not alone in my wish that the world-view and foreign policies were better formed through an attempt to be as complete in our historical retrospectives as possible. E.G. Noam Chomsky is constantly trying to catalog as much of that as possible. But he's impossible to read due to his own self-aware understanding of the futility of the undertaking. I'd like to find a couple more authors with a similar long-view wish, who maybe aren't as convincingly negative on how everything has played out and continues to be played out.

Small errors: s/their/they're/ and s/uninvited/unindicted/
I totally forgot that I was going to go on and on about how when other's actions affect how one is judged by association, then there's generally the hope that everyone will be able to act in a way that will be seen as dignified, thus lifting one up by association.

I think this is all the people were concerned about when mentioning that they would have preferred people didn't dance in the streets or that there could have been a trial. They were not actually saying they were unhappy with the news, but that the jubilation and shooting weren't going to come off as the most dignified of options undertaken. I think they have a point, but, you just can't expect everyone to think alike; thus some people were jubilant, dignity be damned, and a 10 year locate-and-capture operation ended in a kill because more conservative approaches hadn't exactly worked and that was deemed acceptable despite the clear preference for the more dignified option.

NO MAN DONT U UNDERSTAND US FOREIGN POLICY IS TOTALLY BENEVOLENT AND CAUSES MUCH JOY THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, OSAMA AND SADDAM STOOD AGAINST US INTERESTS BECAUSE THEY HATED OUR FREEDOMS NOT BECAUSE THE UNITED STATES HAS LITERALLY DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY CAUSED THE DEATHS OF MILLIONS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD OVER THE PAST 60 YEARS. NOPE, NOTHING TO CRITICIZE ABOUT AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY LALALA CANT HEAR YOU JUST GONNA WALK ALONG WITH MY HEAD IN THE GROUND DESPITE THE TRAIL OF BODIES LEADING DIRECTLY TO THE WHITE HOUSE

I also have to seriously question the repercussions this action will have. So the United States government is allowed to kill, without due process, anyone who they say is undertaking acts of war against the US government. What is stopping the Pakistani government or Yemeni government or Somali government from hunting down Barack Obama and George W. Bush for the bombing campaigns they have undertaken which have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians since 2003? What is stopping the Colombian government from hunting down the past ~6 US Presidents for the thousands of civilians which have been killed over the past 40 years by covert US military action in their country?

http://www.galacticempiretimes.com/2011/05/09/galaxy/outer-rim/obi-wan-kenobi-is-killed.html


would you know the difference?

lol :P