72Hardtop wrote:
One can't cure mental illness. It wouldn't be wise to make such a claim 'So one never commits mass murder'. The end result is very disappointing. Animals have been known to commit mass suicide. So they say...
It isn't up to us to find solutions for their problems. We can only do what we need to do to make every US citizen safe no matter what that may be or take to accomplish it. Terrorists are nothing more than monsters and they do NOT deserve to be treated as humans. They are NOT to be treated 'humanely' because they are not human.
The time for dealing with terrorism on a diplomatic level is over. Long over. Decades and billions dollars (if not trillions) have been wasted in trying to deal/defeat terrorism on a diplomatic level.
Did the Iraq War solve a thing? Did Vietnam? Did deposing the Shah of Iran? Did Israel's Six Day War solve a single thing? We have blown billions and trillions and the lives of our own soldiers wasted trying to solve problems with violence.
I claim that we have *not tried* diplomacy on an effective level because we have not addressed the very real grievances throughout the Middle East. Look carefully at our history. We do have blood on our hands.
It is TIME that we try something seriously different, and it is time for the neo-cons to step away from the saber-rattling war machine that they love so dearly.
The United States is so much more than our military might. We have important ideals and we used to be a beacon for those who yearned to breathe free. Yet, we are now the nation with more people behind bars, more people executed each year, with less economic mobility, with greater wealth inequity, than any other industrialized country. We have a monstrous military budget that does not in any way make us safer in today's world. Ask our own Joint Chiefs of Staff, they will tell you that we have to become leaner and more intelligent and become more sophisticated in our outreach. We could have won the world over with a Marshall Plan for the New Century and saved money at the same time.
. . . and you do not believe a word I write, because you do not believe there is a cure for mental illness, you do not believe that it is "up to us to find solutions for their problems" and you do believe that "the time for dealing with terrorism on a diplomatic level is over. Long over."
Are you familiar with the economic terrorism
we have unleashed? Are you familiar with the environmental terrorism
we have unleashed? Can you imagine being a Palestian farmer living in his own home for generations and one day, the international powers that be tell you, sorry, this is Israel now, you have to leave? Can you? Then some oil company comes in and pokes holes under your sand and tells you to "get out here, we need this oil." Then munitions companies come in and sell weapons to everybody? And you think that we don't have a part in finding solutions after we "helped" make so many of their problems? When I say "we", I don't mean just Americans, I mean all of the industrialized countries who colonized others, in rather exploitative ways I might add.
The time for dealing with terrorism on a diplomatic level has scarcely begun.
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles