Would you agree with Pres Obama attacking sites in Yemen for retaliation?

No, not now, probably never. We don’t need to go to war with another middle eastern country.

I think it depends how he goes about it. The government of the Yemen is requesting foreign help to track down what it believes to be Al Qaeda terrorists within it’s boarders. This I think should be given in the form of intelligence & even intervention by special forces, if requested. However what the world doesn’t need is yet another knee jerk, unilateral, American military blunder. What Obama needs to do is make American intelligence agencies actually do their jobs properly. If they had been then we could have been spared this botched terrorist attack, 9/11 & the military disasters that followed. America really should get it’s own house in order before it starts inflicting it’s school-yard tactics on the rest of us.

@TheJoker I completely agree. I don’t see Obama jumping in to the fray like the old idiot in charge. He has the ability and desire to question the military rather than just turning them loose. I hope he stays that way.

As bad as Obama appears, I always ask myself “what would McCain and Palin have done”, that always makes me feel better about Obama’s decisions.

Retaliation, yes. War, no. Obliterate the source and leave. Any attempt by the target state to retaliate against this to be met by higher and higher levels of retribution, entire cities if need be. “Pax Americana”. In no case should any military occupation be attempted

@stranger_in_a_strange_land, if we unilaterally decide to bomb countries, what right would we have to complain if we, in turn, were bombed? I would cooperate with the local government to destroy these guys but not send in bombers on our own initiative.

The fact that we can hit back harder and more effectively, essentially wiping them off the face of the earth. In many cases the local governments are useless, through corruption or secret agreement with the goals of the terrorists.. I do believe that the US should not be polluting the rest of the world with our “culture” or commercial avarice, which was probably a key factor in the advent of the terrorism. Keep to ourselves, retaliate tit-for-tat (at 100:1 ratio). We are not the world’s policeman, but until an impartial “police force” is created (don’t hold your breath) vengeance is our most effective weapon. But remember, NO OCCUPATION. Beating a schoolyard bully into a bloody pulp is a highly effect, though “politically incorrect”, method to stop that bully and deterring like-minded individuals.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land I can agree with the “100:1” ratio. I read a book where the peace keepers automatically targeted troop movements and annihilated them. No discussion, no negotiations. We need something like that and to dump the majority of nuclear weapons.

@Ron_C I was one of those “peace keepers”. It has an amazing quieting effect, also the specfic targeting of leaders. The big strategic nukes should go, but the small tactical numbers could have been used to great advantage once a terrorists remote base has been found, especially in mountainous terrain.

@Ron_C….. McPalin, thats a scary thought, would it be nukes by now or mererly Napalm do you think :)

I would prefer we act more stratgicly than just out of retaliation. Retaliation isn’t going to work all that well anyway when those we are attacking are perfectly willing to die and even deliberately kill themselves for their cause. They won’t be threatened by the possibility of an air strike taking them out. THey’ve been convinced that to die to advance their Fundamentalist ideology is the ultimate sacrifice for God, and they will be rewarded with the highest heaven and 72 personal virgins to cater to them.

Given that, we should aim our attacks at crippling terror networks and not just an-eye-for-an-eye punishment.

BTW, we have already been attacking terrorist headquarters in Yemen or helping the Yemeni government do so. Al Qaeda falsely claimed that the Crhistmas Day attempt was in revenge for this. But that is clearly a lie. The first such attack was carried out by us on December 17, 2009 and the panty bomber bought his airline ticket on December 16, one day before the attack it was supposedly to revenge. So the enemy is not just a bunch of murderers, they will even tell lies.

@TheJoker I am a Vietnam Vet, as such, I am extremely against napalm and also land mines. I think it would be horrible to start using tactical nuclear weapons but they are more humane than napalm. It might not be a bad idea to reduce the mountains of Afghanistan to pebbles. The can use the land and it would permanently deny the use of mountain caves to suicide murders.

@Ron_C I’m no fan of napalm or landmines either. In those mountain caves the only effective solution is chemical weapons or tactical nuclear airbursts. As to their support networks, punitive attacks might be effective but ethically repugnant, such as the concentration camp approach used by the British in the Second Boer War. Saturating these communities with mainstream Islamic theology, specifically denouncing the Wahabbi/al Qaeda line as sinful and forbidden (suicide is equally forbidden in all Abrahamic faiths) might be more effective in the long run. Since Islam does not distinguish any separation of religion and state, cleaning out state corruption in these areas is an important deterrent.

That whole region is infested by terrorist influence, you could drop a bomb anywhere and kill at least one extremist. I don’t like war either, but it really does seem like you have to wipe that place off the map, or…...destroy organized religion.

No, the country of Yemen did not attack us.

@Blackberry No need to destroy Islam. Thr more radical elements of Wahabbism need to be discredited at the grass-roots level. That following some radical mullah will only lead to further suffering of your community and that following the traditional “straight path” is rewarded here-and-now as well as in some afterlife.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land a nuclear strike would be easier and certainly more satisfying but will definitely hurt our goal of being the moral arbiter for the world.
Government should have no part in ANY religion. It’s only duty is to protect people from fundamentalist oppression. It seems that the suicide bombers go a long way in discrediting their side. The only way that they would look good is if we or the population capitulated to their demands.

The good thing is that if prosperity and education improve, it will be difficult to recruit people willing to commit suicide especially when they see their leaders hiding in caves and not risking their own injury.

I’ll never understand the “Until Obama acts as horribly as Bush, I’m ok with whatever he decides” mentality. If he goes to war over this, I would not support it. I’m not in support of going to war with any country which has not attacked us. That includes Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc. That’s not a very Nobel Peace Prize winning way to behave. No matter how it’s carried out.

@Ron_C No nation-state should be the moral arbiter of the world. This was a fiction created by Woodrow Wilson, who should have remained president of Princeton rather than venturing into politics. Mind our own business and massive retaliation for any attack on us. The US was by nature an isolationist nation until political leaders with their own agendas (not all of them American, btw) changed the course.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land , @ubersiren I am literally a world traveler and have to fight my inclinations towards American isolationism. It would be nice if we could seal our borders and let the rest of the world “go to hell”. Unfortunately we have to deal with and trade with other countries. Did you know that we could not even support our military if we cut off trade with China, Japan, Korea, and even Russia? We are no longer self sufficient in any market.

If we sealed our borders, eventually the guards would have to turn around and prevent people from leaving the country rather than stopping them from entering.

Since we are in this position, our only option is to attempt to help the world become a better place. We should be concentrating on lifting people out of poverty and ignorance rather than the previous policy of reducing our standards to levels found in China and India. There is no such thing as the conservative approach for staying where we are. You either progress or regress, I choose to progress.

@Ron_C The fact that the US is no longer self-sufficient is a function of outsourcing rather than capability. If forced to be, the US is one nation that could easily be self-sufficient and with a higher standard of living than we currently enjoy. As for those who wish to leave; roll out the red carpet at the exit for them.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land I am not saying that we can’t become self-sufficient, if fact, if that happened I would be quite happy to close the borders and retreat. Considering the “pay to play” Congress, I don’t see that happening in my lifetime.

I am from the northeast and have seen the damage outsourcing has caused and completely support the return to the state of the country before we gave away the steel mills, electronics factories, textile mills, and even technical support.

We now have privatized jails, mercenary armies fighting wars in countries where we don’t belong and even outsource picking our crops. I am not sure that we can ever recover from all of this degenerate behavior. I do know that I will never vote for an incumbent of any party and will work to clean out our elected officials. Unfortunately, that is all that I can do and maybe it’s impossible.

This subject has really depressed me because I can’t see an end to it.

@Ron_C I too am very fatalistic towards the whole thing. I also belive in voting against all imcumbents, they are equally tools regardless of party. The only thing I can personally do is live in debt-free isolation as far from other people as possible. Prepared to forcibly eject any “busybody” attempting to violate my privacy “for my own good”, regardless of consequences.

From what I understand the government in Yemen wants to arrest Al-Qaeda members in their country. If they request support, the US should offer it.

http://www.examiner.com/x-8131-Sunset-District-Libertarian-Examiner~y2009m12d16-US-bombs-Yemen-kills-120-just-another-day-in-the-life-of-an-empire
How come no one is talking about the fact that the US bombed Yemen almost a week before the botched terror attack?
We are aways quick to retaliate, yet never seem to ask the question, “Why are we being attacked?”
We can not go around the world, bombing countries, and expect people not to retaliate. The big problem is, since most of these countries leaders have certain interest or ties to our government, there will never be military attacks on us, only individual, or “terrorist” attacks.

Until we realize that terrorism is caused by our foreign policy, terrorism will never stop, it will only get worse, and we will keep losing civil liberties in the name of “security.”

@chris6137 I agree, I should have mentioned it. The one thing we get every time we bomb a village is instant terrorists. I personally don’t see anything wrong with special forces going into a village and capturing or even killing that are actively supporting terrorist acts on the U.S. I do have a problem with bombing the whole town and “let god sort them out” as the old Vietnam war saying goes.

Think more killings causes more terrorist. If we had spent all that money building schools, creating jobs, etc for those people, they might like us. These people feel hopeless..no jobs, no future, etc..So, when a man is at the “end of his rope,” being a terrorist gives him some meaning in his miserable state of affairs.

@Cotton101 EXACTLY!

@chris6137 Terrorism as wer are seeing from Al Qaeda is not due to our attacking them first. It has to do with our very presence in the Middle East. Our choices are to give up the ability to function anywhere in the Muslim sectors of the world and watch our ally, Israel be wiped from the face of the earth, or to stop radical Islam.

Al Qaeda issued a statement taking responsibility for the Christmas Day bombing attempt and saying it was retaliation for the bombing in Yemen. But that is a VERY obvious lie. We bombed them in Yemen on December 17th. Abdulmutallab purchased his airline ticket on December 16, one day before the event his act was supposedly in retaliation for. Obviously, the attack had been in planning stages for months prior to his buying the ticket.

My son gave me a book titled Dying to Win—The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism for Christmas. The author, Robert A. Pape has built a comprehensive database of everyact of suicide terrorism going back decades. It’s a real eye opener about what we are up against. My take away is our best long-term strategy is to fight the poverty, lack of education and feelings of hopelessness that make it easy to radicalize young men. But in the short term, we also have to stop the ones already radicalized from killing our people.

@mattbrowne One of the big concerns about Yemen is they are letting terrorist go!

Yemen to Release More Than 170 Al Qaeda – The Weekly Standard
Feb 8, 2009… Al Qaeda terrorists, including some of the USS Cole plotters, have a habit of… Email the article Yemen to Release More Than 170 Al Qaeda…
http://www.weeklystandard.com/.../yemen_to_release_more_than_170_1.asp – Cached

they need to bomb more of these places with fliers explaining why terrorist actions are stupid. they were deceived by logic, they can be fixed by logic. especially if they have many in prison already. brain wash the lot of them and release them back to the public to infect the rest with rational thought.

really, a missionary service seems like the most important thing.

@ETpro , the only problem I have is your saying that we have to fight radical Islam. To me, the surest way to strengthen a religion is to oppress it. Look what happened to the Romans. The early Christians were no less radical than today’s Muslims. The lesson seems to be that the harder you fight the more likely you are to lose.

I agree about our presence in the Middle East being the main cause, but in almost all cases, there are retaliatory attacks, just not always in the US. This was one of them.

According to the link I posted, which was posted on the 16th, not the 17th, the war games may have been going on for the whole week, but, 120 were killed and 40 wounded on the 16th during an air strike.

@Ron_C If I gave the impression I wanted to oppress Islam, I am sorry. THat was not my intent. Rather we should support the possitive message of mainstream Islam and seek to discredit Wahhabism and the destruction it brings.

@ETpro You are right about that. The most effective thing we could do is build schools to teach the children about the real world. I have always thought that the study of religion should be rated R. Children should not be subjected to brainwashing and terrorist threats of hell from adults.

Amen to that, Borther Ron. :-)

so lets get this right, if a chinese man gets on an American flight and blows it up, war will be declared on china?

No I know, a Rusian!
Those commie bastards are at it again!.......

Or how about a Canadian.

No hang on, your all going to be merged soon, so that would be pointless.
Best just bomb people who can’t fight back aye!......

Well, Quebec can merge. They are always wanting to go.

@faye I would welcome Quebec, I love it up there and it would be nice to avoid the border hassle. @Pazza You are correct, it is ridiculous to bomb a country because some of its citizens are a threat. That was the Bush policy and has been proven to be disastrous.

@Cotton101 – I think politicians and tribal leaders in Yemen are divided. We can’t trust all of them. The international community should increase the pressure on Yemen.

Yemen is a VERY poor country whose government is already under severe pressure from a widespread insurgency. Pressure alone without providing them the assistance to act on that pressure is likely to have unintended and undesirable consequences.

Pressure to accept assistance.

@mattbrowne No need for that. THey seem quite anxious to do so. The problem we have there is largely from the ungoverned areas, not from a recalcitrant government.

OMG! WW3 has begun! run for your life!

wait… oh sorry my bad its not real…