[mooxe]

Last weekend I took my family on a trip to New York City. One of the places I wanted to visit was the WTC. Arriving at the scene was very surreal almost. Seeing it on the news constantly, hearing the words "911" almost daily for six years now also made it kind of a special place to see.

My 1st thought as I stood on the site. Was it all worth it? Afghanistan, Iraq.... and everything else that goes with this war on terror. The WTC site is only one or two city blocks, thats what kind of stunned me. Such a small area, the site where the war on terror really started. When I see videos on Liveleak or Youtube its a totally different feeling. You see it, and it inspires me to fight back, even being Canadian and all. Why does a video give a much different feeling than actually standing where the towers used to be?

I suppose it was the amount of construction at the site. A new tower is being built and the site looks like any other construction zone. Men working, cranes, vehicles, huge fences surrounding most of the area. That took away from the feeling you should get by standing where 3000 people died and a war was started.

Standing there invoked quite different feelings then when I stood on the Normandy beaches.

[Arg0n]

Yes I know how you feel, same thing happened to me... I'm from Croatia and 16 years ago there was a battle for a city named Vukovar, Croats fought bravely to the last day but lost, and then the combined JNA/Chetnik forces forcibly exiled the rest of Vukovars non-Serb population, Just hearing about it makes a small reaction in me, but I have seen the videos of the people in the refugee convoy, old and young, their faces, the sorrow, grief, despair... It rips your heart into pieces. Two particular videos: one of an old man in tears telling the camera man to leave him alone, and that he is sick of life, sick of everything. And the other of a man in late 70's looking at the fallen city, not saying anything just standing there and crying. I am on the verge of crying right now as I write this. Monuments are not as hard hitting as actual videos, actual places so It's normal.

P.S. When I saw the Vukovar videos I haven't started hating Serbs, just the agressors.

[Polemarchos]

war on terror = i doubt that exists....

911 should be seen only a populist outbreak of a conflict raging up to now. Not the clash of civ. theory or war on terror...

the right definition is either post-cold war conflicts or nation versus non-state actors. 90% of the fight in afghanistan and iraq have nth. to do win war on terror, but against local revolutionary/insurgent forces. The little element of Al-Quaida (what a pygmalion) is not enough to baptize a conflict "war on terror"

[Blackstump]

[Polemarchos]

[quote="Blackstump"]
war on terror.. hmmm ide say that the majority of wars end up as wars of terror, in way or another.. populist outbreak ??... ide say muslim v christian ( or at least the rest of the non muslim community) has been going on since christ played fullback for nazereth..[/quote="Blackstump"]

wrong.. muslin didnt emerge up 632 AD.
Archenemy of Christian was Roman pantheism.
Constantine the Great made christiandom state religion after 330 AD. ->
Christianity thus evolved in the Greek speaking part of the Roman Emprie (Eastern later Byzantine Empire)

[quote="Blackstump"]
Afghanistan and Iraq have very little to do with Al_ Quaida ??.. Hmm im sure its a proven fact that both countries have provided shelter and funding for training camps and actual operations logisticaly implemented from there regions...[/quote="Blackstump"]

Afghanistan correct... But Taliban does not equal Al quaida.

Iraq wrong... no conncetions to any Terrorist network. Only after the invasion activities of terror networks developed in Iraq... Come on even the US congress found out that that was bullcrap...

Reason = Saddam was a secular dictator installing picture and statues of him all around Iraq... For militants that is blasphemy... thy wouldnt cooperate with Saddam in any case.

[quote="Blackstump"]
The little element of AL Quaida not big enough to baptize a conflict " war of terror" ?? what would you call the 9/11 and the Bali and London bombings then ??[/quote="Blackstump"]

Well i would call them terrorist attacks, not Terrorists war effort against the West...

9/11 bombers came from Germany and where all Saudis... -> Sunni muslims

Bali - Indonesian Sunni separatist Bombing to destabalize local authority and incite fear within tourist industry ---> Sunni again.

London - Homegrown British muslims -> also Sunni.

You see that:
1) Christian vs. Muslim is wrong... because it should be christian vs. Sunni muslim..
2) The attacks might look coordinated, stilll Bali for instance had diffenrent goals than 911 and or London, Madrid...
3) Mere philosophically: You cant fight Terror. It should be called war of prevention or sth...

[Blackstump]

In 624 Mohammed was robbing and killing Meccan travellers for there money , 8 years later hes conquered most of western Arabia and Southen Palestine thru a dozen bloody invasions, that for the most part "holy wars" after he had his vision, from here on in 1400 years of Christian v Muslim or more correctly East v West aggresion, so when i say since Christ played fullback.. i mean a long time.. hardly populist
Afganistan Taliban dosnt mean Al Queda ? no.. they just have the same ideals.. and o yes Osama live there and on the border of Pakistan for awhile... maybe still does.. and o thats right lets not forget the training camps..hmmm seems he must have some support there somewhere..
Iraq dosnt support Al Queda.. well a certain Leftenent Colonel Shakir from Sadams hand picked, had a meeting in 2004 in Kuala Lumpur with one of the 9/11 "Pilots" that went on for 3 days(as far as i know that hasnt been disproven) they met at another Al Queda opperatives residence that was a knowed "money man".. well i suppose they could have been old friends who were getting together for beer and pretzels...
Bali.. ??? well mate Al jazeera is another Indonesian arm of Al Queda... the Bali bombings werent anything to do with Balinese independence for fuks sake... if you look at the main defendents rantings in court you will see he was shouting Allah Akbar and laughing as they read out the list of those he killed, and also his regret of killing innocent "muslims" in that attrocity so maybe you see that as somthing else then i do but it dosnt take a "front" to make a war, and its defintaly a war... of terror ..

[Blackstump]

sorry double post

[Polemarchos]

good point...

so we can say Herodotus pointing out the the history of warfare is just a contest between WEST vs EAST continues up to now...

[Blackstump]

Yes i suppose so, but to step back another thousand years to Herodotus. When it was the Greeks v every other bastard or more correctly barbarian(Persian) or who ever it was, it was hardly a holy war, more a land grab or mines bigger then yours thing, and remember Herodotus maybe called the father of history, but is also known as the father of lies (probably behind his back )

[Polemarchos]

[AT_Stalky]

[Polemarchos]

very good point indeed, and if someone uses this Iraq-Al Quaida argument he has to explain to the rest why it does not apply to Saudi-Arabia were connections are proven...

what iraq did was counterbalancing US power in the middle east. Saudi Arabia bandwagons with US. Simple international realtions theory again, neorealist and/or interdependency theory.

[Blackstump]

[Blackstump]

Sorry i stuffed up the dates it was actually reported in 2004 the summit meeting took place in January 5_8 2000, anyway theres no way of proving it from here but the Wall ST journal is a usally reliable source. Heres the whole story as was told, wether its true or not... who knows?
THE PRESIDENT CONVINCED THE COUNTRY with a mixture of documents that turned out to be forged and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda," claimed former Vice President Al Gore last Wednesday.

"There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever," declared Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism official under George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, in an interview on March 21, 2004.

The editor of the Los Angeles Times labeled as "myth" the claim that links between Iraq and al Qaeda had been proved. A recent dispatch from Reuters simply asserted, "There is no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda." 60 Minutes anchor Lesley Stahl was equally certain: "There was no connection."

And on it goes. This conventional wisdom--that our two most determined enemies were not in league, now or ever--is comforting. It is also wrong.

In late February 2004, Christopher Carney made an astonishing discovery. Carney, a political science professor from Pennsylvania on leave to work at the Pentagon, was poring over a list of officers in Saddam Hussein's much-feared security force, the Fedayeen Saddam. One name stood out: Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Hikmat Shakir. The name was not spelled exactly as Carney had seen it before, but such discrepancies are common. Having studied the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda for 18 months, he immediately recognized the potential significance of his find. According to a report
last week in the Wall Street Journal, Shakir appears on three different lists of Fedayeen officers.

An Iraqi of that name, Carney knew, had been present at an al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on January 5-8, 2000. U.S. intelligence officials believe this was a chief planning meeting for the September 11 attacks. Shakir had been nominally employed as a "greeter" by Malaysian Airlines, a job he told associates he had gotten through a contact at the Iraqi embassy. More curious, Shakir's Iraqi embassy contact controlled his schedule, telling him when to show up for work and when to take a day off.

A greeter typically meets VIPs upon arrival and accompanies them through the sometimes onerous procedures of foreign travel. Shakir was instructed to work on January 5, 2000, and on that day, he escorted one Khalid al Mihdhar from his plane to a waiting car. Rather than bid his guest farewell at that point, as a greeter typically would have, Shakir climbed into the car with al Mihdhar and accompanied him to the Kuala Lumpur condominium of Yazid Sufaat, the American-born al Qaeda terrorist who hosted the planning meeting.

The meeting lasted for three days. Khalid al Mihdhar departed Kuala Lumpur for Bangkok and eventually Los Angeles. Twenty months later, he was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it plunged into the Pentagon at 9:38 A.M. on September 11. So were Nawaf al Hazmi and his younger brother, Salem, both of whom were also present at the Kuala Lumpur meeting.

[Pz_Meyer]

hmmmm, some of the posts have a ring toward conspiracy theories. war on terror, al-queda in Iraq. some say NATO is in Afghanistan to fight a war on terror, but the real reason is to build an oil pipe line to pipe oil from Iraq to the Caspain Sea, thereby eliminating the Persian Gulf as the main means to transport oil from the Mid east to the US.

And now that the US is in Iraq for good, that should serve to further destablise the whole middle east

[southern_land]

A conspiracy theory is only a theory until it's proven right...

[Pz_Meyer]