War on Terror-why arn't we winning ?

Hi, Why are you limiting your responses to one liners? Its not a trick question-I'm genuinly interested in what you could contibute.

 

Because it's a subjective objective. Its designers have purposely made it that way. Their goal isn't to "win," it's to justify 24/7 military action around the globe.

If there is no enemy, how can spending hundreds of billions of dollars on military action be justified?

The real reason for global US military action is to enforce international "free-trade."

 

The Government, Big Brother, powers that be, want to keep us constantly scared. Everything is a threat, everything is a war that must be fought, and all of it for profit. We're in a very dark, screwed up country right now.

 

Funny how horrified this country is when something like Boston happens. But the fact that our government does the same thing on a daily basis to innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and so many other countries with drone attacks and our troops, doesn't even register in their minds. Karma, what goes around comes around.

 

Because the media tells them they are "insurgents"...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htrjz6cFz1c"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htrjz6cFz1c
The media tells us the people we are killing are "insurgents" "terrorists"..... people don't realize these are innocent folks like the ones who died in Boston, 9/11, etc.

 

Thanks . Those posts answer the question I was about to ask-why are Terrorists targeting OUR innoscents ? Even so , killing 'tit for tat' aint right and is counerproductive to their cause-theyre playing into the hands of those you describe above.


Raga_Mala-Thanks for replying to my post . I have to agree with much that you say. However, I cannot accept that our Democracies are so corrupted that they no longer ,effectively, exist. Used , manipulated and at times perverted by those whom you describe I agree but we have influence yet .
Democracy is humankinds most noble invention,in its centuries of evolution its been under constant stress,ever in a state of flux , mirroring the societies to which it has been subjected. It is a reflection of the state of human nature,all our strengths & failings , the best & worst in us . Its outlasted even defeated tyranies . Democracy with all its failings is our best hope yet. We cannot afford to give up on it.

It concerns me too that in describing State sponsored terrorism ,the vast politico-corporate military machine,the extensive multi-faceted Inteligence surveilances and control of the Media, we disempower ourselves and future generations into hopeless inaction .

Though I admit to being a pessimist by nature, I am optermistic that the present situation cannot continue,as you say, change effects all things !

 

Terrorism is a tool most effectively used by a minority who feel they are excessively oppressed by the, or a majority.

Democracy is humankind's most noble invention?
I don't know how that is relative to a thread titled "War on Terror-why arn't we winning ?", but is deserving of a discussion in a thread of it's own. Perhaps it IS relative only due to the consequences brought about by a central government being imposed upon a large numbers of societies collectively which result in the creation of a minority which is only slightly smaller than the majority they feel are infringing upon them.

More likely some future generation will be led to take action and bring about changes necessary to throw off the chains current and past generations have imposed upon them.

Change, will eventually take place and the only question in my mind is will it be accomplished peacefully or require extreme violence in order to be accomplished.

 

Democracy must mean that the organization of the society is controlled by the people who live in that society. It is not one thing but a spectrum. To whatever extent the population truly controls the society, that society may be called "democratic." Our society is more democratic than others, but less democratic than we are taught to believe that it is, and certainly less democratic than an ideal democracy. Simply having a Constitution and throwing elections every couple years does not a democracy make. We have to ask whether the mechanisms of popular control can actually affect the workings of the society. In our system, certain elements are under popular control and the vast majority of important ones are not.

In our society, decision-making powers about resources and their utilization, and the organization of major social institutions, are made in large part (but not totally) by a few whose power is not checked by the people: primarily a small group of corporate hegemons who control almost all the economic resources and property, and their unelected cronies within government bureaucracies. Neither corporate leadership nor appointed bureaucrats are subject to reelection and their power is unchecked by the people their decisions affect (namely, almost the whole population).

It is a semantic issue whether our society has enough popular control to be called "Democracy" or not. Even if it meets some criterion for being a democracy, it is STILL not accurate to portray "Democracy" as a standing institution/state/group of states against which terrorists are directing terror. No such entity exists.

As far as I know, most anti-American or anti-Western sentiment is directed at the fact that the Western World controls the globe by force and bases its prosperity on theft and suffering, NOT on the fact that those nations allow their people to elect their government. It is a convenient fiction that terrorists "hate our freedoms." Maybe a tiny minority actually care about our freedoms and want to install some kind of global theocracy, but the vast majority have more immediate economic or political grievances.

Maybe our democracies still function: as I say, that question is not substantive but semantic. But I refuse to accept an analysis which puts terror directed against "democracy" in a different class from state terror or any other kind of violence directed at non-combattant innocents. You acknowledge the existence of state terror but you still talk about "civilian terror" as the more pressing and scarier problem. In fact, state terror kills orders of magnitude more people in a given year than civilian terror. I don't think there can be a distinction.

 

True.

I don't even think it is called 'The War on Terror' anymore.

In April 2007 the British government announced publicly that it was abandoning the use of the phrase "War on Terror" as they found it to be less than helpful.This was explained more recently by Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller. In her 2011 Reith lecture, the former head of MI5 said that the 9/11 attacks were "a crime, not an act of war." "So I never felt it helpful to refer to a war on terror."

 

The US certainly still calls it "The War on Terror", which I think is wrong. Instead of an endless war with the Constitution set aside, it should be thought of as law enforcement.

 

Raga_Mala I fear a misunderstanding has occured along the way. The only time I have accused terrorists to be attacking Democracy is when it has been home grown groups acting against civilians within their own Democratic country. I was refering to the PIRA at the time and making the point that they had democratic means with which to have their grievances addressed and they chose violence against civilians.

Given that history,I have tried (page 3) to understand why an individual would knowingly murder innoscents in the name of any cause.

 

Yes Individual , I do feel that my comment on Democracy is relative to this thread-if you read the post I was replying to properly you may see why .

 

US President Barack Obama has rarely used the term, but in his inaugural address on 20 January 2009, he stated "Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred." In March 2009 the Defense Department officially changed the name of operations from "Global War on Terror" to "Overseas Contingency Operation" (OCO). In March 2009, the Obama administration requested that Pentagon staff members avoid use of the term, instead using "Overseas Contingency Operation". Basic objectives of the Bush administration "war on terror", such as targeting al Qaeda and building international counterterrorism alliances, remain in place.In December 2012, Jeh Johnson, the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, stated that the military fight will be replaced by a law enforcement operation when speaking at Oxford University, predicting that al Qaeda will be so weakened to be ineffective, and has been "effectively destroyed", and thus the conflict will not be an armed conflict under international law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cun8o2sDJgE"]Jeh Johnson | Full Address | Oxford Union - YouTube

 

Thanks. I didn't know that.

 

I'm not a big fan of the US policy on drones, but our military doesn't just pick a random spot on the map and say, "Lets blow up whoever is there today." They are always going after specific groups and individuals, and others get in the way. This is not similar to Boston. We have no reason to believe that the bomber brothers were targeting specific individuals or groups that are connected to the federal government, or the US military, or to anti-Islamic hate groups, such as some fundamentalist Christian churches. It's just the opposite. The bombers had to know it was unlikely that anyone would be at a marathon race except ordinary people.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. proved that it doesn't have to be used to bring about great change.

 

No worries. I guess a lot of people still use the term - sometimes pejoratively.

 

Mostly Republicans.

 

Citizens?

How many Republicans are in this thread?

 

Members of the Republican Party. Mostly.

 

Actually how many non-democrat party supporters would be a better question.