"Surprise, cockfags!"

[Duncan Edwards]

I am a fan of the Tennessee Titans football team. I have never missed a single minute of any game they have ever played in their home stadium. Win or lose, good or bad, rain or shine, I'm always there. I will never agree that my team should accept a negotiated settlement for any contest. Do not speak to me about the supposed superiority of any other team because I won't listen. The word fan is derived from the word fanatic. I am indeed fanatical about my team. In similar fashion I don't expect the fanatics of the other side to simply agree that I am right so a battle must be held on the field to determine who is correct.

I'm a New Orleans Saints fan myself (we're going to implode again, I just know it)...

But your analogy is false. After a football game, everyone goes home. There is a zero body-count.

First of all the easy one - Yes, the Saints will blow it.

You miss my point. The other team, whoever or whatever the game, simply won't negotiate for less than a win. Why should they unless they believe they can't win? Fanatics aren't really noted for that be they Titans or Taliban.

If you think the US is the sole source of motiviation for terrorists then we need to have another discussion.

[Lomax]

The only way we can win this war is to kill the enemy faster than they can replace their numbers, cut off their sources of supply, and destroy their ability to wage war. That, in fact, is the only way any war has ever been won.

That method was tried in Vietnam. Remind me how that turned out.

Based on my studies of the history of the Vietnam war, including conversations with veterans, I respectfully disagree.

America had vastly superior fire-power.

America lost.

Go figure.

But there's an important point here. People keep talking in terms of "War." There is no war - or if there is, it's completely unlike any war that's gone before, and needs to be approached in a completely different way.

War, as it always been understood up until now, is a state of armed conflict between two soverign nation states. It carries on until there's a negotiated peace settlement, or until one side surrenders. Then it's over.

By this definition, the War on Terror is not a war. The enemy is not a nation state, but a group of individuals who recognise neither national boundaries, nor any law (national or international) but their own. I might add that their reputed leader - Osama bin Laden - is Saudi Arabian in nationality; though no-one has suggested that that particular country should be attacked (oil....).

There is no front line. The enemy wear no uniforms, and can melt into the civilian population at will. If you seize their territory, they'll simply re-locate (most of them have left Afghanistan and are operating from Pakistan). They cannot be beaten in the way that Germany was beaten in 1945. The world has changed. Warfare (if we can still use that term) has changed. Mindsets and strategies must change also.

[Lomax]

First of all the easy one - Yes, the Saints will blow it.

Well we agree on something, at least.

You miss my point. The other team, whoever or whatever the game, simply won't negotiate for less than a win. Why should they unless they believe they can't win?

I believe the Saints can't win - but I wouldn't want them not to turn up for the game. But I still think your analogy is false. Football is a game (I used to play cornerback, by the way. Very badly). It is entertainment. Whilst the boundary between entertainment and violence can be blurred (boxing; Quentin Tarantino films) mankind has moved on since the days of the Colosseum. Sport is sport and war is war (even if we have to re-define war - see supra).

If you think the US is the sole source of motiviation for terrorists then we need to have another discussion.

No, I don't think that. If nothing else, that would be a very simple point of view; whereas in reality the problems we (mankind) face are hugely complex. However; complex problems cannot be solved by simple solutions - and particularly not the sort of "Nuke them 'til they glow" solutions espoused by Mynock and his ilk.

I do think that American attitudes are PART of the problem; as indeed is American foreign policy. Not that I see malice where none was intended - but what is the road to hell paved with?

[bbjohn]

I've been looking at some of these comments. I believe the source of much of the Islamofascist fanaticism comes from Saudi Arabia. Wahabbist Islam, which is the only legal religion in that country, is hostile not just to other religions, it's hostile to other versions of Islam. At one time, the Wahabbists were considered a dangerous lunatic fringe in the Islamic world. When the Turks controlled Mecca, they built big forts to keep the Wahabbists out. Now, the Wahabbists are running the place.

If it hadn't been for oil, Saudi Arabia would still be a backwater and Wahabbism would still be a fringe movement. Flush with oil money, they've been able to spread the malignant message throughout the Islamic world through seemingly benevolent activities like setting up schools and supplying religious textbooks.

Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban are radical Wahabbists. Wahabbist religious leaders want the Saudi media to ban all music and all depictions of women. It was Wahabbist teachers in Saudi Arabia who blocked firefighters from rescuing girls trapped in a burning building because they weren't properly veiled.

With "friends" like the Saudis, we don't need enemies.

If we want to crush Islamofascism, we need to cut off their funding. We need to stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia. You can't tell me the nation that put human beings on the moon can't figure out how to end our dependency on Arab oil.

This is a new kind of conflict, but there is one very traditional thing about it: those who wage conflict need money to get the means of fighting that conflict. If we stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia, we will plug up one of the terrorists' major funding streams.

It's time we told the Saudis they can keep their oil, and their country can become a backwater again.

Big Bad John

[Mynock]

No; I don't have a solution to all the world's problems. But I'm quite certain that the solution is NOT a higher body-count.

So we're in agreement. Yea, really, we are. Either I didn't do a good job of getting my point across or you misinterpreted it. I don't want to see a higher body count just for the sake of a higer body count. I'm saying that we're at war with these guys (unconventional though the war may be) and we have to do what needs to be done to win. If it means a few innocent people get caught in the crossfire, well, war is hell and shit happens.
Do you really think that all terrorism from the middle east would cease if the USA disappeared tomorrow? I say this with all love and everything bud, but if you do you're deluded. There's plenty more free and semi-free countries where we came from.

[Billie Bonce]

You can't tell me the nation that put human beings on the moon can't figure out how to end our dependency on Arab oil.

She did. She attacked and defeated Iraq, that possesses almost that much oil as Saudi Arabia

[Lomax]

I'm a New Orleans Saints fan myself.

The Saints will blow it.

Right. I just KNOW I'm going to regret saying this (tempting fate and all that) but 45-14 over the Cardinals suggests that normal service (or, since we're talking about the Saints here, abnormal service) has been resumed.

Which means that for a (brief, in all probability) period, I can feel smug.

Who dat?

[I think this is what they mean by hi-jacking a thread.]

[Duncan Edwards]

Having spent quite a bit of time in New Orleans and having relatives who escaped from there I'd love to see them pull it off.

[bbjohn]

Having spent quite a bit of time in New Orleans and having relatives who escaped from there I'd love to see them pull it off.

I live in Arizona, so I wasn't happy to see the Cardinals lose. At the same time, I wasn't too unhappy about it. The New Orleans Saints have never been to the Super Bowl, and their fans have been waiting for a long time. As a Cardinals fan, I can understand and appreciate that. New Orleans has been the site of many Super Bowls. It's about time the fans there felt they were part of the party and not just observers.

[Rackasan]

Just to let our American cousins know....... I served 23 years in the UK military and had to endure the Irish American population of New York funding terrorists to bomb civilians on the UK mainland. What has happened is terrible and I would not wish it on anyone but remember.......Americans (not all) funded terrorism in the Uk for nearly 30 years.