Nation's Greatest Mission is to Prevent Terrorists

You forgot something that was key and I really
cannot believe he said it!

"These kind of people who blow up subways and buses are not people you can negotiate with or reason with or appease," he said."

We have negotiated and are negotiating and I present Muqtada Al Sadr as evidence number one.

I can see bush spinning that as successfully
assimilating a Shiite cleric insurgent into the
mainstream...does not change the fact Muqtada Al Sadr used terror methods and has American soldiers
blood on his hands.

I see this speech by bush is to take advantage
of the 1 strength he has in the polls and that
is terror...he is generalizing terror to bring
those poll numbers out of the doldrums and I think
it will work but he is being disingenuous when
he says we cannot negotiate with terror when in
fact he has.

I think his poll numbers will rise because of supreme court process and his speech.

 

Agreed. We also negotiated in Afghanistan, allowing Pakistan to come in and remove their citizens who were fighting alongside the Taliban. Then we resumed fighting. That's one reason I have always maintained that we are not really fighting a war on terror. In fighting a real war, there are no negotiations with the other side unless one surrenders permanently.

I am not forgetting how the "average" citizens cheered and hung American civilian bodies from the bridge in Fallujah. What did we do? We allowed those same "average" citizens to leave Fallujah before our troops went in.

And of course, we strongarmed Israel to go along with the Road Map to give away land for peace with the terrorists.

We are too politically correct to win the war on terror. You cannot fight a war and build a nation at the same time. First you fight, finish it, and then rebuild after the fighting is over. If the fighting is never going to be over, then nuke the place and be done with it.

 

Agreed. And I like Neal a lot.

 

The WAR is on whether we like it or not.We don't have a choice if we are to survive.Not to fight back is not only cowardly it is suicide.The enemy will not stop attacking us until it costs more than he/she/it is willing to pay.Our enemy is fanatical.Our enemy has learnt from previous wars we have fought that we can lose our resolve and they are couting on that very fact to make it easy for them to win.
America has always had heroes,those who were and are willing to fight for our existance and freedom.Unfortunately america has also had it's detractors and cowards and those types will always exist. They will have thier freedom because some were and aree brave enough the fight thier fight.

 

Regardless it is leaking out that the
Republicans are positioning themselves for the
mid term elections and that means withdrawal..so
there goes your resolve...politics and its name
is Republican.

 

One thing that amazes me is that the Bush haters on this forum always seem to have inside information on the workings of the Administration and the Republican Party. Do they really have a "fly on the wall", a "mole" in the Whitehouse, or just "perverted imaginations"?

 

Agreed. I am not forgetting how the "average" citizens cheered and hung American civilian bodies from the bridge in Fallujah. What did we do? We allowed those same "average" citizens to leave Fallujah before our troops went in.

</font>[/QUOTE]While I agree with a lot of what you say, I want to remind you we went into Falluja twice.

The first time, there was such howling by the media, muslims everywhere, home grown liberals, and even our staunch allies, the British, about the "brutality" of the assault that we stopped our Marines in their tracks and forced them to negotiate when they were winning.

So when we do actually "take the gloves off" the weight of the world falls on our heads.

Let's face it folks, this is not the war it should be. The reasons are many, but the main one is there are too many Americans that don't really believe we are in a war at all.

Thousands more American civilians will have to die to make Americans realize that our enemies mean business. And it will happen.

The clock is ticking.

 

Ken posted this first somewhere else, but it seems very relevant to this....

Koranic duels ease terror

SANAA, YEMEN – When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen's Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster.

Nervous as he faced five captured, yet defiant, Al Qaeda members in a Sanaa prison, Judge Hitar was inclined to agree. But banishing his doubts, the youthful cleric threw down the gauntlet, in the hope of bringing peace to his troubled homeland.


"If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle," Hitar told the militants. "But if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence."

The prisoners eagerly agreed.

Now, two years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a relative peace reigns in Yemen. And the same Western experts who doubted this experiment are courting Hitar, eager to hear how his "theological dialogues" with captured Islamic militants have helped pacify this wild and mountainous country, previously seen by the US as a failed state, like Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Since December 2002, when the first round of the dialogues ended, there have been no terrorist attacks here, even though many people thought that Yemen would become terror's capital," says Hitar, eyes glinting shrewdly from beneath his emerald-green turban. "Three hundred and sixty-four young men have been released after going through the dialogues and none of these have left Yemen to fight anywhere else."

"Yemen's strategy has been unconventional certainly, but it has achieved results that we could never have hoped for," says one European diplomat, who did not want to be named. "Yemen has gone from being a potential enemy to becoming an indispensable ally in the war on terror."

To be sure, the prisoner-release program is not solely responsible for the absence of attacks in Yemen. The government has undertaken a range of measures to combat terrorism from closing down extreme madrassahs, the Islamic schools sometimes accused of breeding hate, to deporting foreign militants.

Eager to spread the news of his success, Hitar welcomes foreigners into his home, fussing over them and pouring endless cups of tea. But beyond the otherwise nondescript house, a sense of menace lurks. Two military jeeps are parked outside, and soldiers peer through the gathering dark at passing cars. The evening wind sweeps through the unpaved streets, lifting clouds of dust and whipping up men's jackets to expose belts hung with daggers, pistols, and mobile telephones.

Seated amid stacks of Korans and religious texts, Hitar explains that his system is simple. He invites militants to use the Koran to justify attacks on innocent civilians and when they cannot, he shows them numerous passages commanding Muslims not to attack civilians, to respect other religions, and fight only in self-defense.

For example, he quotes: "Whoever kills a soul, unless for a soul, or for corruption done in the land - it is as if he had slain all mankind entirely. And, whoever saves one, it is as if he had saved mankind entirely." He uses the passage to bolster his argument against bombing Western targets in Yemen - attacks he says defy the Koran. And, he says, the Koran says under no circumstances should women and children be killed.

If, after weeks of debate, the prisoners renounce violence they are released and offered vocational training courses and help to find jobs.

Hitar's belief that hardened militants trained by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan could change their stripes was initially dismissed by US diplomats in Sanaa as dangerously naive, but the methods of the scholarly cleric have little in common with the other methods of fighting extremism. Instead of lecturing or threatening the battle-hardened militants, he listens to them.

"An important part of the dialogue is mutual respect," says Hitar. "Along with acknowledging freedom of expression, intellect and opinion, you must listen and show interest in what the other party is saying."

Only after winning the militants' trust does Hitar gradually begin to correct their beliefs. He says that most militants are ordinary people who have been led astray. Just as they were taught Al Qaeda's doctrines, he says, so too can they be taught more- moderate ideas. "If you study terrorism in the world, you will see that it has an intellectual theory behind it," says Hitar. "And any kind of intellectual idea can be defeated by intellect."

The program's success surprised even Hitar. For years Yemen was synonymous with violent Islamic extremism. The ancestral homeland of Mr. bin Laden, it provided two-thirds of recruits for his Afghan camps, and was notorious for kidnappings of foreigners and the bombing of the American warship USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 sailors. Resisting US pressure, Yemen declined to meet violence with violence.

"It's only logical to tackle these people through their brains and heart," says Faris Sanabani, a former adviser to President Abdullah Saleh and editor-in-chief of the Yemen Observer, a weekly English-language newspaper. "If you beat these people up they become more stubborn. If you hit them, they will enjoy the pain and find something good in it - it is a part of their ideology. Instead, what we must do is erase what they have been taught and explain to them that terrorism will only harm Yemenis' jobs and prospects. Once they understand this they become fighters for freedom and democracy, and fighters for the true Islam," he says.

Some freed militants were so transformed that they led the army to hidden weapons caches and offered the Yemeni security services advice on tackling Islamic militancy. A spectacular success came in 2002 when Abu Ali al Harithi, Al Qaeda's top commander in Yemen, was assassinated by a US air-strike following a tip-off from one of Hitar's reformed militants.

Yet despite the apparent success in Yemen, some US diplomats have criticized it for apparently letting Islamic militants off the hook with little guarantee that they won't revert to their old ways once released from prison.

Yemen, however, argues that holding and punishing all militants would create only further discontent, pointing out that the actual perpetrators of attacks have all been prosecuted, with the bombers of the USS Cole and the French oil tanker, the SS Limburg. All received death sentences.

"Yemeni goals are long-term political aims whereas the American agenda focuses on short-term prosecution of military or law enforcement objectives," wrote Charles Schmitz, a specialist in Yemeni affairs, in 2004 report for the Jamestown Foundation, an influential US think tank.

"These goals are not necessarily contradictory, with each government recognizing that compromises and accommodations must be made, but their ambiguities create tense moments."

Some members of the Yemeni government also hanker for a more iron-fisted approach, and Yemen remains on high alert for further attacks. Fighter planes regularly swoop low over the ancient mud-brick city of Sanaa to send a clear message to any would-be militants.

An additional cause of friction with the US is that while Yemen successfully discourages attacks within its borders on the grounds that tourism and trade will suffer, it has done little to tackle anti-Western sentiment or the corruption, poverty, and lack of opportunity that fuels Islamic militancy.

"Yemen still faces serious challenges, but despite the odd hiccup, we sometimes have to admit that Yemenis know Yemen best," says the European diplomat. "And if their system works, who are we to complain?"

As the relative success of Yemen's unusual approach becomes apparent, Hitar has been invited to speak to antiterrorism specialists at London's New Scotland Yard, as well as to French and German police, hoping to defuse growing militancy among Muslim immigrants.

US diplomats have also approached the cleric to see if his methods can be applied in Iraq, says Hitar.

"Before the dialogues began, there was only one way to fight terrorism, and that was through force," he says. "Now there is another way: dialogue."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0204/p01s04-wome.html

 

I guess your point is that they CAN be negotiated with?

 

carpro, I don't give a hang what the rest of the world thinks about America - the gloves should have come off on 09/11. But there are too many $$ at stake for the rich and powerful to do what is correct to win the war.

To the best of my knowledge, it never has been made public who benefitted from the "put options" on United Airlines on 09/11. Some people made a lot of money knowing ahead of time what was going to happen.

 

No my point is that apparently somebody out there HAS negotiated with them SUCCESSFULLY.
I don't know if there is anybody in the US who is capable of repeating that success.

 

I already blame our leaders for not doing enough. All of them. Every last one of them. Some who lost the last election should be glad, because they won't be in the spotlight when the next big attack comes.

I've been sounding the alarm trumpet ever since the known terrorist Muslim imam was invited to pray in the National Cathedral at the Memorial Service after 09/11. But there I go again, being politically incorrect.