9/11 ...

[Outlander Systems]

This.

You know, not much in this post I find fault with.

9/11 was a tragedy. We should always remember. We were attacked. It was a tragedy.

But, we let it take control of our lives, giving up freedoms we shouldn't have ever been asked to give up.

Admitting that doesn't do a disservice to those who died that day.

[WillBrink]

I was fine until he equated being a victim of terrorism with death by natural selection via McDonalds. Everyone is going to die and if it's french fries that get me, I don't blame the french. And that a big difference between a mostly natural cause and being on a plane flown into a building or being in a building that had a plane flown into it.

As for the memorial, I know I'm cynical but I see a hole in the ground. I want to see something built from the bones of our dead enemies...all of them. It's been almost 20 years and I'm still not ok with it. I know it's wrong and would have resulted in lots of collateral damage including innocent people who had nothing to do with it and couldn't have prevented it if they tried, but if we went off the rails and went tactical nukes on selected sites I don't think it would have been much more wrong than what we actually did.

We could have just called it conversion by microSieverts.

That last time someone attacked us and killed approx 3k people, we set the world on fire paying them back in spades and making it clear to the rest of the world, attacking the US will not end well for you and your country will be decimated to its core. That message was not sent post 9/11 and of course had we not ignore the many multiple smaller attacks from the very same group, allowing them to probe our will, etc, it would never have happened. I'm still not OK with it in large part due to knowing we had multiple warnings, dead people, and ability to prevent it had we not had spineless worthless fu#% at the helm. A fleet of cruise missiles should have hit the Saudi intel buildings and palaces too on 9/12 for starters.

And lets not even get into how much resources, etc were red directed going into Iraq.

18 years later, I'm not even close to OK with any of it.

[Rogue556]

A fleet of cruise missiles should have hit the Saudi intel buildings and palaces too on 9/12 for starters.

And lets not even get into how much resources, etc were red directed going into Iraq.

18 years later, I'm not even close to OK with any of it.

Spot on. I remember reading the 9/11 report that was released a few years back and wondering why the hell Saudi Arabia can still be found on a map.

Absolutely infuriating.


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[WillBrink]

Spot on. I remember reading the 9/11 report that was released a few years back and wondering why the hell Saudi Arabia can still be found on a map.

Absolutely infuriating.

Money, oil, oil $. That and they're the enemy of our enemies, but with friends like that...

That's also why we have a tenuous moral standing with the rest of the world, we lecture X country for it's lack of Human Rights, while ignoring one of the worse offenders. Not that everyone else does not do the same thing, but we also claim to stand out above the rest.

While I get the geo political aspects of the situation and relationship, there's a line and they crossed it by miles and totally got away with it.

And hustling off OBLs family under US protection back to Saudi, vs hold them all in fed detention until one of the M=fers told us where to find him, make sure they were working with us to find him etc, etc,

[flenna]

Spot on. I remember reading the 9/11 report that was released a few years back and wondering why the hell Saudi Arabia can still be found on a map.

Absolutely infuriating.


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After 9/11 we should have made certain countries in the ME an uninhabitable glass parking lot.

[jpmuscle]

I was fine until he equated being a victim of terrorism with death by natural selection via McDonalds. Everyone is going to die and if it's french fries that get me, I don't blame the french. And that a big difference between a mostly natural cause and being on a plane flown into a building or being in a building that had a plane flown into it.

As for the memorial, I know I'm cynical but I see a hole in the ground. I want to see something built from the bones of our dead enemies...all of them. It's been almost 20 years and I'm still not ok with it. I know it's wrong and would have resulted in lots of collateral damage including innocent people who had nothing to do with it and couldn't have prevented it if they tried, but if we went off the rails and went tactical nukes on selected sites I don't think it would have been much more wrong than what we actually did.

We could have just called it conversion by microSieverts.

Well, I mean if we’re being purely objective any loss of innocent life via means that are/were otherwise preventable is always a tragedy.

More people die individually at the hands of drunk drivers, texters, blunt objects, venomous animals, and probably even Darwin Award stupidity annually then are killed by “assault weapons” but god forbid you try to draw comparisons because, Muh guns are scary.

9/11 was a tragedy for epic proportions and should be remembered as such. I just wish folks gave a damn about some things that actually matter with the same fervor as things that don’t actually matter or atleast are statistically insignificant.

As for the Middle East we should have spent 6 months laying waste to anyone and everything. Full on scorched earth.


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[Wake27]

Spot on. I remember reading the 9/11 report that was released a few years back and wondering why the hell Saudi Arabia can still be found on a map.

Absolutely infuriating.


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Which report?

[SteyrAUG]

And hustling off OBLs family under US protection back to Saudi, vs hold them all in fed detention until one of the M=fers told us where to find him, make sure they were working with us to find him etc, etc,

You do know he attacked his own family right. I doubt any one of them knew where he was at. Saudi intelligence might have known, but the Bin Ladens were living in the US for a reason.

[WillBrink]

You do know he attacked his own family right. I doubt any one of them knew where he was at. Saudi intelligence might have known, but the Bin Ladens were living in the US for a reason.

I did not. When/where did that happen? I know they claimed to have totally disconnected from him and he them, but I was not aware of any physical attacks. Still not our job to protect his family due their connections.

[Belmont31R]

Iraq was not a lost cause. Reading this thread there's a profound lack of Obama blame for how the two wars turned out. We had a chance in Iraq and Obama made sure it turned into a shitshow. Biden got sent to Iraq to be the fall guy for not signing a SOFA so Obama could say he got us out even though we never left. Watching some of the Frontline doc's about Mosul and Northern Iraq I'd still have no problem going and fighting for those people. I was in Baghdad in 2004 and 2005-2006 when things were going south and I get pissed thinking those people weren't good people for the most part who just wanted to live their own lives how they saw fit. Part of my duties in 2005-2006 was as an advisor to an Iraqi interrogation facility so I got to see all the ****s brought in around the Baghdad area the Iraqi's picked up. Saddam was hung about 100M from where I slept for months, and the Iraqi's I worked with were part of his trial.

I never went to Afghanistan but from what Ive seen that's way more of a cluster**** than Iraq. I actually don't blame the Taliban. The Taliban are not a singular unit and one valley to the next can have radically opposing alliances. As a vet all I can say is that Im extremely proud of the many people who have stepped up there and there's no shortage of courage I still think about to this day. Just got done listening to the audiobook of Chosen Few. Again **** Obama, Bush, and the DOD for not doing their best to support boots on the ground. We had the Taliban solidly defeated in 2002 and 2003 but by then Iraq was the focus. Rumsfeld was horrible. Brenner was horrible for Iraq. Most of this was not a failure of military capability or lack of willingness on the ground to engage the ememy. Everyone was operating with guidance from DOD and DOS and the WH who held back mil ops to where we were combat ineffective. You can watch combat ops from Afghanistan from the Obama era where troops in contact can't even get air support without an hour's worth of red tape and O3's have to get permission from senior O's to authorize every strike.

I have zero qualms about helping people who want to be free and live life as they see fit. ISIS could have been cured when Obama was still in office if he dumped arms to the Kurds and put ODA's in N Iraq and the IA before they got to Mosul.