Could Al Gore being elected in 2000 actually have turned out worse than Bush's terms in some regards, by giving Tipper Gore, the PMRC, and their views on regulating the preservation of "Family Values", an inside influence in Washington?

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• Tipper technically resigned from the PMRC when her husband became vice president, but that's no reason to assume that her views or tactics have changed.
  And what precisely brings you to that conclusion on terrorism?

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on August 29th, 2008

• Gore is a spineless pussy.

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  by Someguy on August 29th, 2008

• Okay... But that still doesn't quite explain how you come to the conclusion about terrorist attacks.
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  If anything, 9/11 seems to have been motivated by the precise opposite of "Spineless Pussy" behaviour; in the first tape released after the attack, Osama bin Laden himself says that the attacks were in retaliation against America's meddling in support of Israel over Palestine.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on August 29th, 2008

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• There's no real way of know how negotiating with terrorists would have gone, is there? Because the people who did get elected before 9/11 never even seemed to think of it. No, they'd rather just burn the Middle East to the ground.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on August 29th, 2008

• How does anyone negotiate with terrorists, Roland? Did you think they were just standing around waiting to talk to us?

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  by LittleDeadRidingHood is relentless on August 31st, 2008

• Assuming that terrorists have no motive but pure psychosis and fanatacism is one of the biggest mistakes of the past few decades (and that's including Vietnam).
  There *Are* genuine reasons behind terrorist attacks, and even if those reasons don't justify them, they can still only be solved by understanding and addressing them, rather than just bombing the living shit out of them.
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  In a "War On Terror" aggressive tactics are counterproductive, because the terrorists we're fighting to begin with are, by and large, people who got pissed over that exact same sort of behaviour in the past.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on August 31st, 2008

• You still didn't answer the question, though. How do you negotiate with them?

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  by LittleDeadRidingHood is relentless on August 31st, 2008

• The same way you negotiate with anyone, you go, you talk to them, you come to understand what they're thoughts and motivations are, and you try to use that understanding to work out a solution to the conflict.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on August 31st, 2008

• And while you are talking, one of these totally rational people rams into you in their suicide car wired with explosives.

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  by Tallyman on August 31st, 2008

• Did I ever say they were totally rational?
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  Yes, there is illogic and fanaticism behind this, and there are people who simply won't listen to reason.
  But, in conditions where people safe and content and free, fanatics tend to be in the minority.
  If you ignore what drives these people to fanaticism, killing those people personally will do absolutely no good.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on August 31st, 2008

• We are trying to make certain that the innocent citizens are, "conditions where people safe and content and free."
  Killing the attackers makes sure they will not kill us.

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  by Tallyman on August 31st, 2008

• Killing the attackers produces more of the same.
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  I'm not saying we should do nothing to help out the sort of oppressed third-world nations these fanatics hail from, just that the way we're doing it is counterproductive, because ideas cannot be killed or controlled.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on August 31st, 2008

• Roland, you have to find them to talk to them first. In the meantime, they're bombing you. It's not going to work, these people don't understand negotiation, and they're not reasonable, so you can't reason with them. They understand violence, that's their culture. If we'd tried to negotiate with them, we'd have had many more 9/11 style attacks while we were trying to track down the source. These fanatics hate us, we're the Great Satan, and to them, the only good American is a dead one. (I was not advocating blowing up the middle east, btw.)

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  by LittleDeadRidingHood is relentless on August 31st, 2008

• They communicate with us all the time, and I'm sure these people watch the president's speeches on TV.
  Was there some public address I missed where negotiation was offered?
  The "Finding them to talk to them first" you're talking about wouldn't be negotiation. More like interrogation than anything.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on August 31st, 2008

• Like I said, viewing terrorists as simply fanatics is incredibly ignorant and foolish.
  Whether their logic is faulty or not, their grievances are not fictional, nor unaddressable.
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  For example, have you seen the first communique Osama bin Laden released after 9/11, the one in which he took credit for the attack?
  In that video, he expressly states that his plans to blow up the World Trade Center were motivated by the U.S. government's cooperation with Israel in their assaults on Palestine.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on August 31st, 2008

• Whether that's a valid reason or not, and whether it was his only reason or not, can you not see how people would get angry enough at the U.S. to start bombing its people to bits because of that?
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  "They understand violence, that's their culture." Sounds an awful lot like an advocation of violence in the Middle East to me.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on August 31st, 2008

• Nope. I'm just telling you that that's the way their culture is. They are always at war with one another. So, by way of deductive reasoning here, are you saying, in effect, that we should've done nothing while they continued to attack us? You'll never get to the source, through normal measures. They are not a government to be reasoned with, they are a group of extremists in a land where life is cheap, and they have no problem killing for their violent beliefs.

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  by LittleDeadRidingHood is relentless on September 1st, 2008

• "viewing terrorists as simply fanatics is incredibly ignorant and foolish." Really? How do you view them, then? Would you invite them over for tea? How about a barbeque? This whole thing of "we need to negotiate with them and try to understand them" seems weak, and since you're such a scholar of middle eastern culture, in general, then you should also know how they view weakness on the part of their opponents, Roland. I think to view them as anything other than a serious threat is foolish. And apparently, our government thought so, too.

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  by LittleDeadRidingHood is relentless on September 1st, 2008

• Middle Eastern culture is chronically violent, eh?
  These people would beg to differ, I'm sure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgd86Tv96zQ
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  I view them as fanatics, yes, but it's the "Simply" that's important, and yes I view them as a serious threat.
  But that doesn't make violence the solution.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on September 2nd, 2008

• I'll posit you a question here: When the U.S. decides to hunt down a terrorist, introducing violence into the lives and homes of many Middle Eastern civilians in the process, who's really "Winning" that war?
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  The U.S., who've managed to bring one person to justice, (which has been shown in the past to do virtually nothing to alleviate the overall atmosphere of anti-Western fanaticism)?
  Or the fanatics, who've died for their cause just like they planned, and whose vendetta against the West suddenly seems much more reasonable to all the people who got caught in the fallout of America's efforts to hunt down terrorists?

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on September 2nd, 2008

• There's always somebody who's going to disagree with everything.
  
  They had no problem "introducing violence into the lives" of many Americans on that fateful day in September of 2001, did they?
  
  Roland, you're looking for ways to blame the U.S. for not attempting to negotiate with terrorists. I think that, in all honesty, if our government had felt that it was at all an option, they would have tried it first.

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  by LittleDeadRidingHood is relentless on September 2nd, 2008

• What they did to us doesn't matter, because war shouldn't be carried out as vengeance. By trying to justify war as retaliation against terrorism, you may as well be saying that we should just go ahead and operate on their level.
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  My point isn't to "Blame" anyone, mainly just to point out that killing people in an effort to eradicate ideas is counterproductive, because I *Don't* want to see America run into the ground.
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  That's the problem with having a blanket policy of not negotiating with terrorists: You never consider it an option, based not on the practical specifics of the case, but rather on that blanket policy; It's self-fulfilling.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on September 2nd, 2008

• Once again, Roland, I doubt highly that you can reason with them for the reasons I've already stated. However, instead of arguing this point with you further, I'm going to suggest that if you feel this strongly about your ideas, then you should be writing letters to the people who can actually do something about it, or run for a government office yourself. Let's just leave it at that.

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  by LittleDeadRidingHood is relentless on September 2nd, 2008

• Well, you definitely can't if you never try.
  And believe me, I do, unfortunately, they also seem to have developed a blanket policy of not taking letters seriously, and it's nigh impossible to get elected without playing by their rules.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on September 3rd, 2008

• I agree with you, here. The whole government seems to have forgotten that they work for us- not the other way around. They've completely bypassed that whole "We The People" thing, haven't they?

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  by LittleDeadRidingHood is relentless on September 5th, 2008

• Well, it's good that we can agree on *Something*.
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  By the way though, I did some research, and remembered something that I can't believe slipped my mind before: The Algiers Accord.
  Even though Reagan's Iran-Contra clusterfuck stopped the accord from mattering much, it does show that even terrorists have their reasons, and can be negotiated with (to carry the comparison further, look at what happened in Operation Eagle Claw).
  In fact, despite the vast difference in scale between the invasion of America's Iranian embassy and 9/11, the sentiments behind them seem roughly the same: "Get the hell out of our internal affairs!"

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on September 6th, 2008

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• I'm not sure about Al, but some of the things that come out of the mouths of Tipper and her associates are just plain disturbing.

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  by Mr. Meaulnes on August 30th, 2008

• Different voices from the same general personality.

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  by Halskiisaklink on August 31st, 2008