@masterninja - the invasion of Iraq was more than 18 months (that's 1.5 years) after 9/11. You make it sound as if we jumped Iraq immediately after. If you think we did, you need to review your facts.

March 19, 2003 - President Bush declares war on Iraq (note: war was declared, did AQ declare war on us before hand?)

March 20, 2003, 5:30am Baghdad time (9:30 PM EST, March 19) - The US launches Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Please do NOT confuse a declared war and attack with a sneak attack like Pearl Harbor or, worse, 9/11, and please do not view an attack 18 months later as a reaction and response to 9/11. I was 35 years old and clearly remember the events of that morning. How old were you and how well do you remember them?

It wasn't a declared war. We haven't done that for 60 years and even if we did Bush couldn't have done it himself.

Hell, if they shot a missile at my submarine, its not got the equipment to shoot that down, but it doesn't make it any less of a target.

And yes, of course, the use of airliners as cruise missiles is horrific, but you can't complain about their choice of targets. Its a military headquarters. Period. Anybody who puts the uniform on in the morning knows that that act makes them a legitimate military target. Anybody who works at a military base knows(or should) that its a target.

And as far as looking back on history, the Japanese MO in all their wars was to do exactly what they did. They fucked with the wrong people, but when you're in total war, you do some pretty shitty things to other people. I mean, we roasted whole cities from the air. Shit happens. The reason we're able to say they're a bunch of bastards for Pearl is because we won. Don't bullshit yourself into thinking its any other reason. If we had lost, it would have been a glorious victory over a power that was standing in the way of the Japanese Empire's proper place, etc etc etc. We won, we wrote the history.

Invictus, the Japanese didn't tie innocent civilians to the front of their zeros or onto their bombs (may as well have been what AQ did with the *civilian* airliners). Japan has their share of attrocities involving the whole war, including Pearl Harbor and the fact that they didn't rescue sailors and pilots from sunken or downed enemy craft at sea; they either straffed them in the water or left them to die. But these were soldiers and every target was military or strategic (we bombed factories too), not civilians going to work or to visit family and friends that were kidnapped and killed on the airliners, and striking the World Trade Center was not a strategic strike. It was a visible target with the intent being to strike terror in the whole world.

I will accept that Pearl Harbor was no more legit, if you will accept that the attacks of 9/11 were far more heinous because of the use of civilian airliners as weapons.

Well, 9/11 was a terrorist attack rather than the actions of a sovereign nation's military. It's apples and oranges.

Japan did target civilians. They did that in China and the Philippines and throughout Asia. To an extent we did that when we bombed Japanese cities.

@Invictus - it was authorized in advance, then. Congress stopped just short of declaring war, but H.J. Res 114 of October 16, 2002 authorized it and Bush came on the air to announce it just as the operation began.

That isn't a declaration of war. You can't be so fast and loose with technical terms like that.

I was talkign specific attacks. Germany bombed London indiscriminately and without mercy. We dropped f-ing a-bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. So yes, attrocities happen, but until 9/11, I had never heard of using civilian transportation as a payload. Sure, civilian trains and busses and planes had been blown up, but never used as a weapon.

I agree, that is why I corrected myself and said they stopped short of declaring war. I was incorrect in my first statement.

9/11 wasn't like bombing Dresden. It was a heinous TERRORIST attack, not the actions of a government. It was just like the car-bombing that happen all the time but this time it was a plane. Since it was so terrible an action we responded as if it were an attack by a foreign government, but that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't. It was a really, really bad terrorist attack. It was not comparable to Pearl Harbor apart from that it rightfully pissed America off.

...and killed more people. Seriously Invictus. Pearl Harbor saw fewer people die than 9/11.

And Pearl Harbor saw fewer people die than World War II.

Do you seriously think that if the Twin Towers were empty because of fumigation there wouldn't have been a response exactly like the one which ended up happening?

You don't seem to be understanding that there is a distinction between an attack by a country and a terrorist attack. 9/11 was terrible and we were right to respond. Pearl Harbor was terrible and we were right to respond. That doesn't mean that the justification for the response was the same in both cases. They were different.

@Jack, what was so military about the World Trade Center? You think only the Pentagon was hit? If it weren't for the use of the airliners, I'd have no problem with the Pentagon as a target. But they attacked a lot of innocent people in the World Trade Center. People who didn't wear a uniform or work for the government in any way.

And back on the Pentagon, those people on the airliner didn't wear unifroms (of a military nature, obviously the pilots and cabin stewards had their uniforms on). So still a heinous act.

Anyone who thinks that AQ=Iraq is SERIOUSLY erronius.

Perhaps that's how they justified attacking Iraq in the first place.
And there has been Proof that the rest of the world already knew, that AQ does NOT=Iraq.

So what was the justification for such an aggressive act Draugnar?

There also has been speculation (and i don't entirely believe nor discredit it) that some of those in Power in the US orchestrated the attacks to begin with, but that's a whole other thread in itself....

And the response wasn't the same. We pursued the terrorist organization. We haven't overrun Afghanistan, we have search for Al Quaida and we gave the Taliban fair warning to help us or become culpable as accessories to the crimes committed by Osama Bin Laden. they chose to side with their terrorist brothers and are now accessories after the fact. It's a very legit legal prosecution being pursued against war criminals.

Iraq was never officially declared as having anything to do with 9/11. It was supposed to be about Iraq's non-compliance with all of the UN directives and there potential WMDs, which may well have been scuttled out in the desert and we just haven't found them yet. Mind, I don't think we belong in Iraq. I think we should have waited until we had the backing of the UN Security council in full and gone in with very specific goals, acheived them, and got out like we did with Operation Desert Storm.

@masterninja - AQ != Iraq. It never was and never had anything to do with 9/11. See my previous post (typed while you typed your response).

Ah, ok... gotcha Draugnar!!!!

Damn crossovers!

I agree. The US should never have interfered in Iraq's problems.
Especially now it's opened a Pandoras box.

And France(Quite rightly) defended the sovereignty of Iraq and to this day has not participated in any of the many countless civilians killed by US troops.

Afghanistan is a whole different matter.

"And the Japanese used military equpiment to attack a military base. Even if the Pentagon is classed as military, it was still a civilian airliner they crashed into it. So, please don't even THINK of equating AQ with the Japanese fleet or 9/11 with Pearl Harbor. One was a legitimate attack on a military by a military, the other was a bunch of cowards who hijacked innocent civilians and killed them to get their targets, both military and economic. Had they a military of their own and used their military might, I could accept the comparison, but they didn't and I won't."

-- Draugnar

Draugnar + 1

Call them crazy, call them evil, but they weren't cowards. They had the courage of their convictions. Evil convictions, to be sure, but they had them.

We're not doing ourselves any favors by bullshitting ourselves about the nature of our enemies.... not having a clear picture of our opponents has cost us a lot in the past.... go look up on MacAurthur's debacle at the Yalu....

Lets understand these guys, so we can beat them.

They are evil motherfuckers, but they're not cowards. Assuming otherwise gets a lot of my brothers and sisters killed.

@draugnar: please read everything I wrote, I answered all of your objections already.

If you are not a strong force, and you are up against a strong force, you hit whatever you can. When the colonists were up against the British in the revolutionary war, people thought OHMIGOD, they aren't lining up and fighting with honor! The US has all the power, when you look at military(and most other things). So, we are currently using drones to kill anyone we see that is, or looks like, one of the terrorists on our list in Pakistan. How do you strike back at something that is completely untouchable? The military is not exactly an easy target. They hit the Cole, but they needed to hit something to get us to react in a really heavy handed manner. We should have been able to stop 9/11. There was knowledge of the attack coming, but we were not organized enough.

In all of history, there have been attacks on civilians. The fire bombing of Dresden. The fire bombing of Tokyo. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Israel destroying most of the infrastructure in Lebanon(including hitting an area run by Christians?).

Every use of the CIA by the US would be condemned. So, how does the propping up of the Shah of Iran or the Saudi Royal Family fit into this? As the US, are we allowed to manipulate and control the governments of other countries? Are we allowed to try to assassinate people?

Jack Klein - That was a repost of my quote by The_Master_Warrior, not a post by me. As far as the courage of their convictions, it's easy to be brave when you are insane, believe you will go to heaven where you'll get shitloads of virgins, and know you will die and not have to face punishment for your actions here on earth. That ain't courage, that's insanity. Courage is doind things in spite of fear. These people had no fear. They were brainwashed into believing they would get all these rewards and life would be better in the afterlife, after they had shucked their mortal coil.

@Tantris - in regards to assassination. Please provide evidence. Assassination is illegal and not an accepted action by the US government. While I have no doubt that black ops occur and maybe some are assassinations, but I haven't seen or heard of any performed by the US. If we took out someone ala Jason Bourne, I would think there would have been some word of some leaders (political, drug cartel, whatever) dying of mysterious causes in the world press.

"Assassination is illegal and not an accepted action by the US government."

Are you serious?

I'm talking officially. My point is that the world press hasn't exactly had anything in it in a long time about a mysterious illness and death of a political, financial, or spiritual leader that is in any way related to the US, so we can't go saying the US commits assassinations.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/01/blackwater-20100

Yeah, sure, not cowards. Right. That's why they used civilian instruments to attack targets of no military significance and then celebrate by cowering in a cave in Afghanistan while the mountain above them is carpet bombed. How is that courage?

"we are currently using drones to kill anyone we see that is, or looks like, one of the terrorists on our list in Pakistan. How do you strike back at something that is completely untouchable?" - finally the US has gotten with the programme, the pentagon was kicking into gear by Robert Gates, (bush's last War secretary, and the one guy Obama kept on) Greatly increasing the production of things like drones. (cause it only costs 20,000 dollars to put one in the air, and they can be run 24/7.)

So the US are using every tool in their arsenal, why should you expect the enemy to do anything but the same. If that means attacking civilian targets, they will. If that means hitting militrary targets or embassies across the middle east, they will.

They are not evil, they have different values. You are blind if you can't see that.
They are people, not brainwashed, people with beliefs.

They believe their culture is important, that they are also of the opinion the US influence in the middle east is corrupting their culture, that the exploitation of their markets, the support of dictators to extract their oil on favourable terms, the influence on their markets with goods which they may see as degenerate or frivolous. They are fighting this influence in the only ways they can think of.

You call them evil while you send automated drones into their skies and rain fire on their villages from above. You, the US could be seen as an evil force in the world which must be combated at every turn. Anyone who subscribed to that point of view would do anything to stop you from further corruption of the people and culture of Islam.

Is there any wonder that uneducated villagers in the middle of nowhere celebrate when a US drone is brought down? They see a weapon which can only be used to kill them and they were happy.

Evil, well that's just a human concept. There is no absolute good/evil. You may have a different world view to these people, but if you can't understand their views then you have no chance of negotiating with them or resolving this conflict peacefully and fairly.

If they are so different to you then they probably wouldn't be able to understand your views either, but short of genocide you're not going to win this war, it will just become more bloody and extended. The US may pull out, and the Islamic nations will celebrate. Smart Islamic governments will try to avoid letting the US know that they are supporting terrorists. Others will end up the way the Taliban did in 2001 when the US removed them from Kabul.

TMW: What would you do if a Sino-EU alliance defeated the United States and set up an occupational government here, with the help of local collaborators? Would you take to the hills, fight back any way you could?

I would. There is no such thing as a fair fight in war. I was on a submarine. Submarine tactics, roughly speaking, are the equivalent of surprising somebody in a dark alleyway with a shotgun. Ideally, they don't even know the torpedo is coming until it goes into its terminal acquisition mode, and breaks the back of the target.

War is hell. And wars are fought by whatever means necessary. You cheat, you lie, you fight dirty to win. We do it. And so do they. Yes, they hide in caves, because we rule the skies. They don't fight us where we have the advantage, they hit us where we are weak. I get the feeling, sir, you are a hawk in the mode of Dick Cheney, who is very warlike now, but when it was time for him to actually risk his own blood, he found other things to do. Go ask an infantryman about fair fights. They're not interested in them. Nobody who knows what war is is interested in fair fights. Nobody.