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The end of the "War on Terror"

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Josh started this discussion 15 years 3 months ago

Obama Aide Declares End to War on Terrorism
http://washingtonindependent.com/54152/obama-aide-declares-end-to-war-on-terrorism

John Brennan picked a deeply symbolic day to end the “war on terrorism.”

On August 6, 2001, Brennan, then a senior CIA official and now President Obama’s assistant for counterterrorism and homeland security, “read warnings that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike inside the U.S., but our government was unable to prevent the worst terrorist attack in American history,” he recalled to an audience Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. It was a reference to a CIA analysis, called a President’s Daily Brief, that the 9/11 Commission uncovered as a key warning that an attack by al-Qaeda was likely.

Eight years later, in his first speech since joining the Obama administration, Brennan annulled several key aspects of the so-called war on terrorism — starting with both the name and the idea that the United States was involved in any sort of “global war.”

What do you think?

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santa klaus

15 years

I think public schools are funded by local property taxes, but I'm not sure.

That´s one of the sickest things I have ever heard. :D

You don´t need a wacky German to convince people who are convinced already. The progressives are in power now, all they have to do is: make use of the power!

Of course, the nutwings will go crazy and scream murder. Who cares? Of course, there will be Dem congressmen who are afraid to go along. They should be told in no uncertain terms that they can´t expext any help in the future if they don´t go along. Use the power and don´t be afraid to crucify a traitor once in a while. There´s a huge majority in both houses, so you don´t need every single jerk anyway.

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Scotch Argus

15 years

(I think public schools are funded by local property taxes, but I'm not sure.)

I have a relative in a middle class town near boston, and due to reduced tax revenues, there are teachers being sacked to save money. Whilst the system in the UK is not perfect by any means, the central funding means this could not happen here - or if it did would be the result of massive central govt revenue problems (which admittedly aren't impossible) rather than one city suffering a decline in property taxes.

I know I'll sound like an idiot, but I personally see a spectrum of political maturity - it's not a straight line, and has heaps of bumps along the way, but you have african countries with corruption and nepotism at one end and European social democracies at the other. The USA is somewhere in the middle moving towards Europe. The presence of the religious right is holding them back, as idealogues always do. It's not to say that the western european system is perfect - it's moving too and changing all the time.

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santa klaus

15 years

I know I'll sound like an idiot, but I personally see a spectrum of political maturity - it's not a straight line, and has heaps of bumps along the way, but you have african countries with corruption and nepotism at one end and European social democracies at the other. The USA is somewhere in the middle moving towards Europe. The presence of the religious right is holding them back, as idealogues always do. It's not to say that the western european system is perfect - it's moving too and changing all the time.

America is held back by the spirit of "if everyone takes care of himself, everyone is taken care of". It is one of the myths of the early days of the nation. It must be said that this spirit was appropriate for an empty country and successful, although only for the white majority.
It is not the right model for a crowded, interconnected world. Unfortunately, I can´t see the USA moving towards Scandinavian social democracy. America sticks to a failing reason of state.
What I see is the end of the European social democratic movement. I hoped it´ll have a renaissance after Communism disappeared, but the opposite happened. Blair (a closet catholic! :D) and Schröder were not social democrats at all. They privatized and liberalized in a way that Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan must have watched in disbelief. If their parties had some credibility left, they destroyed all of it. The same happened everywhere in Europe. Today, the Social Democratic parties in Italy and France are irrelevant. In the UK, they just got the worst election result since 1909. The same will happen in Germany in four weeks.

They don´t even know any more why they exist, what they should fight for, except for clinging to the last bits of power they have. Pathetic.

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MelB

15 years

Obama Aide Declares End to War on Terrorism
http://washingtonindependent.com/54152/obama-aide-declares-end-to-war-on-terrorism

What do you think?

I think it is semantics, and semantics only. They have renamed the War on Terror as Overseas Contingency Operations, and deployed more troops to Afghanistan. Maybe OCO isn't quite descriptive enough - it should be Long-term Overseas Contingency Operations. ;)

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santa klaus

15 years

Things with "long-term" in their name tend to fail sooner than expected :D

On a related matter, never work with IT companies with "solutions" in their company name!

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MelB

15 years

haha, I was more referencing the new acronym it would become: LOCO, which is a good description for such a crazy endeavor. ("Loco" means "crazy" in Spanish.:D)

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santa klaus

15 years

Hehe, you are right. MORE foreign troops is exactly what the Taliban want. They must think "this is almost too easy"... :rolleyes:

They´ll do exactly the same as with the Russians. The only difference is that they only need to kill a fraction of them (compared to the Russians) to make that war really, really unpopular in the place they came from. Too easy.

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santa klaus

15 years

Now wood be a good time to get out of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s election commission: Karzai 54%
EU election observers: 25% of the votes forged, most of them for Karzai.

Is that what our troops should risk their lives for? What exactly is the difference between our puppet Karzai and Ahmadinejad anyway?

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gordo

15 years

I think the biggest problem with the US' education and healthcare systems is the complete lack of value for money. Its not like the US has a particularly lower tax level; its often claimed it does, but when you include all teh various state sales taxes etc, it adds up to roughly teh same as australia, canada and the UK (a tiny bit less than a lot of continental europe). and despite the problems the commonwealth countries have, we spend proportionally less (privately and publicly) on healthcare that covers EVERYBODY and education that actually works. no, not perfectly but in terms of bang for your buck, the US is coming a shameful last.

but theres always been a strong anti-tax/anti-government sentiment in the US - it is the UNITED STATES of america, not AMERICA, states rights and all that. theres a big distrust of teh federal government that i havent noticed in other countries. even the revolution that gave birth to the USA came from a resentment of taxation - 'no taxation without representation'. the US has a strong libertarian streak that the rest of the western world seems to lack... if you can answer as to why that is, you get one million theoretical internet dollars!

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