What does 9/11 mean to you?

[Gambit]

both communism and terrorism are same in some aspects: both are non-tolerant, totalitarian, and both seek destruction of capitalist governments.

It's flat out lies like this that make me bail out of these discussions these days. It's not even a differing opinion, you're just making things up.
How can we have a discussion where people just make up random new things and claim them for fact?


New rule: Communism, henceforth on these forums, refers to a religion that worships the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Because apparently the real definitions of words are for pansies.

I'm done here unless I have to moderate. Have fun all.

[johndh]

You cannot shoot an idea. You cannot waterboard it. You cannot threaten it with attack dogs. You can't put a bag over its head, make it stand on a box, and mock its genitals. These are all things we have done in the name of fighting an idea that cannot be fought through violence. Terror is an idea. You cannot fight an idea with bullets, especially when that just creates more terror. How many people died on 9/11? How many have died as a result of our absolute boondoggle of a reaction to it?

[Blarumyrran]

You cannot shoot an idea. You cannot waterboard it. You cannot threaten it with attack dogs. You can't put a bag over its head, make it stand on a box, and mock its genitals. These are all things we have done in the name of fighting an idea that cannot be fought through violence. Terror is an idea. You cannot fight an idea with bullets, especially when that just creates more terror.

You cannot make colorless green ideas sleep furiously. This is because the meaning of those combinations of words is not defined in a clear enough sense, so denying that you can make colorless green ideas sleep furiously is silly; this is a question of language and associations, not an argument with immediate substance. You are using deceptive rhetoric: by the structure of your statement, you make the reader immediately recognize that "You cannot shoot an idea" is true for reasons of language, but then, with "These are all things we have done in the name of fighting an idea that cannot be fought through violence." you suddenly make the reader parse the previous sentences in a completely different way - that eg "You cannot shoot an idea" would start meaning roughly "You cannot (damage the power of a certain idea through shooting people associated with it)". The reader still remembers the previous linguistic reason for why the sentence is true, but because the characters that he sees on his screen remain the same, believes that the sentence is already true, also when you completely switch its meaning in such a way.

[Boldek]

terrorism is just another form of crime. and like all crime, killing people only stops it for a bit of time. so true, you can't kill an idea without crazy genocide or something disastrous, but as for what I said about communism may actually not be made up. they taught that perfect communism would have no other form of government, would have all the world under its roof, and planned any means necessary to acheive its goals. and their fruits are still being harvested in north Korea, where people are tortured, killed, starved, because they questioned the system. in China, the place is overridden with censorship, and many places still recover with their imprisonment under the Iron curtain. go and look for yourself, ask people look at the bits of the wall still standing that separates Berlin. take a stroll in China (not the tourist part) or if you can, North Korea, though due to communism, you'll probably never get out. check out places that met communism, like Cuba, Romania, Vietnam, Cambodia, Russia, East Germany, Poland, N. Korea, Czechoslovakia ( what's left of it) to name a handful from the many. communism may seem like a great deal of hodge podge, but where ever you may be, you don't seem to have met it face to face. millions have died, over a hundred million to be precise, more than any terrorist strike, and those mass graves, those ruined lives, ruined countries, ruined economies, ruined hopes, aren't made up. both terrorism and communism are two active and breathing global criminals. I kid you not.

[Finrod]

I don't know where to begin.

lets start with saying 9/11 was an extreme terrorist attack on the USA. I believe most all of you would agree to that. I've heard lots of people say lots totally false and untrue things, blatant lies, such as Bush planting bombs all over the Twin Towers, or the US attacking countries for oil and other nonsense (not necessarily all here), so I would like to say a few things.

1. The Iraqi War was NOT against the Iraqi people. Period. There was a earlier example about New Zealand invading the US. That example didn't quite work because the US is not a dictatorship who is torturing American people or genociding all Native Americans. Saddam Hussein tortured people. As in, put people through giant paper shredders and other gruesome ways of torturing people to death that you can't even imagine. His own son Uday would stick knives through is little brother Qusay's thighs for pleasure when they were kids. He would stick the knives parallel to the muscle tissues so it wouldn't make much permanent damage. (I'm sure you've never had that experience. My little brother better thank me for not doing that to him) A lot of people just don't realize how evil Saddam was. He was genociding the Kurds in northern Iraq, like what's been happening in Africa, only with poison gas and bullets instead of machetes. If there was a smilie that can even start to discribe him it would be ^3 (No offense to Drakefriend)

Maybe it's not politically correct or popular to look at the actual facts, such as the Iraqi people welcomed the American's as liberators, or that the Iraqi people are MUCH better off then they were before, and if you actually ask a Iraqi person, 99 times out of 100 they will tell you they like the Americans. (the other 1% are terrorists or Americans in disguise ) America set up a democracy in Iraq. Maybe you don't know what a Democracy is, so long story short, it's better. Period. (Such as...Women can walk around in the street without gasoline being dumped on them and set on fire for not having a male relative accompany them, they can even vote, etc...)

The Iraqi War was not just to stop Saddam from finishing his nukes and nuking Israel or Iran or the USA or somewhere, it was for the Iraqi people themselves. All that nonsense about the US beating up on poor Iraq is just plain not true. At all. Period. The same goes for Afghanistan, the people love the Americans. (except the Taliban)

Too many of people think "But the Iraqis never booted him out, so they must be OK with him, right?", they don't realize that the Iraqis didn't boot him out because they can't. He has control of the Military. He's got his foot on their necks. Or they say, "Hey it's his people after all, right?. We shouldn't interfere with anything, they must want him, right?". 100% of those retards are in countries with Democracies, people with the freedom of speech and other unheard-of rights in Muslim countries. They don't know a *censored* thing about secret police and NO FREEDOM. They have the freedom to sit around and complain about the government and stuff, but if you never knew when the Gestapo or the KGB might grab you and torture you for no apparent reason, would you be happy?

2. America did not do it for oil. Period. It's been said in this post, "America did it for oil!""No they didn't, we actually get less oil than we did before.""See? everybody has been getting less oil.". ??? I would like to know which school of logic that guy came from.

Fun Fact: There are bigger oil reserves under Alaska then the whole Persian Gulf, before the Persian Gulf was nearly emptied. Maybe you just make fun of Sarah Palin saying, "Drill, baby, drill" and you never looked up any facts. Obama actually has been getting rid of Oil Rigs for their 'danger hazard'

Spoiler:

Do you know what happened to all that BP spill mess? it all dissolved into the water within a few weeks. Somehow nobody even thought about the fact that there is tons of natural oil vents into the Gulf. There's lots of little bacteria stuff that thrive there and eat the oil = fish food. The BP oil spill killed about 270 some birds (about the amount that 1 wind turbine kills a week) and it helped the fishys. That's why you don't hear about it anymore. It's embarrassing to all those people who went berserk over it.

which made the price of gas go up. BUT just because gas prices went up does not mean we are desperate for oil. America could have all the oil it ever wanted by drilling in Alaska. (But NO!, it would hurt the wildlife in ANWAR) And you better believe me that America would rather disturb a few Arctic foxes and drill then invade a country and grab their oil, making millions of our own people upset.
Someone said earlier that America only fought wars in the middle east because they want oil. As a enthusiastic Military Historian, I would like to re-point out that we did go into Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, WWI, WWII, the Barbary Pirates War, 1812, Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua, The Spanish-American War, the Mexican War, and a host of others that are nowhere near the middle east, and we weren't there for oil. If you can get legitimate proof that America got tons of oil out of...say...the Philippines in the Spanish-American War or something, I'll listen to you.


Some of you might call me a "fundie" but that DOES NOT change the actual facts. OR The Truth. OR Reality. OR win your argument.

There is a Right and a Wrong. And sometimes you have to fight for the right thing because it's the right thing.

P.S. Velensk, Atari, Boldek, I'm with you fellas.

P.P.S. With the original intent of the thread I'll say that 9/11 means a lot to me. My mom was flying when all the planes were grounded. My Dad, me, and my older sister drove up to pick up my Mom and 4 ladies who were coming back to our city. We drove thru Downtown Atlanta in middle of rush hour and there was not a single car on the road. It was creepy, just the silence everywhere. I remember all of us surrounding my Dad at the computer, waiting for the pictures of the Twin Towers and Pentagon to download. We had dial-up and half the US must have been trying to see the pictures or watch the TV so it went real slow. My mom was watching the TV, and she saw the 2nd plane crash into the Tower.

[doofus-01]

You cannot shoot an idea. You cannot waterboard it...

You cannot make colorless green ideas sleep furiously... You are using deceptive rhetoric: by the structure of your statement, you make the reader immediately recognize that "You cannot shoot an idea" is true for reasons of language, but then, with "These are all things we have done in the name of fighting an idea that cannot be fought through violence." you suddenly make the reader parse the previous sentences in a completely different way - that eg "You cannot shoot an idea" would start meaning roughly "You cannot (damage the power of a certain idea through shooting people associated with it)"...

Eh. Clever deconstruction, but johndh is right, terror is an idea or tactic. War on Al Qaeda? Sure, makes sense. Not sure about "war", but certainly violent retaliation or neutralization. War on Islamofascists-Who-Hate-Us-for-Our-Freedoms? Uh, seems like the same dangerous mindlessness as "Death to the Great Satan" to me, but maybe I'm wrong. War on Terror doesn't require any such reflection, and it is a problem because it lacks focus. If the US had clear goals, we wouldn't be in Afghanistan right now. War on Terrorism is reminiscent of the War on Drugs, it'll never end and that's the point. "Be afraid, be very afraid, and vote for the ones who talk tough and wrap themselves in the flag."

A lot of this conversation seems obsolete. Not that any of those issues were solved, and that is a failure, but other issues have come up. We've learned nothing, except possibly to lock airplane cockpit doors. So, 9/11 was tragic for many. Many events are tragic, a life lost in a subway bombing isn't less tragic than a life extinguished by a drunk driver, which isn't less tragic than a death in WTC. 9/11 responders who inhaled toxic dust should be taken care of (not that that's really happening), but for the most part it's over.

I think I'm starting to repeat myself, so I'll bug out, but it was interesting to see what people had to say, even if I disagreed with a lot of it. Thanks.

[johndh]

You are using deceptive rhetoric: by the structure of your statement, you make the reader immediately recognize that "You cannot shoot an idea" is true for reasons of language, but then, with "These are all things we have done in the name of fighting an idea that cannot be fought through violence." you suddenly make the reader parse the previous sentences in a completely different way - that eg "You cannot shoot an idea" would start meaning roughly "You cannot (damage the power of a certain idea through shooting people associated with it)". The reader still remembers the previous linguistic reason for why the sentence is true, but because the characters that he sees on his screen remain the same, believes that the sentence is already true, also when you completely switch its meaning in such a way.

I thought it was pretty obvious what I meant, but allow me to rephrase. Killing a person who holds an idea, does not extinguish that idea. If we rounded up every member of [pick one] and executed every last one of them, racism would not go away, nor would racially-motivated hate crimes.

[zookeeper]

Maybe it's not politically correct or popular to look at the actual facts, such as the Iraqi people welcomed the American's as liberators, or that the Iraqi people are MUCH better off then they were before, and if you actually ask a Iraqi person, 99 times out of 100 they will tell you they like the Americans. (the other 1% are terrorists or Americans in disguise ) America set up a democracy in Iraq. Maybe you don't know what a Democracy is, so long story short, it's better. Period. (Such as...Women can walk around in the street without gasoline being dumped on them and set on fire for not having a male relative accompany them, they can even vote, etc...)

So where are you getting these "actual facts" from?

[mystic x the unknown]

For me, 9/11 is a big reminder of common person's utter helplessness in face of people in power and a big reminder of human irrationality.
Also.. a boot stepping on human face.
...

I read just the end of the thread and I'm amazed at the amount of naivety and/or lack of knowledge of some people.. Some believe the US govt. wages wars to make its citizens happier or even to make people in other countries happier!

It would make for a lengthy talk, but I'll at least ask you to consider this:
The wars are paid for by the US govt and thus the taxpayers, yet the profits go to private companies (extracted from the conquered country), usually multinational, many having strong ties with people in the government (probably best known is Cheney and Halliburton). The war in Iraq caused the oil prices to go up, making consumers pay more and oil companies earn more.

The most recent manufactured crisis was raising the debt ceiling, had nothing to do with events pre-2004

If you accept the premise that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars happened because of 9/11 and there would be no costly wars without it, then 9/11 has contributed at least 1.25 trillion or about 8.5 percent of the total debt (the wars are projected to cost much more in the end). Then there is a price tag for the additional -so called- homeland security of nearly half a trillion (but you still pay 2.5$ per flight to fund the TSA). Then there's increased defense spending not counted as being part of the war price tag and that's not the end of the list.

when has the US 'conquered' a country for its resources? did they bomb Germany flat for its cars?

The German government made massive debts with western banks to finance both of the World Wars and they owed heaps of money in unpaid reparations for World War I. By conquering them, you assure that they are going to pay. Plus you can still make money off the war. By destroying the emergent superpower, you get rid of unwanted competition. So there, some good reasons to conquer Germany for you.

Now to burying a couple ridiculous ideas..

remember that winning a war is a profit itself

I don't see how. Could you please explain that?

Hussein who was feverishly preparing his WMDs

Almost everyone knows there were no WMD.

it halted Hussein from getting his nukes ready and blowing something into smithereens

Why would he blow up anything? You think he would do it "just because"? His life was having his little empire. If he used a nuke, Iraq would be immediately invaded and he would be imprisoned if not killed.

Finrod: I thought Boldek's posts were ridiculous, but yours really stole the cake..
Let me address one part that might actually seem fitting:

America set up a democracy in Iraq. Maybe you don't know what a Democracy is, so long story short, it's better. Period. (Such as...Women can walk around in the street without gasoline being dumped on them and set on fire for not having a male relative accompany them, they can even vote, etc...)

No, you are the one who doesn't know what Democracy is. Democracy is supposed to be rule of the people.. people are supposed to decide. That's how it's supposed to be in what you are talking about, the widely practiced form of Representative Democracy.
If this is rule of the people, it's odd how often the representatives do what people don't want them to do and when they do what people want, it's because people were told what to want.
Also, women still get murdered over religion or customs in democracies.

[Boldek]

so mr. mysticxunkown, let me ask and answer some questions: which private companies, pray tell me, profited, and why wouldn't a country that had a sensible leader start action to prevent people from harm? its own people? like thousands of its own people?

to your WMD idea: who is everybody? a bunch of bumbling people that kindly let Hussein transport his weaponry and project over the border before they 'checked' do you expect a tyrant, villain, madman to tell the truth? wow, right now I feel like even normal people here aren't doing that. you think there is something stupid to wage a war to protect people? isn't that's what WWII was about? gosh, isn't that pretty much the reason for nearly every war America participated in? and what kind of idiot would wage a war that would drive the public to hate for years to come for a bunch of non government owned oil companies? the government only lost money in the war, not gained it. and speaking of superpower, Germany had the Nazis because they weren't a superpower, they were declining into a little country that had to pay for a world war, and they actually came off for the better thanks to uncle sam spending our money to fix them up for start a war. wow. and you say that it is foolish to say they would make war to fix things? how the heck are you supposed to run a country if you've got people blowing up buildings and slaughtering people? you don't see how winning a war is a profit? you just vanquished a dangerous enemy, who threatens your very people and country, so yes, I can under stand that. and why would Hussein use his nuke? to make global war and bring the coming of the twelfth imam, if you know, and if he wouldn't, he would sell to someone who would, let's say Iran. what if Finrod does know what democracy is? he is simply saying that in western cultures, the one that Bush was trying to institute, people don't use Sharia law, (which means people don't murder the teenage daughter because she is pregnant, you don't beat your wife up because she won't do you say, etc..) people try to use western culture, and democracy is all about freedom of speech. sharia law has a lot of oppression on people, especially women, and I am not even touching half the matter. and no, people in democracy shouldn't be told what to want, despite what Jimmy Carter said. no, the president is supposed to carry out the will of the people, not act as the big daddy who tells the ignorant peasants what to do. and, in democracies, (at least the stables ones.....) people that murder women over religion, customs, DON'T get away with it. instead, they are labeled criminals and punished. not praised for carrying out the will of Allah.

back to the war on terror: why is it so obvious to you that Bush would do some random and long winded plan that might give him a handful of cash, ruin his reputation, spend anything he got from his oil cost scheme on rebuilding the country he "ruined" and spending dollars and years to help a country get a stable government, and somehow do this as a greedy and selfish scheme to snatch our money? who is he now? just a guy who lives in Texas, not some sort of billionaire living it high on the hog. what ever machinations he did were sure abstract, and help a lot more than other wise. so lets look at the obvious: thousands of people were killed, places like the pentagon, the world trade centers, and a plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field that was probably heading for the white house. this was an open, direct assault on not just America, but the constitution, the beliefs, the very American dream of the pursuit of happiness. these bunch of boys were so filled with hate for people who wronged them none, that they were ready to die in the knowledge they killed people who never met them. something had to be done, and Bush wasn't going to say "everyone, I am the president, and you are supposed to do what I say, so close your eyes and lock the doors, and maybe the terrorists will just give up." no, instead he decided to thwart their next assault, by striking the place where it started. to me, that meant a lot. the dude could have just handed out guns to police force that could sit in air planes stopping terrorists, and ignore the call of justice. but instead he ruined his reputation, he spent years working n a third world country while people yammered in his ear, and he went out of his way to fix things up.

okay, you probably still aren't convinced, so let's say this: would if, the world was the iron dystopia you think it is, would if, Bush did it for money, would if, the terrorists real hideout was in California, and Osama Bin Laden is actually a normal US citizen who got drunk and got some boys together and have fun causing destruction. should we leave our dear little emperor Hussein to have fun trashing a country? trashing people with his cruel system? would we leave the Iraqis to be tortured, murdered, forced to kiss the feet of a man the personally ordered the slaughter of entire people groups?

for some reason, America has this weird syndrome known as chronic hero syndrome, meaning that they are always meddling in other people's empires.
1945: death of Hitler, a guy, believe it or not, actually would not have conquered America, though his Eugenics ideas actually started in America so why did America go in and bomb his country, kill his soldiers, land soldiers through parachute and boat just to ruin his plans? can't Britain and France handle their own problems? apparently France couldn't. and Britain was being steadily destroyed. Russia was a part of the axis. (until they switched due to Hitler, and 'liberated' eastern Europe, using guns and bayonets of course) Italy was having fun with Hitler smashing others. Japan was busy grabbing land on the other side of Asia. and speaking of Japan, why did we drop those nukes on them? all they did was bomb a base we captured some years before somewhere thousands of miles across the ocean from America. there was even thousands of Japanese living there. and instead, we steamed thousands of miles, firebombed tens of thousand of people in Japan, massacred their desperate defenders on islands like Iowa Jima, and actually dropped nuclear bombs, (two of them) when all they were doing was seizing some random Philippine islands and a good bit of China. never mind that they were bayoneting pregnant women, or that they were using Chinese children as target practice, you Americans need to understand that you guys have problems! not every body runs around the world trying to fix things up, why, America is the first! obviously they must have covert motives! they are after our money! they don't care about the three thousand soldiers that died in Pearl Harbor, what were they doing with their fleet in the pacific anyway? what do they care about their buildings being rammed by an American plane, its all about oil and cash!

if you were in the greatest tower of it's time, running a business, and suddenly a jet filled with fuel smashed though a window nearby, would you, as you crawled among the burning wreckage say: "huh, we aught to ignore them. every one knows these guys aren't as bad as all that."

and last but not least: democracy, once again I will stress, is not about people being told what to do by one guy. that's why we kicked the Brits off our land and sent them packing. because democracy is about people telling the president what to do. and no, they shouldn't be told what to want, because then we are back to oppressive monarchy, and the meaning of the constitution is gone. and then nearly three hundred years of toil and war, of work and sweat is gone. it's back to villainy and might makes right. so nope, that's not what democracy is.

[Blarumyrran]

I have this weird syndrome known as chronic hero syndrome

[Gambit]

so mr. mysticxunkown, let me ask and answer some questions: which private companies, pray tell me, profited

This is by no means comprehensive.
Our mercenaries:
Blackwater
DynCorp
Triple Canopy
Erinys
ArmorGroup

Profited from high gas prices:
Halliburton
Exxon Mobil
BP
Shell

Given high-priced NO BID contracts for rebuilding:
BBC World Service Trust
HSBC
AMEC
Serco
Vodaphone

[Great_Mage_Atari]

I'm not picking sides here, but it did need a little clarification. This is an extension of what Gambit inferred:
Benefiters of the war in Iraq (Top 25)
Now you see that many companies did in fact benefit, sadly enough.

[Boldek]

of course companies profited, that's capitalism, that's how we were able to escape the debt last time int he 30's, through war. note the list there is a random group of large companies that got payed from the government to clean up, ah there we go. the government payed a bunch of companies to clean up if this was a dirty scheme, why not, lets say, just one company? why a whole bunch? whenever the government pays someone, there is always greedy congressmen it seems, helping themselves, and usually more money goes out than goes in. so what's the deal? had it been one or two large ones, but it's a whole bunch. how on earth would someone pay off all their friends when I repeat, are still losing money in the war. it's so much easier to do it under a pretense like bail out. and if a bit of money is being shuffled under the table, I repeat, why does it have to be done in such a sloppy way as war? companies make profits from wars because the government needs contracts and weapons, buildings and research. not through poorly done attacks on enemies that makes half the nation hate you. other president's with lower intelligence did it smooth without all the trouble of a terrorist attack. and so what if they made money? it's not like Bush would refuse to pay the companies just because it might make him look bad, capitalism is all about making, giving, printing(not as much) and exchanging money. so a bunch of companies profited. is that enough proof to back up claims? Bush needed contracts and companies made money. the entire stock market, for goodness sakes, is all about predicting and making money. if a hurricane smashed a head building in a corporation, and they needed someone to rebuild the building, are we going to give the CEO dirty looks for possibly invoking a storm to pay his cousin?

and mercenaries: they have been around forever, though the action in the Iraq war was done by the military, mostly marines. perhaps Hillary Clinton payed a bunch of guards to protect her on her photo op, but any profit those guys got was just through the usual way. violence, unrest. does every person that makes a profit in the conflict need to be finger printed and cross examined?

Shell, Exxon and BP(well before the entire blow up scare) were always big companies that drilled in places as far as from Alaska to Ecuador. drive down the street, take a walk if you don't want the oil dudes profiting. you may notice at least one pump owned the list you named. they make the most money, thy are trusted brands, and they don't have all their pumps in the mideast, so obviously they would lose some competition, make some money, and life goes on. should every unexpected economic boom in history be someones evil scheme?

[Deusite]

I'm in a mood to post... unexpectedly long dry arrogant poncey post ahoy...

It annoys me whenever terms degenerate and become misleading, which seems to happen especially when it circulates through the media too much.
I read a book "The Rise and Fall of Communism" by Archie Brown (sorry Gambit ), wherein he used communism with a little 'c' to describe it in theory, and Communism with a capital to describe how it actually existed. Communism with a little 'c', is the belief that goods and property should be held in common, the state should control industry so that none of it is private and use a planned economy, until society is classless and the state itself withers away as it becomes defunct. Communism as was carried out was entirely different, the things that were common to most regimes were that there was indeed a planned economy, focusing on heavy industry, forced collectivisation (which was supposed to happen voluntarily and gradually under communism), an authoritarian regime with no freedom of the press, religion (which was also supposed to whither away under communism), worship, speech etc. Instead of the state becoming smaller, represented by one party, it became bigger, creating a political class all its own with no regard for communism. Reagan once said that Communists read Marx, but capitalists understand Marx. To illustrate all of this, China is economically one of the most capitalistic nations in the world, socially it is Communist. Nepal in the 2008 elections was ruled by a Maoist government, democratically, in a coalition, until they were eventually ousted. It has been 60 years; I wish people would get over the Red Scare.
Fundamentalism is not the same as extremism. Strictly speaking the former is the focus of one's beliefs on the central tenets of one's religion, with little leeway on the interpretation of their holy scripts. Thus a Christian may focus his beliefs that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and is God, and descended to Earth to save humanity from sin. Extremism is the belief in things that are on the fringe of one's religion, and often therefore on the fringe of what is acceptable. These two things are often the opposite of one another, and should not be conflated.

And now what 9/11 means to me:

That America and the UK are still utterly clueless as to how to respond to guerilla warfare and insurgency despite Vietnam, Afghanistan, Afghanistan again, and Iraq; that America doesn't criticise itself enough, that we will always be more upset by how many of our soldiers rather than how many countlessly more enemy civilians, are killed; that the general reaction to the whole thing was painfully predictable, that the phrase 'War on Terrorism' should have never been conjured.

This 'War on Terrorism' is a war of ideas, as was the Cold War, these wars cannot be won, since no idea can be proved to be superior, and no nation state can ever embody ideas and claim to uphold them without hypocrisy and therefore claim victory for their cause. There can be no territorial nor economic gains. In this case the perception was democracy v. terrorism. I cannot think of a country that is a pure democracy. Here (the UK), we seem to democratic whenever there's a general election or a local council election, for the rest of the time it is an aristocracy, where professional politicians are in a class of their own, where every decision must be borne by the people unless we are so infuriated that MPs deign themselves to withdraw such things. In an actual democracy (or at least as Rousseau defines it) politics is not a career but a duty, the general population would exercise sovereign and legal authority whereby a new law could not be passed without their approval. There would be certainly no two party state. The Cold War merely ended, but that in itself was a victory, as will this; the only victory was that we all stopped wasting our money, and that Eastern Europe regained its independence.

Iraq was nothing to do with 9/11, only stupidity, but it wouldn't have happened without it. We went to war on the basis that the regime posed a threat to America's and the UK's national security with nuclear bombs, (I call them nukes, because I like to call a spade a spade). I believe some went to war out of fear and because Saddam's regime was no longer useful to our own ever selfish interests. It is not a better place than before, I think, the Financial Times, of all things, called it a religious dictatorship, more civilians were killed than Saddam was capable of killing himself, many more were displaced. For all we know, there may have been a successful reiteration of the Arab Spring had we not invaded. Iraq is not yet free, Iraq and Libya prove that we cannot give people freedom, as much as we would like to, freedom must be taken and bought with blood, as Thomas Jefferson said. There has been no successful revolution that was without casualties, because power is almost never willingly surrendered, especially in the case of totalitarians.

If this is a war of ideas, then the proper response to 9/11 would have been to prove their idea false, by not invading another country, which was portrayed as imperialist and oppressive, by treating it as a homicide, and not a declaration of war, by addressing genuine grievances, such as the propping up of regimes in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, ignoring their abuse of their people. In my opinion, propping up or toppling governments on an ideological basis is effectively a breach of sovereignty, or at least self-determination, and should be abhorrent to any place that claims to be democratic. Resistance to the groups themselves should have been carried out covertly. Telling these people when you plan to invade is unbelievably stupid, as is telling them when you will leave. Perhaps this would have resulted in more of 'us' dying. I don't care. It could not have resulted in the death tolls Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Taliban (which has mutated beyond an anti-Western group), is now involved with talks to be included in the Afghan government, as they should be, because if they are not included the wars will continue there, now as a civil war, and it is not our place to decide how a country should be run, that is for the people themselves to decide — the essence of democracy.

It seems to me that some people perceive that the Middle East's frustration with affairs vented itself first as anti-Western terrorism, then democratically. We thought they were not capable of a constitution similar to our ideals; this was wrong and always had been — observe Egypt. Terrorists were a tiny group of people until Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded, every death of an enemy in a religious cause is a martyrdom; we were not only the enemy but godless; the war was to some demonstrably expansionist; support increased and spread worldwide, killing a terrorist seems to like decapitating the Hydra. By these invasions our ideas were losing in the region, since fewer people then believed in them. But despite this, the Arab Spring still occurred, which I suspect marks the subsidence of this whole sorry thing.