Yep.

People who live by the sword understand only one thing -- the threat of their, and everyone associated with them and their cause, deaths -- that is, being VANQUISHED.

Not asked to surrender, not "negotiation", DEATH.

That's it. Nothing else matters. A shark in the water does not care if you're a nice person or not. It cares about one thing if it is hungry - is it likely to win or lose if it attempts to bite you? That's all.

There are people who operate under EXACTLY the same model as a shark. They WILL strike if they think they can win. Period.

You can deny reality all you want but it IS reality.

Those who refuse to accept facts are damned fools. If you want to play the fool's game, do it somewhere else as this is not the place for you.

If there's one thing you should know by now around here, it's that I don't suffer fools well at all.

OH NO MR BILL !!! The stone aged Muslims would be angry and might do something !!
If they do .....................
Proceed to step 2.

One thing would be established : Not only do we have a military but we are willing to use it while never considering the term 'collateral damage'. An attitude which I believe would make a most 'consider' their actions before taking them.

The only reason the ragheads have enjoy any leverage at all in the modern world is because they're sitting on top of oil. Which they have leveraged to bring their education and economic systems into the 21st century. Not.

In the long run, they will end up back as goat herders whose effect on the world stage is nil.

When I'm King of the U.S. - I declare free Ice Cream Fridays!!

Come on all...no one is going to enact these policies...

OK...here he is...

I donno Madman.

When is the last time another country had to resist a first world country's .mil with the gloves off? I will go with WW2.

What happened there?

Substitute nukes with incendiary carpet bombing ala WW2 with dumb bombs, which was thought of as a perfectly reasonable strategy, And... whats the difference? Dresden anyone? How about the burning cities of Japan ?

Are you aware of some of the ridiculous ROE that US soldiers are subject to in theater ? Take those away and...

You wouldn't need nukes. Though nukes certainly would make a point

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There are people who operate under EXACTLY the same model as a shark. They WILL strike if they think they can win. Period.

That’s a broad generalization of the enemy. A good percentage of suicide bombers are young (in their late teens and twenties). Typically they are from the streets without a pot to***** in and are brought into Islam by the promise of power and social standing. When you have nothing today and are promised power over a female tomorrow, there is an allure. These types are not sharks, they are brainwashed followers. The leadership are the sharks and are not the one’s strapping suicide vests on rather they are barking orders.

You deal with radicals by being more radical against the radical and NOT the general population. Most of the people living amongst the “savages” are just like you and I. They want to work, provide for and raise a family and have a nice life. Threatening nuclear war is too extreme and IMO a short sighted, problematic solution to the issue at hand. Have a look at a family photo and imagine watching your kid get incinerated by a nuke because your neighbor’s teen-age son strapped a suicide vest on and decided to blow himself up.

We seem to have enough will to print whatever is necessary to fund hookers and blow on Wall Street so that the party can continue but ZERO resolve to fund the more radical (i.e. special ops) to infiltrate and exterminate the existing Muslim radicals. The solution to this problem is to have them kill each other by providing pieces of paper with Ben Franklin scribbled on them.

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Are you aware of some of the ridiculous ROE that US soldiers are subject to in theater ? Take those away and...

You wouldn't need nukes. Though nukes certainly would make a point

1. Country is huge
2. Friend or Foe? (which day is it?)
3. Not enough manpower in military to pacify by 'conventional' means...

Changing ROE not enough...

Really? You can't firebomb the cities ?

firebomb mud huts? Not very efficient.

The US will never get rid of all Muslim radicals, that would involve years and years in theater. The best we can hope for is constant trimming, and every time we do something, its recruiting for more radicals.

There is not a solution to this problem that won't involve a lot of pain and suffering to all parties, including to the US on home ground. The fact that there isn't a clean solution, does not mean we shouldn't try.

para 3 typo alert outage < outrage

if you bomb their cities and make them disperse to the mountains, then you have effectively neutered them.

If you loiter some air assets or have some arty around and kill any concentration of 2 or more taking a ****, now what?

Did you read 1. & 3....?

It could have been much easier on everyone if the people who burned those Qurans took even a minimum effort to find out how it should be done.

I'm not a muslim, and it took me all of 3 minutes starting from googling "how to properly dispose of old quran" to find out several accepted ways, which way is better and why, etc etc. And that's from scratch, not even starting from the link posted by another reader in this forum.

US is in Afghanistan for quite a while already, and it would be common sense to have some sort of a local advisor who could tell them if an idea is bad or not.

The soldier who died is a kid who probably wasn't responsible at all and didn't know better (and whoever killed him, should have thought of that, since everyone will eventually have to answer to God). But somewhere in there, there is an officer or someone in power, who could and should have done the minimal effort, and who will probably not have much consequences in this world.

And isn't it logical to stop for a moment and think "Hey, this (that we're burning) is not just some theological_discussion_123456 by scholar al-Blahblahi, this is the central scripture of an entire major religion, shouldn't we >>check first<< how it should be treated?"

Three minutes of Googling would prevent problems.

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It could have been much easier on everyone if the people who burned those Qurans took even a minimum effort to find out how it should be done.

SO WHAT?

They had PROPERTY they wanted to dispose of that was THEIRS.

If you want to claim that this is JUSTIFICATION do it somewhere else. I'm done with this sort of horse**** around here.

Leave.
Get attacked.
Bomb the origin of the attackers. Friend, foe, doesn't matter. We already have too many "friends" as its.(saudi's pakistan, etc)

All we have done the last ten years is prove that the enemy can hurt us. Bankrupt us, make us waste time, and make us feed them more followers.

We are begging for another major strike someday.
Samething must change.

Something will change...as it must. The mathematics of this and of our debt are impossible to resist forever.

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It could have been much easier on everyone if the people who burned those Qurans took even a minimum effort to find out how it should be done.

BS

It's not as if this was a peaceful group of people simply roused to violence when their pacifict religion was violated. This a violent group looking for EXCUSES to commit violence. The lack of such excuses doesn't prevent them from committing violent acts. Someone who is determined to kill others can always find a pretext if they look hard enough. This one just happened to be handy.

Actually, shooting down all of the rioters would be a good policy. They have already self-selected for religious extremism and violent tendencies. Any society would be improved by removing such people from the gene pool.

Thought they were prisoners writing notes back and forth in the Korans...? A lot of big burn incinerators at Bagram --- tons of stuff burned daily....

excellent ticker Karl.

Too many people getting caught up in semantics here...the point is to steer America to a point where it acts upon the basis of liberty. Pull everything back to its borders, let the world take care of itself, but if anyone attacks America then they will be butt****ed before they can "apologise".

If this kind of mentality was pervasive then the world would be a much different place. Right now aggression is seen to be completely justified with no more than rumour to back it up. If the US wishes to be the leader of the free world again then it must act in accordance with the principles of freedom.

And that includes retaliation and defending itself without mercy if (and only if) it is attacked.

Energy independence instantly kills the free ride that these non-productive countries have been on for decades.

"... And that includes retaliation and defending itself without mercy if (and only if) it is attacked. "

There is a fine line there - if we have the knowledge to be preemptive, we should be. The problem is those in power keep making stuff up so you can't trust them. (Iraq has WMD's and is going to attack us...and 10 years later where are we?)

Excellent ticker. I agree wholeheartedly. If I had been President on 9/11, Mecca would have been a radioactive crater by nightfall.

Western Civilization and Islam cannot peacefully coexist on the same planet. Period. Islam has been at war with the entire non-Muslim world for 1400 years. Despite anti-Western propaganda in recent years, the Crusades during the Middle Ages were wholly justified counterattacks. They were attempts to win back formerly Christian lands which had been conquered and subjugated by the forces of Islam.

The war has gone through hot and cold spells, but in general Islam has advanced more than it has retreated. A major turning point came in the 18th century, when the Western world started the Industrial Revolution. The Islamic world was soon left behind and became a primitive backwater. It remained so through the mid-20th century.

That all changed when Western oil companies discovered immense oil fields in the Middle East. Suddenly Muslim countries were flooded with unimaginable wealth. They used that wealth to buy and influence politicians, the media, and academia in the West, and also fund the construction of mosques as well as terrorist groups.

If the West pursued energy independence, the Muslim world would be returned to the poverty that they richly deserve. An impoverished Muslim world would cease to be a threat to the West. Let them eat sand and drink oil.

I also believe that we would be completely justified in seizing and annexing the oil fields in the Middle East. Those oil fields were discovered and developed entirely by Western scientists, engineers, and oil companies, using Western money. The Arab Muslims did nothing whatsoever to deserve any of that wealth. But this wouldn't be necessary if we pursued energy independence.

I would also like to see a Constitutional amendment declaring that Islam is a totalitarian political ideology and is not protected by the First Amendment. That would allow us to ban future Muslim immigration, close down mosques, and put a stop to Muslim proselytizing and recruiting in our prisons and in our military.

Generally speaking I am not in favor of expropriating others' property or Constitutional amendments regarding spiritual ideology.

Just sayin'

In the context of an ongoing policy of political/military domination of central asia, massive retaliation just says "even more bat**** crazy than you thought" and the result would be the constant prospect for the next 100 years of having an american city suitcase-nuked and with the logical retaliation/deterrent - mecca - already used. There was a reason America switched from a massive Retaliation to Mutually Assured Destruction approach during the cold war. Massive retaliation combined with a policy of isolationism and scrupulously fair dealing abroad could make some sense, but we have a lot of cockroaches in our own house we'd have to clean before that would be remotely possible. We're currently missing the "walk softly" part of the equation.

As a matter of policy, the soldiers who treated the Koran like garbage ****ed up. International policy - via politics or military action - is the art of getting what you want for the minimum cost. Creating a situation KNOWN to antagonize people in the country you're trying to do nation-building in sabotages that policy. As private citizens in the US... knock yourselves out. Burn a whole pile of em. As soldiers deployed abroad & therefore as an implicit extension of the repubic, its goals, its policies... if anyone ordered it, they belong in the stockade. I don't care how politically correct or incorrect it was, firemen shouldn't pour gasoline on the fire they were sent to put out.

They could have just dumped the books in front of the nearest religious leader "Here, we don't need or want these, do what you like with them, bye"

That could have been done with virtually no effort. Better yet, they could have contacted the local religious leader saying how concerned they were about proper treatment and asking for help. A very effective CHEAP opportunity thrown away. They wouldn't have to MEAN it. Do you mean it when you slog through a swamp to catch the enemy from behind? Doesn't compute. You slog through the swamp to create the easiest victory.

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If you want to claim that this is JUSTIFICATION do it somewhere else. I'm done with this sort of horse**** around here.

No, Genesis, I did >>not<< want to claim that this is justification. Only a madman could claim that.
For burning of a holy book, a justified level of response would be to call those who did it tactless fools, that's about it. Killing someone for it is a murder.

All I wanted to say is that those in charge there could have done it better with only a minimum effort. My point was that it would not have taken them any significant effort to do it, and yet they didn't.