Perusing the news today on my lunch break, I read about today's bombing in New York City's Times Square. It appears that someone left a small bomb on the doorstep of the military recruiting facility right in the center of Times Square. It went off at around 3:45am, so fortunately no one was reportedly hurt in the incident. The building took some damage near its front door.
What's truly scary is that I was in Manhattan just last Saturday, and I literally walked within 30 feet of the EXACT spot where that bomb went off today. There's a Hard Rock Cafe just across the street, and my girlfriend and I had dinner there Saturday evening. It's eerie to think that if this terrorist asshole had decided to drop this bomb off on Saturday night, I might not be here today to write this. At a minimum, I'd have a face full of glass shards.
At this point, it's too soon to pin this on a Muslim extremist. Authorities are seeking out an individual who was seen riding a bicycle near there at approximately the time of the incident. I'm hoping somebody's security camera was pointing in the right direction just before this happened. My gut instinct is that this is home-grown terrorism, but I truly hope I'm wrong. The fact that it was a military recruiting office that was bombed screams "anti-war protester" to me, so I sadly expect that this jackass will be some left-wing liberal pansie who thought it'd be cool to "make a statement" against the war on terror. Yeah, some big statement. It's too bad the chicken-shit pussy didn't have the balls to try attacking a REAL military target like a base. It would have been comical to see how quickly he'd have been shot into minced meat by the MP's at the gate.
Whether this individual ends up being a tattooed, pot-smoking hippy wannabe or a true Islamic terrorist, it doesn't much matter. If this person was trying to attack a symbol of the U.S. military, then this person is, by default, essentially in favor of Islamic terrorism, so that makes him one based on his loyalty. His loyalty sure as hell isn't to THIS country.
I'm confused as to how most people in this country have, for whatever reason, inexplicably switched sides in the war on terror. Everyone seems to be against it. That tells me that the tragic fate of nearly 3,000 innocent Americans on 9/11/01 means nothing to most of America anymore. That's pretty pathetic. The argument to my statement above will probably be, "But Iraq didn't attack us on 9/11. There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq, nor did Iraq have any WMDs. Bush lied to us all." Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's real convenient to blame everything on Bush. He's become the world's scapegoat. But you're missing the bigger picture if you think Bush started this war. You need to revisit your history from the last 20 years or so.
First of all, our beef with Iraq didn't start on 9/11. Our beef with Iraq had been festering since 1990-1991. For those of you too young to remember (and I suspect most of you war protesters ARE too young to remember, so you don't know what your talking about), Iraq invaded the innocent nation of Kuwait back then, and left a trail of murder, bloodshed, and pillaging in its wake. A coalition of nations united to go and liberate Kuwait and kick the Iraqis the fuck out. And when that day came (and I was coincidentally watching CNN live when those first bombs fell), the coalition came, saw, and kicked the living shit of the Iraqi army. The Iraqis got what they deserved. For whatever political reasons, it was decided to leave Saddam Hussein in power. His military was, for the most part, decimated, so we didn't have much to fear for a number of years. When Iraq finally surrendered in the first Gulf War, there were certain agreements that Iraq signed and promised to meet. Some of those agreements were NEVER met, and that was the beef with Iraq. That's an oversimplified summary, but that's the gist of it.
When 9/11 happened, if I may remind you, there was a fear that Iraq (a known state sponsor of international terrorism), might be secretly aiding Al Qaeda and offering them weapon technology, whether it was bioweapons or nuclear weapons. There was some intelligence gathered that supported this notion. (That intelligence, we later learned, was gleaned from a Muslim who had a beef with Iraq, and so in true Muslim fashion, he lied to us so that we'd have reason to attack.) This faulty intelligence, coupled with Iraq's blatant disregard for the U.N. agreements they signed 12 years earlier, was what our incursion into Iraq was based on. It should be noted that just because we never found weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq, doesn't mean that Saddam never had them. He was KNOWN to have had them prior to, and during, the first Gulf War. He USED bioweapons on his own people -- those incidents are well documented. And U.S. soldiers who fought in the first Gulf war have all sorts of strange diseases that are attributable to chemical or biological weapons that were used by Iraq back then. We had every reason to believe that he would have still had them. The fact that they were never found is likely because the U.N. spent so much time debating whether Iraq should be attacked, that Saddam had ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD to conveniently rid himself of all his bioweapons (or nukes, if he had those too). Saddam knew we were eventually going to invade, and he knew his military would surely lose, so the only revenge he could exact was to make us look like fools. It makes perfect sense that he'd have gotten rid of any incriminating evidence just to save face and make us look like we invaded for no good reason.
Sadly, America (and the rest of the world) has fallen for Saddam's trick. It worked. I never thought I'd see the day that American citizens would side with Saddam Hussein and say with straight faces that we should NOT have deposed him. He was a sick fuck, people, and his intentions could never be trusted because he was a madman. Not knowing what weapons he did or didn't have, I feel we made the right choice. I just wish we'd have been prepared for the Iraqi people to turn on us. We mistakenly expected they'd embrace freedom from Saddam and embrace Western democracy, but instead age-old tribal rivalries took over. That, followed by sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia factions, has led Iraq into a horrible spiral of violence. In the midst of all that mayhem, Al Qaeda siezed the opportunity to slip in and now we're fighting on multiple fronts. If our military's leadership had done a better job of preparing for the aftermath of the initial war we might have been in better shape today to wrap things up over there. Sadly, that didn't happen. Now with the surge, the military is doing what it should have done back 2003. So far, they're making progress. I have nothing but respect for our armed forces for what they've accomplished, and more importantly, for all they've sacrificed.
Another common thing I often hear from Iraq war protesters is that we should have finished our work in Afghanistan first. Umm, I hate to tell you people this, but we had pretty much wiped out or driven out all of the Taliban in Afghanistan within the first year after 9/11/01. The ones we didn't kill scampered across the border into Pakistan to hide out. For the first few years after 9/11, there were only small skirmishes to deal with in Afghanistan. The rise in violence and attacks in Afghanistan in the last few years is attributable to the fact that the surviving Taliban took a few years to regroup, reform, and retrain their fighters in Pakistan. Plus, newer and younger generations of Muslim boys have now joined the cause, helping to boost their numbers back to a level where they can launch somewhat more effective attacks. I'm happy to see that coalition forces are doing a good job of responding with strong counter-attacks. But there's still a long road ahead. Our biggest problem now lies with Pakistan. That's the powder keg that's waiting to explode next. Mark my words on that.
Okay, so now that you've had a history lesson, I hope it's apparent that while we may have invaded Iraq based on some bad intelligence, there were other long-festering issues that we were trying to resolve too. More importantly, all of you Iraq war protesters out there should look at the situation in Iraq today as an opportunity, not a disaster. How in the world could I say that? Here's what I think....
Whether there was ever Al Qaeda in Iraq before our invasion or not, the fact of the matter is that our presence there has drawn Al Qaeda to us in Iraq now. Instead of having to hunt them down the world over, we've established a known theatre of battle where we KNOW that Al Qaeda exists. It's unfortunate for the Iraqi people that the battleground is in their turf, but frankly I don't have any sympathy for the Iraqi people anyway. They turned on us immediately after we deposed Saddam, so I say again that they got what they deserved. We gave them the gift of liberty and democracy on a silver platter when we removed Saddam, and instead of embracing it, they turned on us and then on each other. The Iraqi people should all be ashamed of themselves. But what can you say? They're mostly Muslims. And from all I've seen, nothing good ever seems to come from Islam.
A Palestinian terrorist today barged into a seminary for rabbis in Jerusalem, and opened fire on students there. Eight innocent people are dead as a result. Gee, I wonder if he was a Muslim too....
Tell me, somebody, why I'm supposed to embrace Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance? I'm just not seeing it.
This is your proud infidel, signing off....
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