Your rebuttal to the *Let's get 'em over there before they come here*

[liveoaktx]

argument.

Somebody in my town has, twice now, put in an ad that basically says that we need to vote for Bush because he's gonna go smoke 'em out of their holes over there before they get us here. The first time I ignored it, but he's done it again, appealing to people's fear.

Concisely, your best arguments for why this is an unwise line of thought.

[Parche]

1. bush phrases

God I cant stand that one either
just like the one "war on terror" i cant stand.


There is no way we can get every terra ist, whether it be here
or overseas, we can try and sometimes it will work, but that is allwe can do, we have to work with other countries, instead of being a bully

[BlueStateGirl]

2. I like Bill Maher's statement that it is ridiculous to believe they

can't do both.

Why won't he spend the money to protect us here at home?

[wildflower]

3. They are already here. n/t

[bigtree]

4. Ridge says that attacks may be imminent

Soldiers Patrol City Streets as Americans Are Warned of Imminent Terrorist Threat

By David Usborne in New York
Independent UK

Tuesday 23 December 2003

Officials across the United States responded to the decision on Sunday from the Department of Homeland Security to elevate the national terror alert level to orange, the second highest level. It was an indication of serious concern in the intelligence community that al-Qa'ida was preparing to strike again.

Tom Ridge, the director of Homeland Security, repeated his message of Sunday that the country should be especially vigilant. He said the warning was based on information which indicated that attacks might be imminent. He did not specify the sources of the information or where the attacks could occur. Officials said that there was particular concern that terrorists might use aircraft again.

Mr Ridge said: "The volume is up. The quality of the reporting is up. The credibility is there." He said the assaults could be more devastating than those of 11 September. Referring to the intelligence, he said: "We've never quite seen it at this level before."

Worries about a terrorist attack have been mounting for some time. Last week, federal officials warned New York and other large cities about the increased risks of attacks during the holiday season. The decision to raise the alert level to orange for the first time since May might in part have been prompted by the broadcast by the Arabic television network al-Jazeera on Friday of a new tape recording allegedly made by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy. The voice on the tape said al-Qa'ida was "still chasing Americans and their allies everywhere, even in their homeland".

http://www.truthout.com/docs_03/printer_122403C.shtml

[seabeyond]

5. sittin in chapel last spring a christian said that to me

stayed with me. i unloaded right there in chapel. how selfish and cowardly that is. and you say you are a christian. kill thousands of innocent people, babies, kids in iraq because you arent willing to suffer repercussion from what our government has done over the years.

how totally uncaring that is. cowardly

[patdem]

6. 1st of all they CAN get THERE but NOT HERE...we put soldiers in harms

way against a codray of people who could NEVER even reach the USA..because they are too poor or because they have no REASON to come to the USA and hence would never get VISAS?? So we just send soldiers to Iraq under false pretenses and attract a bunch of INSRUGENTS...of which FEW would be terrorists at all if we did not INVAD and OCCUPY Iraq? NO....bush* has CREATED terrorists...including Iraqi citizens who are AGAINST the OCCUPATION...what a load of CRAP!!!

[Kadie]

7. bushie doesn't smoke them out, he tries to bomb them out

When you use bombs, innocent people are killed.

When you kill innocent people their family and loved ones want revenge.

[xchrom]

8. get who? osama? well -- where is he?

how about the rest -- who are they?
can he spot them?
iraqis -- well they seem to be happy with those they've killed of ours do far -- and show no signs of letting up.
how long does he propose we sit there and get our asses blown up? has he sent his kids?

[moondust]

9. This morning "they" were in Jakarta, this afternoon in Afghanistan.

A while back in Madrid, a few days later in Saudi Arabia. Then in Turkey. Some of the 9/11 hijackers came via Germany, some via Indonesia, others via wherever.

George Bush has no idea where "over there" is at any given point in time and we certainly cannot occupy the entire planet.

[athena]

10. There are several problems with that argument.

1. People who say "let's get them over there before they come and attack us here" imply that Bush attacked Iraq to kill the terrorists there. There were no terrorists in Iraq. Bush's stated reason for attacking Iraq was that Iraq might provide weapons to Al Qaida, but we now know that Iraq did not have any such intentions and did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S., by far. The U.S. attack on Iraq actually helped Al Qaida to regroup. It would have been much more effective to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan instead of being distracted by Iraq.
   
2. Terrorists are not all from the same country. There are Islamist terrorists all over the Middle East and Europe. To "get them over there", the U.S. would have to attack all the countries in the world.
   
3. Attacking a country (such as Iraq) makes the U.S. weaker at home. Already, the military is stretched to its limit. The solution is not to lash out at the rest of the world, but to improve our defenses over here.
   

[LoZoccolo]

11. Who have they gotten this way, really?

Seems like the bulk of the real al Quaeda guys have been had through the more traditional method of using intelligence to track them down and capture them. I don't understand how the Iraq war would have been more effective than just finding them. We still have to find them amidst all the wreckage in Iraq, right?

The war actually put us at a disadvantage in isolating us in world opinion (can we count on foreign countries lending us their intelligence and law enforcement resources if they're less inclined to respect us - why would they just give us all that if they don't like us and think we're on our own now), and making new enemies and thus possibly new terrorists (people in Iraq are now against us that didn't have any reason to before).

[fob]

12. Here's some rejoinders*

*Note: Not all are necessarily what I believe, some are just red-meat type to throw at the knee-jerkers that just might wake them up, they will be noted with (*)

Why did he wait for 3,000 deaths to do it then?*

The "they" they're referring to number in the billions, are you prepared for neverending war and the end of civilization?

That's exactly what they wanted. "They" already "got us here", and bush*s weak leadership skills allowed him to be suckered into the trap. Ask the Soviets about Afghanistan if you don't believe me.

That makes a *tiny* bit of sense if the number of terraists is finite, but since bush* doesn't know what finite means, he's fucked.

What kind of pussy attitude is that? I thought the crawford cowturd said "Bring em on"?*


edit (reverse-psychology dept) I agree. When are Jenna and Barbara going over to smoke em out?**

[nyhuskyfan]

13. Simple - When was Iraq going to invade us?

Any president would have conducted military action to get the Taliban out of power and deny Al Qaeda safe haven after 9/11. The Iraq diversion is the problem. Iraq never attacked us, never had plans to attack us, weren't a threat to attack us, and never harbored Al Qaeda. They did have some meetings in 1996 with Al Qaeda, but then again, we had plenty of meetings with them in the 1980's when we were arming them to fight the Soviets, so there goes that theory.

Saddam Hussein had something to lose -- power of his country. Al Qaeda and terrorist groups are nomadic, less centralized, and have much less to lose. Replacing a guy with something to lose with thousands of people with nothing to lose makes nobody safer. It makes it much harder to know your enemy, know where they are, and what they are up to. Instead of a central goverment in Baghdad, there are now splintered factions of America-haters all over the place who you can't box in or even threaten effectively ("You better fall in line, or we'll bomb you out of your tents").

We diverted money, resources, attention, and manpower from Afghanistan to fight a country that was no threat to us. Had we finished the job in Afghanistan, caught more of the Al Qaeda in Tora Bora, helped rebuild the country, and made the nation safer for its citizens after generations of warlords, we'd have a lot more respect around the world.

[George W. Dunce]

15. Not really

"Any president would have conducted military action to get the Taliban out of power "
Agreed, however, how many presidents would have paid war lords to hunt for the man that just killed nearly 3000 innocent people? Warlords that were sure to be bought off. How many presidents would have gone that route instead of using the most powerful military in the history of the planet?

[actinide92]

14. You are not getting them over there

Your country has been attacked and you do need to respond forcefully, the guy with the ad is appealing to this basic patriotism.

But Bush has not responded to 9-11. Bush has attacked the wrong oil rich, despotic, Arab state. Instead of the oil rich, despotic, Arab state that supplied most of the terrorists, is the home of Osama and has a state sponsored religion that is very antagonistic of non-believers, Bush has attacked the state next door. One of the terrorists state's worst enemies.

Instead of stopping them over there, all the USA is showing the terrorists and their backers that American soldiers can fight well and die bravely.

You would have thought Bush/Cheney would have learned from their Vietnam experience, when the army was hamstrung by its inability to attack the North, the source and base of the enemy...Oh thats right, they didn't go...they don't know that to win a war you must confront the enemy in their face

[newyawker99]

19. Hi actinide92!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Chomskyite]

16. My rebuttal

Let's get AL-Qaeda over there and let's do it in smart way. And let's ALSO keep them from coming over here at all.

If just "getting them over there," worked, Russia would not have lost hundreds of children last week.

[coalition_unwilling]

17. Isn't this the Vietnam argument redux?

Didn't the Government used to say we had to fight the Commies in Vietnam so we didn't have to fight them in the streets of San Francisco, or some such nonsense?

You might try quoting Lincoln to him (after, of course, pointing out that 'terrorist' is a pretty nebulous term and we've managed to create way more of them - whatever they are - than we've destroyed so far): 'The best way to get rid of an enemy is to make him your friend.'

[POAS]

18. Terrorists now have

130,000 American targets right in there own back yard. All we've accomplished by sending troops to Iraq is make it easier for the terrorists to kill Americans. Americans killed in Iraq are just as dead and just as victimized as Americans killed in NY,NY.

[rockymountaindem]

20. Because not all terrorists are the same.

Some terrorists know how to shoot guns and duck behind cover. Those are the guys in Iraq, Chechnya and the southern Philippenes. Others, such as pilots, document forgers, explosives experts etc. aren't in those street battles because they're too valuable to waste. Instead, they attack us here. We may see the Mahdi army in the streets of Najaf, but they won't be able to attack St. Louis. However, trained pilot terrorists can attack us here, so they won't be shooting a gun in the streets of Iraq.

[Heath.Hunnicutt]

21. Pipelines built vs. bin Laden discoveries: Score 8 to 0, pipelines leading

What more evidence could someone want? We took troops from Afghanistan and sent them to Iraq. John Kerry has asked: when Bush knew OBL was in the mountains near the borders, why didn't we send in the 101st Airborne to get him?

[cheshire]

22. Well that would be fine If we were looking and not hiding Osama.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

23. Let's protect here and then they won't matter over there

Clinton put 100,000 cops on the street. Communities can't afford them anymore. There are hardly any states that aren't in debt right now to my knowledge.