Freedom Tower No More!

[RedRalph]

It's true Formal, despite being a great poster, you have a very underdeveolped sarcasmometer. I love the way the word 'Freedom' has become so lame its now embarassing

 

[general_kill]

More like 100k.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

But hey, feel free to multiply it by ten for propaganda.

Note:


So all violent crime is included, as are the suicide bombs etc; so really it's more like 80k and even less if we only count stuff the US actually did. But meh, let's call it an even billion.

Iraqibodycount only keeps track of documented violent civilian deaths in Iraq. Their exclusiveness does not properly represent the real damage done by our invasion nor the real civilian death toll.

IBC even stated that they are not estimates and only record documented deaths that fit their specifications. It would be utterly time consuming to list all the deaths they don't include in their records that are directly caused by our invasion.

You cannot claim my estimate is founded on propaganda when your claim of 100,000 deaths is founded on incomplete records.

That's like saying: we have only documented 5000 species of frogs, therefore there are only 5000 species of frogs on Earth while dismissing scientists who use statistical methods to give an educated estimate on the true number of frog species. Or that we haven't yet discovered the new world, therefore North and South America doesn't exist.

Most of the species in the Amazon are still not documented, are we to assume they don't exist?

So Ecofarm, you can give me a source for your estimate of Iraqi civilian death and we can agree to disagree. But your IBC reference is absolutely fallacious. So is your suicide bombing argument. We destabilized Iraq which triggered a chain reaction leading to the bombings. Therefore the deaths are a result of our invasion. No invasion = no bombings.

 

[mrt144]

I still don't get why we can't rebuild them to look identical to what they were. Sure, we may be tempting fate but they were an integral part of the NYC skyline since they were built. It makes me sad whenever I see a movie set in NYC to not have the towers in there.

 

[Patroklos]

while Dafur & other world crises go on without a bat of the eyelash on our part we'd decrease terrorism significantly.

Yeah, I bet muslim extremists the world over are crying their eyes out over Durfar

IBC even stated that they are not estimates and only record documented deaths that fit their specifications. It would be utterly time consuming to list all the deaths they don't include in their records that are directly caused by our invasion.

It does, however, represent the only hard evidence based figure we have, everything else being a guess of some sort. Nobody said "we should assume they don't exist" in regard to further casualties, but those guessing 10x the proven number should have eyes rolled at them given the complete lack of reasoning behind their figures.

 

[Miles Teg]

Yeah, I bet muslim extremists the world over are crying their eyes out over Durfar

No one's crying over Durfar

On the subject of Darfur, the extremists might not be crying, but I imagine the impressionable young men of Darfur are. And then there are these wonderful holy men offering them a cause worth dying for...

 

[West 36]

We'll take all that freedom to Vermont!

 

[general_kill]

It does, however, represent the only hard evidence based figure we have, everything else being a guess of some sort. Nobody said "we should assume they don't exist" in regard to further casualties, but those guessing 10x the proven number should have eyes rolled at them given the complete lack of reasoning behind their figures.

I'll lay it out like this. My one million deaths figure came from the ORB survey of Iraq War casualties conducted a year and a half ago (. This was an estimate that tried to take into account many of the obvious deaths that IBC misses due to their methodology. As I mentioned previously, IBC was never meant to give the real death toll of the Iraq War. It does a fantastic job of keeping records of specific and identifiable deaths.

There are so many deaths that can get past IBC and I have already stated how time consuming it would be to list them all. I think my analogy of frog species still stands. If ecofarm actually uses the 100,000 death figure to draw a larger generality, his whole case is fallacious.

Just so we get some perspective here:
Ecofarm dismisses 1 million death toll as propaganda without even asking for the source OR questioning the legitimacy of the source. I don't want to invoke any kind of Godwinism but this really reminds me of holocaust deniers. They are so fixed in their point of view that they don't even care about scientific evidence/study to the contrary. Six million Jews died in the holocaust? That's just propaganda! I don't care what your source is, it's propaganda! I won't even question your source because you can't convince me otherwise. Here, let me offer an incomplete record of Jewish deaths... See! Only two Jews died according to the record!

Yes, IBC offers hard evidence of deaths, but just think about it for a second. How recorded rape convictions have there been? Are we to believe those rapes are the only ones that happen? Or even remotely close to how frequently it occurs? So all the unreported rapes by family members or otherwise and all the cases dismissed due to insufficient evidence or otherwise, they don't matter.

Ecofarm and I clearly have different backgrounds, upbringings, and perspectives. That's why when something like this happens, the best solution is usually to agree to disagree. If Ecofarm really think the civilian death toll is at 100,000 or close to it, then I'm ready to agree to disagree.

 

[Annex]

I still don't get why we can't rebuild them to look identical to what they were. Sure, we may be tempting fate but they were an integral part of the NYC skyline since they were built. It makes me sad whenever I see a movie set in NYC to not have the towers in there.

It makes me sad too Especially that scene in the third Die Hard when Sam and Bruce are running down the street, with the twin towers strategically placed in the background. Depresses me every time.

Though I will say they werent the most picturesque buildings, and if I had it my way the new building would be some neo-Art Deco structure.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Right, perfectly true. But why downtown (that's an ironic word to be saying considering my current avatar) New York? Since you're clearing looking at the symbolism angle, why not the Statue of Liberty. Why not any of a dozen buildings in Washington DC?.

Yeah. If they destroyed the Statue of Liberty and killed 5 tourists from Keokuk, Iowa, how could we possibly be considered seriously by any terrorists ever again? Who knows? Next they may destroy the Washington Monument; then where would be be without our great phallic symbol? </sarcasm>

Suffice to say, hardly anybody in the rest of the world is surprised in the least that terrorists attacked the WTC. Twice.

Maybe you haven't realized something. They committing suicide with the express purpose of killing civilians that have done nothing to them. The west has meddled in dozens of regions, for East Asia to Latin America. And yet it's only the Islamic fundamentalists that are waging war in such a way.

"Maybe you haven't realized something." We openly provoked them into attacking us through decades of incredibly poor foreign policy culminating with our staying in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War. And don't you think others we have wronged don't want us dead as well? That it must be due to their Muslim fundamentalism instead of our own fundamentalism, warmongering, imperialism, and callous disregard for their own culture which is the real problem here?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915669,00.html?promoid=googlep

Once again, those Puerto Rican bombs. Three exploded in New York City one day last week, touching off fires in two stores and terrifying midday strollers outside Manhattan's main library. There were no casualties, but a letter calling for a "war of nerves" against "Yanki-imperialism" that was found in a phone booth made it clear that the lack of bloodshed was only luck: the Puerto Rican terrorists who call themselves the F.A.L.N. had struck again.

The three blasts&#8212;a fourth explosive device failed to go off&#8212;brought to 65 the total of known bombings since 1974 by the Armed Forces of National Liberation of Puerto Rico in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Newark, as well as in New York. The worst outrage: a 1975 lunchtime bombing of Manhattan's Fraunces Tavern that left four dead. Searching for reasons why the F.A.L.N. bombers have been able to persist, TIME Correspondent James Willwerth interviewed a former terrorist from a similar Puerto Rican independence group. Willwerth's report:

The F.A.L.N. is the latest standard-bearer of violent Puerto Rican nationalist tradition that goes back to 1868, when machete-carrying rebels briefly proclaimed a republic in the Spanish colonial town of Lares. In the 1940s and '50s, followers of Pedro Albizu Campos not only bombed buildings and murdered officials on the island but also brought terrorism to the U.S.: gunmen tried to assassinate President Harry Truman in 1950, and in 1954 shot up the House of Representatives.* The F.A.L.N. first appeared in August 1974, when it claimed responsibility for a bombing in Manhattan's Lincoln Center. The group has operated from deep underground from the start, frustrating FBI attempts at infiltration. As one FBI agent observes, "If you can't get in when they are still talking, you're out of business."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing

The Wall Street bombing was an incident that occurred at 12:01 p.m. on September 16, 1920, in the Financial District of New York City. Thirty-eight were killed and 400 persons were injured by the blast.[1] It was more deadly than the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building by the McNamara brothers and would remain the deadliest bomb attack on U.S. soil for nearly seven years, until the Bath School bombings in Bath Township, Michigan.

The case was investigated for over three years; in the end, the perpetrators were not identified by the Bureau of Investigation.[4] The FBI, decades later, said "the best evidence and analysis since that fateful day of September 16, 1920, suggests that the Bureau's initial thought was correct&#8212;that a small group of Italian Anarchists were to blame. But the mystery remains."[4]

There is no justification for that. There are no excuses. There are explanations as to why people these people are fighting, and often enough they take the form of the culturally relevant, politically correct type that you hint at. But that does not explain how they fight and who they target. That is motivated purely by religious fanaticism.

And how do you feel about our own terrorism and religious fanaticism? Is that OK?

Let's get this straight. I do not fear Muslims, not in a David Duke way, and not in a Pannonius style "freak out whenever they show a hint of religious conviction/ascending power" I have no problem with 99.99% of the Muslim world.

You sure could have fooled me from your continuing rhetoric of fear and hatred of a handful of extremists who should be treated like common criminals instead of the world's greatest threat to our freedom and safety.

Formaldehyde, it's amazing how badly you understand humor.

You mean how I haven't yet memorized everybody and their views yet? That statement could obviously be taken both ways. Sarcasm simply doesn't work all that well on the internet where everybody isn't intimitely familiar with each others' perspectives. In some cases it is pretty obvious. In other cases like this it is not.

But noted for future reference. Holy King isn't yet another reactionary.

 

[Ecofarm]

Most of the species in the Amazon are still not documented, are we to assume they don't exist?

First, it is not "most", not by a long shot. Second, 99% of those species are microbial. I guess if we count microbes we could get to a million civilians dead in Iraq.

In the last 20 or so years, we discovered about 2 new mammals, neither in the Amazon (Indonesia).

Anyway, the answer to your question is a resounding yes. Until a species is discovered... you should assume it does not exist. For examples: unicorns, dragons, leprechauns... We cannot simply count them as species because they maybe could be. Are you claiming that 900k leprechauns were killed in Iraq? Or maybe, like, 400k centaurs?

 

[caketastydelish]

But just a little taller.

Knock us down and we'll come back even stronger. That should be the message.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

Considering the fact that the construction is going so slowly, I don't think we should care what the name is.

 

[Miles Teg]

Next they may destroy the Washington Monument; then where would be be without our great phallic symbol? </sarcasm>

Honestly, the referral of everything that's taller than it is wide as a "phallic symbol" has got to be one of the more tiring intellectual fads of the current age. Freud is hardly a credible source anymore.

"Maybe you haven't realized something." We openly provoked them into attacking us through decades of incredibly poor foreign policy culminating with our staying in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War. And don't you think others we have wronged don't want us dead as well?

In the vague wishing we'd leave them alone way? Of course. In the strapping bombs to themselves to kill civilians way? No.

It's just simple fact. We screw around all over the world, sometimes with good intentions, other times not. People fight back, try to kick us out, damn us in speechs and beg for handouts. That's the way humanity works. But we've got this one corner of the world that doesn't do that. They don't just take the fight to us, they take the fight to innocent civilians.

Surely their must be some hidden reason. Surely their must be a set of complex reasons why they choose to attack us in such a way? An of course, these regions must be deep in the sub conscious mind, hidden under layerrs of psychology.

Oh wait, it's not. They post it on their websites and proclaim it in videos. They want to kill infidels in any way possible. Why they join these groups is complicated. What they do in these groups is simple, and for lack of a better word is evil. So if we have to choose between the bad guys and the not so good guys, I'd choose the latter. It's not a black and white morality, it's black and gray.

F.A.L.N. Attacks

An outlier. Not all organized terrorism is Muslim in origin, but that doesn't mean we should blind ourselves to the fact that most of it is.

Also when taking credit for the bombings, they cited American Imperialism as their grievance. Doesn't that mean we should assume they were lying, and that they had aome deep held religious fanaticism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing

Errr, 1920? How about somethin that isn't nearly a century old?

And how do you feel about our own terrorism and religious fanaticism? Is that OK?

Equatism is always a sign of desperation, but this is truly pathetic. Let's talk about terrorism. We try to avoid civilian casualties. We punish soldiers who don't. We make efforts to leave countries a little better than we found them, whether or we do so successfully. Calling war, or even bald imperialism "terrorism" shows a frightful disdain for the common meaning of words.

Let's talk about religious fanaticism. America is a very religious country, probably the most so in the First World. To much, in the opinion of this atheist. However, we do not even begin to approach the level of religous fanaticism and religious control over the state found in the Islamic World. The fact that me and you (judging by your comments I presume you are to) can publicly say that we are not Christians, despite having grown at least nominally as one, is a huge difference. The fact that we let our women go about uncovered, which is a sin in both of our holy books, is a big difference. The fact that scientific theories like evolution are taught in schools despite religious opposition is a big difference.

You sure could have fooled me from your continuing rhetoric of fear and hatred of a handful of extremists who should be treated like common criminals instead of the world's greatest threat to our freedom and safety.

Two questions:

1. What exactly constitutes "fear and hatred"? Does it mean thinking blowing up people is insane, and want to stop people who think otherwise. Because that's the only way I can make it fit in with my statements.

2. Exactly what is the definition of "common criminal"? Given that the most prolific serial killers only manage to kill perhaps a hundred or two hundred people in their entire career, perhaps it's justified to give abnormal treatment an organization who can kill many times that number in one attack, and has no fixed lifespan in which they can kill?

 

[Traitorfish]

And you know this precisely how??? I'm pretty sure you're not psychic.

Only Miss Cleo knows, and she ain't tellin'.

When the replacement for the World Trade Center was decided on, they didn't call it the Kill Iraqis Tower. They didn't call it the Several Square Kilometers of Space Too Valuable to Leave Flat Tower. They called it the Freedom Tower. For that matter, that big bronze babe standing out in the shallows of the Atlantic Ocean isn't called the "Statue of Taking Over the World Through Capitalism" or the "Statue of Imperialism", it's called the Statue of Liberty. Unless you can prove what the builders of any of these monuments were thinking (and you can't), then......errrrr, how can I put this politely......shut the hell up.

Alright, perhaps I may be mistaken in assuming sincerity on the part of those who designed and constructed the Statue of Liberty, but, at the very least, it expresses a concept. It is a statue, unsurprisingly, of Liberty. Name aside, it's an artistic depiction of the personification of an ideal. The statue, if not necessarily it's creation, is a sincere statement of political idealism.
The "Freedom Tower", on the other hand, is no such expression. It's just a skyscraper that happened to have the word "Freedom" pasted onto it for no real reason other than it looked good in the press. Nothing about the building itself spoke of "Freedom", nor was it likely to. As I said, it was a financial investment in mockery of a true memorial, and the name was a hollow attempt to legitimise this.

An outlier. Not all organized terrorism is Muslim in origin, but that doesn't mean we should blind ourselves to the fact that most of it is.

I find that a hard assertion to believe. There are terrorist organisations in every nation, following every cause. Islamic extremism is simply the most prominent and most successful form of it at this point in history.

 

[Traitorfish]

Double post.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Honestly, the referral of everything that's taller than it is wide as a "phallic symbol" has got to be one of the more tiring intellectual fads of the current age.

Are we both talking about the same Washington Monument?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument

You do know what a phallus is, right?

In the vague wishing we'd leave them alone way? Of course. In the strapping bombs to themselves to kill civilians way? No.

If the roles were reversed what would you be doing? Cowering and hoping the biggest bullies in the modern world would leave you alone? Or would you be doing everything in your power to get them to stop killing your friends and family, to make them stop interfering in how you want to live your own lives, even if such acts were largely symbolic?

It's just simple fact. We screw around all over the world, sometimes with good intentions, other times not. People fight back, try to kick us out, damn us in speechs and beg for handouts. That's the way humanity works. But we've got this one corner of the world that doesn't do that. They don't just take the fight to us, they take the fight to innocent civilians.

And we don't? How many completely innocent Iraqis have died as a result of the original embargoes and the illegal war? 700,000? How many completely innocent people have we tortured? 1000? And you are still whining about 3,000 Americans killed nearly eight years ago? Where is your sense of proportion? How long are you going to use the same lame excuse to torture and murder with impunity?

Surely their must be some hidden reason. Surely their must be a set of complex reasons why they choose to attack us in such a way? An of course, these regions must be deep in the sub conscious mind, hidden under layerrs of psychology.

No, it's quite simple. Bin Laden made it quite apparent why he decided to target the US. We didn't leave their holy land after the first Gulf War. It's all about blowback and inept US foreign policy as it always is. Or do you really think they "hate our freedom"?

Oh wait, it's not. They post it on their websites and proclaim it in videos. They want to kill infidels in any way possible.

And who is that? The handful of actual terrorists or the entire Muslim world? And what about our own religious extremists, many of whom we elect into office? Do you openly villify them as well? Or do you reserve that for people you personally hate?

Why they join these groups is complicated. What they do in these groups is simple, and for lack of a better word is evil. So if we have to choose between the bad guys and the not so good guys, I'd choose the latter. It's not a black and white morality, it's black and gray..

No, it's grey and grey unless you happen to fear and hate them. Unless you can only see one side of this situation instead of both.

Errr, 1920? How about somethin that isn't nearly a century old?.

Ahem.

And yet it's only the Islamic fundamentalists that are waging war in such a way.

Don't you just hate it when someone shows you are wrong through the use of facts, and you won't even admit it?

Equatism is always a sign of desperation, but this is truly pathetic. Let's talk about terrorism. We try to avoid civilian casualties. We punish soldiers who don't. We make efforts to leave countries a little better than we found them, whether or we do so successfully. Calling war, or even bald imperialism "terrorism" shows a frightful disdain for the common meaning of words.

No, claiming that we don't engage in our own forms of terrorism when we clearly do "shows a frightful disdain for the common meaning of words."

http://www.fff.org/comment/ed1299f.asp

The U.S. government is warning American citizens to beware of "terrorist" attacks all over the world, including the U.S. Our government has attacked and bombed people in Iraq, Serbia, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, and many others. Today, we have embargoes against Cuba and Iraq, which are creating misery and death for innocent children. All this without any declarations of war, as required by the Constitution. Why are these actions considered legitimate "acts of war" while retaliatory counterattacks are considered illegitimate "acts of terrorism"? The other problem is that with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. government affirmed the principle that it is okay to target civilians in retaliation for the warlike actions of their government. So, unfortunately, the so-called terrorists target us -- the American people -- for the wrongful actions of our government. I don't know about you but I'm hanging a sign outside my office building that says, 'I stand against what the U.S. government has done and is doing to people around the world. Don't bomb this building!'"

http://www.iraqwar.org/policies.htm

The Clinton administration perpetuates this wrong evaluation of reality by implying that terrorists are evil and mad, like some demons, who, for no rational reason, strike out at the innocent. They like to say, as if they were heroic defenders en route to liberate France, ``We will not be deterred.'' Notice, however, that they never say what we will not be deterred from doing.

Maintaining cruel sanctions on Iraq that already have cost half a million innocent lives? Those sanctions alone are enough to spawn terrorism for the next 40 years. The sanctions are unjust, injuring and killing people who are innocent of any wrong doing. They are stupid, because they only strengthen Saddam Hussein's government. The sanctions have enraged not only Iraqis but also Arabs throughout the Middle East who are sick of the U.S. double standards, lies and hypocrisy.

For example, the United Nations nuclear inspectors recently gave Iraq a clean bill of health, certifying they have no nuclear weapons and no physical plants to produce them. They recommended closing the book on the nuclear issue. The United States said, ``No.'' So many U.S. officials have said publicly that the United States will not agree to lift the sanctions no matter what Iraq does that I don't know why they even maintain the pretense of looking for weapons.

Actual U.S. foreign policy is far from idealistic. We arbitrarily sided with former Nazi allies in the Balkan civil war and bombed Serbs who fought with us in two wars. We slapped sanctions on Sudan allegedly because someone in Washington doesn't like its internal human-rights policies that, you can be sure, are far more humane than China's or those of some of the African dictators we so ardently supported. I suspect the real reason is the current government won't cut a deal on the oil discovered in Sudan many years ago.

Why do Iranians hate Americans? We overthrew their government in the 1950s and installed a dictator whom we backed for decades while he executed and tortured his opponents. Why does anyone expect the survivors of a U.S.-imposed tyrant to like the United States?

The one-sided support of Israel, even when Israel is clearly an aggressor or an abuser of human rights, creates enemies. When your wife and children are killed with U.S. weapons wielded by a government backed by the United States and protected from U.N. sanctions by the United States, it doesn't sit too well.

What I hope people will get from this column is this: Foreign policy does affect your life. It can get you or your children killed. It can make it unsafe for you to travel. Don't tell the parents of those Americans who died on Pan Am Flight 103 that foreign policy has no effect on Americans.

A U.S. government that actually lived up to our ideals and treated people justly would eliminate terrorism. All the security measures and macho rhetoric in the world can't and won't eliminate it.

Your problem is that you are trying to use overloaded words to rationalize your own fear and hatred of people who are no worse than you are. The big difference is that they are not hiding behind the skirts of US military power when they commit their own atrocities.

Let's talk about religious fanaticism. America is a very religious country, probably the most so in the First World. To much, in the opinion of this atheist. However, we do not even begin to approach the level of religous fanaticism and religious control over the state found in the Islamic World.

That's just it. Most Muslims aren't any more fanatic than most Christians are. And I would certainly contend the US fanatics would act exactly the same way given the same circumstances. Does the name Timothy McVeigh ring any bells?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing

The fact that we let our women go about uncovered, which is a sin in both of our holy books, is a big difference. The fact that scientific theories like evolution are taught in schools despite religious opposition is a big difference.

Yeah. Our fundamentalists have perhaps progressed a bit more than theirs have. Big whoop.

1. What exactly constitutes "fear and hatred"?.

Just read your own posts on this subject such as these in this thread.

2. Exactly what is the definition of "common criminal"?"

You know, how we and the rest of the world always treated a handful of terrorists prior to 9/11, before the worlds stupidest free world leader declared "war" on them.

Given that the most prolific serial killers only manage to kill perhaps a hundred or two hundred people in their entire career, perhaps it's justified to give abnormal treatment an organization who can kill many times that number in one attack, and has no fixed lifespan in which they can killv

Only if you are scared of a handful of common criminals who haven't even attacked the US in a very long time...

 

[warpus]

I still don't get why we can't rebuild them to look identical to what they were.

They were kinda blocky & ugly.

I mean, I can understand why people love them so much.. I mean.. It's kinda like my fat aunt Agata. She's fat and ugly, but kinda grew on me, y'know?

 

[Ecofarm]

I love the way the word 'Freedom' has become so lame its now embarassing

Boggle....

 

[Fetus4188]

How about two spherical/egg shaped "towers" & one large middle one?

No, add one more.