I joined the US military literally a month before 9/11 happened. The day I felt really old was the day we started getting new enlistees who weren’t even born during 9/11. One of them told me they didn’t understand why “ancient US history” was so important in our modern military climate.
This January, Biden officially declared an end to the “War on Terror” that Bush Jr. started, which was a response to 9/11. The way our military operates today is mostly thanks to America’s response to 9/11; we evolved so much in the past 2 decades to keep up with a dangerous new decentralized threat to our nation. It’s kind of a big deal.
While that response is probably very relevant to current US military doctrine, I feel compelled to mention that the “threat” was very centralized in Saudi Arabia, and that while its sad that many innocents died in 9/11, at no point during the last 22 years was an actual credible threat to america. W’s lies and subsequent invasion of Iraq no doubt shaped the US military into the fedex-on-steroids that is is today’s as well as destabilized the entire middle east (and maimed and killed countless people on both sides), but ultimately they were just that - lies. None of the countries the US has fought in since 2001 have ever been an actual threat to the nation.
It also assumes the same “them” - because of course the type of moron to share/believe this message thinks all brown people are a singular terroristic honogenate.
I think it specifically referred to al queda or Iraq or whoever but yeah. Besides random terror attacks the idea of pretty anyone being able to truly project power in any meaningful sense to require us to “fight them over here” presumably in the streets or whatever is just, well like I said, preposterous. Whoever or whatever “they” might be.
This also precludes that “fighting them over there” will not itself create an deep-seated hatred of the united states in countries with now-unstable governments, radicalizing more people to a point they would be capable of committing terrorism on US soil, not less.
What I mean to say is that if I’m an Iraqi who grew up with my country being ravaged by a war it had nothing to do with in the first place, I’m going to blame the united states.
While propaganda at home tells us how bad the Iraqis, Saudis, afghanis, Russians, etc. are and how AMAZE-BALLS the USA is. We tend to forget that other countries are spreading their own propaganda on how amazing they are and how bad the USA is.
Not everyone loves us, no matter how much the media portrays us as the “good guys.” Situations are not black and white, there is no ultimate right or wrong. There are infinite shades of gray, infinite opinions, and infinite means of achieving things. You can look at our politics are and how much discourse and compromises there are.
Though most people think they are the good guys and most people aren’t running with malicious intentions. Even doing what we do, thinking we are the good guys. Means we’ll run up against people that disagree and we are always going to make enemies.
Propaganda can be a hell of a drug. Just look at the Russians and kyiv during the literal opening shots of the war. They were told and hyped up that the Ukrainians would be welcoming them with open arms and they even brought along their parade uniforms expecting a quick victory…well reality sunk in when in a way Ukraine did welcome them with arms, just not the kind Russia expected.
Yeah people talked about how “there’s a billion Muslims!” all the time, as if all of them were personally dedicated to serving as soldiers to invade the US. That’s not hyperbole btw, that’s literally what people believed.
I joined the US military literally a month before 9/11 happened. The day I felt really old was the day we started getting new enlistees who weren’t even born during 9/11. One of them told me they didn’t understand why “ancient US history” was so important in our modern military climate.
This January, Biden officially declared an end to the “War on Terror” that Bush Jr. started, which was a response to 9/11. The way our military operates today is mostly thanks to America’s response to 9/11; we evolved so much in the past 2 decades to keep up with a dangerous new decentralized threat to our nation. It’s kind of a big deal.
While that response is probably very relevant to current US military doctrine, I feel compelled to mention that the “threat” was very centralized in Saudi Arabia, and that while its sad that many innocents died in 9/11, at no point during the last 22 years was an actual credible threat to america. W’s lies and subsequent invasion of Iraq no doubt shaped the US military into the fedex-on-steroids that is is today’s as well as destabilized the entire middle east (and maimed and killed countless people on both sides), but ultimately they were just that - lies. None of the countries the US has fought in since 2001 have ever been an actual threat to the nation.
Remember that sound bite people were being fed, and repeating all the time: I’d rather fight them over there than over here. Preposterous
It also assumes the same “them” - because of course the type of moron to share/believe this message thinks all brown people are a singular terroristic honogenate.
I think it specifically referred to al queda or Iraq or whoever but yeah. Besides random terror attacks the idea of pretty anyone being able to truly project power in any meaningful sense to require us to “fight them over here” presumably in the streets or whatever is just, well like I said, preposterous. Whoever or whatever “they” might be.
This also precludes that “fighting them over there” will not itself create an deep-seated hatred of the united states in countries with now-unstable governments, radicalizing more people to a point they would be capable of committing terrorism on US soil, not less.
What I mean to say is that if I’m an Iraqi who grew up with my country being ravaged by a war it had nothing to do with in the first place, I’m going to blame the united states.
While propaganda at home tells us how bad the Iraqis, Saudis, afghanis, Russians, etc. are and how AMAZE-BALLS the USA is. We tend to forget that other countries are spreading their own propaganda on how amazing they are and how bad the USA is.
Not everyone loves us, no matter how much the media portrays us as the “good guys.” Situations are not black and white, there is no ultimate right or wrong. There are infinite shades of gray, infinite opinions, and infinite means of achieving things. You can look at our politics are and how much discourse and compromises there are.
Though most people think they are the good guys and most people aren’t running with malicious intentions. Even doing what we do, thinking we are the good guys. Means we’ll run up against people that disagree and we are always going to make enemies.
Propaganda can be a hell of a drug. Just look at the Russians and kyiv during the literal opening shots of the war. They were told and hyped up that the Ukrainians would be welcoming them with open arms and they even brought along their parade uniforms expecting a quick victory…well reality sunk in when in a way Ukraine did welcome them with arms, just not the kind Russia expected.
This is very funny since the 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia and not Iraq.
Yup :/
Yeah people talked about how “there’s a billion Muslims!” all the time, as if all of them were personally dedicated to serving as soldiers to invade the US. That’s not hyperbole btw, that’s literally what people believed.
Yes if a billion people want us dead, we’d be dead.
Last time I looked into it, it was around 1.5 billion worldwide.
I just checked again; estimates in 2020 were around 1.9 billion.
And yeah, it’s silly to believe that that many people would be a monolith.