[lmmlzxx]

The US government commits terrorist attacks on a regular basis. I may not convince all of you about the air strike in Syria the other day, or the hospital that was intentionally hit a few months back, but can any of you deny that the Shock and Awe bombing campaign at the outset of the Iraq war was terrorism? Shock and Awe was the "use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight". The stated purpose was to terrify the civilian population. The Oxford Research Group estimated that there were 6,616 civilian deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe

[elgabogringo]

that's not the common understanding of Terrorism. That's just war.

I'm sympathetic to anti-Iraq war views.

Less sympathetic to those actually against the war. Most seemed like they didn't want any response to terrorism at all, which is unacceptable.

There's an ideology out there that wants to come to my country and kill me and my family. I'm perfectly fine killing those people first - or at least making sure they can't come here and commit the ultimate hate crime.

[oxide]

You can't respond to terrorism with overwhelming force, its a concept. A tactic. It just goes underground when stamped out or gets taken up by other idealogues who act alone.

We went to fight extremists who happen to use terrorism. We also spent most of our time and money with our dicks in our hand instead of 'killing them before they killed us.'

They don't want you dead, anyway. they want you terrified.