Clean out the hornet nest

from JoeUser Forums
On the side of my house there was a huge wasp nest this summer. They had literally dug a cave into the ground at the base of the house. It was quite impressive really.

My wife complained that I needed to do somethign about it. Every time we were on the deck, the wasps would be buzzing around us. Occasionally they'd get into our face and we'd wack one of them. A pinprick strike on them.

Last month, my 4 year old was getting the mail and when he opened the mailbox a wasp flew out and stung him on the arm. That was it. I knew at that point I had to do something about the problem.

The wasp nest by then was huge. I wish I had a picture of it to post. It was underground mostly and surrounded by bushes. But wish a shovel, anti-freeze, and a hose I went in there and eradicated them. I got stung in the process but I took care of the problem pretty thoroughly.

There are still wasps, but not nearly as many and not nearly as close to the house as they were. I obviously can't wipe out all wasps everywhere, but I was able to take care of the problem in a pretty decisive way. Now it's just a matter of keeping an eye out for new nests and making sure they don't get started. I was lucky, my son isn't allergic to wasp stings. My wife is though. The wasps didn't really bug me until I realized that they could really harm my family. If it had been my wife who had gotten stung it would have meant a trip to the hospital at the very least.

Terrorists are a lot like wasps. For the past 30 years we've been watching their nests but not really done much about them other than pinprick strikes. Now they've really stung us and we have to act. Because next time they may strike with much worse than a few airplanes.

We must find where they are and root them out. We must take preventative measures to change the enivironment that allows them to grow. We'll get stung some in the process but we must do our best to eradicate the problem on a sustained, long term, large scale.

Those of you who have given this subject some thought, what do you think the world community should do to solve this current problem?
12,752 views 18 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
Well the answer is certainly not attacking Afghanistan. What's the point? Bomb their cities back to the stone age? Uhm, the Soviets already took care of that. Destroy their schools and hospitals? Done already. Destroy their infrastructure? Done. Impoverish the nation? Too late. All bombing them will do is stir the rubble left by previous bombs, and kill more innocents.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
I agree with the article you are referring to:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/14/afghanistan/index.html

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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
I say take out their training camps. They are sinnters and being Moslem I know this will only do good. The won't kill, sin less, and the world won't have to live under such fear.
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
To be honest this is really difficult to discuss, and I almost wonder whether it should be.

The truth is, that we know very little about the facts.

There is a prime suspect, but there is not yet proof. I'm not saying that Bin Laden is innocent, even IF he was not responsible for this attack, there MAY be justification for a concerted effort to remove him from the planet. Reaction without clarifying which of these motives is the one being acted upon is dangerous.

We are not military expects. We do not know the best way to deal with this sitution. The primary focus during the Gulf was on the ground presence, but the majority of damage was done by special forces from nations such as the US and UK.

We should leave these decisions to those who know best as the world will be changed by the actions taken. It is dangerous to build up a demand for a certain route of action, which the US feels compelled to act upon when it may not be the right one.

I doubt we know the half of what is going on. I would suspect that Special Forces troops will either already in Afghanistan, or on the borders, just waiting for an order.
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
Sorry bout that I received an error first time so I thought it didn't work!
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
Being an American Muslim myself, I cop crap from both sides of the matter. Arabs point and call me 'American *$#@' whilst Americans point at me and call me 'Muslim &%$#@'.

Islam does condemns these actions and such. There is no justification for what has been done.

In addition, I propose a more permanent solution. Obviously, taking out the person directly responsible for this will do little for the future. What's to stop a hundred more of the same to come up? We need to go to the root of the problem - the reason for their use of terrorism - to stay away from it.

Let's also remember that the US TRAINED Bin Laden - IF it is indeed him, he's just coming home to nest!
Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
I suggest not jumping to conclusions when it comes to islam. We are talking about right wing extremist. Not unlike much of our extremists here in the United States. Don't forget, we put metal into trees to kill loggers, and we kill abortion doctors. It dosn't mean all liberals and all Christians are evil. Neither groups condone these kinds of behaivor. However, those who teach these IDEAS need to be rooted out. The idea's are where we fight our wars, UNTIL you kill 5,000 people. Then the ideas need beaten out of you.
Reply #9 from JoeUser Forums Top
while there is always collateral damage to a certain extent, do you really think we're just going to start carpet bombing these people? Our strikes will be extremely surgical and will be focused primarily on communications and military targets and possibly anti-aircraft and aircraft sites. I think its ridiculous to assume that the world wants to act like the terrorists and slaughter the innocents. But war is not clean as we will lose troops possibly even by our own "friendly fire." But lets consider the alternative. We can wait until they nuke washington or maybe one day you'll have a glass of water and contract a hemorraghic fever. Nothing like a lil case of lassa fever to brighten your day. No i think i'll stick with the notion of going in and hunting these fuckers down. My opinion is also i dont want to see one of these scumbags on trial either. I dont want to waste a dime of american money on a trial for these people. I want them put down. I want the world safe. And i dont want to worry about my soon to be step-daughter (8 years old) having to breathe in nerve gas while she plays outside with her friends.

I do hope that the afghan people suffer as minimal as possible (not at all would be ideal) and that the "allies" take their time and do it right.

United We Stand
Reply #10 from JoeUser Forums Top
Surgical bombing? I'm just hoping that you were too young to be around during the so-called surgical bombings of for example Iraq and the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. If you did, chances are you didn't bother to look up the facts, but rather decided on blind faith in what you were told by the Pentagon spokesmen. Fact: There is no such thing as an effecive "surgical" bombing. This is simple rhetorics to that they may remain on their high moral horses. As a matter of fact, what the Americans seem to resort to in this time of great difficulty is the exact same short-sighted thinking that made them the target of terrorists in the first place.

On the issue of Usama Bin Laden, I can only agree with Jürgen Storbeck, head of Interpol. One shouldn't fool oneself, believing that this man is the leader of world terrorism, just because he has been portraited as the face of moslem terrorism in media. Contemporary terrorism is much more complicated than that.
Reply #11 from JoeUser Forums Top
According to Iraq, fewer than 2000 civilians died in the Gulf War. That's surgical bombing. Surgical bombing isn't the same as perfect bombing.
Reply #12 from JoeUser Forums Top
I think many points made here are valid. Among those are being careful and very calculated before taking any action, which appears to be what Bush is doing. I also think that we need to go much deeper than bombing a country whose leaders have harbored a known terrorist.

On this point I stress that Osama bin Laden deserves to be put to death for his crimes of the past, regardless of who's responsible for NY and DC.

I think diplomacy is important here, not for the terrorists, but for the rest of the world. The US has bombed many a country in the past 30 years. Of course, they were all justified by our government in some way. I am not posting here to either criticize any of the past campaigns nor promote them. I'm merely stating that we've made decisions that have turned other countries against us. We need to rectify that. I think right now Bush and Colin Powell are doing a great job with this.
Reply #13 from JoeUser Forums Top
Apparently refreshing does another submit.

I'm sorry, I was trying to get a fairly large post up. Apparently this isn't the place...and that's fine.
Reply #14 from JoeUser Forums Top
With all due respects to a nation that is shocked and looking for revenge.....who in this group will be going after the target on the ground?
Air power will do very little in a country that has no infrastructure to destroy and where the Soviets bled themselves dry in recent history.
The effective tactics in Afghanistan of any value are the old ones, as ever, the PBI.
As a Vietnamn Veteran and (Recently) retired Regular Army type I wouldn't like the prospect......to have the President making ''Wanted Dead or Alive'' sound grabs is not very clever.
''Who Dares Wins''
Reply #16 from JoeUser Forums Top
Well just use RAID it kills bugs and would work on terrorist so there ya go
Reply #17 from JoeUser Forums Top
The naivete and lack of historical knowledge present here is depressing.

The question that should be asked is what those countries that we "bombed" did to warrant the bombing.

Let's look at the list starting from 1970:
Vietnam (1973)
Beirut (1984) - US was part of a peace keeping force.

Greneda (1985) - we didn't actually bomb anything here but US military was used to restore dmeocracy after a cuban led insurgency took over the little island.

Lybia (1986) - In response to a terrorist attack on US soliders.


Panama (1989) - In response to drug charges on Noriega, retaliation for attack on individual solders. Technically, we didn't bomb anything here.

Iraq (1991) - Iraq invaded Kuwaitt, US liberated Kuwait.

Sudan/Afganastan (mid 90s) - retaliation for bombing of US embassies.

Kosovo (1998) - NATO action due to ethnic cleansing by Serb forces.

The appologists for these terrorists really bug me. In every one of these cases, they were in direct response to a hostile action done to someone else.

The solution isn't to do things that make these people less angry, the solution is to eliminate these sick people that can justify murdering thousands of innocent people.
Reply #18 from JoeUser Forums Top
BTW, next time there's a school shooting, maybe instead of blaming the shooters we should have a long convoluted discussion about what the kids who got shot might have done to annoy the shooters. Sheesh.