flagreen said:
In the aftermath of that attack, the number of folks in the Bar and Grille who were defending America within the various threads on the subject were far and few between other than those who would on occasion drop into a thread to say "Nuke the Bastards!". In short, those who shared my opinion's on the subject and were willing to hang in there and fight were very few. Personally I don't believe it was because such folks were not out there, but rather it was a situation where many of them were intimidated by the vast numbers of those who held opinions contrary to mine and theirs. Either that or they just didn't care enough to say anything.
First of all, I'm really sorry to hear that The Giver was not a real person. You had me and just about everyone else fooled, and despite his occasional abrasiveness, I really did enjoy having The Giver around. I have to give you credit for pulling this hoax off for as long as you did. You wouldn't by any chance happen to be The Taker and Iron Mike Tyson as well, would you? :lol:
Second, I think you are mistaken about the number of people willing to defend America post 9/11. I was there quite often(it was
my city they attacked, after all), as was Jason, supercaffeinated, Jack Roberts, and probably a few others whose names escape me at the moment(I'm too lazy to start rereading my saved threads). To be sure, many of our posts were of the "nuke the bastards" variety, but I also remember writing quite a bit defending the invasion, torturing of suspects to gain information, having summary executions instead of holding trials, etc. Since I only had 30 or so posts pre 9/11, I really had no reputation to worry about, so I just posted my opinion and didn't care. It would have been nice if more of the fixtures like yourself freely expressed their opinions without worrying about the consequences, but I do understand where you're coming from by creating The Giver for that purpose. In my opinion, as long as you have a rational, logical train of thought rather than an emotional one, your opinions would have stood on their own merits even if many other regulars disagreed with them.
To this day, I still don't no if not making an example of Afghanistan will eventually result in our eventual destruction, but only time will tell. I personally feel eventually terrorists will acquire and use nuclear weapons with devastating consequences. I just don't know whether or not wiping a bunch of countries who represent the primary threats to our safety off the map would prevent that. If so, you are trading one set of lives for another. If not, it is needless, senseless slaughter. BTW, I'm not condoning such actions at this time, even though I did post 9/11. I'm merely saying that they should always be on the table if we are ever attacked again. Indeed, in the event of nuclear terrorism, most of the American public would be demanding a like response, so in such a situation I just don't see how our leaders would be able to avoid it. In the end, I know violence solves nothing, but once one side resorts to using it there are only two choices-fight back or die. It works against 1 billion years of evolution to do the latter, so most people choose the former.
