6 Years After 9/11

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
21

[quote]pat36 wrote:
orion wrote:
texasguy1 wrote:
You can’t blame a soldier for a president’s poor leadership skills.

No, but I can hold them responsible for the decisions they make and it is pretty clear for more than 20 years now that the US have a national offense, not defense, and that is what they joined.

Not entirely true for the National Guardsm they got really fucked.

You cannot wash yourself free from your sins by turning your conscience over to a higher power, Milgram experiment and so on…

There is nothing noble, honorable or special about it, just an ape cowering before authority and excusing his failings with the magic piece of cloth he was made to wear.

Correct me if I am wrong but last time I checked, the primary purpose for most militaries is to break things and kill people. If create a military with something other than that then it is something other than a military.
[/quote]

True.

This is why you only use a military to defend yourself or as the very, very last resort.

Because war is nothing but a giant meatgrinder, it is the four horsemen descending on your country, it is a living nightmare.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world American civilans no longer have it in their bones what it means to be at war, maybe that is why all this war on whatever BS rethoric works.

If you heavily arm 20 year olds that go from being yelled at constantly from being masters over live and death in less than 2 weeks and put them under constant
stress ugly shit is bound to happen.

US foreign policy seems to work under the assumption that since you have a mighty hammer everything must be a nail…

That was actually my brother.

Unfit for service for psychological reasons.

Sad thing, really…

He only took 1 1/2 weeks to get fired, which is quite an accomplishment.

[quote]
It doesn’t matter if people signed up for the military voluntarily, because if they didn’t we’d reinstate the draft here and the polocies and actions that you abhore would be going on anyway.

Besides, our biggest probelm in our current conflicts is that we have shown to much restraint and allowed to much access to the interworkings of our operations.

We could have been long done with both conflicts if we’d wanted to be, but the body count would be higher to. But then it really wouldn’t affect you as you wouldn’t really here about it.
Please express how you’d fight a kinder, nicer more gentle war? [/quote]

Fist I would not fight that war at all.

Second and this is were you go wrong you cannot fight that war all differently.

Your own narrative forbids it.

It is bad enough to let hundreds of thousands Iraquis die for their own “freedom” or because of an alleged threat that we know now did not exist, but you simply cannot use WMD to bring peace, democracy and prosperity, and this is what you do, right?

There are some things forbidden to you because deep down you want to be , scratch that , NEED to be the good guys and that illusion can only be strained so much.

I would fight that war by using all that money to find a alternative for fossile fuels.

Then withdraw all troops and let these POS regimes collaps and herd goats again.

True, that would be a tad socialist and I would even use the bad, bad climate change to swindle people into it but I can get seriously pragmatic if I have to.

22

[quote]orion wrote:
pat36 wrote:
orion wrote:
texasguy1 wrote:
You can’t blame a soldier for a president’s poor leadership skills.

No, but I can hold them responsible for the decisions they make and it is pretty clear for more than 20 years now that the US have a national offense, not defense, and that is what they joined.

Not entirely true for the National Guardsm they got really fucked.

You cannot wash yourself free from your sins by turning your conscience over to a higher power, Milgram experiment and so on…

There is nothing noble, honorable or special about it, just an ape cowering before authority and excusing his failings with the magic piece of cloth he was made to wear.

Correct me if I am wrong but last time I checked, the primary purpose for most militaries is to break things and kill people. If create a military with something other than that then it is something other than a military.

True.

This is why you only use a military to defend yourself or as the very, very last resort.

Because war is nothing but a giant meatgrinder, it is the four horsemen descending on your country, it is a living nightmare.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world American civilans no longer have it in their bones what it means to be at war, maybe that is why all this war on whatever BS rethoric works.

If you heavily arm 20 year olds that go from being yelled at constantly from being masters over live and death in less than 2 weeks and put them under constant
stress ugly shit is bound to happen.

US foreign policy seems to work under the assumption that since you have a mighty hammer everything must be a nail…

The personel in our military is no worse than the personal in other miltaries. They are doing what they are supposed to be. I am sure you are some bad-ass who’d tell a superior to get fucked. I am sure that is what you did in your year of service for the Austrian militaty. And I am sure they were perfectely ok with you doing that.

That was actually my brother.

Unfit for service for psychological reasons.

Sad thing, really…

He only took 1 1/2 weeks to get fired, which is quite an accomplishment.

It doesn’t matter if people signed up for the military voluntarily, because if they didn’t we’d reinstate the draft here and the polocies and actions that you abhore would be going on anyway.

Besides, our biggest probelm in our current conflicts is that we have shown to much restraint and allowed to much access to the interworkings of our operations.

We could have been long done with both conflicts if we’d wanted to be, but the body count would be higher to. But then it really wouldn’t affect you as you wouldn’t really here about it.
Please express how you’d fight a kinder, nicer more gentle war?

Fist I would not fight that war at all.

Second and this is were you go wrong you cannot fight that war all differently.

Your own narrative forbids it.

It is bad enough to let hundreds of thousands Iraquis die for their own “freedom” or because of an alleged threat that we know now did not exist, but you simply cannot use WMD to bring peace, democracy and prosperity, and this is what you do, right?

There are some things forbidden to you because deep down you want to be , scratch that , NEED to be the good guys and that illusion can only be strained so much.

I would fight that war by using all that money to find a alternative for fossile fuels.

Then withdraw all troops and let these POS regimes collaps and herd goats again.

True, that would be a tad socialist and I would even use the bad, bad climate change to swindle people into it but I can get seriously pragmatic if I have to.

[/quote]
I think the idea here is to pluck the weed at it’s roots.

When you wait until attacked you are fighting from a position with your back against the wall. Preventing your enemy from growing strong keeps you from potentially losing a war and tons of lives.

Usually the person who throws the first punch in a fight wins.

If our intelligence knows of impending issues, it makes sense to handle them before they blossom. By being offensive in this sense, the military is acting defensively.

23

[quote]orion wrote:
pat36 wrote:
orion wrote:
texasguy1 wrote:
You can’t blame a soldier for a president’s poor leadership skills.

No, but I can hold them responsible for the decisions they make and it is pretty clear for more than 20 years now that the US have a national offense, not defense, and that is what they joined.

Not entirely true for the National Guardsm they got really fucked.

You cannot wash yourself free from your sins by turning your conscience over to a higher power, Milgram experiment and so on…

There is nothing noble, honorable or special about it, just an ape cowering before authority and excusing his failings with the magic piece of cloth he was made to wear.

Correct me if I am wrong but last time I checked, the primary purpose for most militaries is to break things and kill people. If create a military with something other than that then it is something other than a military.

True.

This is why you only use a military to defend yourself or as the very, very last resort.

Because war is nothing but a giant meatgrinder, it is the four horsemen descending on your country, it is a living nightmare.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world American civilans no longer have it in their bones what it means to be at war, maybe that is why all this war on whatever BS rethoric works.

If you heavily arm 20 year olds that go from being yelled at constantly from being masters over live and death in less than 2 weeks and put them under constant
stress ugly shit is bound to happen.

US foreign policy seems to work under the assumption that since you have a mighty hammer everything must be a nail…

The personel in our military is no worse than the personal in other miltaries. They are doing what they are supposed to be. I am sure you are some bad-ass who’d tell a superior to get fucked. I am sure that is what you did in your year of service for the Austrian militaty. And I am sure they were perfectely ok with you doing that.

That was actually my brother.

Unfit for service for psychological reasons.

Sad thing, really…

He only took 1 1/2 weeks to get fired, which is quite an accomplishment.

It doesn’t matter if people signed up for the military voluntarily, because if they didn’t we’d reinstate the draft here and the polocies and actions that you abhore would be going on anyway.

Besides, our biggest probelm in our current conflicts is that we have shown to much restraint and allowed to much access to the interworkings of our operations.

We could have been long done with both conflicts if we’d wanted to be, but the body count would be higher to. But then it really wouldn’t affect you as you wouldn’t really here about it.
Please express how you’d fight a kinder, nicer more gentle war?

Fist I would not fight that war at all.

Second and this is were you go wrong you cannot fight that war all differently.

Your own narrative forbids it.

It is bad enough to let hundreds of thousands Iraquis die for their own “freedom” or because of an alleged threat that we know now did not exist, but you simply cannot use WMD to bring peace, democracy and prosperity, and this is what you do, right?

There are some things forbidden to you because deep down you want to be , scratch that , NEED to be the good guys and that illusion can only be strained so much.

I would fight that war by using all that money to find a alternative for fossile fuels.

Then withdraw all troops and let these POS regimes collaps and herd goats again.

True, that would be a tad socialist and I would even use the bad, bad climate change to swindle people into it but I can get seriously pragmatic if I have to.
[/quote]

Make no mistake, we are at war. A war we did not start. Granted the Iraqi front was stupid and uncalled for to say the least, but we were attacked, not once but several times by the same people.

Islamic radicals under the tutelage of osama and al kay-duh, who were and are supported and protected by many regimes in the ME. We were attacked several times and did nothing.

We were going to be attacked again and again so we had to do something.Now we are doing somethings but some were the wrong things. We can’t undo it, we have to finish it the best we can and move on or out if you will from Iraq. This war won’t end in Iraq. Actually what needs to be done in a big way is to get ugly with our “ally” Pakistan rather than go after another “enemy”.

They have allowed al kay-duh to reform under their sovereignty and it’s high time we violated that soveriegnty and take care of the issue ourselves.

24

[quote]texasguy1 wrote:
orion wrote:
pat36 wrote:
orion wrote:
texasguy1 wrote:
You can’t blame a soldier for a president’s poor leadership skills.

No, but I can hold them responsible for the decisions they make and it is pretty clear for more than 20 years now that the US have a national offense, not defense, and that is what they joined.

Not entirely true for the National Guardsm they got really fucked.

You cannot wash yourself free from your sins by turning your conscience over to a higher power, Milgram experiment and so on…

There is nothing noble, honorable or special about it, just an ape cowering before authority and excusing his failings with the magic piece of cloth he was made to wear.

Correct me if I am wrong but last time I checked, the primary purpose for most militaries is to break things and kill people. If create a military with something other than that then it is something other than a military.

True.

This is why you only use a military to defend yourself or as the very, very last resort.

Because war is nothing but a giant meatgrinder, it is the four horsemen descending on your country, it is a living nightmare.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world American civilans no longer have it in their bones what it means to be at war, maybe that is why all this war on whatever BS rethoric works.

If you heavily arm 20 year olds that go from being yelled at constantly from being masters over live and death in less than 2 weeks and put them under constant
stress ugly shit is bound to happen.

US foreign policy seems to work under the assumption that since you have a mighty hammer everything must be a nail…

The personel in our military is no worse than the personal in other miltaries. They are doing what they are supposed to be. I am sure you are some bad-ass who’d tell a superior to get fucked. I am sure that is what you did in your year of service for the Austrian militaty. And I am sure they were perfectely ok with you doing that.

That was actually my brother.

Unfit for service for psychological reasons.

Sad thing, really…

He only took 1 1/2 weeks to get fired, which is quite an accomplishment.

It doesn’t matter if people signed up for the military voluntarily, because if they didn’t we’d reinstate the draft here and the polocies and actions that you abhore would be going on anyway.

Besides, our biggest probelm in our current conflicts is that we have shown to much restraint and allowed to much access to the interworkings of our operations.

We could have been long done with both conflicts if we’d wanted to be, but the body count would be higher to. But then it really wouldn’t affect you as you wouldn’t really here about it.
Please express how you’d fight a kinder, nicer more gentle war?

Fist I would not fight that war at all.

Second and this is were you go wrong you cannot fight that war all differently.

Your own narrative forbids it.

It is bad enough to let hundreds of thousands Iraquis die for their own “freedom” or because of an alleged threat that we know now did not exist, but you simply cannot use WMD to bring peace, democracy and prosperity, and this is what you do, right?

There are some things forbidden to you because deep down you want to be , scratch that , NEED to be the good guys and that illusion can only be strained so much.

I would fight that war by using all that money to find a alternative for fossile fuels.

Then withdraw all troops and let these POS regimes collaps and herd goats again.

True, that would be a tad socialist and I would even use the bad, bad climate change to swindle people into it but I can get seriously pragmatic if I have to.

I think the idea here is to pluck the weed at it’s roots.

When you wait until attacked you are fighting from a position with your back against the wall. Preventing your enemy from growing strong keeps you from potentially losing a war and tons of lives.

Usually the person who throws the first punch in a fight wins.

If our intelligence knows of impending issues, it makes sense to handle them before they blossom. By being offensive in this sense, the military is acting defensively.
[/quote]

Unfortunately this shit is like organized crime or cancer.

It is what it is because we are what we are.

To pluck the weed at it`s roots would mean finishing off mankind.

Plus you cannot engage 1 billion something Muslims, you CAN however radicalize most of them, so a military solution is hardly the answer.

25

[quote]pat36 wrote:

Make no mistake, we are at war. A war we did not start. Granted the Iraqi front was stupid and uncalled for to say the least, but we were attacked, not once but several times by the same people.

Islamic radicals under the tutelage of osama and al kay-duh, who were and are supported and protected by many regimes in the ME. We were attacked several times and did nothing.

We were going to be attacked again and again so we had to do something.Now we are doing somethings but some were the wrong things. We can’t undo it, we have to finish it the best we can and move on or out if you will from Iraq. This war won’t end in Iraq. Actually what needs to be done in a big way is to get ugly with our “ally” Pakistan rather than go after another “enemy”.

They have allowed al kay-duh to reform under their sovereignty and it’s high time we violated that soveriegnty and take care of the issue ourselves.[/quote]

You are not at war.

The British were not at war with the IRA, the Spanish are not at war with the ETA, Germany was not at war with the RAF and Italy was not at war with Austria just because we blew up some shit.

War is different.

The Iraquis are in a war.

The US is one of the safest societies ever.

The insisting on “being at war” instantly discredits you all around the world.

Pakistan?

With what?

Plus they have “nukular” weapons mm`kay?

26

Ignorant. Willing. Participants.

Soldiers don’t ask questions but that doesn’t make them any less complicit. It sucks for them when they come back questioning their actions when they realize the brutality they were “forced” to act with that may not have been necessary. They always come back with questions.

EDIT–I changed the phrase “at fault” to the word “complicit” in the first sentence of second paragraph.

27

[quote]pat36 wrote:
And how would you run your military? Every man for himself? Boy I’d love to see that one in action. Or perhaps no military at all? That’d last long.[/quote]

I wouldn’t change the way the military is run. I’d simply expect every soldier to obey his vow to uphold the Constitution. People should not enlist to fight unconstitutional wars for special interests. If you want to do that, become a mercenary.

[quote]pat36 wrote:
The personel in our military is no worse than the personal in other miltaries.[/quote]

I’ll admit that they’re no worse if you’ll admit that they’re no better. Have we got a deal?

[quote]texasguy1 wrote:
I think the idea here is to pluck the weed at it’s roots.

When you wait until attacked you are fighting from a position with your back against the wall. Preventing your enemy from growing strong keeps you from potentially losing a war and tons of lives.

Usually the person who throws the first punch in a fight wins.

If our intelligence knows of impending issues, it makes sense to handle them before they blossom. By being offensive in this sense, the military is acting defensively. [/quote]

Wake up, our enemy lives in caves. Let’s scale our military back to it’s 1905 level, so that we’ll be only able to destroy every cave in Afghanistan.

Another one of our enemies inhabits the minds of thousands of individuals, living in every part of the world. That enemy is the ideology of terrorism. There are ways to combat an ideology. We may be better off doing that than searching every cave in the Middle East.

Soldiers are just grunts. The story of human history is the story of millions upon millions of forgotten, unloved, under-appreciated grunts. I haven’t got a heart big enough to embrace every one of them. Therefore, at the risk of being a hypocrite, I won’t embrace any. Nor will I go out of my way to malign them. They are what they are. That is, serfs - the forgotten apes of history.

As a conservative, egoist/individualist, I take responsibility for my own actions and expect others to do the same. Fundamentally, I think that people deserve what they get. I’m not a bleeding heart and I refuse to shed a tear for unexceptional people who merely behave according to the circumstances of their time.

But show me a great, outspoken philosopher or scientist, and I’ll weep openly.

28

[quote]Nominal Prospect wrote:
pat36 wrote:
And how would you run your military? Every man for himself? Boy I’d love to see that one in action. Or perhaps no military at all? That’d last long.

I wouldn’t change the way the military is run. I’d simply expect every soldier to obey his vow to uphold the Constitution. People should not enlist to fight unconstitutional wars for special interests. If you want to do that, become a mercenary.
[/quote]
And whose call was it to go to Iraq? The soldiers? Who are the soldiers called on to obey by law?

Again, you are holding soldiers accountable for decisions Bush made. The soldiers are only responsible for their individual actions out side the chain of command. With in the chain of command the buck stops at the Commander in Chief.

They are only better in the fact that they are American soldiers protecting my American ass. If I were German, I’ like the German military better.

You are highly mistaken if you think we can change the way these peolpe think. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place. That is exactly what Bush thought he was trying to do.

He was wrong, you cannot change something that is rooted so deeply in these people. We can merely disable their ablity to harm us. That is what we have to do. That is what made Iraq such a huge mistake. It took the focus on disabling thier ability to harm us on to a “We are going to chagne the hearts and minds” of the arabs by taking out an asshole dictator.

Obviously, the appreciation for removing Saddam was somewhat less then the Bush administration expected. In the end the terrorist ideology becme reinforced rather than lessend. Bush thought of getting rid of Saddam as a good will gesture to the Middle East as most of the Arab world hated his guts because he was a secular leader.

Like I said it backfired. We won the miliary war, we lost the ideological one, big time. In the mean time our focus was removed from where it needed to be an al kayduh reorged. The only good news this time is we are aware of it.

I have the heart. I embrace them, they are not apes, they are people doing a dagerous job

[quote]
As a conservative, egoist/individualist, I take responsibility for my own actions and expect others to do the same. Fundamentally, I think that people deserve what they get. I’m not a bleeding heart and I refuse to shed a tear for unexceptional people who merely behave according to the circumstances of their time.

But show me a great, outspoken philosopher or scientist, and I’ll weep openly.[/quote]

So the children getting raped, killed, starved, watching their mothers get raped and their fathers killed say in the Darfur region of Sudan and the Congo deserve what they get? I must be a pussy but that kind of stuff bugs me.

29

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Ignorant. Willing. Participants.

Soldiers don’t ask questions but that doesn’t make them any less complicit. It sucks for them when they come back questioning their actions when they realize the brutality they were “forced” to act with that may not have been necessary. They always come back with questions.

EDIT–I changed the phrase “at fault” to the word “complicit” in the first sentence of second paragraph.[/quote]

How would you run the military? It’s easy to malign, but what’s the alternative if what we have now is bad?

30

[quote]pat36 wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Ignorant. Willing. Participants.

Soldiers don’t ask questions but that doesn’t make them any less complicit. It sucks for them when they come back questioning their actions when they realize the brutality they were “forced” to act with that may not have been necessary. They always come back with questions.

EDIT–I changed the phrase “at fault” to the word “complicit” in the first sentence of second paragraph.

How would you run the military? It’s easy to malign, but what’s the alternative if what we have now is bad?
[/quote]
Don’t get me wrong. My intentions aren’t to malign the US military. The military is a tool. I feel this tool, that’s intent to keep our country safe, has been misused.

The military is part of the Department of Defense. Defense is the the active resistance against a direct attack or threat of attack of our national interests. This does not include the interests outside the US–I regard that as unconstitutional.

With the introduction of better technologies defense becomes more and more possible. Technology allows us to be more proactive with intelligence–not only with the gathering of intelligence but listening to and analyzing intelligence for the defense community.

I fail to see how we misinterpreted the intelligence that brought us into Iraq. The main failing there was the politicization of the intelligence.

The military needs to be made more elite as the mission has become more specialized than fighting in the traditional front.

31

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

How would you run the military? It’s easy to malign, but what’s the alternative if what we have now is bad?

Don’t get me wrong. My intentions aren’t to malign the US military. The military is a tool. I feel this tool, that’s intent to keep our country safe, has been misused.

The military is part of the Department of Defense. Defense is the the active resistance against a direct attack or threat of attack of our national interests. This does not include the interests outside the US–I regard that as unconstitutional.

With the introduction of better technologies defense becomes more and more possible. Technology allows us to be more proactive with intelligence–not only with the gathering of intelligence but listening to and analyzing intelligence for the defense community.

I fail to see how we misinterpreted the intelligence that brought us into Iraq. The main failing there was the politicization of the intelligence.

The military needs to be made more elite as the mission has become more specialized than fighting in the traditional front.[/quote]

If the military is a tool and the people in it are like wise tools, how are they culpable in the decisions the Commander in Cheif makes. If nobody joined, there’d be a draft, but the policies would remain the same, the players may be different, but we still be in Iraq, right or worng.

If nothing else to soldiers should be thanked for joining voluntarily so that others and those of us that are young enough to be drafted aren’t.

32

[quote]pat36 wrote:
If the military is a tool and the people in it are like wise tools, how are they culpable in the decisions the Commander in Cheif makes. If nobody joined, there’d be a draft, but the policies would remain the same, the players may be different, but we still be in Iraq, right or worng.
[/quote]
Ahhh…yes, I don’t mean to imply they are “at fault” which is why I changed my statement to complicit; meaning, one is an accomplice in the wrongful actions whether one is aware of any wrong doing or not. I really believe that the government prefers that their enlisted men and women remain uneducated and ignorant of the world about them because it makes it easier for one to willingly pull a trigger.

I think conscription is wrong. If people aren’t willing to join the military voluntarily it means that we probably shouldn’t be engaged in the conflict to begin with. Why does the federal government, whose sole job is to protect personal liberties, have a totalitarian say in what wars will be fought by whom? Do you not think that people would join the military and defend their country if they really felt threatened by outside invaders?

I don’t want to start an argument about the past few wars that relied on the draft but do you notice that both of them did not really involve the safety and security of this nation?

The best way to thank military members is to make sure their government, who uses them for their purposes (whatever they are), take responsibility for them when they return. They don’t care about yellow ribbons.

33

[quote]entheogens wrote:
I agree that soldiers are not to blame for the policies of a given government.

After all, in the U.S., a lot of kids who dont come from wealthy backgrounds get lured into the military
as a way of getting career training, college funding or as a way to see the world.

They dont foresee it as a way to:

Go To Far Away Lands, Meet Exotic People, and Kill Them.[/quote]

Beats working at Wal-Mart or some other shit detail. I’ve been poor and done those jobs and they SUCK.

34

[quote]JustTheFacts wrote:
Luckily al Qaeda doesn’t really exist. I think its funny that the word on the street is “al Qaeda” is supposedly at pre-9/11 strength.

I suppose that might sound real scary if you didn’t know what “al Qaeda” was and what it was really like back then.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/140207Qaeda.htm

[/quote]

Cool post!

Seems to be a pretty thorough video.

35

[quote]pat36 wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

How would you run the military? It’s easy to malign, but what’s the alternative if what we have now is bad?

Don’t get me wrong. My intentions aren’t to malign the US military. The military is a tool. I feel this tool, that’s intent to keep our country safe, has been misused.

The military is part of the Department of Defense. Defense is the the active resistance against a direct attack or threat of attack of our national interests. This does not include the interests outside the US–I regard that as unconstitutional.

With the introduction of better technologies defense becomes more and more possible. Technology allows us to be more proactive with intelligence–not only with the gathering of intelligence but listening to and analyzing intelligence for the defense community.

I fail to see how we misinterpreted the intelligence that brought us into Iraq. The main failing there was the politicization of the intelligence.

The military needs to be made more elite as the mission has become more specialized than fighting in the traditional front.

If the military is a tool and the people in it are like wise tools, how are they culpable in the decisions the Commander in Cheif makes. If nobody joined, there’d be a draft, but the policies would remain the same, the players may be different, but we still be in Iraq, right or worng.

If nothing else to soldiers should be thanked for joining voluntarily so that others and those of us that are young enough to be drafted aren’t.
[/quote]

Good point.

I just saw Saving Private Ryan again on HBO… and that fuckin movie always brings tears to my eyes.

Too many forget that the Orwellian maxim is true, and always will be true: “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

Soldiers cannot be blamed for moves that our asshole C-in-C makes. We can only get them out.

36

[quote]texasguy1 wrote:
When you wait until attacked you are fighting from a position with your back against the wall. Preventing your enemy from growing strong keeps you from potentially losing a war and tons of lives. [/quote]

So what about these facts: worldwide recruitment for terrorism is at an all-time high, Al Qaeda has built themselves back to where they were before 9/11, and occupying Iraq has actually created more terrorists than it has killed?

How does that fit into your philosophy? Bush is trying to put out a fire, by dousing it with gasoline. Any argument that invading Iraq was a good strategy has been rendered meaningless by the total incompetence with which the war was waged by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

President Teddy Roosevelt: Talk softly and carry a big stick.
President George W. Bush: Brag loudly and swing wildly.

By the way… How’s the hunt for Osama going? Maybe he’s hiding in the same place that Sadam hid his massive stockpiles of WMD’s?

37

[quote]Brad61 wrote:
So what about these facts: worldwide recruitment for terrorism is at an all-time high, Al Qaeda has built themselves back to where they were before 9/11, and occupying Iraq has actually created more terrorists than it has killed?
[/quote]

I think your last statement is more an adhoc political strategy, than actual fact. There is no way to prove it after all. Really how do you find out? Take a census before and after? “Sir are you now or do you have aspirations towards being a terrorist?”

I do agree with the general concensus that Iraqi front has backfired in a major way. I’ve said this before and I figured it was common knowledge that the mistake of the current “war on terror” was made long before a boot ever hit the sand.

Bush said publically that his ultimate goal was to change the way the middle east works and that his functional philosophy was to do that.Of course that’s dumb, it’d be easier to stir dried concrete with your tongue than to change anybody’s “heart and mind” It’s my thinking that part of the reason he wanted to get rid of Saddam was to give a “gift” to the rest of the ME who hated his guts because he was a secular leader and did not follow islamic law.

Another reason was personally vendetta, and yet another was that maybe he did indeed perceive a threat. Someday, I’ll do some research and see if I can back that up, those are just my thoughts on the matter.

What I do not buy is that we went into Iraq because Bush is just a big bad bully who want to drop bombs on people because he likes the boom, I think it was just dumb, not mal-intentioned.

That’s pretty funny, not a bad description either.

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[quote]ssn0 wrote:
Having invaded afghan., Al-Qaeda Weak Right? Yeaahhhh… … NO They’re actually just as strong as they ever were.

I advise everyone who can to thank a US soldier for risking his life in Iraq and Afghanistan just so we can have a higher quantity of more expensive oil. Men, hats off to you. You’re truly doing the lord’s work.[/quote]

Their appears to be plenty of blame to pass around. The politicians, who are ultimately responsible for policy decisions, obviously deserve the largest share. The public as well as US soldiers could probably be accused of viewing the situation with extreme naivety. The latter two would do well to research any claims the political class makes given their inherent penchant for plying their trade, that is to say lying. This is true in any nation.

The following exchange exemplifies this well:

[i]
Gilbert:We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

Goering:“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

Gilbert:“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

Goering:“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

From Gustave Gilbert’s Diaries at Nuremberg
[/i]

Whether soldier or civilian individuals must be unwilling to simply swallow the beliefs of a given political party or the prevarications of fear politicians continually spout for their own self-interests.

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[quote]pat36 wrote:
Soldiers don’t make policy asshole. It’s not thier fault they are there so don’t blame them.[/quote]

“Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns” – Henry Kissinger

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[quote]pat36 wrote:
I think your last statement is more an adhoc political strategy, than actual fact. There is no way to prove it after all. Really how do you find out? Take a census before and after? “Sir are you now or do you have aspirations towards being a terrorist?” [/quote]

There most certainly is a way to prove it. Just take a look at the increase in number of attacks (failed and successful).

Of course, had you been in an Arab country, you wouldn’t be asking that question. The radicalization of the populace post-2003 is so evident that even a slow kid could clearly see it.