Are Our Troops Terrorists?

[quote]lixy wrote:
BH6 wrote:
Imagine a foreign power invades your embassy and holds your citizens hostage for year.

Didn’t the US invade the Iranian embassy in Iraq? Didn’t you kidnapp Iranians in the incident?

Imagine a foreign power positions anti ship missles on a sea lane that 40% of the world’s oil travels through.

How’s that different from your navy that’s all around the globe? At least, the Iranians are doing it at home.

Imagine a foreign power regularly threatens an ally with destruction.

Meanwhile, it’s the US who’s got a record of actual destruction.

And for the last time, the Iranian government clarified what Ahmadinejad meant in his speech that was widely mistranslated. That wasn’t a threat.

Those are acts of aggression. Responses to those acts are defensive, to protect allies and maintain the rights of free passage through sea lanes.

How about Mossadeq? Wasn’t that an act of agression? How about arming Saddam?[/quote]

Just a few questions about some of the things you listed. Can you provide a link to an article WRT the U.S. seizing the Iranian embassy in Iraq prior to Iran seizing our embassy in their country?

Secondly, is it correct to assume that with Mossadeq that the Shah of Iran basically had “fired” him from his position. Mossadeq then refused to step down forcing the Shah into self imposed exile. I understand the beef between Britain and Mossadeq over the oil and Britain intel attempting to sway the US with talk of communist conversion. Wouldn’t all this make the Mossadeq situation null and void since he was "illeagally in power when he was overthrown.

I’m not saying I’m right I’m just asking for clarification.
As for our Navy all over the globe, they don’t threaten to sink civilian tankers to cripple the world economy.

[quote]vroom wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Since Americans are the most moral people on earth…

Where do you get this stuff?[/quote]

He pulls it out of his ass. Just like everything else.

Its key phrases like this all over the place that let you know he’s full of hot air shit.

[quote]lixy wrote:

Didn’t the US invade the Iranian embassy in Iraq? Didn’t you kidnapp Iranians in the incident? [/quote]

The Iranians invaded the US Embassy in Teheran with absolutely no reason. Considering Iran’s role in arming shiite insurgents in Iraq, we had more than enough justification to enter the Embassy and make arrests.

Our Navy does not actively threaten any country unless we are at war or conducting military operations without a declaration of war. Our Navy is one of the few in the world with the ability to sail into the non-territorial waters surrounding any country and exercise our right of free passage. There is no aggression in those actions.

[quote]Meanwhile, it’s the US who’s got a record of actual destruction.

And for the last time, the Iranian government clarified what Ahmadinejad meant in his speech that was widely mistranslated. That wasn’t a threat. [/quote]

You are right. The Iranian government is as neutral as Sweden.
Iran’s hands are as bloody as the United States’ and any argument to pass off Iran as a bullied victim of US aggression is false.

The United States is and always will be a world power and major actor in the Middle East. The Iranian government will be in conflict with the US until it accepts this fact. Since 1979 the islamic government of Iran has acted towards the US as if we were the enemy, while countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, and eventually Iraq, prosper from healthy
diplomacy with our government.

The Iranian people will come around one day and rise up against the religious dictatorship they live under, and we will be here to welcome them into the western world and the global economy.

[quote]snipeout wrote:
Can you provide a link to an article WRT the U.S. seizing the Iranian embassy in Iraq prior to Iran seizing our embassy in their country?[/quote]

No.

I personally don’t grant much credit to hereditary monarchs. The Shah’s dismissal is therefore a moot point. The Iranian monarchy has been an absolute for all of its existence. The anti-monarchy Iranians outnumbered the pro-monarchy ones, and had it not been for the intervention of the US/UK, a real democracy could have blossomed in Iran at the time.

US policy is based on the fact that, as long as a dictator is on your side, you don’t give a rat’s ass about democracy, human rights or any other atrocity. That’s the reason nobody buys the “freedom” and “democracy” Iraq rethoric.

No. They actually attack countries and threaten to bomb sovereign nations. That’s worse in my book due to the higher cost in human lives.

[quote]BH6 wrote:
lixy wrote:
BH6 wrote:
A deployment of warships to the Persian Gulf is not terrorism. If it is, then the deployment of Iranian Silkworm anti-ship missles to the coast bordering the Strait of Hormuz is also a terrorist act.

Imagine if a foreign power invaded one of your bordering countries, then started packing their warships around your coasts while calling you “axis of evil”, supporting your separatist movements, and organizing campaigns of disinformation to overthrow your government. Don’t seem quite the same as testing missiles inside your OWN territory.

One is an act of agression. The other, a defensive reaction.

Imagine a foreign power invades your embassy and holds your citizens hostage for year. Imagine a foreign power positions anti ship missles on a sea lane that 40% of the world’s oil travels through. Imagine a foreign power holds that sea lane hostage with threats of attacking civilian shipping. Imagine a foreign power regularly threatens an ally with destruction.

Those are acts of aggression. Responses to those acts are defensive, to protect allies and maintain the rights of free passage through sea
lanes. [/quote]

Exactly

[quote]vroom wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Since Americans are the most moral people on earth…

Where do you get this stuff?[/quote]

He is just trolling for a reaction.

I hate arguments over categorical definitions, because categories often impose some kind of connotation on the truth. I know people who have come back from Iraq, and people who are over there right now.

I don’t agree with this war in Iraq, but I know soldiers in the US military who I would not put in the same category as people who slam planes into office buildings or blow up bombs in markets to kill civilians who have different religious creeds.

Whenever I hear somebody call my friends (who are in the military) terrorists, it always gives me myself some militant urges.