[quote]Nominal Prospect wrote:
steveo5801 wrote:
I think that most of you have missed the point.
The GOAL is not to get the troops home, the GOAL of any military action is to WIN.
The goal of a water buffalo is to graze in a rice field. The goal of a leftwing activist is to impeach Bush and bring the troops home. The goal of a military hawk is to establish American military supremacy over the middle east. When you make generalizations and treat them as universal truths, baby Jesus cries. [/quote]
You are an idiot – bless your heart! America doesn’t want supremacy over anyone. WE WERE ATTACKED. THEY WISH TO KILL US. WE NEED TO WIN.
Now is that so hard for you to understand?[quote]
A statement has no meaning without a context. The context consists of the person who makes the statement, the things the statement applies to, and the recipient(s) of the statement, among other factors.
Now that we’ve established that there is no one “goal” in Iraq, we can move on to the question of how to determine a “win”. I’ll let you answer that, since you should have done it in the first place.
steveo5801 wrote:
The war on terror, which Iraq is a large part, was taken to us, not the other way around.
Really? In what way was the war “taken to us” when 9/11 was preceded by more than half a century of British and American imperialism, in the Middle East and elsewhere? I’m talking about the decades of American intervention all over the world.
Now, just because you and the rest of the American public don’t give a shit about what your government has done in the past, it doesn’t make you immune to the consequences of those acts. And as we have seen, the way that foreigners get Americans to care is by slamming jets into American skyscrapers. A fairly effective strategy. It will continue to be used against the U.S. as long as the American government gives foreigners a reason to hate this country by stationing troops in their homelands and dictating their private affairs.
steveo5801 wrote:We are protected when we are on the offensive. These people will stop short of nothing to kill everyone of us if they had the chance.
Each of those assertions has its premise in academic theories dealing with international relations, and both of them are open to debate. Again, you need to realize this, and stop assuming that other people are going to take for granted the opinions and premises which you have chosen to believe.
On the latter assertion, I will offer the libertarian perspective:
The only way that nutjubs will ever succeed in harming the United States is if they are directly or indirectly empowered by the government. All the more reason to stop picking sides in every conflict around the world and mind our own business. Witness the U.S. backing of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the support given to Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War, the nuclear program in Iran started under the US-backed regime of the Shah.
The examples of US government fuckups in foreign affairs simply go on and on and on, like a bad joke.
steveo5801 wrote:
It is amazing to me to see so many Americans seemingly rooting for the other side. How do I know this? Because if you were truly for America, then you would be saying (or writing) things like:
Everyone is rooting for “America”, from the hardcore peace activist to the old guard conservative. The problem is that “America” means different things to different people. This should be obvious enough if you put a bit of thought into the matter. A nation is not a singular entity. It consists of millions of individuals with seperate lives, seperate histories, and therefore, seperate perspectives.
steveo5801 wrote:
(1) Stay the course until the job is finished.
Only if you have a true understanding of the academic theories supporting this course of action and have taken everything else into consideration. This is very complex, academic, historical stuff. It’s not a matter of beating your chest and being “with us or against us”, like a WWF match.
steveo5801 wrote:
(2) We need to wipe out all of the leaders of these terrorist organizations and the people who harbour them.
If, in the process of wiping out said terrorists, you create more of them, the net result is a loss. This has to be considered before the latter course of action can be taken.
steveo5801 wrote:
(3) We must protect America and Americans first by staying on the offensive.
Okay, so you obviously buy into the argument that “we’re fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them here, etc…” That’s fine. But make THAT the focal point of your argument – don’t cloak it under the guise of some phoney issue such as “patriotism”, “national duty”, etc…It has nothing to do with any of those things.
steveo5801 wrote:
What I am reading is the old “blame America first” crowd and how Bush is like Hitler and the U.S. is like the Nazis. Your leaders (like Hillary, Chuck Shumer, etc) also agree with you. Actually, I don’t want you to stop, because the way it is going, these positions will lead to another resounding defeat for the libs this fall in the elections for Congress.
No, what you’re reading is different perspectives coming from people with different premises and different information than you. It’s only a very small minority that actually compares Bush to Hitler and practices that militant activism shit.
You and other neocons on this board also need to stop deluding yourselves into thinking that anyone who doesn’t support an interventionist foreign policy is a liberal; it ain’t even remotely true.
#1 Mainstream liberals aren’t opposed to war. They support it for the “right” reasons. This translates into to cheering for “humanitarian interventions” sponsored by Democratic administrations and denouncing Republican-sponsored wars as evil. Liberals and Democrats cheered when Clinton bombed Serbia in 99’, violating dozens of international laws in the process. Antiwar.com was there to document that sorry incident in detail and gave it the same treatment that would later be used to document Bush’s Iraq war. It’s interesting to note that the Antiwar site was widely supported on Freerepublic, the popular conservative forum – that is, until Bush came into office, at which point it suddenly became “garbage” in the eyes of conservatives everywhere.
Antiwar.com is a paleo-conservative/libertarian/non-interventionist news & editorial site. Which brings me to my next point:
#2 You are aware of the libertarian platform, are you not? Reducing the scope of the federal government in every area, military included, is completely antithetical [opposed to] every tenet of modern liberalism. And while Libertarians may not be a blip on the national political radar, there ARE plenty of them to be found on the net. So don’t try to claim ignorance…
#3 Are you aware that the group most responsible for propogating the ideas associated with neoconservatism is a cadre of Ivy-league educated academic scholars, the majority of them being of former leftist persuasion? You’ve heard of “knowing your enemy”. Well, maybe you should know your own side.
#4 While we’re on the subject, Hil Clinton will be elected president, and the Democratic party will be rejuvenated, on a platform more hawkish than that of the Reps. The GOP is abandoning Bush and his neocon cabal. The Dems will pick up the reins where Bush left off. Watch and see.
Antiwar.com made the prediction, and it’s a plausible-enough scenario. Interesting, if nothing else:
Hillary Clinton, War Goddess - Antiwar.com Original
Okay, I’ve been writing too long. Enough of dealing with this nonsense. If this post is ignored by the resident neocons I will gladly quote it and repost it as many times as it takes to get a legitimate response. [/quote]
The only response I will give this drivel is that you are clearly part of the “Blame America First” crowd, and I dismiss you outright. You will blame our nation for all the evils in this world as we deserve to get it.
Well, I might remind you that it was the U.S. that saved Europe’s rear end and it is the U.S. that won the cold war, and it will be the U.S. who will stand up to these Islamic evildoers and wipe their behinds from off the face of the planet. There is no coexisting with evil – otherwise you get a 9/11.
You can repost your Blame America First diatribe as many times as you wish. That only proves that your position is the position of weakness and not of strength.
And, btw, the objective in a war IS to WIN!