[quote]The Mage wrote:
You know Zap, I think we are mistaken. We should answer his question.
But we need to make sure that it is in fact an accurate reflection of events in Iraq.
First Bush was elected, so that doesn’t work right. So to match Iraq we need a military coup by some crazy loon. Lets name him orion.
After taking power, he proceeds to kill his enemies, and a few friends too. Then he begins ethnically cleansing the wrong Christians, and (unfortunately for me) the atheists. He gases San Francisco, telling them they were simply burning ganja, resulting in the death of tens of thousands of Hippies.
A terrible dictator at this time suddenly comes into control of Canada, and we go to war. (I’ll let Zap name this dictator.) China has a problem with them, because they want all Chinese dead for not being Canadeeish, so they give us a couple of tanks. (Later North Korea complains that they built our entire military.)
When things cool down between us and Canada, and after landfills are getting full of our bodies, orion decides to invade Mexico to take, (what does Mexico have? Oh yeah,) TAQUILA.
China decides that is the last straw, and invades us to get this loon out of power, but not before USSORion (formally America,) responds by sending a missile into Barbados, and re-institutes free elections. (Maybe everyone votes for George P Bush this time around.)
In this case I would be fighting right along with China and thanking them.
The problem with orion’s scenario is that doesn’t in any way match what happened in Iraq. But I played his game to fruition under roughly the same scenario as in Iraq.[/quote]
Let us work a little on your scenario.
Canada is a dictatorship because the Chinese have ousted their democratically elected president, installing a dictatorship which was replaced by a slightly less restrictive form of theocracy after the Canadians rebelled.
Still, practically 100% of the Canadian airforce is of Chinese origin.
Though they have proven that they can topple American dictators like other people change their underwear, the Chinese do nothing as Orion gasses his own people and even provide military aid in the form of intelligence and satelite imagery as Orion decides to attack Canada.
Attacking Canada suits their needs, because their intervention has backfired and now, by fighting communism they have created a new enemy, radical Islam.
Canada fights back with all they have and hate the Chinese even more, calling them the Big Satan.
Orion decides to attack Mexico, for Taquila he needs to fuel his Army, if not Canadian, then Mexican.
He talks to his old cold war mentors, they tell him to go along.
He does
Surprisingly, they bomb the US to pieces and encourage American resistance movements to rise against Orion.
Unfortunately letters of condolence is all they get from the Chinese as Orion crushes his opposition.
They do not even get the “little” aid Orion had during the war against Canada.
The US faces a UN embargo that kills the old, the young and the weak.
Adding insult to injury, the Chinese foreign minister declares on international TV that 5000000 dead American children have been “worth it”.
Because Burmese rebels crash a plane into the Bejing towers, the Chinese feel like blowing shit up again in the US.
Orion, knowing that his time has come, tries to make a deal to flee to Cuba, because he likes the weather and the women.
The Chinese though, cocksure that that will be a piece of cake invade the US and find out to their surpise that they
a) know nothing about the country
b) have not even close to enough translators
c) have made enemies in the course of the last decades.
So, my questions:
The average American would react how?
And how much of a difference would it make if said nation assured you that they are not really targetting civilians, they just die at an artificially accelerated rate.