[quote]666Rich wrote:
This is while they ignore the root causes, ie our funding to the iranian and iraqi governments during the 80’s during mass genocide on both sides, or funding of the afghan resistance and leaving the country in shambles. .[/quote]
Ya, maybe we should go back to 1980 and fix that!
or maybe you could stop being a moron and realize that NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO…there will be results you cannot forsee.
We helped the “afghan resistance” to defend themselves. What did we owe them beyond that? What COULD we have done…they didn’t want us there any more then they wanted Russia. You’re black and white simple view of the world must be comfortable…but it isn’t reality.[/quote]
I generally really like reading your posts, but I have to disagree.
You’re quite correct–there will ALWAYS be unforeseen consequences. To me however, this would encourage CAUTION when deciding on a course of action. As for the Afghan situation, there were a variety things we could have done to avoid having an entire generation of people in that country grow up knowing nothing but how to fight and simultaneously having an intense dislike for us. We did none of them. And now as a result we have problems tied to the region.
This is one of the reasons those purely pragmatic “self-preservation” arguments don’t carry a lot of weight with me in CERTAIN AREAS (not universally)----We probably did the right thing in aiding the resistance to Soviets there, but we dropped the ball completely immediately afterwards without thinking about things.
[quote]666Rich wrote:
I once again point to China, they are essentially using our own methods against us. While we station troops everywhere, China buys farming rights in African countries to feed its growing population and develop agro-tech in sub saharan africa that both countries can profit from.
They are doing the same with commodity rights. See, Chinas military, though huge is not stationed around the world. They are defeating us Economically through those aforementioned methods. [/quote]
The Chinese opened their country up to greater economic freedom after Tiananmen. Had they not, their government might very well have been toppled. They gave their people SOME freedoms and said “leave the governing to us.”
Hense, if you live in China, you may have a tad more freedoms, but if they tell you to move because they are building a dam across and over your neighborhood you better. If you do not, you will be incarcerated. And if you bitch about this, you can be murdered.
So their system still has a lot to be desired.[/quote]
As Valor said, they’re playing a great game right now. Their system leaves a shitload to be desired, but they are doing very well a number of things that we should be doing better. See the African farming rights point above. We did something similar in learning from WW1–after WW2 we figured out that the Germans were pretty pissed off about the first round and Allied emasculation of them. So we figured to help them rebuild after the 2nd round and poured lots of money in, along with infrastructure. Worked much better. That’s what China is doing in certain areas and it is working very well for them. We could do it as well, but we are wasting time and resources–and squandering political capital–on other things.
[quote]elano wrote:
The way I see it, having a big military is kind of like being jacked. Rarely anyone will fuck with you so you don’t have to use your strength. Everyone knows it’s the little weak guy that gets fucked with. One of the reason nobody has messed with out allies either. Big dude’s got their back. [/quote]
You couldn’t have said it any better. I just don’t understand why people have such a big problem with us standing up for ourselves.[/quote]
Because we are not standing up for ourselves. Our military is used for plunder. It’s OTHER people standing up for themselves that we have a problem with.
[/quote]
Who have we plundered?[/quote]
Please stop playing dumb. The Phillipines. Vietnam. China. India. Honduras. Iraq. Practically everybody in Latin America.[/quote]
To pluner would mean that we went thee are took something. What have we takin from The Phillipines.Vietnam, China, India, Honduras, or Iraq. What ever it is it sure aint oil.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
As Valor said, they’re playing a great game right now. Their system leaves a shitload to be desired, but they are doing very well a number of things that we should be doing better. See the African farming rights point above. We did something similar in learning from WW1–after WW2 we figured out that the Germans were pretty pissed off about the first round and Allied emasculation of them. So we figured to help them rebuild after the 2nd round and poured lots of money in, along with infrastructure. Worked much better. That’s what China is doing in certain areas and it is working very well for them. We could do it as well, but we are wasting time and resources–and squandering political capital–on other things.
[/quote]
Yep, I claimed their smart. They also stay out of politics. They don’t care who or what you do in your country, they’ll deal with you…of course, when the US deals with a dictator, it’s wrong, but for the sake of playing, when China does it, it’s smart.
Now, which country would you rather live in, the US or China?
Do you think we would still be so involved in the middle east if we werent importing as much oil? This is not a leftist environmentalist question, I am a geologist who will be working in the oil and gas industry. I see alot of potential for self sufficiency in resources through smarter exploration for petroleum, recovering lost reserves from old wildcat wells, alot more natural gas production and coal which we have abundances of. This as well as smarter renewables policy, and no i dont mean biodiesel or other “quick fixes” . But thats another topic.
[/quote]
See this is cool. Actual debate instead of name calling. Alright here goes:
I think we were attacked on 9/11 mostly because we arent Muslim and we are the biggest threat to radical Islam’s desire to take over the world. The FIRST attacks on us by Muslims back the 1800’s were because we arent Muslim.Check out that link about the Barbary Wars I posted earlier.I have to pleed ignorance on the Iran Contra Affair. I head about it when I was younger but I was too young to understand the whole thing and havent gone back to read about the whole thing. That being said I’m not a big fan of Ronald Reagan or Ollie North. I do know we funded Iraq when they were fighting Iran. We really should have got involved with in my opinion but we did. Oh, yes I;m a soldier and I’ve done two tours in Iraq. My Iraqi Arabic isnt that great but alot of the Sons of Iraq that I’ve talked to HATE Iran. Granted these SOI in particular were bigtime Saddam loyalists back in the day. I don’t know if it means anything. As far as I helping Afghanistan goes, we helped them and so did Saudi Arabia. But since we arent Muslim they are coming after us (as per this book, http://www.amazon.com/Looming-Tower-Al-Qaeda-Road-11/dp/037541486X and its not biased either).I really do think we are there to help defeat Al- Qaida and the Taliban.
I honestly do think we had good reason to go after Afghanistan 1st and Iraq second. Afghanistan was ground zero for terrorists and Iraq also had terror training camps AND Saddam had chemical weapons (he’s used them before) he also had all the yellow cake. Who’s to say he wouldn’t train and arm a terrorist on using it in a city in America? Darfur? I’d go and I wouldn’t have any problems with it either.
You know somthing/ I have no idea how we got the job of being the worlds police. Sometimes it pisses me off becuase we get involved with to much “drama”. Why does the governement get involved in some of this stuff. I think because of regulations by various governments commercial vessels arent allowed to carry guns. So in come the SEALs. I don’t know anything about the Yum Corp. but I bet they have a policy like Starbucks Coffee. They don’t go into bad neighborhoods.
Not only do I think oil is major reason why get involved with the Middle East BUT if it werent for oil we probably would have kick some ass in Saudi since they have all these connections with these radical mosques all over the world. If I understand it right Sarah Palin raised taxes on the oil business here in Alaska. I hope the economy holds up.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst thing that ever happened to the US military. The Soviet Union was the perfect excuse to engage in all those military operations which made us so rich. I guess that was just a side-effect, though.
Actually, we’ll never know. We’ve blocked the natural development of so many nations and forcibly put down so many popular movements that there’s no way to know.
[quote]You yourself said we are both guilty…what, exactly, are the Communists guilty of?
What are they guilty of?[/quote]
“What about THEM?! I don’t want to hear about us anymore, talk about THEM!”
I’m sure you can find lots of information about Soviet affronts. Look them up if you’re interested. But you’re still missing the point: just because they did it too doesn’t mean we were right.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
As Valor said, they’re playing a great game right now. Their system leaves a shitload to be desired, but they are doing very well a number of things that we should be doing better. See the African farming rights point above. We did something similar in learning from WW1–after WW2 we figured out that the Germans were pretty pissed off about the first round and Allied emasculation of them. So we figured to help them rebuild after the 2nd round and poured lots of money in, along with infrastructure. Worked much better. That’s what China is doing in certain areas and it is working very well for them. We could do it as well, but we are wasting time and resources–and squandering political capital–on other things.
[/quote]
Yep, I claimed their smart. They also stay out of politics. They don’t care who or what you do in your country, they’ll deal with you…of course, when the US deals with a dictator, it’s wrong, but for the sake of playing, when China does it, it’s smart.
Now, which country would you rather live in, the US or China?[/quote]
The US of course. I never said anything otherwise, don’t try to mis-characterize my argument.
[quote]666Rich wrote:
but from an ideological viewpoint it costs us way too much money, gets us into problems that we shouldnt have, and drains the budget.
[/quote]
Perfectly reasonable posts Rich, but don’t expect the war-mongers in this forum to agree with you.
You should post more often.[/quote]
Yeah, Rich, please post more about how the “ideological viewpoint” concerns itself with cost and budgets.
Let’s see if anybody besides Dustin applauds your nonsensical statements.
[/quote]
Here we are. War-monger number one steps to plate.
Please point out all of the “nonsensical statements”. You should have no problem doing this, correct?[/quote]
Sure.
What in God’s name do budget and cost considerations have to do with “ideological viewpoint?”
But I know; you were so excited to see someone else criticize the US that you didn’t pay attention to what he actually wrote, right?[/quote]
I would infer from the way the sentence was written that the U.S’s ideological viewpoint has cost us untold amounts of money, which he explained in the form of imperialist misadventures and enormous military spending. All of which are blatantly obvious.
Of course, it’s easier to wave the flag and be a good statist than to (gasp) criticize the government.
I have not punched someone outside of training or the line of duty in years. I’d make an exception for you. And did I say anything about giving anyone freedom? How about you let ME construct MY postions? As for your country side argument…I agree. Which is why we should kill every fucking living thing over there.
[/quote]
One of your more retarded, Trollish posts here.
And your internet tough guy act is extremely lame.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[The US of course. I never said anything otherwise, don’t try to mis-characterize my argument. [/quote]
I didn’t mis-characterize anything, just pointing out that regardless of their successes, they’re system is still screwed up as ever and I bet most of the people who live there would love to be someplace else, or ruled by someone else as well.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
I’m sure you can find lots of information about Soviet affronts. Look them up if you’re interested. But you’re still missing the point: just because they did it too doesn’t mean we were right.
[/quote]
So, you are admitting they plundered nations as well?
[quote]666Rich wrote:
Ok, does that mean we should have troops in saudi arabia, yemen , quatar, bahrian…etc? Germany? Japan?
[/quote]
No.
How do we know we’re not actually doing more de-stabilizing with our global military than stabilizing? For example, we blessed the Pakistani government as they developed their nukes because they’re an “ally.” Now, they’ve gone completely Islamic, even though they were pretty much that way before.
In the late 90s, we bombed Christian Serbs trying to defend the cradle of their civilization (Kosovo) from Albanian Muslim terrorists. More recently, we’ve helped broaden the “shi’a crescent” with our Iraq follies. Oh, and we’re still in Afghanistan going on 9 years attempting to make Muslim Pashtuns see the light and stop acting like 6th century savages. We should have just let India handle our Taliban problem like they wanted to.
No, this was actually a good idea, except that we funded it through drug trafficking. Getting the Muslims to shoot at one another is always in the best interests of the infidels. If they’re not shooting at each other, they’re shooting at us. 1300 years of Islamic history testifies to this.
[quote]666Rich wrote:
Ok, does that mean we should have troops in saudi arabia, yemen , quatar, bahrian…etc? Germany? Japan?
[/quote]
No.
How do we know we’re not actually doing more de-stabilizing with our global military than stabilizing? For example, we blessed the Pakistani government as they developed their nukes because they’re an “ally.” Now, they’ve gone completely Islamic, even though they were pretty much that way before.
In the late 90s, we bombed Christian Serbs trying to defend the cradle of their civilization (Kosovo) from Albanian Muslim terrorists. More recently, we’ve helped broaden the “shi’a crescent” with our Iraq follies. Oh, and we’re still in Afghanistan going on 9 years attempting to make Muslim Pashtuns see the light and stop acting like 6th century savages. We should have just let India handle our Taliban problem like they wanted to.
[/quote]
The cradle of their civilization is a battle that happened over 600 years ago that they lost!
[quote]666Rich wrote:
Ok, does that mean we should have troops in saudi arabia, yemen , quatar, bahrian…etc? Germany? Japan?
[/quote]
No.
How do we know we’re not actually doing more de-stabilizing with our global military than stabilizing? For example, we blessed the Pakistani government as they developed their nukes because they’re an “ally.” Now, they’ve gone completely Islamic, even though they were pretty much that way before.
In the late 90s, we bombed Christian Serbs trying to defend the cradle of their civilization (Kosovo) from Albanian Muslim terrorists. More recently, we’ve helped broaden the “shi’a crescent” with our Iraq follies. Oh, and we’re still in Afghanistan going on 9 years attempting to make Muslim Pashtuns see the light and stop acting like 6th century savages. We should have just let India handle our Taliban problem like they wanted to.
[/quote]
The cradle of their civilization is a battle that happened over 600 years ago that they lost!
PR, I dont think you read my posts entirely. I pointed out the destabilizing effects of our global military presence and the follies of the pakistan funding. This is what I am against. I agree with letting them shoot at each other, which is why we should not be over there.
So we should actively engage in covert regime change across the world? Ok, I assume you would love a domestic gestapo too. See the whole problem here is the culture of fear and the loss of individual autonomy it creates and many are way to blind to see it. British people and CCTV is a nice example.
Though this point was made in another post, nobody really gets anywhere by insulting anyone in these posts. Its pretty detrimental to making a solid point actually, as well as makes the insulter look like a fool.
[quote]666Rich wrote:
Ok, does that mean we should have troops in saudi arabia, yemen , quatar, bahrian…etc? Germany? Japan?
[/quote]
No.
How do we know we’re not actually doing more de-stabilizing with our global military than stabilizing? For example, we blessed the Pakistani government as they developed their nukes because they’re an “ally.” Now, they’ve gone completely Islamic, even though they were pretty much that way before.
In the late 90s, we bombed Christian Serbs trying to defend the cradle of their civilization (Kosovo) from Albanian Muslim terrorists. More recently, we’ve helped broaden the “shi’a crescent” with our Iraq follies. Oh, and we’re still in Afghanistan going on 9 years attempting to make Muslim Pashtuns see the light and stop acting like 6th century savages. We should have just let India handle our Taliban problem like they wanted to.
[/quote]
The cradle of their civilization is a battle that happened over 600 years ago that they lost!
You probably should have waited for lixy to say this before you chimed in to her defense. Congrats on making my “Ignore” list.
[/quote]
Well, since I am on your ignore list anyway I would like to point out what an utter fool you are for putting someone on an “ignore list” for pointing out that some obvious errors in your post.
I am sure that putting everyone on an “ignore list” who disagrees with your most obvious mistakes will help you achieve enlightement, or at least it will seem that way, with noone disagreeing with you and all.