Syria Uproar?

[DBCooper]

[quote]Quasi-Tech wrote:
DB, you asked a question, I’m answering it. The Geneva Convention was to provide protection for prisoners of war, to prevent torture, starvation, gas chambers, etc. You may not have an issue with a war being fought to win, but when women and children are murdered, raped, and then hung from the city walls and televised for the world to see, I think you might feel differently.

War is meant to be fought between men (and now women, yay equal rights/opportunity) and used to have a degree of honor. Look at how they used to fight in the Revolutionary / Civil War - stand in lines and fire into each other - not the best strategy, but it had to do with honor.

Sure, the US could win by many means. We have the tools, the technology (Starship Troopers obligatory, would you like to know more?), but we don’t use everything because our goal isn’t to eradicate a society, its to stop injustice. And the ends do not justify the means. There is reason for control of action, and as tempting as it sometimes may be, its a slippery slope that could lead to things like nuclear holocaust, epidemics, and genocide - which is why I’m guessing Jewbaca did the “…”[/quote]

First of all, I would not feel any differently if I saw women and children being hung from walls and all that shit. I don’t like war at all and that’s specifically because there are only two ways to fight it: the way the U.S. currently fights our wars (which drags things on longer than necessary and puts more of our troops in harm’s way as a result) and the way everyone who we fight seems to conduct war: to fight to win, inflict as much damage as possible, and end the enemy’s desire to fight. It’s ugly, period. I think that if we, the U.S., were to understand that war should ONLY be fought to win and not to maintain some bullshit form of “honor”, then we would realize that war is much more brutal and sadistic than the terms under which we currently conduct them. As a result, we might not get into nearly as many of these things if we understood that every time we DID go to war it would require us to stoop to barbaric levels, and perhaps even lower.

Your take on Civil War fighting methods is entirely inaccurate. It wasn’t about honor; it was about the fact that guns at that time had no rifling and were completely inaccurate and unreliable. By standing together the way they did, there would at least be this huge volley of firepower all at once and more people would be hit at the other end of it as a result. There’s no honor in warfare. That’s just some bullshit construct that people who start the wars but don’t fight in them perpetrated in order to make it easier to send men off to die for nothing. I’d rather be alive and without honor than dead and with honor. If you talk to people who have been to war, and I have many relatives who have fought in every major armed conflict since WWII and have talked with all of them about this very thing, they all understand that there are two goals: win and survive. Maintaining honor is for people who like to play video games and romanticize one of the ugliest, most vicious, brutal aspects of humanity.

We fight to stop injustice? Really? Are you THAT naive? We don’t fight to stop injustice at all. We fight to protect our interests, and justice isn’t one of them. If we fought to stop injustice, we wouldn’t be rattling the sabers every time Iran makes some technological nuclear breakthrough. We wouldn’t go into countries and tell them that we stand for democracy and all that fluffy bullshit and then turn around and back the powers that remove a democratically-elected leader/regime because we don’t like them (see: Iran in the early 1950’s, Egypt today, etc, etc).

There are definitely reasons to control our actions, but NOT when it comes to war. How would you like to be the one who tells the mothers of fallen American soldiers that their sons died halfway around the world because the U.S. had to control its actions, that we had to maintain honor, that maintaining a fucking IMAGE is more important than her kid’s life?

[DBCooper]

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
I can’t wait for Push to come in here and say that we can’t just sit on our hands and let the area devolve, that we have to do something! That’s the attitude he always mocks whenever some sort of gun-control thread pops up. [/quote]

Bertie my darling, I just now saw this post. I’m flattered you thought of me first but I’m inclined to think more or less like you do on this subject.

So I reckon you’re going to have to re-figure the psychological profile you have on me in your file.[/quote]

Damnit. I was hoping to bait you into some sort of discussion on the issue, but they’re never as fun when we’re in agreement on an issue.

[DBCooper]

Also, Quasi-Tech, since according to you war is to be fought under some sort of mythical honor code, how do you feel about the American Revolution? We fought without “honor” in that conflict, I suppose, since we used a form of guerrilla warfare much of the time. Those were the terms under which we could win. If we were to follow your way of thinking we’d have been crushed by the British and we’d all be eating fucking crumpets and washing them down with Earl Grey tea. Thank God we had no honor back then.

[Quasi_Tech]

I didn’t say I believed we go to war to stop injustice… I meant that is the message our government send to the public and other nations to justify the act. Do you think America would have signed on to go to the Middle East prior to 9/11? There was resounding support afterwards.

One of the greatest victories for the US was the use of militias and gorilla tactics. We no longer stood on the line because our soldiers weren’t as well trained, the British had the best standing army at the time. Using the same weapons as when “standing on the line” we gained an advantage by not playing their game.

The US tries to engage in just wars because it saves face with the rest of the world. Like it or not, you and I are a tool, an item, in the machine of war. The welfare/well-being of our soldiers is not a concern of those in power, as you said, influence/politics/power are. So soldiers are held to rules required. And you may not have a problem with distasteful war, I will again point my finger at the Holocaust. Perhaps we should just go genocidal and wipe out everyone that doesn’t agree with us, by any means necessary. I’m sure we could cook up a nice disease that would flourish in an arid climate, and wipe out the bulk of their populace in a matter of months. When they come begging for help because they can’t create an antidote, we welcome them with open arms and then kill them when they think we’re saving them - again by injection of an “antidote.”

All of that, with a war won, and without putting troops on the ground or spending millions on armor, ammo, and logistics. What would the rest of the world do in response? You should be careful what you wish for, it isn’t hard to get inside our borders and although other’s technology may not be on par with the “Great USA” it just takes a quick and dirty to get the job done, or the ball rolling.

There is much more at play and at stake here than “fighting to win.” The uneducated don’t understand that, and those we fight against often don’t, because they lack a view of the bigger picture, they are stuck in the “now”.

[Quasi_Tech]

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
There are definitely reasons to control our actions, but NOT when it comes to war. How would you like to be the one who tells the mothers of fallen American soldiers that their sons died halfway around the world because the U.S. had to control its actions, that we had to maintain honor, that maintaining a fucking IMAGE is more important than her kid’s life?
[/quote]

I wonder what would make a mother prouder… that her son was an honorable soldier who died on the lines defending freedoms of those who can’t (whether that’s the real reason or not) or that her son returns home, victorious with ear and tongue souvenirs around his neck, having raped every village and pillaged his way because it suited him. Shooting the children of other mothers simply because he was the dominating force and there’s no reason to not act like an animal. In my family at least, it would be the former over the latter.

In which case you might as well remove the words honor, respect, and bravery from all of the armed forces commercial. Just say, “Do you like to rape and pillage? Is murder your thing? Don’t kill Americans where you go to jail, join the military, we’ll satsify all the bloodlust you could ever desire!” I think you’d get a different demographic.

The reality is, that being in the military is a high risk job. When you sign the paper, you are signing your life over to Uncle Sam. It is up to those in charge/power to make the decision how to “spend” your life. That’s reality, and its why mothers cry when their sons “sign on” and why they have incentives for joining. Just like being a cop, fireman, or jailor all has risks, so does this. That is the hard, cold truth. They could have developed many things by now to better help soldiers, hell we could just use drones to fight wars, but a man’s life is “cheaper” than that equipment and maintaining it. Tell that to the families of the fallen soldiers, because that’s exactly the truth of the situation.

[on_edge]

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Here’s something I’ve never understood. Why the FUCK do we care if armies start gassing the shit out of people, even civilians? We napalmed half the Vietnamese civilian population into oblivion, we’ve used Agent Orange all over the place, we’ve used an atomic bomb twice, we blow people into fucking smithereens all the time.

Listening to some of these dumbfuck politicians on both sides of the aisle scream and yell about gassing people comes across like some sort of deleted scene/outtake from Dr. Strangelove. When you’re blowing people up who cares how you do it? What’s the difference between napalm, 5000lb bunker busters, Agent Orange or anything type of weapon meant to kill massive amounts of people at once?[/quote]

It’s like the crossbow. It just works way too good.

What else could you possibly use to wipe out an entire regions population with minimum damage to the existing infrastructure?

Thing is, nobody likes when one gets shot back at you.

This whole situation is messed up, but seems like part of a much longer term strategy. The big push from the outset of the wars in Iraq was to the north west toward Syria, which became the staging area for insurgents to fight against the US in northern Iraq. Pushing back to their source brings everything right into Syria.

Then, if you look at it on a map, it looks like the US has been cleaving a big swath of land right through to the Mediterranean sea and the only thing in the way now is Syria. On the other side of Iraq is Afghanistan, which McChrystal has admitted requires a long term strategy of assimilation and troop dedication. Pakistan has been wishy washy and duplicitous in their relations with the US, but there is a big gulf just below them that we use for support from the naval fleet.

So it all forms a big pincer, with Iran right between the claws. Sounds nuts for sure, but this seems much more like a very old strategy of siege warfare and cultural assimilation than just beating up a bunch of little countries run by crazy dictators.

But I’m not a geopolitical guy or war strategist, so that could all be a bunch of crap.
[/quote]

If you are correct, the big flaw is we’ve completely failed at the assimilation part. All our efforts in the middle east over the last 20 years has only rallied more anti-american sentiment. I’d rather we just stayed out of everything and let them do whatever the hell the want to do. (Except back Israel. I’m all for backing Israel because it’s just plain fun watching that tiny country bitch slap the whole region at every turn)

[Quasi_Tech]

I think that all of this “in-fighting” is silly. When the aliens show up and start kicking ass, we’re going to have to patch things together real quick. I oft wondered if indeed we were attacked by an extraterrestrial force, would the world be able to put its differences aside to try and win? And if we were able to do so, after defeating the aliens, would we stay at peace knowing they could come back, or return to our in-fighting as a species?

[DBCooper]

[quote]Quasi-Tech wrote:
I didn’t say I believed we go to war to stop injustice… I meant that is the message our government send to the public and other nations to justify the act. Do you think America would have signed on to go to the Middle East prior to 9/11? There was resounding support afterwards.

One of the greatest victories for the US was the use of militias and gorilla tactics. We no longer stood on the line because our soldiers weren’t as well trained, the British had the best standing army at the time. Using the same weapons as when “standing on the line” we gained an advantage by not playing their game.

The US tries to engage in just wars because it saves face with the rest of the world. Like it or not, you and I are a tool, an item, in the machine of war. The welfare/well-being of our soldiers is not a concern of those in power, as you said, influence/politics/power are. So soldiers are held to rules required. And you may not have a problem with distasteful war, I will again point my finger at the Holocaust. Perhaps we should just go genocidal and wipe out everyone that doesn’t agree with us, by any means necessary. I’m sure we could cook up a nice disease that would flourish in an arid climate, and wipe out the bulk of their populace in a matter of months. When they come begging for help because they can’t create an antidote, we welcome them with open arms and then kill them when they think we’re saving them - again by injection of an “antidote.”

All of that, with a war won, and without putting troops on the ground or spending millions on armor, ammo, and logistics. What would the rest of the world do in response? You should be careful what you wish for, it isn’t hard to get inside our borders and although other’s technology may not be on par with the “Great USA” it just takes a quick and dirty to get the job done, or the ball rolling.

There is much more at play and at stake here than “fighting to win.” The uneducated don’t understand that, and those we fight against often don’t, because they lack a view of the bigger picture, they are stuck in the “now”.[/quote]

No, you did not say that stopping injustice was the message being sent. You said that our GOAL was to stop injustice, not that that was the face we put on it.

You are missing the bigger point I am trying to make. I am not advocating genocidal warfare at all. I am simply stating that unlimited, all-out, TOTAL warfare is the only logical way to conduct a war, since the primary goal of a war is to WIN the war and defeat the enemy. It is pointless to defeat an enemy temporarily if that means they simply regroup and come at us again in a few years, a generation later, whatever. If we understand that basic reality, we will fight wars in a way that completely destroys the enemy’s will and ability to wage war against us in the future.

But the bigger point is that we MUST realize that this is the only proper way to conduct war. We then need to ask ourselves when we face situations like Afghanistan, Syria, Germany/Japan/Italy, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and so on if we are willing to go to the steps I have previously laid out in order to win. If we are not willing to take those steps then we should avoid war at all costs, because to go to war without that mindset is to go to war without making victory the overwhelmingly highest priority. If we go to war without that mindset then we go to war with the incorrect motivation. Of the wars that I listed, which ones did we accomplish our goals in? WWII. Why? Because we took the step that we are no longer willing to take. We did not eradicate Communism from Vietnam, we did not drive it from Korean soil, we have not driven Islamic fundamentalists/al Qaeda completely out of Iraq or Afghanistan and we will not do that in Syria either with our current mindset.

I am simply pointing out reality without advocating it. War is brutal and destroys lives. I am not advocating brutality and destruction, only pointing out that we need to understand this fundamental reality and base our entry into wars/conflicts/insurgencies/etc. on that basic fact and not on some ethereal honor or need to stop injustice. If we DO enter into these things, THIS is the way we need to conduct ourselves. That doesn’t mean that I advocate entry into these things in and of itself, a distinction you are apparently missing.

[DBCooper]

[quote]Quasi-Tech wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
There are definitely reasons to control our actions, but NOT when it comes to war. How would you like to be the one who tells the mothers of fallen American soldiers that their sons died halfway around the world because the U.S. had to control its actions, that we had to maintain honor, that maintaining a fucking IMAGE is more important than her kid’s life?
[/quote]

I wonder what would make a mother prouder… that her son was an honorable soldier who died on the lines defending freedoms of those who can’t (whether that’s the real reason or not) or that her son returns home, victorious with ear and tongue souvenirs around his neck, having raped every village and pillaged his way because it suited him. Shooting the children of other mothers simply because he was the dominating force and there’s no reason to not act like an animal. In my family at least, it would be the former over the latter.

In which case you might as well remove the words honor, respect, and bravery from all of the armed forces commercial. Just say, “Do you like to rape and pillage? Is murder your thing? Don’t kill Americans where you go to jail, join the military, we’ll satsify all the bloodlust you could ever desire!” I think you’d get a different demographic.

The reality is, that being in the military is a high risk job. When you sign the paper, you are signing your life over to Uncle Sam. It is up to those in charge/power to make the decision how to “spend” your life. That’s reality, and its why mothers cry when their sons “sign on” and why they have incentives for joining. Just like being a cop, fireman, or jailor all has risks, so does this. That is the hard, cold truth. They could have developed many things by now to better help soldiers, hell we could just use drones to fight wars, but a man’s life is “cheaper” than that equipment and maintaining it. Tell that to the families of the fallen soldiers, because that’s exactly the truth of the situation.[/quote]

You’ve obviously never lost anyone close to you in warfare. Worrying about how well your child will adjust to the “real world” after committing atrocities in warfare is what the parents of dead soldiers like to call “a nice problem to have”.

And a man’s life is actually not cheaper than a drone. If you do even some cursory research into the cost of training, equipping and feeding a soldier you’ll find that it far outweighs the cost of a drone, since a drone not only replaces a pilot, but actually takes the place of several pilots. The armed forces have been using large remote-controlled vehicles to detonate IEDs instead of sending out soldiers to inspect them a la The Hurt Locker for years now. I live within a few blocks of Chico State, where their mechatronics department has been producing them for the Armed Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq for years, at a cost of about 3K per RC vehicle. If you read literally any Popular Mechanics magazine from the last 6-8 years you’ll see that the Pentagon is actually making a huge push toward replacing soldiers with robots and whatnot. They envision a future in which each soldier literally has their own R2 unit like Luke Skywalker and R2-D2.

Why is this? Mostly for economical reasons, but I’d like to think it’s also so that it becomes easier to kill a LOT of people without all the collateral, psychological damage that humans incur when doing so. The My Lai Massacre would have been much cheaper for the Army if a few robots had killed those 500 people instead of a few dozen soldiers who then needed massive therapy, prescription drugs, etc., etc., all costs which the Army incurred. Robots don’t get PTSD, humans do. And in ways both direct and indirect the Armed Forces pays for PTSD.

[DBCooper]

[quote]on edge wrote:

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Here’s something I’ve never understood. Why the FUCK do we care if armies start gassing the shit out of people, even civilians? We napalmed half the Vietnamese civilian population into oblivion, we’ve used Agent Orange all over the place, we’ve used an atomic bomb twice, we blow people into fucking smithereens all the time.

Listening to some of these dumbfuck politicians on both sides of the aisle scream and yell about gassing people comes across like some sort of deleted scene/outtake from Dr. Strangelove. When you’re blowing people up who cares how you do it? What’s the difference between napalm, 5000lb bunker busters, Agent Orange or anything type of weapon meant to kill massive amounts of people at once?[/quote]

It’s like the crossbow. It just works way too good.

What else could you possibly use to wipe out an entire regions population with minimum damage to the existing infrastructure?

Thing is, nobody likes when one gets shot back at you.

This whole situation is messed up, but seems like part of a much longer term strategy. The big push from the outset of the wars in Iraq was to the north west toward Syria, which became the staging area for insurgents to fight against the US in northern Iraq. Pushing back to their source brings everything right into Syria.

Then, if you look at it on a map, it looks like the US has been cleaving a big swath of land right through to the Mediterranean sea and the only thing in the way now is Syria. On the other side of Iraq is Afghanistan, which McChrystal has admitted requires a long term strategy of assimilation and troop dedication. Pakistan has been wishy washy and duplicitous in their relations with the US, but there is a big gulf just below them that we use for support from the naval fleet.

So it all forms a big pincer, with Iran right between the claws. Sounds nuts for sure, but this seems much more like a very old strategy of siege warfare and cultural assimilation than just beating up a bunch of little countries run by crazy dictators.

But I’m not a geopolitical guy or war strategist, so that could all be a bunch of crap.
[/quote]

If you are correct, the big flaw is we’ve completely failed at the assimilation part. All our efforts in the middle east over the last 20 years has only rallied more anti-american sentiment. I’d rather we just stayed out of everything and let them do whatever the hell the want to do. (Except back Israel. I’m all for backing Israel because it’s just plain fun watching that tiny country bitch slap the whole region at every turn)
[/quote]

Therein lies the rub, though. How do we assimilate the region while at the same time blindly backing up the most hated entity in the region? If there is one thing that pretty much everyone in the Middle East has in common, it’s their hatred of Israel.

[Quasi_Tech]

You asked why things are the way they are, I explained them. I’ve had plenty of family serve in the various branches of the armed forces. Thankfully, they all came home. One died here along with his entire family, on behalf of a kind wreckless driver. My “lack of loss” has no impact on what I’ve said. Its an emotional and difficult topic, but it doesn’t change that the value of life of a soldier as viewed by those in charge, is not the same as the value of life of that soldier’s family. Its always been that way. Good men/women die to serve lesser causes.

My question to you then, is where do you draw the line? What qualifies as “all out war” but still isn’t ok to do? Its shades of grey and I don’t think anyone here is qualified to make those decisions.

[DBCooper]

[quote]Quasi-Tech wrote:
You asked why things are the way they are, I explained them. I’ve had plenty of family serve in the various branches of the armed forces. Thankfully, they all came home. One died here along with his entire family, on behalf of a kind wreckless driver. My “lack of loss” has no impact on what I’ve said. Its an emotional and difficult topic, but it doesn’t change that the value of life of a soldier as viewed by those in charge, is not the same as the value of life of that soldier’s family. Its always been that way. Good men/women die to serve lesser causes.

My question to you then, is where do you draw the line? What qualifies as “all out war” but still isn’t ok to do? Its shades of grey and I don’t think anyone here is qualified to make those decisions.[/quote]

I don’t think ANY war is OK when it is fought with something other than WINNING as the primary goal. You can have all these other goals like spreading democracy, stopping injustice, maintaining honor and so on, but you can’t accomplish those secondary goals when you lose.

Speak for yourself about qualifications, but as far as I’m concerned I am more than qualified to make those decisions because I have a functioning brain capable of using basic logic and critical thinking skills. IF we go to war, then I don’t really think anything that contributes to victory as quickly as possible and with as little loss of your own soldiers’ lives as possible is beyond reproach. I do, however, think that war itself is not OK. But once that line is crossed, all morality that doesn’t contribute to victory should be thrown right out the window. Otherwise you get situations like Vietnam, where the writing on the wall was ignored for years before we got out of there. We could have ended that war really fast by bombing all the levees that surround Hanoi and its suburbs and flooding the entire area. It would have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, perhaps millions, but we would have won the war and it probably would have saved the lives of most of the 56,000 American boys who died there. We could drop small-yield, tactical nukes in Afghanistan or Iraq, we could cover all of al Qaeda’s poppy fields and the surrounding areas with Agent Orange with a few drones and keep thousands of Americans out of harm’s way as a result. To do so randomly would be wrong; to do so in war is not wrong because it contributes to victory.

Again, that doesn’t mean that war itself is OK. But when war is undertaken, and it IS undertaken at some point, it wrong to fight it in any other way. Only the losers in war will talk about “honor” and “respect” and “code” and all that bullshit. It’s simply a way to make them feel better about themselves for losing. It’s slave morality in its simplest form. While I don’t agree with war in and of itself, the fact is that we DO go to war, and when we do we should do so with Master Morality guiding us, not slave morality. You seem to have problems making that distinction. The way we conduct war isn’t about right or wrong, honor vs shame, justice vs injustice and so forth; it’s about winning vs losing, period. The choice between war and not going to war may be about right vs wrong, but once war is underway all that other shit goes out the window. I really don’t know what’s so hard to grasp about that basic distinction.

[kinein]

Saudi Arabia has a military, so does Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, etc

Whats the point of training, arms, and selling them jets tanks etc if they aren’t going to use it.

Whats the point of the Arab League?

France has already taken the initiative in another country to stomp on Jihadi’s without US boots on the ground or US warships in theater.

Why does the US have to be THE policeman?

We issue a travel warning for Syria.

Australia Prime Minister issues a travel warning for the US.

Does anybody see the irony here?

[Jewbacca]

[quote]kinein wrote:
Saudi Arabia has a military, so does Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, etc. Whats the point of training, arms, and selling them jets tanks etc if they aren’t going to use it.
[/quote]

No country can really project power much beyond their borders like the USA and, to a lesser extent England and then to a much lesser degree France. In short, yes, the countries you listed have able fighting forces, but they are really limited to protecting their country.

China, India, and Russia are trying to get force projection, but really are 3rd tier in comparison — the infrastructure is not there.

The USA’s transport and logistics set up is second to none; it’s modeled after the Roman approach of seriously forward bases, on the theory it is better to fight elsewhere than back home.

[SkyzykS]

[quote]on edge wrote:

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Here’s something I’ve never understood. Why the FUCK do we care if armies start gassing the shit out of people, even civilians? We napalmed half the Vietnamese civilian population into oblivion, we’ve used Agent Orange all over the place, we’ve used an atomic bomb twice, we blow people into fucking smithereens all the time.

Listening to some of these dumbfuck politicians on both sides of the aisle scream and yell about gassing people comes across like some sort of deleted scene/outtake from Dr. Strangelove. When you’re blowing people up who cares how you do it? What’s the difference between napalm, 5000lb bunker busters, Agent Orange or anything type of weapon meant to kill massive amounts of people at once?[/quote]

It’s like the crossbow. It just works way too good.

What else could you possibly use to wipe out an entire regions population with minimum damage to the existing infrastructure?

Thing is, nobody likes when one gets shot back at you.

This whole situation is messed up, but seems like part of a much longer term strategy. The big push from the outset of the wars in Iraq was to the north west toward Syria, which became the staging area for insurgents to fight against the US in northern Iraq. Pushing back to their source brings everything right into Syria.

Then, if you look at it on a map, it looks like the US has been cleaving a big swath of land right through to the Mediterranean sea and the only thing in the way now is Syria. On the other side of Iraq is Afghanistan, which McChrystal has admitted requires a long term strategy of assimilation and troop dedication. Pakistan has been wishy washy and duplicitous in their relations with the US, but there is a big gulf just below them that we use for support from the naval fleet.

So it all forms a big pincer, with Iran right between the claws. Sounds nuts for sure, but this seems much more like a very old strategy of siege warfare and cultural assimilation than just beating up a bunch of little countries run by crazy dictators.

But I’m not a geopolitical guy or war strategist, so that could all be a bunch of crap.
[/quote]

If you are correct, the big flaw is we’ve completely failed at the assimilation part. All our efforts in the middle east over the last 20 years has only rallied more anti-american sentiment. I’d rather we just stayed out of everything and let them do whatever the hell the want to do. (Except back Israel. I’m all for backing Israel because it’s just plain fun watching that tiny country bitch slap the whole region at every turn)
[/quote]

Maybe, maybe not. The huge section to the west cleaves off a bunch of countries that we have been historically pretty chummy with. Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, not necessarily our best friends, but at least good enough to do business with.

I’d bet a trillion internets that there are deep gas shale beds underneath that oil basin, just like the ones on this continent.

[UtahLama]

Yet another case of the U.S. deciding to depose a greedy, mean, asshole dictator.

To allow “free” elections.

So that the vastly muslim majority can elect a government that hates the West and furthers their overall goal of a Muslim world.

Oh and we spend billions that we have to borrow from China in the process.

It could easily end up as WWIII with China and Russia looming.

Sounds like a good idea…let’s do it.

/Obama’d

[kinein]

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:

[quote]kinein wrote:
Saudi Arabia has a military, so does Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, etc. Whats the point of training, arms, and selling them jets tanks etc if they aren’t going to use it.
[/quote]

No country can really project power much beyond their borders like the USA and, to a lesser extent England and then to a much lesser degree France. In short, yes, the countries you listed have able fighting forces, but they are really limited to protecting their country.

China, India, and Russia are trying to get force projection, but really are 3rd tier in comparison — the infrastructure is not there.

The USA’s transport and logistics set up is second to none; it’s modeled after the Roman approach of seriously forward bases, on the theory it is better to fight elsewhere than back home.[/quote]

Good, very good points.

[UtahLama]

[quote]kinein wrote:

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:

[quote]kinein wrote:
Saudi Arabia has a military, so does Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, etc. Whats the point of training, arms, and selling them jets tanks etc if they aren’t going to use it.
[/quote]

No country can really project power much beyond their borders like the USA and, to a lesser extent England and then to a much lesser degree France. In short, yes, the countries you listed have able fighting forces, but they are really limited to protecting their country.

China, India, and Russia are trying to get force projection, but really are 3rd tier in comparison — the infrastructure is not there.

The USA’s transport and logistics set up is second to none; it’s modeled after the Roman approach of seriously forward bases, on the theory it is better to fight elsewhere than back home.[/quote]

So how did the 6-7+ Arab countries attack Israel in the Arab-Israel War 4 decades ago? [/quote]

Not effectively?

[kinein]

[quote]UtahLama wrote:

[quote]kinein wrote:

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:

[quote]kinein wrote:
Saudi Arabia has a military, so does Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, etc. Whats the point of training, arms, and selling them jets tanks etc if they aren’t going to use it.
[/quote]

No country can really project power much beyond their borders like the USA and, to a lesser extent England and then to a much lesser degree France. In short, yes, the countries you listed have able fighting forces, but they are really limited to protecting their country.

China, India, and Russia are trying to get force projection, but really are 3rd tier in comparison — the infrastructure is not there.

The USA’s transport and logistics set up is second to none; it’s modeled after the Roman approach of seriously forward bases, on the theory it is better to fight elsewhere than back home.[/quote]

So how did the 6-7+ Arab countries attack Israel in the Arab-Israel War 4 decades ago? [/quote]

Not effectively? [/quote]

Hahaha.

[Uncle_Gabby]

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Your take on Civil War fighting methods is entirely inaccurate. It wasn’t about honor; it was about the fact that guns at that time had no rifling and were completely inaccurate and unreliable. By standing together the way they did, there would at least be this huge volley of firepower all at once and more people would be hit at the other end of it as a result.[/quote]

I’m going to stay out of this pissing match and just swoop in to shoot down this one part of your post. The vast majority of soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War fought with rifled muskets that were very accurate and reliable. I hunt with a reproduction sometimes with which I have killed deer at well over 100 yards shooting off hand. There are reports of sharpshooters scoring kills at 600+ yards with standard issue rifles (see the excellent Model 1851 Enfield rifle). Casualties were horrible because technology usually outstrips tactics.

The main reason infantry fought in densley packed lines and squares for centuries was to protect them from calvary. No need to get into a long lecture on that.

But I agree with your overall point that honor is usually a concept used by those in power to send others off to die for causes they have no stake in.