Guardianx11x

Alright, the difference between can and can't and should or should-not is simple. Say we can stablize iraq with minimal funds and few lives lost. Ok, that is something we should do.
A different scenario. Say we can stablize Iraq, but the cost of american lives will be very high. It will take a very very long time. It will drain billions and billions of dollars. AND it will ruin or foreign relations with almost all our allies....

In both cases we CAN do what we set out to do. But whether we SHOULD do it is very questionable in the second case.

__________________

FatCobra

All right I see your point. But whether or not we "Should" really matter now? We can't leave, even Obama and Hillary know this, as neither would sign a Document that would Guarantee if they became president, that all our troops would be out of Iraq by 2012! So instead, we should talk about how we CAN finish it and then get our ass's out of there

Guardianx11x

Agreed.

__________________

mentholated

Just because Hillary, and Obama think we "can't pull out", means we can't? I'm sorry, but there is no reason other than the vested interest in destabilizing our own country that these people (the obama, hillary, and mccain and the corporations and groups that control them) have that prevents us from leaving. You don't seem to understand, along with a vast majority of people, that THEY DON'T WANT OUR TROOPS TO LEAVE. They WANT us to be vulnerable, and they fully know what will result from our impatience. Civil war, folks, resulting from economic crash and the violent overthrow of the federal government. Thats what these people want. Why do you think they've built prison camps capable of holding upwards of 2 million people each (in some cases, such as the alaska camp, the rest can hold quite a few thousand each).

Anyone planning to travel to the independent territories of Hawaii any time soon?

Scholars agree, the constitution grants no right of secession. But since the constitution appears to have been thrown out of the door with the economy, all bets are off.

Xen

First off I think, to end the war, we need accept that we over stepped our bounds there. For as much as Saddam was an evil tyrant to his people, he never outright went against us. When he invaded Kuwait, he actually contacted the State Department to see if we would be ok with it. It wasn't until there was a global outcry that we, the US, stepped in and orginized the world against him. Then all we did was push him back to within his borders and kept him from flying along the southern and northern borders. And, that betrayal is why Bush Sr. was almost assasinated while on tour in Kuwait. Most of the Arab nations agreed with our going into Afganistan to root out Al Quedia, including Iran, even though the Bush run media will say that they are funding them. I don't think I've heard Amedenhijad say once to get out of Afganistan, it's always been about Iraq. And now that he's sent 1 billion of Irans money to help rebuild Iraq, maybe we should look at the Arab Nations to set about helping instead of having a heavy handed approach to nation building. The US's track record of Nation building has been pretty dismal. I honestly think, Japan is about the best example of rebuilding and that was 50+ years ago. Korea, which we are technically at war with (only a cease fire was ever signed to end the Korean war), is still a divided nation and we oppose any thought of them reconsiling as long as North Korea has a dictatorship. Veitnam, the world learned how to beat us with this war. The US citizens do not want wars that last long or are drawn out without knowing we are making a difference. WWII, we had Pearl Harbor, to keep the nation focused, now we have 9/11. The difference is the idea that our government knew something and let it happened anyways. Clinton and Bush Jr, are both guilty of this. Clinton for having the papers and not initiating something about it, and Bush Jr, for ignoring the paperwork, and not stepping up.

::steps off the soapbox::

We fail at nation building cause too few are making too much $$$ from this war to really care.

__________________
Curiosity is going to kill this Cat.

ScratchMonkey

Can the Semper Fi Act extend to include all of California? Or at least the whole Bay Area? Don't send any Federal money into the area. And then refund us all our Federal taxes. The locals can then raise taxes to cover the lost funding, and remove DC's cut from the picture.

(No need to provide us with military protection. We'll just draft Code Pink. )

__________________
Sig

Kerostasis

Don't forget Israel! I don't know if he's mentioned Afghanistan or not, but he definately wants us and all the Jews out of Israel. Would you suggest we leave both Iraq and Israel to keep Ahmadinejad happy?

__________________

Xen

Don't even get me started with Isreal... Want to talk about the pot calling the kettle black??? Isreal learned some things from the Nazi's about dealing with their problems. If the world had not stepped in they would have turn all the Palistine controlled areas into literal concentration camps with 30 ft high fences with no gates. While I do not agree with the rocket attacks, sending in tanks to destroy a block worth of houses in retailiation, does not hurt the militants that fired the rockets, they hurt the average citizen who's house was leveled. And then, the idea of let's just starve out the militants by blockadeing everything, then forcing them to have to blow a hole in the wall next to Egypt to get simple emedities. We condone these actions by staying there, so we are just as bad as Isreal. Yea, PR wise we can critisize the Isreali government but, at the end of the day, we don't sanction or pull our troops out. This is because we know, Isreal would be attacked by most evey Arab nation.

As for pulling out, let's look at history for a second. When the British tried to impose their will in the middle east, it backfired on them. Because they did not know the culture at the time and how to deal with Islamic Leaders. The Nazi's knew something of the religion and were able to negotiate with them to allow the Nazi's to station troops there so that they could have a southern route into Russia. That attack never happened due to the losses in the winter prior to the planned southern offensive. Those troops where then moved to Northern Africa and given to Rommel to use. When the british finally pushed them off the continent, Rommel moved all the remaining Middle Eastern troops back to germany to try and repel the Allies. After it was all said and done, Isreal was created out of world sympathy for the Nazi slaughter. But, it displaced people who had been living there, the Palistinians. The Palistinians were promised that they too would have atleast part of their country back. Yet Isreal has renigged each and every time. And, continues to invade what they have ceded to the Palistinians, with settlements and military to protect these settlements. That's like your neighbor coming over and using your bedroom for themselves all the time, then calling the cops when you try and throw him out. We need to stop being the world police, it didn't work in Veitnam, it hasn't worked so well in South America, and its definately not working in Iraq.

__________________
Curiosity is going to kill this Cat.

Kerostasis

The gaza incident was really amusing, in a cynical sort of fashion. Gaza is a little piece of land with 3 distinct borders: A land access to Israel, a land access to Egypt, and a tiny piece of sea access which I think is controlled by Israel but can't remember for sure. At any rate, Gaza's access to the outside world exclusively has to pass through either Egypt or Israel. Egypt responded to this power by completely shutting off all contact, while Israel set up border crossings but heavily controlled what could go through them.

And so of course Israel is blamed by the world for blockading Gaza, while Egypt's role is completely forgotten until desperate palestinians broke into Egypt themselves. I'll bet you never even stopped to wonder why there was a "wall next to Egypt" to begin with. Egypt had been blockading Gaza for far longer than Israel!

(PS: emedities = "amenities" and renigged = "reneged".)

__________________

thegreatnardini

I think you're association between the actions of the Nazis and the Israelis is extremely distasteful. Yes the Israelis have been forceful, sometimes too much, in their personal War on Terrorism, but to say that if left unchecked they would build concentration camps is absurd and ridiculous. They are dealing with a level of terrorism that we can only dream about, and I guarantee you that if we had terrorists blowing up buses every day in your local cities America would be a much scarier place.

Are you sure it didn't work in Vietnam? If we hadn't gone in and had a more isolationist stance could the Russians have thought twice about invading us? Could the Cold War have gone hot, or have continued past the 1980's? Have we been attacked on American soil since 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq? We made the mistake of becoming an isolationist country during the 1930's, and look how that turned out. I'm not saying everything we do overseas is good, or has immediate positive effects either. Don't say these actions have been worthless when you don't take the time to think about what might have happened otherwise, or look at the bigger picture.

__________________

lTG-6thl TheGreatNardini

Xen

The barbed wire topped fences were already being built by the Israeli's back in beginning '07, and their intent was to wall the Palistinians up. They were stopped because the Isreali Supreme Court said it was unconstintutional, if their courts had not stopped them, it would have been a reality by now. This to me screams concentration camps, or inturnment camps that the US used on Japanese citizens here. All in the name of national defense. That is not how to end attacks, that sort of action only begs to have more dramatic action be taken by the Palistinians. Is it right to keep this cycle of violence going? Not at all, but to keep a blind eye to what one side does and condemn the other for doing the same sort of things is Naive and wishful thinking.

__________________
Curiosity is going to kill this Cat.

Guardianx11x

They are as much the agressor as they are the victim. Both countries are doing whatever they can short of an all-out war. People are suffering on both sides. Honestly, it's hard to justify a lot of the Israeli political decisions in the past 30 years. I do agree with Xen though, they were inches short of concentration camps.

Vietnam was a massive blunder in every sense of the word.

No, economic forces took care of Russia. The only reason there WAS a cold war is because of a percieved threat between the two nations, this has nothing to do with our policy of policing other nations.

Ok, quick question for you kiddies out there...WHY DID WE GET ATTACKED? does anyone know? It it because terroriests are really mean and dont like our loose lipped culture and super awsome economy?

(hint: no)

This question also made me a bit sad. It implies that us not being attacked has something to do with our actions in Iraq. I'm going to go ahead and say that it is unlikely. Iraq and the people responsible for 9/11 are DIFFERENT, in fact, they don't even like eachother. Sadness.

Nobody said anything about being isolationist. I think there is a happy medium between ignoring world issues...and covertly overthrowing countries government leaders and installing US friendly individuals (who usually turn on us). Nardini, the biggest problem with our foreign policy is that it is NOT long term. You're correct, our actions are not worthless...and that is the problem. If they were we wouldnt have caused so much damage. Unfortunatly we have had a large negative impact of quite a few foreign nations. We obviously shouldn't become isolationists (throwback to highschool civics class WOOT), but we definatly need to reevaluate our role in the world community.

__________________

thegreatnardini

I'm not saying Vietnam was successful. We didn't accomplish anything substantial by being there,and ultimately the communists were successful. I'm simply saying that by being in Vietnam we showed the rest of the world that we were serious about curbing communism.

I disagree. It is certainly feasible that the Russians, or any other nation for that matter, could have attacked us or our allies during the Cold War had the US not had such an aggressive foreign policy. The fact is it thankfully didn't happen so we will never know.

I agree, the Iraq War had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. At the very least it was because of Bin Laden's leftover grudge from our involvement in Afghanistan during the 1980's. But could it be possible that our aggressive stance has made terrorist groups and the countries that support them think twice about attacking us?

It could be a different thread, but I remember someone talking about what it would be like if we pulled all of our troops around the world to police our borders. Again, I'm not saying everything we do around the world is helping our situation, and far from it. Looking at what we know today it was obviously a mistake to go into Iraq. Will that mean in ten or twenty years the Middle East can't be a more stable place because of it? It's not gonna happen unless we do in fact reevaluate our stance both in Iraq itself and abroad, but if we don't back out and we help out Iraq properly we could salvage something good from this situation.

__________________

lTG-6thl TheGreatNardini

Ferris Bueller

This thread has largely deviated from the issue of the protesters in berkeley, so I'll bring it back with a little anecdote from this afternoon.

/hijack
So yeah, I almost got into a fight with a bunch of hippies today. Watching the daily show video in the other thread brought it to mind.

So what, you ask, might cause mild mannered Ferris to get into a fight with "peace loving" people? The fact that they're hypocritical morons. Story time:

So I'm walking across campus. It's spring break here, so it was mostly empty. Nice day, warm, clear skies, I was feeling pretty good about the day. Then I saw what looked like a bad situation forming. A couple ROTC cadets (AROTC im guessing from the BDUs) were strolling across campus, minding their own business and chatting with each other. A group of 7 hippies (the dreadlocks and tie dye were dead giveaways) started marching to intercept them from across the quad.

"Bad juju is brewing..." i think to myself, so I also set an intercept course from about a hundred yards away.

As I get close, the hippies get right in the path of the two cadets and start berating them. I heard the words "baby killer" and "mass murderer" directed at them and I started getting angry. The two cadets just shucked it off and tried to keep walking. The hippies held ground and blocked their path. The cadets tried to go around them, again blocked by the hippies. They try to turn around and walk the other way, the hippies encircle them. My walk picks up to a hobbly sprint (i may be using a cane, but my medication and 15 years of running makes me strong enough to get where I need to go).

These cadets are obviously trying to keep their cool, but each time they try to move away, they're blocked by the hippies. I'm about 30 feet away when I see one of the hippie chicks spit on one of the cadets when he asks to get by. Blood is now boiling in my veins.

I approach loudly. Everyone turns and goes wide eyed. I shove my way between two of the tree huggers and yell "back the f*$% off!". I see what appears to be genuine fear for a moment, it's all i need. I tell the cadets to head out and position myself between their retreat and the idiot seven. The moron squad has now realized that they outnumber my short gimpy self and they move to advance. I raise my cane sword style and point it at them. My tirade was the end of the altercation:

"Look here, you dumb pieces of ignorant crap: those two kids werent hurting you. They didnt even talk to you. They were walking harmlessly across campus and you attacked them for the clothes they're wearing. You have no idea what their ideals are, you dont know them, and you most certainly have no idea about how to make a statement. You, the ugly b#$^& in the pink, you spit on one of them and you're wearing a shirt with a peace sign on it. Do you know what hypocrisy is? Cause you're oozing it. Now, let me tell you how this ends: you will let them leave. You wont bother them again. Return to your mommy's backyard and fire up the bong if you want, but leave here and do it now. You're all idiots and I'd personally like to kick the crap out of each of you. So help me god, if you dont do what I just advised, the first person to take a step forward will be in the emergency room in 20 minutes." And I start tapping my cane on my shoulder like a baseball bat.

They turned around and walked away, genuinely thinking I was crazy. Maybe I am.

Protesting is one thing, but assaulting military personnel, whether it is verbally or physically, is something I wont stand for. Plus, it felt good to get to point out the idiocy of an entire group of people and threaten bodily harm if they continued with said idiocy at the same time. If they were really committed to their cause, they could have just bum rushed me and taken me down, but they were probably afraid that I might actually follow through.


This thread hijack brought to you by the president of the United Brotherhood of the Fraternal Order of "College Hippies are Morons", Orlando chapter. Our motto: "Screw with the people that protect our country and I'll personally thump your skull for ya."

__________________
|TG-6th|Ferris Bueller

TurkishDelight