Yup. Aldebaran’s first post was June 19, 2003
december’s last post was Aug 28, 2003.
As I said, if the USA had been invaded and someone had posted that you’d have said something different. As I pointed out before, he was also writing about how he felt - not something he was going to do. There IS a difference - if you would just try to put yourself in his shoes for a second.
I understand how he felt when his friend’s child was killed. Here in Belfast the child of a friend of mine was shot in the head when terrorists were holding up a shop where he was queuing up with his daddy. Fortunately he lived, though he lost an eye as the bullet passed right through it. All of their friends were incredibly shocked and angry - and I know some of them felt like retaliating. But they didn’t - and nobody really thought that they would - it was just an expression of anger.
To say that there is parity between the insurgents and US soldiers, that the difference between car bombers and the US military is just a matter of perspective, is nothing short of obscene.
Not when one side are terrorists who saw the heads off innocent civilians and the other side is trying to combat them. There’s a qualitative difference; you may not see it but I assure you it exists.
And Aldeberan’s expression of anger was on the side of the Iraqi version of the terrorists who shot that child.
There’s more of a parallel than you think. The gun that shot that little boy in Belfast was more than likely paid for by IRA [Noraid] sympathisers in the USA. At that time most of the terrorists here were financed by contributions from the USA.
My brother - a Royal Marine - did 4 tours of duty here where he was being shot at by guns financed by the same source.
And a lot of the weaponry used by the Iraqi insurgents comes from people in the US, too. So?
To label all the insurgents car bombers is logically equivalent to labelling all US troops torturers. Both assertions are incorrect.
Whaaaa?
Yes, for you. That was my point.
Yes, but again, for you. To someone like Aldebaran, it’s folks who are driving their tanks into innocent peoples’ homes, hauling innocents to jail and torturing them, invading their country on a flimsy excuse, etc. What I’m getting at is that if this is suppose to be an international board, people are going to be exposed to some pretty hair-raising viewpoints. No one is advocating allowing a thread that is saying things like “yeah, let’s meet here at this time to go out and kill American service people.” But it’s going to be unavoidable to come across folks who voice some solidarity with the insurgents. To warn him for what he said lowers the level of discourse to some sanitized G-rated Barney level. And to do so only for his viewpoint is hypocrisy.
If we’re here to fight ignorance, let’s not get squeamish, and for certain not selectively squeamish.
And do they openly collect money in pubs in the USA to buy weapons for Iraqis? I thought not.
They do it in mosques and through fraudulent Islamic charity organizations.
Which is quite unlike what the IRA had to do; since Irish Catholic cops and politicians turned a blind eye to their fund raising it could be done fairly openly and in English.
Sadly disappointed by your latest comments,** Gobear.**
Time and again we’ve gone over our respective attitudes towards the Iraq invasion and how we each deal with it and just when I think we’ve reached some common ground, boom…you show up wrapped in The Flag.
Simply don’t understand why you think it’s such a terrible crime to wish for – or even have thoughts or feelings about getting involved with those who actively oppose the invaders – an eventual defeat of the US Forces that are carrying out the very actions that you’ve come to realize as being rather daft. And I am being quite charitable in my description of same – but at any rate, why would you cheer stupidity?
For what is the ultimate meaning should the US “win” this war? Ponder that for a while and tell with a straight face if that’s the direction you want your country to be headed in. I have, and as much as I despise any unnecessary bloodletting at all, I happen to agree with Alde on this matter. And I also understand his passionate stand. It’s called ‘empathy’ and I am pretty sure I’d feel the same way under his circumstances. Besides, while I am certainly not of a religious bent, it is also rather easy to see how the whole neocon dream can be interpreted as a 21rst Century Crusade.
See, you were the aggressors and the ones that started a war for reasons only known to those that did. And I can’t, in good conscience, wish you any success under those circumstances.
Yes it’s painful, yes it is fucked-up to be wishing for the failure of your very own Armed Forces that have been placed in this quandary. But take the star-spangled-banner shades off for a second and direct your anger at those responsible for this mess to begin with.
Want to end the senseless killing of your own troops? Do you not understand that they shouldn’t have been there in the first place? Because if you do, you’d also realize that the best way to support them is getting them the hell home and making those that sent them there the object of your scorn. Like it or not, the great majority of those you broadbrush with the ‘terrorist’ label, are simply patriots fighting off an invading force. Yours, to be exact.
You seem to take great exception to the killing/targeting of innocents by the insurgents, but you appear to be oblivious to the fact that the great majority of innocents killed fall under the rubric of your own forces. That your side loves euphemisms such as “collateral damage” for the killing and/or targeting* of those very innocents does not change the fact that they are all just as dead.
Ball’s back on your court.
*Do you honestly think the top brass isn’t aware of what the actual results of their “smart bombs” and “targeted air-raids” are?
I remember way back in my college years taking an intro to philosophy class that sounded a lot like some of these arguments. Being older than the 18-19 year olds, I always got a chuckle out of the kids assuming philosophy was equal to “Yeah, but, what if…?” What if existence is false? What if truth is a lie? You say the sky is blue? What if my perception is different? And what is perception anyway? Real *Animal House * stuff, but profound to them because they were seeking TRUTH! And dammit, they were going to get it from the pHD if they had to break every bone in his body. Never mind they had no perspective that with age comes a world outside the campus and their parent’s basement.
I don’t know Alde personally, of course. He liked to dodge any question of where he was from (his right, but everyone here knows where I am) while acting like a pit bull towards anyone that seemed to touch a nerve. And, of course, not knowing what country he was in left us all guessing what may set him off without an opportunity to know where he was standing.
The 2 places I’ve seen WAG’d that sound reasonable are Iraq and Belgium. Belgium being a wild WAG as it seemed to be some European country, though indeterminate, and Iraq because of the animosity to US troops “invading his country”. While I never said I’d shoot his countrymen, he said he’d shoot my friends serving there. (How the ban was staved off that long, maybe I’ll never understand) Meanwhile I have an official warning for offering advice on making right an illegal use of software. With no mention of how to actually break the law asked about. But I digress.
Oh, RedFury, accusing gobear of being wrapped up in The Flag[sup]TM[/sup] is about as hollow as accusing Bricker, Brutus and myself of being fundraisers for Hillary Clinton.
gobear, though often on the other side of a political debate with myself, is still respected and , hopefully, still close enough for a handshake across the aisle.
I was looking for debate on this subject over here, but you bring up a very good point. Based on your post there were Catholic cops and politicians (in English-controlled land) fighting, well, basically, England.
Care to comment on that?
You say this as if it is an uncontestable fact. Maybe if you gave it some critical thought it might help you though.
Why is it obscene? I assume we are talking ‘moral parity’ here?
Now you refer first to ‘insurgents’, then to ‘car bombers’ as if the two were descriptive of the same group of people, although that’s not immediately obvious.
So, is it the fact of fighting an insurgency against an invading army that makes the insurgents morally inferior? I have trouble believing that you personally believe that an invaded populace does not have the right to resist an invading army (though you may), but I certainly don’t think that would be a common view.
Or is it the tactics of the ‘car bombers’ that lead you to believe them morally inferior to the ‘US military’. This is also not a particularly obviously easy argument to defend. The US military has made widespread use of very powerful explosive devices in areas where civilian casualties are inevitable. They argue that these weapons are deployed in a discriminatory fashion and that they attempt to avoid civilian casualties (although a number of civilian casualties in the tens of thousands suggests that this is somewhat optimistic). The ‘car bombers’ could likewise make some kind of argument that their targets are the occupiers of the country and their collaborators and civilian casualties are incidental.
As far as I’m concerned, there is no valid justification for anyone on this board to want to kill US troops. You don’t have to support George Bush to believe that.
While many of us lament and even curse US involvement in Iraq and the loss of life on both sides, it is becoming increasingly clear that most Iraqis do not wish to kill US soldiers. The Kurds have never shown any opposition to the Americans and the top religious leader of the majority Shiites, Sistani, is willingly cooperating with the American installed Iraqi goverment. They are however pissed off at the ineptitude of the American military campaign.
To claim you want to kill the “US invaders” allies you with the non Kurdish Sunni faction that heretofore have held control of the entire country in a manner that would make Al Capone proud. Thus Aldebaran either is an Arab Sunni in Iraq or a terrorist sympathiser. Either way he would be an enemy of Iraq or an enemy of the USA.
Truthfully I don’t believe he is either. Just the cleverest troll this board has ever witnessed.
Does this mean you think the insurgency is losing support in Iraq? That most Americans want to kill Iraqis?
I’m not sure either matters to this specific discussion. The taking up of arms has only rarely been decided by a democratic process. The point of this thread is whether there is a double standard towards advocating US military action and that of the insurgency/enemy of the moment.
And is that somehow worse than Noraid? As I said before, my brother was one of those troops being shot at by guns bought with money collected openly in the USA to support terrorists. I didn’t see much US support for OUR troops back then!
I think he is talking about catholic cops and politicians in the USA who turned a blind eye to Noraid’s activities in the USA - even though they knew that the money that was being collected bought armaments that terrorists would use here.