mswas, in a very small way I agree with you. One man’s terrorist is anothers freedom fighter, right? I despise Bush, I hate the war in Iraq…
That being said, I think there is a big difference between what the soldiers in Iraq are doing and what terrorists do. Imho, terrorists are cowards that hide behind masks rather than openly confronting their enemies. Big difference.
While I recognize there exists a technological difference, there is no excuse for making your primary targets civilians rather than the military, imho.
Huh. I would have thought it was a slam dunk to show moral relativism in US foreign policy. I guess not. The OP gets high marks for frothy rhetoric though.
And Soldiers are cowards who hide behind bureaucracy and claim to be “Just following orders” when they know deep down what we all know, that they are protecting Halliburton’s profit margins.
A soldier who is part of an invasion force, who kills people in THEIR OWN COUNTRY, is no better than a terrorist.
Airman Doors you can kiss my ass. You are no better than a terrorist. You are supporting an illegitimate occupation, you are either killing, or supporting the machine that kills Iraqis in their own country. You are the aggressor force, and they are defending their homeland. You are not defending me, I am not under attack. I was more likely to be killed in New York by other New Yorkers from 90-95, than I was by ANYONE from 2000-2005 including the 9/11 attacks. We had a lower murder rate in the first half of this decade than we have had EVER, and that includes the 3000 killed. Osama bin Laden is representing a people that we have backed into a corner. People that we in the Anglosphere have been dominating and fucking over for nearly two centuries. He is the Freedom Fighter, not you. You are the oppressor. If you were a real American, you’d put down your gun and take your court martial like a man.
It’s exactly because I love America that I need to tell you what the fuck is up, because you know it in your heart, you know that what we are doing is not right, that we are the aggressor force, that everything we’ve done is a shallow attempt to cover up the fact that all we are accomplishing is aggressive corporate expansion. Airman Doors, I want you to remember this in 15 years when they’ve cut your pension, when they’ve forgotten you just like they forgot the Vietnam vets. I want you to remember when your military benefits don’t mean squat. I hope you buy stock in halliburton, because it’s the only way you’re going to find a profit from your service.
You are NOT defending me, take solace in that. You are HURTING ME. The President said, I am either with him or with the Terrorists, I definitely ain’t with him, but don’t worry, this is as bad as it’s gonna get. I won’t do any worse than tell you straight up how I feel about this, and I will tell everyone how I feel about it.
This war is UNAMERICAN, and the President who’s profit margin you are fighting for is DESTROYING AMERICA. You should be marching on Washington not Baghdad. He’s working to bankrupt this country while expanding his regimes profit margin. They want to create an Empire, he wants to be Caesar, you scoffed at it in the other thread, but that’s what he’s trying to do. He wants to collapse the Republic and start the Empire, and you are part of his military that he’s using to do it. The thing is, he wouldn’t fight next to you, and he didn’t even want to buy you fucking armor until it became so politically unpopular that he had to. You’re a fucking fool. I don’t care how you romanticize and justify it to yourself. You should not be over there. You should be where the real Americans are IN AMERICA. If we were invaded, I’d be right fucking next to you with my rifle. If we weren’t toppling regimes left and right in order to create an underclass that is out of sight out of mind for the past 50 years, then there would be no terrorists attacking us. They don’t hate us for our Freedom, they hate us because we KEEP KILLING THEM AND STEALING THEIR RESOURCES!!!
So someone has to say it, you’re morally equivalent to a terrorist. You’re not better, you’re not worse. But what do you care, you don’t require my respect anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Keep on supporting the killing, the rape, the torture. Keep on telling yourself that Carlyle hasn’t been laundering money so your Bosses Daddy could sell weapons to both sides and keep them fighting for years and years. Keep telling yourself that your commander in chief feels more loyalty to you than the Saudis, but I’ll tell you right now he doesn’t. He values the lives of his Saudi buddies far more than he values yours. You are cannon fodder for him in his imperialist aims.
Eisenhauer the last President to truly lead an army warned against a Military Industrial Complex, he said it was the worst thing that could happen to America. Maybe it’s time people woke the fuck up and started listening. Just look at New Orleans if you want to see how much safer you are keeping us exactly. The bad guys are here, they aren’t over there.
The only person to ever say that to me besides you was my stepmother who was schizophrenic and liekd to beat me. Congratulations, you’re in good company.
I have had sex with multiple people. I had sex last night even.
But that aside. Go ahead and keep thinking that our imperialist aggression counts and bringing liberty to the world.
So what I want to know is when it’s wrong enough to stop fighting an unjustified war. At what point does disobeying your orders come into play? We all grew up being told about the Nazi soldiers not being justified because they were ‘just following orders’, and I’m not calling you a Nazi, you’re not a Nazi, but neither is Al Qaeda. But where that magical line drawn? When is fighting an unjust war too unjust? When does ‘just following orders’ become an unreasonable excuse? I’m not saying you are systematically terminating Iraqi lives, but how many Iraqis have to die before it becomes the individual soldiers responsibility for every person he kills? Where is that line when selling your soul for Halliburton’s profit becomes unpalatable enough for you to cross that line?
mswas, you’re going way too far with your generalizations.
I know some soldiers personally that truly believe they are there as liberators - a simple search of military blogs/journals would prove this. For someone that claims to be open minded, you’re being extremely close minded about this. Not everyone believes we’re there for Halliburton; some of them truly believe they are there to make the world a better place.
As for the rest of your theories, if you haven’t heard of Alex Jones you might be interested in him: Prison Planet and Info Wars.
Well I am all about being unrepentant for things. If you are really ok with what you’re doing that’s at least honest with yourself and others. I don’t think it’s desirable, but if you think it’s cool and are willing to accept that it’s a matter of your self-interest prosecuted via your national interest vs that of someone elses. I just don’t like the self-delusion that I see in so many Americans.
Nevertheless, there is a tiny grain of truth to what is being said. The grain of truth is that Americans are far more tolerant of collateral damage happening to others than they would be if it were happening to Americans. It’s hard to think of an analogy, but let me try this one out. Remember back in the day when the IRA was practicing hard-core terrorism against the British–nail bombs at funerals and in pubs, etc. Now it was well-known that a lot of their funding came from Irish nationalists in New York; and the US did a less-than-complete job of cracking down on this source of funding. Suppose the Brits got fed up with US inaction and decided to take matters into their own hands. Supposed they learned there was going to be a meeting of IRA terror funders at a pub in New York, and launched a missile raid on the pub. Inevitably, innocent bystanders in the pub are killed, and a missile goes off-target into a neighboring apartment building, killing more civilians. The Brits, let us suppose, merely reply that the war on terror knows no borders, that the death of the innocent victims was an unintended tragedy, etc., etc.–basically, all the things the US is saying now. Now imagine the US reaction in this case. It would be beyond outrage. There would be talk of war. But when, for example, the US does the same think in Pakistan, Americans merely shrug their shoulders and say “c’est la guerre.” It is unreasonable to expect others to react differently than we would, or to be more forgiving than we would be in similar circumstances.
You’re fun mswas. Can I use you at my daughter’s birthday? We need a clown.
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But I think there’s a rule against jokes in the BBQ, so perhaps your parody of a liberal hippy loony belongs in one of the other forums.
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Seriously, I think this comes in two parts. First, that we’re bombing in Pakistan. I’m not pleased about this… it reminds me of when we bombed Cambodia in Vietnam. On the other hand, this area of Pakistan is barely under control of Pakistan’s president, as I gather it, and mostly by leaving it alone. So AQ has been using it as a hideout. I do not know all the details. It is not impossible that the Pakistani president gave a silent OK, followed by public protest. It is also not impossible that we just bombed anyhow.
Secondly, that when we bombed a target, civilians died. Clearly, this seems to have been a valid target, as bombing targets go. And we do not yet have innocent/guilty seeking lasers that go ‘pew’. It’s not a good thing, but there are no safe zones for an AQ person to be, and people really should avoid them, or they may wind up dead. Sad. But part of the war.
As these things go, I am more upset by the first part than the second. If we bombed the Reichstag, innocent women and children would have died, too. Would that have been less moral? More moral?
There is no war. That is just bullshit Bush rhetoric and cannot under any circumstances be an excuse for bombing a village in an allied country. And it’s not bombs or nothing. You want to kill those people, send in troops or track them and pick them up later. Failing that, do nothing. It’s not like it’ll make a blind bit of difference to the terrorist threat anyway if you kill OBL and all his lieutenants.
Pakistan regularly performs military operations against Aq-Q in this region. It’s their country. We wouldn’t stand for a foreign country bombing us whatever the bad people they might kill along with the rest and the same standard applies to our actions.
There is, in fact, a war going on in Afghanistan, against AQ. It ousted the Taliban, and is currently attempting to unify the country. If it is not a war, it is a police action. How do you disagree with this?
I really wish people would stop burying the occasional good point in the midst of a boatload of illogical, paranoid, and almost incomprehensible gibberish.
I’m just here to tell you that other than tobacco, firearms, and oil, there ain’t much industry left in the US. If we have a military-industrial complex - it isn’t that complex at all.