1.  Afganistan-We did what we came to do, weakened Alquada, now it is time to help the people rebuild. 2.Militirism-peace through strength.  It is not right to use force without provocation, but a strong military needs to be maintained in case of attack or to stop a greater evil then war. 3.Americasn Military-Not back up from the pit Clinton through it into, but getting there.
 
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[army] Fishman
FM/LCRW JMac/Aegis 3-4/Aegis 12/(=A=)(MC1)
"I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be unfair in my favor?."
"Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused."
Tall, dark, handsome, and all around stud.

The whole stupid subject in general: I watched the Grammys last night on TV. I saw some folk singer singing about "That sad September Day". I suddenly became deeply ashamed to be from a rich, western country. Over 1 million Iraqi children have died since the US and UK imposed sanctions on Iraq after the Gulf War. We won't let medicine into the country, because it could apparently make weapons of mass destruction. We won't let food into the country (Iraq imports about 60% of its food.. at least it DID, before the Gulf War), because it could apparently feed an army which will take over the world. We won't let seeds into the country, because then they could grow coffee, sell it for profit, and buy weapons of mass destruction. 1,000,000 children. That doesn't even begin to show the real numbers.. the innocent men and women who have died through our own greed. 10,000 Americans. And they get a song about them. The guy who sang the song won the Best Album grammy.. where is the justice in this world? The estimate of the number of Afghanistani civilians who died since September the 11th through disease, famine and, of course, bombing, came out a few weeks ago. You know what it was? 30,000. Three times as many who died on September the 11th. 30,000 lives we could have saved. 1,000,000 lives we could have saved. Every single person in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and any other rich nation, has blood on their hands. Every single one of them should be ashamed. I know I am.
 
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AAMB/LCM Bear/VEHC/VE
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RET/LCM Bear/mSSD Atrus/VEN/VE (=A=) (=SA=) (=FOCE=) (=JCPA=) [BRC] [BRC] [NDM] [LSM]
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TRP/LCPL Grizzly/3SQD/1PLT/1COMP/1BAT/1REG/Lorn IV/VEA 

Nice.  I totally agree with that, the US, and in fact, the entire Western world, seems to follow one simple statement. "It's only okay when we do it." In fact, if we actually cared about the lives of the people in Iraq, #1, we wouldn't have supplied him with weapons for about a decade before deciding he's evil, and, #2, we would have totally invaded Iraq and ousted him the first time. Just my little addition to Bear's little speech. [OOC: The reason I said the invasion thing here even though I'm against violence is that, if we're going to commit violence anyways, we might as well finish what we start]
 
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Argon Viper
"History is on the move, those who cannot keep up will watch from a distance, and those who get in our way will not watch at all" - Grand Admiral Thrawn
"He who knows his enemy, needs not fear confrontation" - Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
"Insanity is not a mental condition, it's a way of life" - Argon Viper
"Those who run from death, win little.  Those who simply live their lives, win much" - Argon Viper

K, my response.  First of all, The meaning of life was good at first.  It later degenerated, which is why I dropped out of it.  Now back to the real topic. Osama is dead, actually.  We hit him and a group of terrorists with a missle.  The problem is that it blew them into such little peices that we have been unable to positively identify the bodies yet.  We are working on DNA tests, so we should have a positive ID soon. Now then, the military.  nonviolence does not work.  Gandi was used as an example.  Gandi was a great man.  If eveyone followed his teachings we would live in a perfect world.  The problem is not everyone does.  Gandi was killed by being shot in the chest three times.  This was a trajedy showing the evil in our world.  We can not remove the evil from this world.  There will always be evil men.  What would have happened if we had followed a path of nonviolence when Hitler rose to power.  He was a murderous psychopath.  He would not have seen reason, and he would have only used our noble intentions to further seize power.  That is why we must have a strong army.  As for using it as a battering ram to free the peopleoo mcuh risk.  We are human, and while I feel the the United States is the greatest nation in the world, but we have made very serious mistakes.  To use our military that way would be to invite another serious mistake and make us the evil that we would seek to stop. Just as many people were dying due to hunger and starvation before we came .  We did all that we could to keep from killing innocents.  Now we are working to rebuild, and it will stop others form dying.  The people that died from our strike are far fewer then those that would have died had Alquada gone unchecked.  The embassy, the Cole, then the towers.  They kept getting bolder and bolder, and killing more and more with each strike.,  Had they gone unchecked, there is no telling what they might have done.  As for Iraq, we are not stopping supplies due to greed.  We are stopping supplies because the psychopathic leader of this country keeps trying to build weapons of mass destruction that he would not stop from using to kill us all.
 
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[army] Fishman
FM/LCRW JMac/Aegis 3-4/Aegis 12/(=A=)(MC1)
"I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be unfair in my favor?."
"Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused."
Tall, dark, handsome, and all around stud.

Hitler was a madman.  This is clear in many ways.  For instance, he said that the Jews were one of the lowest life forms on Earth, and that the master race was to be made up of blond haired blue eyed Christians.  This is despite the fact that he had brown hair and brown eyes, and had jewish blood!  You can not reason witha man with no sanity and no concience.  If we had followed a code of nonviolence he would have succeeded in setting up a world regime, and it would only have gotten worse from there.  And it would not have ended with his death.  He was a madman, but he was a crafty madman.  He could have easily put someone into power who would have followed his policies.  It would not have worked.  As for terrorism, they were growing bolder and bolder.  Thier attacks have been steadily increasing in lethality.  They were on the brink of making weapons of mass destruction.  (Yes, I know that it isn't hard to find ways to make them, but it is very difficult to make them and they were on the brink of it.)  THe only think that has prevented this planet from turning into a glowing wasteland already is that so far those with access to them know that they are to terrible a weapon to use.  There is no winner of a nuclear war.  But a fanatic that is willing to fly a plane into a building would not hesitate to use devices like that.
 
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[army] Fishman
FM/LCRW JMac/Aegis 3-4/Aegis 12/(=A=)(MC1)
"I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be unfair in my favor?."
"Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused."
Tall, dark, handsome, and all around stud.

Nice point Snake    He's right, maniacs have the simple problem of being maniacs.  They may be as smart as they like, but sooner or later, they will make a mistake.  Now, whether that mistake is simply driving their army so hard that it turns and marches the other way(as happened in ancient Rome), or they're dumb enough to fight against their own allies(Hitler), they always do it.  Now, granted, I prefer the Roman one, it's so much more peaceful, but the Hitler one is fine with me.  The point is, if we simply increase our security to keep terrorists out(the FBI admitted that they could have done this if they had actually paid attention to the Middle East), Osama bin Laden will be dead before he has any chance to conquer the US.  As it is, we're giving him what he wants, the chance to attack and kill American servicemen(won't say women because they're not allowed in combat) on his own soil.  He must find that to be some consolation to him.  If we withdraw, the European peacekeepers will still be there, Kharzai will be allowed to set up his government(assuming everyone pays up like they've promised), and Afghanistan will be peaceful again.  If we take the enlightened road.
 
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Argon Viper
"History is on the move, those who cannot keep up will watch from a distance, and those who get in our way will not watch at all" - Grand Admiral Thrawn
"He who knows his enemy, needs not fear confrontation" - Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
"Insanity is not a mental condition, it's a way of life" - Argon Viper
"Those who run from death, win little.  Those who simply live their lives, win much" - Argon Viper

1. Nicely put Fish  2. Wow, another one I agree with, this is getting freaky  3. WOOHOO!!!!  GO FISH!!!!(Says an American citizen  )
 
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Argon Viper
"History is on the move, those who cannot keep up will watch from a distance, and those who get in our way will not watch at all" - Grand Admiral Thrawn
"He who knows his enemy, needs not fear confrontation" - Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
"Insanity is not a mental condition, it's a way of life" - Argon Viper
"Those who run from death, win little.  Those who simply live their lives, win much" - Argon Viper

The two front war was not what led to the Germans defeat entirely. Yes it did help in their downfall, but Europe still would have fallen.  Two weeks before earl Harborwas attacked our President recieved a telegram from England's PM saying that if we did not help we would have a nazified Europe in less then a year. In response to Fish... 1.  We actually do have proof that Osama was behind it BEYOND DOUBT.  We have documents from him to the hijackers, we have travel records, we have more then enough roof.  We gathered all the evidence before we did anything.  We then told the Taliban to give him to us.  They refused, so then we moved in.  To not have done so would only have opened us top another attack. 2.  I partially agree wioth you. Politicians now have way to much power, and they all to often use the military to distract the public.  It is necessary, though, to have a strong military just in case.  The world travels in cycles. Example:  Europe and America: Everyone believed that they were civilized enough to have eliminated war.  World War one.  it is called the War to End All Wars.  They rebuild and believe there will be no more war.  World War two.  It is supposedly to "make the world safe for democracy."  Korea.  Vietnam. Two years ago theywee saying there would be no more war.  Now the middle east is a powderkeg and Pakistan has said they wilol use whatever means necessary, INCLUDING NUKES!!! 3.  The leader at the time determines it.  Under Clinton, the mlitary was a joke.  Kosavo should never have happened, and the military was being used as Clintons tool to bring the public's attention away from whatever sex scandal or scam he was currently involved in. When they decided to spend all that money so that the average grunt could have berets instead of just the elite, It was pretty apparent that our military was becoming a joke.  Now though, I think we are finally getting it back together under Bush (thank God!!!)   

It is me. Whenever I try to post as JMac it comes out as Liquid Sna, so I am hoping this will post as Fishman.
 
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[navy-JMac]
"Join the Army.  Travel to fun and exotic locations.  Meet new and interesting people, and kill them."

"The goal of war is not to die for your country.  It is to make the other guy die for his."

JMac, what information sources are you reading?  You're not getting the same story I am...  Just for reference, I listen to NPR's "All Things Considered" every morning, I read Newsweek, I check out articles on Yahoo, and I read the articles my friend gets from the NY Times.  I have never once seen any sort of evidence linking bin Laden to the bombing that is any more than "We want it to be him and these coincidences back us up."  If we simply look at the facts, there's as much evidence that some other radical Jihad group did it, or even the Weathermen(left wing radicals from the 70s...).  Also, look at the timeline, about a week or two after the bombing happened, we were demanding bin Laden.  Now, every single decent investigator I have ever heard voice an opinion says that you need faaaaar more than a month, at least, to gather enough evidence to prove, to the extent needed for that kind of a demand, that someone did it.  Now, since we are talking about documents that are not going to get destroyed(the guys who wrote them and know where they are and are already dead), and a guy who's not going anywhere(until forced to, there was no way bin Laden would have left Afghanistan, he wasn't nearly as safe anywhere else...), we had plenty of time to be thourough.  Think about it. Now, I'm in total agreement with Fish on the issue of militarism. As to WWII, that's true, the two front war was not what killed Hitler, it was what happened during that war.  If he had been able to restrain his ally by offering to supply some oil himself(it would have been possible with good enough cooperation) or if he had simply asked them to hold off for one year(they had eighteen months of oil left...), he would have had enough of a foothold to win by the time the US joined in.  Once again, think about it. That's all I have for today, join me next time for...  Oh wait, I'm not a news anchor 
 
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Argon Viper
"History is on the move, those who cannot keep up will watch from a distance, and those who get in our way will not watch at all" - Grand Admiral Thrawn
"He who knows his enemy, needs not fear confrontation" - Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
"Insanity is not a mental condition, it's a way of life" - Argon Viper
"Those who run from death, win little.  Those who simply live their lives, win much" - Argon Viper

Well, these strings are always fun to read, if just to see what other people in other parts of the US and the world are thinking.  So, for pennies a day, here's my take on some of this. 1.  Afghanistan is a gut reaction to the problem.  Was there a need to go there in the quest to disrupt Al Qaeda activities? Sure.  Is it be-all and end-all of the problem? Of course not.  Hopefully for a change we can do something about giving the right kind of help to this shredded country.  We used to go in and tear up countries and at least try to help them rebuild.  Look at the Marshall Plan as an example of that.  The rest of the world is freaking out all the time about the US "taking them over".  Seriously, that's ridiculous.  We can't even decide what to do with Puerto Rico, much less work on getting new territory to confuse ourselves with.  Basically, it's a pointless argument thread.  What we do attempt to do a lot is set up "friendly" governments which eventually antagonize, brutalize, and extort their populace into a hate-filled frenzy.  This is what the US should stop doing.  I am perfectly fine with 0.01% of my taxes going to help build schools, roads, and electrical plants across the world as well as food and lumber and whatever other raw materials it takes to get a place to where it can deal with the modern economic system.  Frankly, I don't care if the citizens of that country like me when we pull out - just as long as they have a system that can feed, protect, and educate them.  Educated people usually don't start lobbing bombs at each other as the first response to a problem.  Angry, dispossessed street mobs do.  I don't blame many of these people for hating us.  Their governments (most of them aided by us) are corrupt.  Their only outlet for revenge is the western world, which they see as the root cause of the problem.  I don't think that's going to change.  I believe there will always be a clash of cultures there in some ways.  However, everyone blames America for being blind to the plight of the world because life is pretty good here.  Why the hell is that a problem?  Isn't the real problem that others are so caught up in what is wrong with their personal lives and their communities that they just want to hate those who a) don't have those problems, and b) helped add to their's?  I feel lucky that I actually have to work to find out where things are violent and awful without having to look outside my door and see it. I'm all for helping those who want help and then leaving them alone for the most part.  It's still a pretty big planet.  As long as people aren't turning themselves into bombs, working actively to kill their own people en masse, and are content to leave their weapons at their national borders, we shouldn't be spending so much time and energy meddling in their affairs.  Let the spies tell us if something is up.  If we stop bribing people to be our fair weather friends, I bet we could afford a pretty decent intelligence network for once. 2. Despite anyone's high handed goals, there will always be anger and strife.  Argon is a lot more idealistic than I am on this, but I kinda wish I could think like he does.  Yes, we have a military here in the US, and a pretty powerful one.  Does it run our government?  No.  That's just ridiculous.  We have historically had the most non-political military on the face of the earth.  That doesn't mean most of them don't vote straight ticket Republican; it means that you didn't see tank columns surrounding the White House in the fall of 2000.  We have a process here, and for the most part it works.  Yes you see all these super warhawks on the TV speaking about "eliminating evil."  That isn't the voice of America, that's the voice of a bunch of people who need to get re-elected either this year or down the road a bit.  I know that a lot of our non-US members can't stand the concept of this country: they hate the US and still really know nothing of it.  This place is so varied, no two states can agree on the same thing.  Conceptualizing this place is hard enough for those of us who live here.  Be patriotic all you want, but know that we agree on few things.  One, most of us wouldn't live anywhere else.  Two, most of us don't care enough about our world image to consider what others think.  Three, should something happen to us, we have the resources (economic, political, and yes military) to deal with it.  I don't think that's far from what anyone thinks about their country.  It may not be correct thought, but it is a fact of life that must be considered. 3.  As for the US military itself, it sure gets kicked around a lot.  As for the Clinton jabs made here; I swear some folks make him out to be the devil incarnate.  He was a hell of a politician: I'd just never trust him with any female friends of mine.  The only military mistakes he made in deploying troops were never sending enough equipment and troops.  Most of the situations we got into in his two terms were holdovers from previous administrations.  It's funny how he worked so hard to please everyone and eventually got nearly everyone on his bad side.  Going back to an earlier point, if we really were in the business of having people "pay us tribute", we would have kept any territory we had ever conquered.  Yes, we are a complicated, often arrogant piece of real estate.  Any powerful country pretty much acts that way.  The English had centuries spent at the top; now they look for ways to stay out of the EU so as not to be diminished by the French and Germans.  Look at Russia at the Olympics lately.  They spent two weeks screaming and complaining because people treated them like....anyone else.  One day it will likely happen here and I'm sure most of you can't wait to point and laugh when it does.  Bad press is better than no press, I guess.  In short, for as jacked up of a time we're having dealing with a loss of innocence and a president who seemingly stepped out of a B-rated movie on the USA Network, I think we are doing a lot better than we could as a nation.    ----------------------- XO/LTC Fury/VEA/TADATH/VE [PoC][SotE:HC][SotE:VEA][IOC] Company Commander Shopkeeper - Imperial Center

Well, no, we couldn't turn Afghanistan into a first world country within a decade, because the education levels of the Afghan females are about 25 years behind the mens. We could build up the infastructure within 10 years, but we'd have to wait at least a generation until Afghanistan gets anywhere near "civilised". Thats the same for most of Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Asia as well. Even if we wanted to help, it would take several generations to repair the damage we have done through our selfishness and greed.   ----------------------- AAMB/LCM Bear/VEHC/VE ------------ RET/LCM Bear/mSSD Atrus/VEN/VE (=A=) (=SA=) (=FOCE=) (=JCPA=) [BRC] [BRC] [NDM] [LSM] ------------ TRP/LCPL Grizzly/3SQD/1PLT/1COMP/1BAT/1REG/Lorn IV/VEA 

Bear, I totally agree that the world will not change overnight; no matter what resources we throw at it.  It still doesn't mean that a concerted effort could not be made.  One problem with American politics is that our leaders rarely look past the time frame of their own term(s).  However, concerning infrastructure, I used to work with a guy who spends a lot of time reading development reports from various sources.  Why? you may ask.  Well, he likes life the way it is now and figures he can retire someday in a place more or less like late '90s America.  Silly concept, but it illustrates that time and resources do factor into political discussions...and maybe even retirement planning.
 
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XO/LTC Fury/VEA/TADATH/VE [PoC][SotE:HC][SotE:VEA][IOC]
Company Commander
Shopkeeper - Imperial Center

JMac, Clinton was very intelligent, he managed to bring the country through an entire decade of growth(which Bush has ended, might I add...).  My main complaint about the scandals and everything is a simple one, who cares?  If you can't flame him through what he is doing politically, then he's doing a good job.  There's no need to go digging through his personal life just to end his professional one.  The fact is, the sex scandals simply pulled public attention away from his job as president(in which he did a good job(more on that later...)), and toward his personal life, where I will admit that he went quite far off.  However, I echo the comment of nearly every Eurpopean leader at the time it happened, "So what?"  As for the good leader part, you'll notice that we only seem to hear about people when they screw up, right?  How ofted did you hear anything at all about Clinton in any professional way?  Never.  Now, logically that would mean that he was doing a good job, because things were going smoothly enough for no one to notice. BTW, thanks for disagreeing with me, I get to flex my debating muscles instead of relating random stories 
 
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Argon Viper
"History is on the move, those who cannot keep up will watch from a distance, and those who get in our way will not watch at all" - Grand Admiral Thrawn
"He who knows his enemy, needs not fear confrontation" - Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
"Insanity is not a mental condition, it's a way of life" - Argon Viper
"Those who run from death, win little.  Those who simply live their lives, win much" - Argon Viper

Once again I'd like to point out how much I love this    There's something about debating that just adds color to life    It's not so much the changing of the other persons mind, its the stuff you learn from them    Once again I'd like to thank JMac as the sole voice that disagrees with me, without you I'd be bored to tears    Thank you again for disagreeing with me  Well, lesse, where to start...  First off, despite Bush's tax cut early on in his term, he's gonna have to raise taxes later, or at least be the cause of it.  He lowered them too soon, this "War on Terrorism" is going to raise them up again, maybe higher than they were before.  Also, I might point out that this recession started when Bush took office, not before.  Despite what you may say about the Pres having no impact on that, he does.  These things are drawn out in a way that includes consumer confidence, which can draw a direct link to the White House.  A new guy is not likely to start off with much confidence in the bank.  As to the "ill founded strikes..." which ones were those?  The only ones I know of were in Kosovo, where the US air strikes managed to assist in the removal of Slovadon Melosovic(I'm not sure if a spelled that right...), a man who is known to have commited genocide.  While I don't specifically like violence, I can agree that that strike was as justified as the one against Hitler.  The fact that he is now on trial in front of a UN war crimes tribunal shows that these strikes were totally effective.  As to the lying under oath, I agree that that's bad, but he's currently taking the punishment, self inflicted mind you.  He chose to take a five year probation from the Arkansas bar, and a couple other things I forgot...  As far as I'm concerned, if we can let a murderer out of jail after twenty years and forgive him, we can forgive Clinton.  Does that cover everything?  Sorry, but I can't see what you wrote here, so that makes responding to it pretty hard...  Well, if I did, just tell me and I'll take care of it  BTW, read the new quotes I put on my sig(Yes, I know I made most of them up myself, but I still think they're relevant  )
 
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Argon Viper
"History is on the move, those who cannot keep up will watch from a distance, and those who get in our way will not watch at all" - Grand Admiral Thrawn
"How boring life would be if everyone felt the same way we do..." - Argon Viper
"Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses" - Carl G Jung
"The way of peace is always better than the way of war, it's just not as fast" - Argon Viper