Bush Speech

[Tricen]

Bush is just a puppet being controlled and manipulated bu higher, or at least smarter, executives.

[Jimmayus]

We're not the most kickass nation in the world for long if this is the status quo for much longer. We have rediculous debt not just at home but also to several of our most important growing trade partners. Our trade deficit to China alone is beyond rediculous.

The fact that budget cuts everywhere except homeland security are necessary because congress couldn't decide on a new budget is terrible. The one plus of that is, no serious new projects can be created because nobody has any money to do so, so they can't plunge the deficit even further.

A lot of our 'moral high ground' as a country has been compromised, not just because of this war, but of incredible hypocricies within what we say and what we do. An example is of couse congressman Foley, but it's not necessary to get into that.

Maybe you are angry at people thinking the President lied, but you are seriously mistaken if you are vindicating the entire administration. Even if his aids fed him lies, that is still misleading the country. In fact, the suggestion that aids have to lie to the President is an even worse situation than the president lying; it implies that not only had the President wanted evidence to invade Iraq, the aides were too scared to give him the correct information.

In general, if we keep up our winning track record, it is my opinion that we will lose much of what makes us the 'greatest country in the world'. Sure we have military might, but that just seems to get us in trouble.

A phased withdrawl of all our troops from Iraq is probably impractical; afterall, we still have troops in Japan, Korea, even Germany. We'll still have troops there for quite some time in all probability.

[Demosthenes11]

I never said his aids lied to him. Everyone though Saddam had WDMs, and he ended up not having them. I don't really blame anyone for that, it's just a mistake (don't think it was the real reason for going either).

Another big criticism of mine of Bush is his spending policy. He spends like a drunken sailor, and is driving our nation into the ground financially. Corruption in the political realm is nothing new, either. Not that it excuses what Foley did, but that kind of shit, I would be willing to bet, goes on quite a bit, along with bribing and all that fun stuff, from both sides of the political isle. American morality in regards to war...It makes me angry. The entire Guantanamo bay stuff is utter bullshit by my standards. I don't know how the US can be taken seriously if we are not aloud to fake drown, take the first shot, or put a Koran in the toilet. The problem in the war is the fact we have too much morality, which no winning side can have in a war. Fighting an enemy that cuts off people's heads because they are not fucking nuts like they are with our current rules of engagement are absolutely ridiculous.

I don't think any kind of withdrawal of troops in Iraq will happen for quite some time either, even if a democrat gets elected

[Duckroll]

So we need to become monsters in order to defeat one?

[Demosthenes11]

So we need to become monsters in order to defeat one?

No, we need to step out of our dresses and become men.

But if throwing the Koran in the toilet and dropping bombs/shooting first makes you a monster, then may the military be godfuckingzilla

[Jimmayus]

What always baffled me about the 'War on Terrorism' is that Terrorism is a tactic employed by groups who are not necessarily linked to countries. It's impossible to 'beat' terrorism, that's like saying you're going to declare Jihad on frontal assaults. The only effective way to reduce the threat is to reverse-educate the people who have the idea in their heads that capitalism is evil.

In my honest opinion, even if Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, what we have done to Iraq was not worth 'taking it out'. I think a far more effective method would have been to do for Afghanistan what we did for Japan or Western Europe after World War II. Maintain a troop presence, but setup a Marhsall Plan system of infastructure rebuilding, and public education. You give them the option to set up their own government, with whatever freedoms or restrictions they want; if there is anything you don't want to do, it is force the leadership into a position of fulfilling another countries' needs while remaking a country.

Of course that is vague and mostly conjecture, but I would wager that, having rebuit much of Afghanistan, as well as aiding those adversely affected by both the Taliban or by our invasion, a very positive impression of the U.S. would be imprinted. Give free, public, non-religious affiliated education, and you have set up what could in time develop into a very strong example of successful capitalism within the Middle East.

It's silly to think we are really making a lasting impression. We basically forgot about Afghanistan and invaded Iraq; our reconstruction is barely moving. But at least we are remaking the army, thank god for that.

At any rate, if this is really about oil (I don't care if it is, the fact that we're there in general is repulsive), the obvious choice is to develop ways to not be so fucking dependant on oil. The only reason many of the dictatorships we hate are so powerful in the first place is because we give them the leverage. It doesn't matter though; if we don't, the Europeans or the Japanese or the Chinese will invent alternate ways. Or they may not, nobody really can say. At any rate, removing the power of the backwards government schemes that we so wish to liberate would be A) less costly in terms of lives spent and B) wouldn't radically screw up countries we shouldn't be near in the first place.

[Fuuko]

In my honest opinion, even if Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, what we have done to Iraq was not worth 'taking it out'. I think a far more effective method would have been to do for Afghanistan what we did for Japan or Western Europe after World War II. Maintain a troop presence, but setup a Marhsall Plan system of infastructure rebuilding, and public education. You give them the option to set up their own government, with whatever freedoms or restrictions they want; if there is anything you don't want to do, it is force the leadership into a position of fulfilling another countries' needs while remaking a country.

To be able to do that, in the same way we did to Japan and Western Europe, you would first have to utterly destroy the Gov. of the countries, destroy their economy, destroy their infrastructure to the point that they are dependent on you for basic needs, destroy the military forces of the country, and kill of something around 70% of the male population of fighting age.

We could do it, maybe we even should, but it would not be pretty, not so much in our own losses but it would be horrible for the middle east.

All I know is if Bush sends more troops and does not change the rules of engagement in such a way that we treat it like the war it is, and not a police action, its a pointless gesture. If he not going to allow us to crush the terrorists till 99% of them are dead or captured, there is no point in fighting.

[Jimmayus]

Actually, everything you posted just makes the job harder; simply rebuilding what we destroyed, and implimenting even more accessible infastructure was my point.

Besides, what do you think we did to Afganistan? We eliminated their governing body and left them with a governing force barely able to run even Kabul, let alone warlords in the North and radical forces in the South. They didn't have a serious economic investment in anything at the start of the war, and certainly they have very little now.

What we've done is basically what you said we would 'have' to do. The point was that we have strongly crippled the country, and if we had focused instead on making it better than it was, we would provide a positive, U.S. aided example, instead of a half-attempt at a so called free society.

[Tenren]

Taking a Social Political perspective on this issue as a Sociologist:

Anyone care to notice that the people who run the USA are the power elite those who control the means of production, the 5% of the wealth of the country is concentrated amongst them. Regardless of who is in power, people who are elected come from this 5% and share the same ideals to some extent which is economic prosperity of the power elite(rich). USA is an imperialistic country like Britain before them.

When it comes to economic resources or strategic positioning throughout the world it is without a doubt that USA will intervene in anyway possible to keep it in their favor. Invading Iraq was a means to secure the oil and to plant democracy in an unstable area. There has been soo many examples of this but have failed such as those clandestine operations in Latin American led by former USA governments assassinating dictators and planting their own chosen ppl in power.

The USA also had a key role in Al'Queda/Taliban. The USA gave birth to the freedom fighters in Afghanistan by sending them resources such as texts that had guns and weapons used in pictures for children to learn basic math. Osama was on the CIA's bankroll. The USA did this because they wanted to use this country to fight against Soviet during the Cold War but didn't have the resources to do so due to their resources being diverted somewhere else. It is much easier to brainwash and turn the ppl into freedom fighters via supplying them with resources such as textbooks to the kids. After the Cold War the USA dropped the program and look what we have now. Fine example of Blowback.

As far as the whole Middle Eastern conflict came to arise from WWI when the Ottoman Empire fell apart. The British promised the Jewish ppl land after the war was over. The promise was made via the Balfour Declaration, and after the land was given to them they claimed sovereignty which shocked the world even the British as it was never expected. I'm not one to say who's land is who but this whole issue stems from carelessness and this is also plaguing the USA.

As far as the issue at hand with the speech, fine example of repeating the same mistake as the Vietnam War. It's been clear that the government has not learned from that total failure. Alas history tends to repeat itself.

[Jimmayus]

Actually there are several fundamental differences between the last time we blundered over there and now.

Oil is, once inflation is accounted for, at an all-time low. There is also no mandatory draft, and a one-track-minded man is the Chief Executive.

What the point of those differences is, our generation is not manifesting the backlash of what we consider poor government in the ways that previous generations have previously. We don't have the motivation to go out there and protest in the way people protested Vietnam, and we don't see massive lines at pumps to prompt us into kicking ourselves into a more healthy train of thought.

I sometimes think back to when my dad offhandedly said that the U.S. should institute a draft, because us lazy middle class kids who can afford to, say, read this forum, would actually do something about the big words of outrage we post here. He wasn't serious, but it makes you wonder if we were actually forced to go there, would we stop being lazy in our rebuke?

Anyway, the best thing for americans to do is to keep buying Jeeps and huge SUVs and any other car that gets gallons to the mile instead of miles to the gallon. That way oil will skyrocket to the estimated 190$ a barrel it'd require to switch to alternative fuels. At least we would get the hell out of countries we don't belong in.

Something of note my dad ran across in the New York Times recently: an Executive at Enron recently said that 'though the models are imperfect', they recognize 'there may be a problem we are a part of'; he was referring to global warming. I don't really care too strongly about that particular issue, but I figure if the oil companies finally stop stifling alternative energy resources in our own country, than maybe we can get out of the goddamn sand.

[Fuuko]

Besides, what do you think we did to Afganistan? We eliminated their governing body and left them with a governing force barely able to run even Kabul, let alone warlords in the North and radical forces in the South. They didn't have a serious economic investment in anything at the start of the war, and certainly they have very little now.

Yes, thats why we still get stories like ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16286880/ ) about how were are fighting the Taliban, the governing body that we supposedly eliminated. Secondly, the Gov. we put in place, by your own argument did not control "the warlords in the North or radical forces in the South", so explain how a gov. is suppose to set up anything like the Marshall Plan if they do not even control parts of the country?

As for making the job harder, I will grant it makes the actual work load more towards your two points, rebuilding and add infrastructure. However you are missing the point that the infrastructure will have to be destroyed on vast scales in order to win a absolute victory. At least in general, I suppose it would be possible in theory to not damage the infrastructure so badly and still utterly destroy the Gov, but that is neither here or there.

I will put it another way, you have to defeat the enemy to the point that all hope of recovering is gone, as well as that idealogical mindset of that Gov. is dead. For example, after the defeat of Germany in WWII, their defeat was so total that the very basic idealogical basis, Nazism, was dead in the hearts and minds of the vast majority of Germany. The rebuilding of Germany would never have been as successful as it was if there had been large segments of Germany that still believed in Nazism(or what ever variations they claimed was Nazism), and were willing to fight for it.

Our problem in Iraq and Afghanistan is that we basically splintered the Governments into dozens of tiny little factions, as well as allowing other factions to grow, and did not defeat them in total and then start rebuilding.

[Jimmayus]

And my thesis was securing Afghanistan and never entering Iraq. Perhaps Marshall plan was not a fair allusion. But you missed what I mean in that quoted paragraph entirely. Had our focus remained on only one country, it would be easy to, say, have the forces currently deployed in Iraq, in Afghanistan. The only reason the current government has no foundation is because we did not focus on giving it any authority, just propped it up and hoped for the best. Of course it is a farce. I thought I didn't have to make it explicit.

You're right we scattered the government, but, had we stayed focused on Afghanistan, and provided a rebuilding of our damage there and been a mostly positive influence, I doubt we would need the carnage you illustrated was part of the rebuilding of Germany.

The above is, however, a "what if?" situation which of course has its' share of problems, but I highly doubt we would be in such a precarious situation as we are now if we had to reconstruct merely Afghanistan, instead of having to deal with a Civil War in Iraq.

There are two problems facing our efforts besides fractured governments: the lack of information about true U.S. motives, and the dis-information being fed to the general populace. What I said about education and making sure information was still accessible (especially from multiple sources and even uncensored internet) is the easiest, albeit longest, method of defeating an enemy born of ignorance like religious radicalism. You don't need to destroy everything a country has to start giving them access to information. I don't mean propaganda, I mean literal access to what we take for granted. That actually benefits from our not touching anything.

I guess that is a long-winded answer whose short version is: I feel this is a different beast than Nazi Germany, and does not require the same kind of rape.

[Mysterio]

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...erisamused.jpg

[Aerin]

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...erisamused.jpg

Pretty much sums it up.

[Fuuko]

Look half of your argument is on things in which we agree, and the other I don't think you get my side. We agree that Afghanistan should have been much more secure and well on its path to a rebuilding and such, long before we should have entered Iraq.

However, unlike you, I do not think that even if we had left most of our troops there it would be going any better, if anything it might be worse. The reason is that we are unwilling to actually defeat our enemies in total, before we start rebuilding. If we had stayed in Afghanistan doing the same moronic police state bullshit we are doing in Iraq, which is what we would have done, Afghanistan would be in as bad or worse shape as Iraq is now. We would just switch the factions fighting, and we would find our selves trying to control warlords, funded by Iran, Syria, fighting the Taliban left overs and radicals, probably funded by Iraq. It would be the exact same situation as Iraq is today.

Our problem is with the method in which we wage war, not that fact that we do. The US is kinda like the Karate master that gets into a bar fight with some drunk moron, who every time he throws a punch he stops at the last second before hitting because he has spent the last 20 years training people and has forgotten how to actually fight, and thus gets his ass kicked by people he has no business losing to.

History has shown us that the only way you will ever get any lasting peace is when one side utterly and totally wins the war, anything less and you just end up with endless minor wars, ceasefires, and peace talks that do jack shit towards any lasting peace.