oh State of the Union

[CMMeast]

Edit: And taken from above quote, "America will spend more than $1 trillion dollars in foreign wars started during the Bush administration. Because of such, the economy is in jeopardy and America's reputation abroad has suffered traumatic blows. On top of this, Americans have seen their civil liberties violated time after time." - That is why.

wut r ur ideaz?

Non-interventionism. We need to understand the reasons the terrorists hate us, not just have some knee-jerk reaction to them. Of course, we need to punish the people who attacked us, but those people aren't the government of Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan. Nation building is never an acceptable foreign policy. We need to pull all of our troops out of the region, in fact we need to pull the troops out of all 400,000 troops that we have in 140+ countries around the world. Bush himself in the 2000 campaign said, "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us" that's sound advice, I suggest listening to it.

It's a short step from non-interventionism to isolationism. With all the unrest in the global markets ('sup credit crunch), fueled by our sub-prime mess, it would be easy for another idiot president to muddle into the fucked up situation that is economic nationalism.

[CMMeast]

It's not our job to come up with ideas. We shouldn't even be over there in the first place. How about you justify to me why we should sacrifice more lives in Iran, (Not just American lives), instead of fixing our own fucking problems at home.

Edit: (Taking out link, it was pretty old)

Wow.

I never did say invade Iran, but since you said it first, i guess you did come up with an idea all by yourself. Good Job!

Cute.

So, you guys don't like the idea of any kind of aggression towards Iran. If I'm wrong, please clarify. Tell me what you think we should do instead of what we shouldn't do.

Doesn't imply you disagree??

I do have some ideas, but since it's not exactly my area of expertise I'm sure that they are full of holes, but they sure as hell don't involve attacking another country. Since you are just begging for something to shoot down, I think we should get out of the middle east asap, stop trying to to be the world police, and work on some issues at home.

Edit: And taken from above quote, "America will spend more than $1 trillion dollars in foreign wars started during the Bush administration. Because of such, the economy is in jeopardy and America's reputation abroad has suffered traumatic blows. On top of this, Americans have seen their civil liberties violated time after time." - That is why.

wut r ur ideaz?

First, let's keep in mind that the biggest solution to the great depression was world war 2. But, no, i do not feel the time is right to invade Iran. We are spread thin, and even if we weren't, most of Iran is a bunch of fuckin' mountains anyway. What we should do though is smoke em out. They can't thrive on their own, it'd be pretty damn easy to seal their borders (even though we can't keep the Mexicans out of our borders) if we can secure Iraq (which we will very soon).

Second, you may ask, Wtf you wanna fuck with Iran for?! World Police no thanks!!" Well, the governments main (and should be only) job is national security. Iran is indirectly killing Americans, and is publicly getting allies to rally against us. If we limp back home, it will show a weakness, that we give up over time. That's why Osoma feels we can be defeated, he's seen us retreat before.

Third, how do we fund this block-aid? If it were up to me, I'd shut down the education department (yea the whole damn thing) and greatly cut down the EPA. With the EPA out of the way, we can finally drill that black gold we got hiding in Alaska and a few other places. That would end almost all of our oil imports and free up a ton of cash. Killing Social Security and welfare would be great too.

So yea, those are just a few of my ideas in a nut shell. They may not be prefect, but i think its a pretty good plan. If anyone else has the guts to post some ideas, please by all means....

Thank you.

I can't decide if you're being sarcastic or not... Your post reads like an idiots guide to future foreign policy, specially prepared for Dubya by his best bud Dick.

[archibaldcrane]

With the EPA out of the way, we can finally drill that black gold we got hiding in Alaska and a few other places. That would end almost all of our oil imports and free up a ton of cash.

/facepalm

People act like ANWAR is the be-all-end-all to our energy crisis. It's not, it's just another source. It wouldn't even come -close- to ending our oil importing needs. We are importing 5+ billion barrels of oil per year - at that rate, ANWAR would be dry in 2 years. It's just another source, it's not an energy panacea.

[CMMeast]

With the EPA out of the way, we can finally drill that black gold we got hiding in Alaska and a few other places. That would end almost all of our oil imports and free up a ton of cash.

/facepalm

People act like ANWAR is the be-all-end-all to our energy crisis. It's not, it's just another source. It wouldn't even come -close- to ending our oil importing needs. We are importing 5+ billion barrels of oil per year - at that rate, ANWAR would be dry in 2 years. It's just another source, it's not an energy panacea.

It's not like we'd be able to get all that oil out of Alaska to the main 48 anyways. Global warming is melting the permafrost oil pipelines are built on. We're going to end up spending billions of dollars just maintaining the Trans-Alaska in changing environmental conditions.

[Zosi]

First, let's keep in mind that the biggest solution to the great depression was world war 2. But, no, i do not feel the time is right to invade Iran. We are spread thin, and even if we weren't, most of Iran is a bunch of fuckin' mountains anyway. What we should do though is smoke em out. They can't thrive on their own, it'd be pretty damn easy to seal their borders (even though we can't keep the Mexicans out of our borders) if we can secure Iraq (which we will very soon).

Second, you may ask, Wtf you wanna fuck with Iran for?! World Police no thanks!!" Well, the governments main (and should be only) job is national security. Iran is indirectly killing Americans, and is publicly getting allies to rally against us. If we limp back home, it will show a weakness, that we give up over time. That's why Osoma feels we can be defeated, he's seen us retreat before.

Third, how do we fund this block-aid? If it were up to me, I'd shut down the education department (yea the whole damn thing) and greatly cut down the EPA. With the EPA out of the way, we can finally drill that black gold we got hiding in Alaska and a few other places. That would end almost all of our oil imports and free up a ton of cash. Killing Social Security and welfare would be great too.

So yea, those are just a few of my ideas in a nut shell. They may not be prefect, but i think its a pretty good plan. If anyone else has the guts to post some ideas, please by all means....

Thank you.

That sounds like a great plan to commit national suicide in the long term to fund a war of aggression that would create a whole nation of martyrs. Without public funding for education and social security/welfare, you'd revert America to a caste system where only the wealthy can afford basic education for their children, and poor people die by the thousand because they can't afford the basic necessities of life. US innovation (one of the few things that we have an advantage in any more) would fall flat on it's face, as workers became slaves to their employers for their productive life, after which they would have nothing to look forward to but poverty and death. Basically, your proposal would throw away nearly all of the societal progress we've made in the past 200 years. You're worried about Iranians indirectly killing a few hundred American soldiers, but you seem to have no qualms about sentencing an entire income bracket to death by cutting the social programs that make their lives possible.

As for actually dealing with Iran, what do you think the rest of the world's going to do when we "seal off the border" of Iran? Assuming that your little blockade succeeded, you'd be killing off one state of people who disliked us and creating dozens more. You'd be starving millions of Iranian citizens who've done nothing besides be born in a country where the government disagrees with you. The outrage that that kind of aggression would cause would galvanize the anti-US sentiment in other countries, and soon, rather than a few angry anti-US nations, we'd have dozens, with all of our troops tied up in Iran trying to keep food out and oil in. Not what I'd call an improvement.

Of course, even if we activated every US military soldier, we don't have the manpower to watch and effectively guard every inch of the Iranian border, so it's a moot point anyways. Before you go off on a rant about how awesome our military power is, realize that (according to Wikipedia) Iran has 16.8 MILLION feet of land border. We have (also according to Wikipedia) a little under 3 million active duty military personnel, a small fraction of which are combat-ready. Even assuming you had every single man and woman with a uniform on standing on the border of Iran, you'd only have one for every 8 feet of border, which would be about as effective at securing the border as the Maginot line was in preventing the Blitzkrieg. So no, it's really not "pretty damn easy".

Then again, reading your post again, it seems that intelligence isn't your strong point. It's hardly surprising that you want to shut down the public school system, considering you can't even spell or use words like "blockade" (not "block-aid") properly. You can't even spell Osama bin Laden's name. You seem to have absolutely zero conception of what our armed forces are capable of, and your attitude towards foreign nations tells me that you've probably never been outside of your state, let alone traveled to any country similar to the one that you've claimed should be exterminated.

Your "ideas", as proud as you are of them, are pages straight from the playbook of tyrants and dictators (like your buddy Saddam) who can only maintain power by oppressing their own people and militarily lashing out at other nations to inspire fear. Unfortunately for you, it's not the middle ages any more, and governing a modern state requires more than an iron fist, an army and a complete lack of morals.

[Beckwin]

I wonder what the hell makes Egon think we could seal off Iran when apparently we can't even seal off Iraq, as Iranian-originated supplies/terrorist fighters are flowing into Iraq.

[Tonko]

First, let's keep in mind that the biggest solution to the great depression was world war 2. But, no, i do not feel the time is right to invade Iran. We are spread thin, and even if we weren't, most of Iran is a bunch of fuckin' mountains anyway. What we should do though is smoke em out. They can't thrive on their own, it'd be pretty damn easy to seal their borders (even though we can't keep the Mexicans out of our borders) if we can secure Iraq (which we will very soon).

Second, you may ask, Wtf you wanna fuck with Iran for?! World Police no thanks!!" Well, the governments main (and should be only) job is national security. Iran is indirectly killing Americans, and is publicly getting allies to rally against us. If we limp back home, it will show a weakness, that we give up over time. That's why Osoma feels we can be defeated, he's seen us retreat before.

Third, how do we fund this block-aid? If it were up to me, I'd shut down the education department (yea the whole damn thing) and greatly cut down the EPA. With the EPA out of the way, we can finally drill that black gold we got hiding in Alaska and a few other places. That would end almost all of our oil imports and free up a ton of cash. Killing Social Security and welfare would be great too.

So yea, those are just a few of my ideas in a nut shell. They may not be prefect, but i think its a pretty good plan. If anyone else has the guts to post some ideas, please by all means....

Thank you.

And this is why natural selection elimination in the human race is a bad idea mmmkay?

[Avinor]

block-aid

The rest of the rant made as much sense. I'd quote-zoom but I think thats a ticket to bansville nowadays.

[Egon]

It's not our job to come up with ideas. We shouldn't even be over there in the first place. How about you justify to me why we should sacrifice more lives in Iran, (Not just American lives), instead of fixing our own fucking problems at home.

Edit: (Taking out link, it was pretty old)

Wow.

I never did say invade Iran, but since you said it first, i guess you did come up with an idea all by yourself. Good Job!

Cute.

So, you guys don't like the idea of any kind of aggression towards Iran. If I'm wrong, please clarify. Tell me what you think we should do instead of what we shouldn't do.

Doesn't imply you disagree??

I do have some ideas, but since it's not exactly my area of expertise I'm sure that they are full of holes, but they sure as hell don't involve attacking another country. Since you are just begging for something to shoot down, I think we should get out of the middle east asap, stop trying to to be the world police, and work on some issues at home.

Edit: And taken from above quote, "America will spend more than $1 trillion dollars in foreign wars started during the Bush administration. Because of such, the economy is in jeopardy and America's reputation abroad has suffered traumatic blows. On top of this, Americans have seen their civil liberties violated time after time." - That is why.

wut r ur ideaz?

First, let's keep in mind that the biggest solution to the great depression was world war 2. But, no, i do not feel the time is right to invade Iran. We are spread thin, and even if we weren't, most of Iran is a bunch of fuckin' mountains anyway. What we should do though is smoke em out. They can't thrive on their own, it'd be pretty damn easy to seal their borders (even though we can't keep the Mexicans out of our borders) if we can secure Iraq (which we will very soon).

Second, you may ask, Wtf you wanna fuck with Iran for?! World Police no thanks!!" Well, the governments main (and should be only) job is national security. Iran is indirectly killing Americans, and is publicly getting allies to rally against us. If we limp back home, it will show a weakness, that we give up over time. That's why Osoma feels we can be defeated, he's seen us retreat before.

Third, how do we fund this block-aid? If it were up to me, I'd shut down the education department (yea the whole damn thing) and greatly cut down the EPA. With the EPA out of the way, we can finally drill that black gold we got hiding in Alaska and a few other places. That would end almost all of our oil imports and free up a ton of cash. Killing Social Security and welfare would be great too.

So yea, those are just a few of my ideas in a nut shell. They may not be prefect, but i think its a pretty good plan. If anyone else has the guts to post some ideas, please by all means....

Thank you.

I can't decide if you're being sarcastic or not... Your post reads like an idiots guide to future foreign policy, specially prepared for Dubya by his best bud Dick.

No, I'm not being sarcastic at all, this is what conservatism is at its core.

With the EPA out of the way, we can finally drill that black gold we got hiding in Alaska and a few other places. That would end almost all of our oil imports and free up a ton of cash.

/facepalm

People act like ANWAR is the be-all-end-all to our energy crisis. It's not, it's just another source. It wouldn't even come -close- to ending our oil importing needs. We are importing 5+ billion barrels of oil per year - at that rate, ANWAR would be dry in 2 years. It's just another source, it's not an energy panacea.

It's not like we'd be able to get all that oil out of Alaska to the main 48 anyways. Global warming is melting the permafrost oil pipelines are built on. We're going to end up spending billions of dollars just maintaining the Trans-Alaska in changing environmental conditions.

Global warming is god for the godless, it's just another way for big government to get in our pockets. Climate change is very natural. I'm not sure where you get your ANWAR information, i require links, cause from what i've read, that's a lil bit off. I'll post my links when i get home from work.

block-aid

The rest of the rant made as much sense. I'd quote-zoom but I think thats a ticket to bansville nowadays.

I never considered myself ranting. But if expressing my views are ranting, then i'm guilty. Oh and yea, i made a typo, so i guess that means i'm a complete idiot cause no one on this form has made a typing mistake. I guess i'll just go back and hang out with my Rush buddies, and tell them that the liberals hurt my feelings again

[Avinor]

Actually I think you're a complete idiot because you seem to think it would be a good idea to stop funding our education system so we can deploy our armed forces in an attempt to seal Iran's borders. And no, this is not what conservatism is at its core. Its some putrid cocktail of libertarian and neo-con pipe dreams that managed to hijack the GOP, and with it our country, for the past 7 years.

[pohibaba]

Actually I think you're a complete idiot because you seem to think it would be a good idea to stop funding our education system so we can deploy our armed forces in an attempt to seal Iran's borders. And no, this is not what conservatism is at its core. Its some putrid cocktail of libertarian and neo-con pipe dreams that managed to hijack the GOP, and with it our country, for the past 7 years.

For one, I think you're mixing my posts and Egon's posts. For two, if you think our current President is a libertarian on pretty much any issue, then you're clueless.

[Avinor]

I was going off a single post, its kinda hard to mix. Did you read it? Granted Bush only embodies the neo-con part of the cocktail that Egon is swilling, but they do share some important and frightening goals for our future. The difference is the neo-cons are actually working towards those goals, while the libertarians mostly just bitch about it.

[Kurp]

There's no need for edjukation when everyone is working in a bullet factory.

[Quixon]

It's hardly surprising that you want to shut down the public school system, considering you can't even spell or use words like "blockade" (not "block-aid") properly. You can't even spell Osama bin Laden's name.

I lol'd so hard.

[Charla]

Man, that was a high quality threadjack back there.

[Andarvi]

First, let's keep in mind that the biggest solution to the great depression was world war 2. But, no, i do not feel the time is right to invade Iran. We are spread thin, and even if we weren't, most of Iran is a bunch of fuckin' mountains anyway. What we should do though is smoke em out. They can't thrive on their own, it'd be pretty damn easy to seal their borders (even though we can't keep the Mexicans out of our borders) if we can secure Iraq (which we will very soon).

Second, you may ask, Wtf you wanna fuck with Iran for?! World Police no thanks!!" Well, the governments main (and should be only) job is national security. Iran is indirectly killing Americans, and is publicly getting allies to rally against us. If we limp back home, it will show a weakness, that we give up over time. That's why Osoma feels we can be defeated, he's seen us retreat before.

Third, how do we fund this block-aid? If it were up to me, I'd shut down the education department (yea the whole damn thing) and greatly cut down the EPA. With the EPA out of the way, we can finally drill that black gold we got hiding in Alaska and a few other places. That would end almost all of our oil imports and free up a ton of cash. Killing Social Security and welfare would be great too.

So yea, those are just a few of my ideas in a nut shell. They may not be prefect, but i think its a pretty good plan. If anyone else has the guts to post some ideas, please by all means....

Thank you.

That sounds like a great plan to commit national suicide in the long term to fund a war of aggression that would create a whole nation of martyrs. Without public funding for education and social security/welfare, you'd revert America to a caste system where only the wealthy can afford basic education for their children, and poor people die by the thousand because they can't afford the basic necessities of life. US innovation (one of the few things that we have an advantage in any more) would fall flat on it's face, as workers became slaves to their employers for their productive life, after which they would have nothing to look forward to but poverty and death. Basically, your proposal would throw away nearly all of the societal progress we've made in the past 200 years. You're worried about Iranians indirectly killing a few hundred American soldiers, but you seem to have no qualms about sentencing an entire income bracket to death by cutting the social programs that make their lives possible.

As for actually dealing with Iran, what do you think the rest of the world's going to do when we "seal off the border" of Iran? Assuming that your little blockade succeeded, you'd be killing off one state of people who disliked us and creating dozens more. You'd be starving millions of Iranian citizens who've done nothing besides be born in a country where the government disagrees with you. The outrage that that kind of aggression would cause would galvanize the anti-US sentiment in other countries, and soon, rather than a few angry anti-US nations, we'd have dozens, with all of our troops tied up in Iran trying to keep food out and oil in. Not what I'd call an improvement.

Of course, even if we activated every US military soldier, we don't have the manpower to watch and effectively guard every inch of the Iranian border, so it's a moot point anyways. Before you go off on a rant about how awesome our military power is, realize that (according to Wikipedia) Iran has 16.8 MILLION feet of land border. We have (also according to Wikipedia) a little under 3 million active duty military personnel, a small fraction of which are combat-ready. Even assuming you had every single man and woman with a uniform on standing on the border of Iran, you'd only have one for every 8 feet of border, which would be about as effective at securing the border as the Maginot line was in preventing the Blitzkrieg. So no, it's really not "pretty damn easy".

Then again, reading your post again, it seems that intelligence isn't your strong point. It's hardly surprising that you want to shut down the public school system, considering you can't even spell or use words like "blockade" (not "block-aid") properly. You can't even spell Osama bin Laden's name. You seem to have absolutely zero conception of what our armed forces are capable of, and your attitude towards foreign nations tells me that you've probably never been outside of your state, let alone traveled to any country similar to the one that you've claimed should be exterminated.

Your "ideas", as proud as you are of them, are pages straight from the playbook of tyrants and dictators (like your buddy Saddam) who can only maintain power by oppressing their own people and militarily lashing out at other nations to inspire fear. Unfortunately for you, it's not the middle ages any more, and governing a modern state requires more than an iron fist, an army and a complete lack of morals.

Holy balls did Zosi own you here. One of the better ownings I have seen in a long time. And FYI, block-aid instead of blockade is hardly a "typo." Typing chedder instead of cheddar would be a typo. In your case it is just an example of either an IQ below 80 (making you clinically retarded, something tells me you don't this) or a person from your proposed future sent back in time to show us what an national privately run education system would produce.

And your stance on global warming is equally as lol worthy.

[Charla]

At first I thought calling it block-aid was intentional, to call attention to the added aspect of blocking international trade with the country in question (which would aid them), thus making it an aid block as well as a blockade, resulting in the partial portmanteau "block-aid". Apparently I was just giving him too much credit.

[Kyreth]

If there's anything history shows, it's that long-term armed conflict only serves as great money pits.

Quite simply- although keeping a war machine running is jobs and soaks up some of your excess population, it does nothing to help run a functioning economy. You sacrifice lots (currently, billions per month) of resources in an effort to produce...nothing. War is crack cocaine for the nation. A quick high, with continual use resulting in a destroyed body and a warped set of priorities, mental illness, and possibly death.

No improvements to infrastructure or the things that make a nation healthy- medical care, education. No lasting industries (other than an ever-inflating defense budget). No healthy trade relationships with other nations. A -reduction- in the supply of critical resources for the nation, some of which is getting diverted to blowing up more real estate in the Middle East to this day. Bush managed to triple my gas prices and jack up everything else thanks to the increased cost of energy in general. GG.

The only way war works as a national policy is genocide, followed by repopulating the place with your own people- and we'd hang the first President who tried that in the modern day for being an immoral-evil-sonfabitch...regardless of how well it worked in the 1800s.

[Charla]

Well, there are ways to conquer things without genocide (these days we'd call most of them Apartheid), it just doesn't work so well when the conquered area has access to guns and/or explosives and has the will to use them. Subsuming the conquered area's economy and resources also repays the initial cost, but again, it wouldn't work so well these days because the rest of the world (and more importantly your own citizens) would get pissed off about it instantly.

[Kyreth]

Well, there are ways to conquer things without genocide (these days we'd call most of them Apartheid), it just doesn't work so well when the conquered area has access to guns and/or explosives and has the will to use them. Subsuming the conquered area's economy and resources also repays the initial cost, but again, it wouldn't work so well these days because the rest of the world (and more importantly your own citizens) would get pissed off about it instantly.

Exactly. The only way to "win" with war are methods that are utterly un-American, not to mention immoral. If we'd marched in, obliterated the existing population to "put em in a reservation" levels, and started building Bush City on the ruins of Baghdad, "war crime tribunal" wouldn't begin to describe the reaction.

Instead, we get a gaping economic wound called "Mission Accomplished." Heck, it's actually making our armed forces stupider- as the war's gotten being a soldier less attractive, the education level of new recruits has been slipping. I can understand attacking another country to provide for the defense of this one, but when the result is exhausting those defenders to less and less obvious purpose, WTF is the idea? The USA isn't properly prepared for self-defense because we decided investing huge amounts of national security on a patch of desert was a good idea for the next decade or two?