[Kjorteo]

Gary Johnson is running and no one seems to have noticed yet. Image-wise, he... hasn't really aged well since he ran New Mexico, so he won't do a lot to change the GOP's image of the old white zombie party, but... oh, well. Policy-wise, he's kind of like Ron Paul, but without the utter barking madness. (Plus he's kind of a hometown hero since he was "my" Governor at one point, you know how it goes.) In a Johnson vs. Obama election, I would actually be torn and unsure who to vote for because I genuinely like them both, which... never happens with Presidents, at least not in my lifetime. It's always been a relatively clear Good versus Evil choice for me.

Of course, there's basically no way he's going to win the primary--his ideas match almost perfectly with what the Tea Party claims they are on paper, but in practice there's still all the family values stuff that will probably ruin him. I mean, he wants to legalize pot. What a Godless hippie. So yeah, his campaign probably won't even get off the ground, someone completely abhorrent will get the nod instead, and the whole Good versus Evil thing will continue in 2012. Oh, well. We tried.

[DanSC]

Psudo wrote:

If the GOP puts up a Mondale, we might see a 1984-scale landslide. And, really, who from the GOP isn't a Mondale this time around? And even if a GOP candidate can overcome Obama and win, do we really want four years of Trump? Huckabee? If we don't get a good black horse Republican candidate, I'm seriously considering voting for Obama. At best, he's the guy that got Osama. At worst, at least the mistakes will be from the other party.

The GOP needs someone like 2000 McCain or Marc Raciot to run, but that will never happen.

[Murray_Smith]

One more hateful man has been snatched from this world. Goodnight riddance, sweet prince.

Crosshair wrote:

How many thousands dead for nothing? How many tens of thousand wounded for nothing? How many hundreds of billions squandered for nothing? All to prop up a foreign policy that is counterproductive to American interests, American ideals, and which is going to collapse anyway.

According to the above statements, you consider the deaths of men who orchestrated mass murder "nothing."

Quote:

We should be ashamed, not celebrating, for our middle east foreign policy of the last 40 years and ashamed for so eagerly falling for such a basic trap and shoving our hand into a meat grinder for nearly 10 years.

What, pray tell, was our alternative reaction to a terrorist attack? A strongly-worded letter?
If, hypothetically speaking, someone were to kill everyone you ever loved, would you not spend most of your waking moments trying to track that person down, regardless of personal cost?
You wouldn't fall for such a basic trap, would you?

Quote:

We should have learned our lesson after Vietnam, but apparently not.

The lessons we learned from Vietnam were only ignored in Iraq, not ShitcAfghanistan. And even Iraq seems to be doing okay, right?
...right?

[Crosshair]

Murray_Smith wrote:

One more hateful man has been snatched from this world. Goodnight riddance, sweet prince.

Crosshair wrote:

How many thousands dead for nothing? How many tens of thousand wounded for nothing? How many hundreds of billions squandered for nothing? All to prop up a foreign policy that is counterproductive to American interests, American ideals, and which is going to collapse anyway.

According to the above statements, you consider the deaths of men who orchestrated mass murder "nothing."

Considering the price paid, yes.

Quote:

Quote:

We should be ashamed, not celebrating, for our middle east foreign policy of the last 40 years and ashamed for so eagerly falling for such a basic trap and shoving our hand into a meat grinder for nearly 10 years.

What, pray tell, was our alternative reaction to a terrorist attack? A strongly-worded letter?

Stop propping up tyrannies who oppress and murder their own people. OBL realized long ago that Arabs will not have self rule until American interference in the region stops. They really don't give two sh*ts about us except for the fact that we are constantly intervining in their internal affairs.

Arabs, like everyone, want to rule themselves in a way that they see fit. Would that mean Muslim Theocracies? Probably. Would oil be a bit more expensive? Perhaps. But under that situation the problem would be Muslims killing Muslims in the Middle east. Fine, let them kill each other. That may sound heartless, but I have no interest in sticking a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger for people who really don't care for me. If you want to go do that, fine, but leave me out of it and don't expect me to wash your brains off the wall.

That 1.1 trillion dollars squandered in the middle east figures out to about $33,000 for every man, woman, and child in the US. That would have bought a lot of oil. That would have bought a lot of modernization in our border security, our law enforcement system, our intelligence system, etc to keep these people out and/or catch if they get in. Seems like that would have been a better use for the money.

If you have to try and impose your system at gunpoint you have implicitly admitted that your system is:

1. Inferior to the one it is replacing. If it was superior then the people would adopt it automatically over time or they would leave their home country to come and live peacefully in yours. (People leaving Europe for the US in the 19th Century, people fleeing East Germany for West Germany, etc.)

2. Just a cover for you to loot the region.

3. Administered by idiot politicians who see no problem with the hypocrisy in their actions because leading by example is too hard.

Trying to impose your system by force, even if superior, is counterproductive because people by their nature don't like being ordered around by outsiders and as part of resisting the outside aggressor will resist their system.

The only reason you have to fear Islam and Muslim extremists is if you believe that their system is superior to Western style constitutional republic government. (same applies with Communism/socialism.) It obviously isn't so all you have to do is let them have their part of the world, let them implement their system, and then sit back and watch it stagnate and fall behind the west.

Last I checked Muslims were not sending fire ships into New York harbor in the 19th century. They weren't committing arson attacks on 19th century US cities. Why not? Because for the large part we left them alone and as a result they had no real reason to do anything to us. The only time we did anything to them was when their pirates get too ambitious and we went over and kicked some ass so they would knock it off a bit and then we left.

Quote:

If, hypothetically speaking, someone were to kill everyone you ever loved, would you not spend most of your waking moments trying to track that person down, regardless of personal cost?

Not if I had to do what had to be done to get Bin Laden. 5500+ Americans have died in our wars in the Middle East since 9/11 so we could "get" Bin Laden. 33,000+ wounded so we could "get" Bin Laden. Are you such a sadistic person that you would be willing to murder 5500 of your fellow Americans if it means you could "get" Bin Laden? Are you such a sadistic person that you would be willing to injure and mutilate 33,000+ of your fellow Americans if it means you could "get" Bin Laden? Cutting off hands, feet, gouging out eyes, disfiguring faces, etc as has happened to so many people we have sent over there if it means you could "get" Bin Laden?

If you would answer "Yes" to that question than you are an animal that is worse than Bin Laden and who deserves the same treatment. At least Bin Laden killed and maimed the innocent under the believe that it would better Muslims. You would do such things simply for revenge.

If you would answer "no" to such a question then you are just a warmongering hypocrite.

Me, I'd rather let Bin Laden live to be 125 rather than do such a thing. Doing anything else would be a Pyrrhic victory at best. One would best spend their resources elsewhere at home to prevent further attacks and changing the foreign policy that results in so many people hating us in the first place.

Quote:

You wouldn't fall for such a basic trap, would you?

No I wouldn't. If someone came and killed my family and then fled halfway around the world, to a place where they are regarded as a hero and have thousands willing to die to protect him, I would not try to go over there and strike him down for the same reason the KKK doesn't go to Detroit to beat up on Black people, because it would be a stupid thing to do that would likely result in them getting killed. Would I be pissed? Yes. Would I keep an eye on him in case I find the chance to meet them alone in a dark alley? Yes. If I couldn't get revenge would I at lest work with others to make sure he couldn't come over and kill anyone else's family? Yes. Would I kill and maim tens of thousands of Americans to get that revenge? No.

I am not going to idiotically go running halfway around the world to his stronghold with all his allies to try and strike him down. If I was going to do that I'd just save some time and airfare and just shoot myself in the head because the end result would be the same.

Quote:

We should have learned our lesson after Vietnam, but apparently not.

The lessons we learned from Vietnam were only ignored in Iraq, not ShitcAfghanistan. And even Iraq seems to be doing okay, right?
...right?[/quote]
You honestly think Iraq is doing well? I bet you also believe the propaganda that the Polish military attacked Germany on September 1st 1939 which is why Germany invaded Poland.

The new Iraq government is weak and has little influence across wide swaths of the country and various human rights abuses are being overlooked by the US. Once the US completely withdraws I will be surprised if it lasts 5 years without being taken over or overthrown unless it receives massive support from the US.

Of course we ignored the lessons of Vietnam in Afghanistan. Once Bin Laden left Afghanistan, what the heck were we accomplishing by staying there? What was the point of establishing a new government given that the vast majority of people there would not recognize the governments authority and would not support the new puppet government? It's not like we didn't know what would happen, given that the Soviets tried the same thing not even two decades before. It too will collapse soon after we leave.


It is long past time to break the cycle of violence and stop trying to impose our values on people who do not want them. Start supporting the troops by opposing war.

/We need "National Defense", not "National Offense".

[Psudo]

Crosshair wrote:

5500+ Americans have died in our wars in the Middle East since 9/11 so we could "get" Bin Laden. 33,000+ wounded so we could "get" Bin Laden.

You're including Iraq numbers? Then, logically, you're assuming that our war in Iraq was to "get" Bin Ladin, not just as an excuse or artificial justification but an actual and useful means to that end.

Even I don't believe that, Bush doctrine right-wing hawk that I am. The war in Iraq might've been good for national security in the sense that it moved the fight with al-Qaeda from New York City to Baghdad, but Bin Ladin was not in Iraq.

There were more motivations involved than merely making one man dead. The man led the organization, al-Qaeda, that planned the 9/11 attacks. He was targeted as leader of that organization, not not the organization targeted for his sake. So many of the leaders of that organization have been killed that "al-Qaeda transformed from what was once a hierarchical organization with a large operating budget into an ideological movement." [1] That destruction of the hierarchical al-Qaeda organization would not have been possible if we had not classified the Taliban as enemies as well, guilty of defending the organization that destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon. They, too, were and are enemies of the USA, a fact that even Pres. Obama, the Canadian government, and Democrat legislators accept.

An entirely different set of enemies were enumerated in the 55 Iraqi Most Wanted card decks, of which only ten are still at large and none were al-Qaeda members. These were leaders of another organization, the Ba'ath Party, that sought war with America (though less effectively).

Aside from the far more numerous enemies than just Bin Ladin, there is other positive work going on. US soldiers spend a lot of their time in Afghanistan and Iraq building schools and hospitals, repairing infrastructure, distributing toys for kids, food, and clothes, and providing other charitable work. Free elections have been held in Iraq and Afghanistan, both countries without democratic histories. Thousands of personal relationships, friendships, and associations have been established between Iraqis, Afghanis, and Americans, the foundations for better, more mutually respectful national relationships in the future.

Whether these achievements were worth their costs is a complex question based largely on subjective judgment, but it is objectively and factually wrong to compare the entire cost of two major wars to the thin, narrow objective of catching or killing one man. There were more objectives and there are more achievements than merely that. A greater purpose of national security is clearly intertwined with these achievements.