Ergh can you imagine if Mitt won that election, I still don't know how anyone believed that guy he just oozed fakeness and horribleness with every pore. It also seems funny that only old white people seem to have voted for him...oh old white people when will you learn
So are you implying the Taliban are the oppressed?Originally Posted by Grizzly
The Taliban didn't even exist during that war. As an entity they emerged during the 90s.
Why yes you're right I'm deliciously evil
Tradition is the tyranny of dead men
Steam:Kadayi Origin: Kadayi GFWL: Kadayi
Probable Replicant
*blush* I'm flattered by the attention boys, but please let's not make the thread about liddle old me
No.
"The Monster" in my case, is the Taliban. "He who fights them" are the US.
You've never watched Robin Williams, have you?
They won't. They will grow decrepit and die. And hopefully we can teach their children to be better than them.
At least the Taliban shit within their own borders.
Last edited by Shane; 09-11-2012 at 12:56 PM.
While I certainly don't like it when America starts wars, and I'm very much against our use of drones or any other form of airstrikes, I have a minor beef with the complaints the US gets even when they don't intervene in international affairs. Member nations of the EU love to give the US shit when we go off and bomb people, and then give us shit when we don't do so. They don't seem to mind that we have this huge military - they just want to be at its helm: NATO's basically the American military, token forces from the UK and France, and a big dogpile of participation awards.
Turkey loves sabre-rattling at Syria, but they're not going to do anything without American support. Israel's been sabre-rattling at Iran, but they're not going to do anything without American support. The member nations of the EU certainly liked to cheerlead when America butted into Bosnian affairs, and France basically said "Hey, America, think fast!" when they went off to bomb Libya. It's the American navy hitting Somalians, and every time some atrocity happens in what are still sovereign nations, we get foreign pundits saying, "and where were the Americans?"
It seems that for all the complaints about American interventionism - and there are many, many legitimate complaints - American non-interventionism would result in far, far more.
That looks like a Catch-22, doesn't it? America intervened in many foreign affairs for a variety of reasons, and now this intervention is actually counted on by the political power players in the region.
But that's talking only about the governments and international organizations. I'm curious to see what the opinion of the regular people in those countries is.
In a related note, I just came across this link in an MMO blog and it highlights many of the problems the newish elected government is facing. Being just an outside observer - albeit one that would much rather see the USA reclaim its importance in the world than let China fill that vacuum - I can say this reflects many of my viewpoints on the country as well.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-865295.html
So what do we enter these international conflicts for then? To amass trillions of dollars in debt? Because our dicks are that huge?
As the great minds of Harvard said fifty years ago when it came to poli sci majors: The optimists learn Russian. The pessimists learn Chinese.
We built our infrastructure at the turn of the last century. We built your infrastructure midway through this past century. The Chinese built their infrastructure last year. Yeah, we could do with a refresh. Part of this election was in allowing ourselves the political and economic capacity to do so.
Well, it's a long menu. I won't even mention cuckoo theories like some South American presidents who believe the USA has cancer-causing omega rays, just the sanest ones off the top of my head:
- Keeping the political discourse focused on external threats is a good way to distract the people from internal problems. You had one whole presidential debate dedicated to foreign policy, for crying out loud.
- As an extension of the point above, keeping your people in fear is one of the most powerful (and abused) tools in politics, allowing the government to take actions (like the Patriot Act) that would be less easily tolerated if not for the perennial threat of war.
- Military spending fuels a HUGE industry, with very close ties to many politicians. There's a lot of profit to be made from wars. This profit helps elect people and keep them in power - who in turn have it in their best interest to make sure there is always a demand for more military spending.
Did you actually watch that debate? Most of it was spent discussing domestic matters because the vast majority of voters prioritized the economy and jobs as their impetus to vote. If you'll watch the other two debates and the VP debate, you'll see that the subject both sides kept returning to was jobs, jobs, jobs.
Point 1: Nalano already responded to this,, but the discourse within the US is focused almost entirely on the economy.
Point 2: Fear of what? Most people don't even know we are still at war. The patriot act was a kneejerk reaction to 9/11 not the product of decades of war.
Point 3: Except that pretty much every conflict since WW2 has cost the US economy not helped to bolster it.
I didn't watch the debate in full - nor have the desire to do so - but from the excerpts I've seen, it looks like it didn't stick to the subject because the candidates' positions were so similar it would have been a full hour exchanging "I agree"s and uneasy smiles...
Can you really say the effect of the fear-mongering has completely waned? Don't you still feel the changes brought to airport security, for instance, or the mistrust and mistreatment of people originating from cultures demonized as "the enemy"? What about the acts allowing execution or imprisonment without trial for whatever people the government deems deserving? Would that have been accepted by the American people were it not for the culture of fear fostered by those who gained power from it?
Granted, things are much better now than a decade ago, but the Democratic government has done much less than it promised to combat the effect of those decisions.
As for the third point, of course the wars hurt the economy and make society, in general, suffer. It's not society who benefits from these wars; it's individuals and corporations. And they do profit, immensely.
Then your opinion of it is null and void, because you are ill-informed.
As your main point is that the American people are ill-informed, this makes your comment doubly ironic.
As a side note, I did not get that impression at all from Turkey. They are not "Sabre-rattling", their attitude is more like "get off my lawn!" - I don't think (lack off) US Support has anything to do with that.Turkey loves sabre-rattling at Syria, but they're not going to do anything without American support.
You are mixing two different issues into one. The only way your argument works is if you are suggesting that the US Government itself was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which is stupid.
This incident and this incident have strong resemblances to a USS Maine event (or, for a 20th century example, a Marco Polo Bridge event), and Turkey has been requesting American action when it comes to Syria.
Why does the F4 Phantom shit sound like a false flag operation? Because F4 Phantoms are not in active service in Turkey. Their main air force are F16s, and F16s can't be shot down by the aging Cold War era shit that Syria have for their anti-aircraft batteries.
Nalano, why are you hanging to a minor point of my message - that the main theme of one of the 3 presidential debates was foreign policy - to try to invalidate the whole argument? I had higher hopes of this conversation from the way it started.
And my main point is not that the American people are ill-informed. I hope that's not the impression I'm causing.
Hypernetic, nope, I'm not supporting any 9/11 nutter conspiracy theory*. But surely you can realize that the American government at the time could - and did - capitalize on the disaster to further their agenda? They don't need to have had any direct involvement with it to leverage the aftermath for political gain.
It's much more than just two issues into one. I'm talking about the consequences of 8 years with a fear-mongering party in power. The few examples I'm giving shouldn't be taken as separate cases, but symptoms of a culture of fear that has held American politics back for way too long.
* Whether 9/11 could have been prevented if the government at the time had acted more appropriately on the information they had is debatable. But I don't think it warrants theories that they deliberately fumbled national defense to create such a disaster. They do exist, though.
Last edited by Maknol; 09-11-2012 at 06:11 PM.
Meanwhile, China is getting rid of its leading party's senior members, to replace them with the junior ones due to "public uproar" of sorts.
This seems a tad more important than the overhyped US elections.
- Tom De Roeck.
monochrom & verse publications
"Quantacat's name is still recognised even if he watches on with detached eyes like Peter Molyneux over a cube in 3D space, staring at it with tears in his eyes, softly whispering... Someday they'll get it."
They do that every ten years. It's a long-planned changing of the guard, and any efforts to shake things up go badly for those who try: Case in point, Bo Xilai.
The United States is a major international power, and has the largest, most diverse immigrant population in the world. Why would it not be a good idea to focus one debate on foreign policy?
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