Sorry but go to a shrink or write in a diary if you care to really figure it out, I'm not going to spend much time in this thread at the moment.

3/2/2011 3:36:54 PM

Quote :

" I am in a position to help save the lives of good people and take the lives of bad people"

Good and bad is very relative term here. If country X has interest in country Y and engages in conflict for sole purpose to satisfy its interest, then it is debatable who is good and who is bad.

Simple example: I'm Serbian and I can tell you that every single NATO pilot who bombed Serbia for 78 days in '99 is bad people in my books. Are these pilots good, law-obiding, moral family and father figures somewhere in their countries? I'm sure they are. However, them doing their jobs and taking orders was an absolute crime to me.

Switch places for a moment and imagine if you some non-taliban villager living in Afghanistan. You are getting bombed daily even though you might not support local regime. You might be even coerced into supporting the regime and fighting for it, because if you don't your family might be in danger. Too many afghans got killed for opposing Taliban. These same people are probably trying to kill you on daily basis. To them you are uninvited, occupying aggressor trying to tell them how to run their country. They have every right in the world to be pissed off, just as you would be if some foreigner came to bomb you and kill you on US soil. Makes no difference.

To say either men are good or bad is arguable. Hell, to say men are good or bed is more philosophical then political question, one to be debated for ages.

3/2/2011 3:44:42 PM

McDanger is like a MetaTroll.

"You're a bad person and so far beneath me that I'm not even going to expound on what I mean when I say 'You're a bad person'"

It's actually quite impressive.

3/2/2011 3:45:47 PM

I don't know what you chucklefucks are doing with your days, but I'm tabbing back here whenever I get stuck or am waiting for some code to run. I'm not going to pause important activities to speculate on which underdetermined theory of lazarus' fucked up head I'm going to endorse

3/2/2011 3:49:00 PM

And I am so important and busy that I cannot possibly say anything more! Back to my important life you worthless ignorant bad people!

3/2/2011 3:53:47 PM

I'm not remarkably important this is just remarkably trivial

It seriously says a lot about you when you project so much self-importance onto me. I simply value my own time. If you don't want to deal with my low-effort posts at the moment then don't.

[Edited on March 2, 2011 at 4:01 PM. Reason : jesus christ]

3/2/2011 3:59:14 PM

Quote :

"Switch places for a moment and imagine if you some non-taliban villager living in Afghanistan. You are getting bombed daily even though you might not support local regime. You might be even coerced into supporting the regime and fighting for it, because if you don't your family might be in danger. Too many afghans got killed for opposing Taliban. These same people are probably trying to kill you on daily basis. To them you are uninvited, occupying aggressor trying to tell them how to run their country. They have every right in the world to be pissed off, just as you would be if some foreigner came to bomb you and kill you on US soil. Makes no difference."

So, let me get this straight. You have a small band of armed religious thugs killing and mutilating ordinary Afghans in order to coerce them into supporting their bid to once again enslave a country in which they have essentially no popular support. In an effort to stop these murderers and would-be conquerors, the US accidentally kills the same ordinary civilians it's trying to protect, mostly because the thugs use civilians as human shields. And your conclusion from this scenario is that the US is the evil party, or even that the two parties are somehow morally equitable? That's just rank moral relativism.

As for your personal animosities, perhaps your anger would be better exhausted on, I don't know, Slobodan Milosevic?

3/2/2011 4:16:46 PM

his point was pretty clear

3/2/2011 4:25:26 PM

Quote :

"You have a small band of armed religious thugs killing and mutilating ordinary Afghans in order to coerce them into supporting their bid to once again enslave a country in which they have essentially no popular support"

Small band? Really? If it was really that small it certainly would not take close to 10 years for the world's most technologically prepared military to eradicate this movement. Carpet bombing certainly didn't work.

Quote :

"In an effort to stop these murderers and would-be conquerors, the US accidentally kills the same ordinary civilians it's trying to protect, mostly because the thugs use civilians as human shields"

Like we said US is not there to protect civilians. It is not in Iraq to protect human rights. It wasn't in Vietnam to fend off future conquerors. It is there for its own interest. It is selling that interest with human rights stories. Sure, there are some inherently evil dictators which may be brought down in the process, albeit at collateral expense. You live in a pink world if you think your country or any other country is in the war for some noble cause.

Quote :

"As for your personal animosities, perhaps your anger would be better exhausted on, I don't know, Slobodan Milosevic?"

Oh yeah? It is quite simple. I was born there and lived more than half of my life in the area, including the time during conflict. I know the area, people, mentality, language, 'goods and bads'. I have serbian, croatian, macedonian and muslim bosnian friends. I've also lived in the US for past 15 years. That gives me two distinctly different perspectives on the situation.

What perspective do you have other than regurgitating media sources on the conflict that occured when you were not even in your puberty in a country you probably haven't even heard of it before it reached media?

There is nothing new you can tell me about that conflict for which a) I haven't heard, and b) haven't seen. If you were present there we might have few things to talk about, other than that you can go on using pretty journalistic lingo to talk about the conflict you know nothing about.

3/2/2011 5:33:54 PM

Quote :

"The only thing I've said that could even remotely be construed as "American exceptionalism" is that, at least in intent, and often in effect, we're better than most countries. I mean, for a really staggering example, look at the difference in the way that the Soviets and the U.S. each approached Afghanistan. They killed something like 2 million people. I think it was roughly 10% of the population. They emplaced land mines made to look like children's toys. We, on the other hand, send a billion dollars worth of aircraft, burn a half-million dollar's worth of fuel, have all kinds of crazy shit that I can't even talk about going on...just to catch, say, 3 dudes...and even then, most of the time we don't even kill them--we just capture them. "

Duke, while I agree that US is overall more lenient in hand slaps, to be fair you have to take into account the time frame of conflict and what advancement in technology has brought. Past conflicts were way more brutal than what happened in, say, last 10 years. What Russians did in Afghanistan is no more brutal than what Americans did in Vietnam. Do you agree?

3/2/2011 5:51:05 PM

that's a fair point. I do think that the Soviets were more barbaric in Afghanistan than the U.S. was in Vietnam, even with the benefit of 10-20 years of technological advancement. A quick look at Wikipedia gives death tolls something on the order of half as much in North Vietnam as in Afghanistan (technically over a significantly longer period of time, too--but probably about the same duration of serious, heavy fighting). At any rate, I'll concede that technological advancement over a decade or two accounts for some of the difference.

Seriously, though, I wish you guys could see how surgical and "soft" many of the operations are over there. A lot of the missions were like "ok, today/tonight we're going to get _______ and his top assistant. Here are pictures of them. They are local Taliban leaders of ___ province. He's also a primary financier of _______ insurgent cell, and sponsors IED builders and emplacers." There would be the dudes on the ground, plus a whole stack of aircraft in support, acting on intelligence gathered through all sorts of ways. The target would get tracked down, and the ground guys would surround the area/house/building. The end result was, more often than not, the specific bad guys getting captured without either side firing a shot.

3/2/2011 7:23:48 PM

Quote :

"Small band?"

With respect to the population, yes, absolutely. They have no more than 10 percent approval among Afghans, yet you insist on referring to them as freedom fighters fighting for "their" country. This is like saying the United States belongs to the Mormons.

Quote :

"Like we said US is not there to protect civilians."

Again, this is where some knowledge of the conflict would come in handy. In fact, the plan from day one was to establish the beginnings of a stable, democratic, human rights respecting government in Afghanistan. It wasn't the reason we went in (which rather explodes your tin hat theories about empire building), but it was always seen as a necessary condition for success. (Though as far as I'm concerned, extinguishing the Taliban would have been justification enough for intervention.)

Our strategy and tactics have evolved a bit with respect to civilians. We're admittedly way more careful about limiting civilian casualties now than we were early on. But at no point in the conflict was the US killing civilians for any reason other than by accident, usually while it was in the process of trying to wipe out al Qaeda or Taliban fighters whose sole objective is to literally make Afghanistan a living hell.

[Edited on March 2, 2011 at 11:52 PM. Reason : ]

3/2/2011 11:50:42 PM

Quote :

"With respect to the population, yes, absolutely. They have no more than 10 percent approval among Afghans, yet you insist on referring to them as freedom fighters fighting for "their" country. This is like saying the United States belongs to the Mormons. "

You have a link for 10%? Also, please stop putting words in my mouth. I never once referred to Taliban as freedom fighters. I am not sure you understand what was I telling Duke regarding vague definitions of good and bad. In fact, your response is way off tangent.

Quote :

"In fact, the plan from day one was to establish the beginnings of a stable, democratic, human rights respecting government in Afghanistan."

or

Quote :

"It wasn't the reason we went in"

So which one is it?

Quote :

"(which rather explodes your tin hat theories about empire building), but it was always seen as a necessary condition for success. (Though as far as I'm concerned, extinguishing the Taliban would have been justification enough for intervention.)"

Again, putting words in my mouth. I never mentioned empire building anywhere. I said US interests, whatever they are.

Quote :

"But at no point in the conflict was the US killing civilians for any reason other than by accident, usually while it was in the process of trying to wipe out al Qaeda or Taliban fighters whose sole objective is to literally make Afghanistan a living hell."

I didn't say they did it on purpose (aside from abu ghraib). You know, I could, point out that Milosevic was doing the same thing in Kosovo. There were hordes of paramilitary KLA fighters hiding in civilian houses. When Serbs bombed the living shit out of these houses, civilians died along with KLA and whole world screamed how Serbs are genocidal maniacs for killing Albanian civilians.
This is no different than what US is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. None, zero, zip. Same thing. I can't say I condone it, but I understand that civilians will die. It is double standards gallore, all in the name of interests.

3/3/2011 3:52:53 PM

Well, to be fair, the Serbs already had a bit of a reputation of specifically targetting civilian populations (whether this reputation was just or not is another discussion). I'd say that is probably where comparisons between Serbia and the US (OEF/OIF) begin to diverge.

3/3/2011 4:45:43 PM

every country has good and bad reputation.
you can't judge every german as sadistic just because they killed 6 million jews
you can't judge every croat as sadistic just because they killed 700,000 serbs in WWII conc camp
you can't judge every north vietnamese, cambodian, afghani...you name it...just because an event occured.

i mean should we judge americans for nagasaki and hiroshima as having reputation for killing civilians?

list goes on. actions of few do not represent the majority and i think you will agree with that?

3/3/2011 5:30:07 PM

Quote :

"You have a link for 10%?"

http://www.gallup.com/poll/126602/taliban-increasingly-unpopular-pakistan.aspx

This figure is cited by just about every NGO working in the region, including those who are hugely skeptical of our presence there.

Quote :

"I never once referred to Taliban as freedom fighters. I am not sure you understand what was I telling Duke regarding vague definitions of good and bad."

I found your Afghanistan analogy rather confusing, but the impression I got was that you think the Taliban, Taliban-aligned groups, or civilians sufficiently coerced into supporting the Taliban are just a bunch of guys pissed off that someone has invaded "their" country. This is exactly opposite of the truth. The Taliban is a terrorist organization that wants to seize control of a country they have no right to rule, and who intimidate regular Afghans through outright violence. This has nothing to do with sovereignty, which the Taliban has no right to claim, and which is rather far down on the list of concerns of ordinary Afghans. The biggest gripe Afghans have with ISAF is its inability to sufficiently crush the Taliban.

Quote :

"So which one is it?"

It is both. They are not mutually exclusive.

Quote :

"This is no different than what US is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. None, zero, zip."

Right. Except for the minor fact that the US presence in both countries has absolutely nothing to do with ethnic cleansing. Small thing, really.

[Edited on March 4, 2011 at 9:29 AM. Reason : ]

3/4/2011 9:25:54 AM

Quote :

"http://www.gallup.com/poll/126602/taliban-increasingly-unpopular-pakistan.aspx "

Now, serious question. Did you even attempt to read that link in its entirety? Not to mention that positive/negative influence has nothing to do with whether or not you are forced to join military.
Example: You might be hardcore ultra-conservative military guy who is in service under the government that has a largely liberal stance on most issues.

That survey merely expresses how happy are Pakistanis and Afghans with Taliban influence. Obama has, what, 40 some percent approval rating? Taliban has 20%. Point is they were a governing body in Afghanistan and whether or not people approve them is irrelevant, just as approval ratings for Kim Yong or any other dictator is likely to be low. They are in charge. They are the law makers. That is what is relevant.

Quote :

"It is both. They are not mutually exclusive. "

Can you explain how can it be both and how are those two statements different in meaning.

Quote :

"Right. Except for the minor fact that the US presence in both countries has absolutely nothing to do with ethnic cleansing. Small thing, really."

If Mexicans in Southern Texas raised arms, start attacking and killing local police and organized themselves in paramilitary formations, what do you think US government response would be?
Now add to that the fact that a large majority of these paramilitary formations were simply composed of normal civilians that just picked up AK-47s. If you kill those civilians you are comminting ethnic cleansing according to you?
That is what Serbia did in Kosovo. Again, you have no clue what happened. You have zero insight on situation, other than fox news or whatever rep/lib junk media you watch.

Now, how do you think US drops bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan? Do you think they count the number of innocent civilians that are in the same house with suspected Taliban leader? If these criminals be it Albanians or Taliban are hiding in civilian hide-outs, more than likely innocent people will be killed. It is just what happens and it will not change.

[Edited on March 4, 2011 at 12:40 PM. Reason : f]

3/4/2011 12:16:42 PM

I guess I don't understand the point you're trying to make about the Taliban. They have absolutely no legitimate claim to governance, unless you consider legitimate governance to be that which is derived from things like popular consent, international recognition, not being one of the biggest abusers of human rights on the face of the planet, and so on. If those things don't factor into your definition of legitimacy, then we can probably leave the conversation at that.

Quote :

"If Mexicans in Southern Texas raised arms, start attacking and killing local police and organized themselves in paramilitary formations, what do you think US government response would be?"

I can tell you that if President Obama decided to respond by waging a campaign of forced removals, mass rape, and mass murder of all people of Hispanic origin, then I would denounce him as an ethnic cleanser and demand he be brought to justice. I sure as hell would not be making excuses for him or try to draw some asinine historical moral equivalencies, as you seem devoted to doing on behalf Milosevic. It's not a matter of perspective: Milosevic was evil. That there are hyper nationalist goons such as yourself who think otherwise does not change that.

Quote :

"Now, how do you think US drops bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan? Do you think they count the number of innocent civilians that are in the same house with suspected Taliban leader?"

Yes, though it would still not be the same even if they didn't. The US is not conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing disguised as a security operation. Milosevic was.

[Edited on March 4, 2011 at 1:09 PM. Reason : ]

3/4/2011 12:40:29 PM

Quote :

"I guess I don't understand the point you're trying to make about the Taliban. They have absolutely no legitimate claim to governance"

You are retarded. Taliban WAS the official governing body in Afghanistan. Whether we think they are incapable of doing that job is completely irrelevant. I am NOT condoning anything they did during their oppresive regime. I think they should be tried and sentenced to death for it. Stop putting words in my mouth and read what is written.

Quote :

"I can tell you that if President Obama decided to respond by waging a campaign of forced removals, mass rape, and mass murder of all people of Hispanic origin"

Is that so? You would not deport (pretty name for forced removal) and kill illegal paramilitary formations that are murdering US law enforcement officers, army personel and high ranking civilians? I guarantfuckintee you that is exactly what US would do! They would wipe the core clean in southern Texas if that ever happened. I'm willing to bet you would support it all the way.

Milosevic was evil for other reasons, such as bribery, extortions, ties to tobbaco and alcohol smuggling, oppresion of opposing political parties, theft from pension and social security plans. However, his response in Kosovo was completely VALID in every respect. He took military action to protect Serbian borders and cradle of Serbian civilization and history. Kosovo is part of Serbia and Serbia is a sovereign nation.

Now go on and keep regurgitating news like a good little sheep.

[Edited on March 4, 2011 at 2:28 PM. Reason : f]

3/4/2011 2:27:56 PM

Quote :

"Taliban WAS the official governing body in Afghanistan. "

They were the quasi official, partially recognized authority in part of the country. If you're trying to say that they wielded some authority over people, fine. But I don't see your larger point. They were still illegitimate in every conceivable way.

Quote :

"You would not deport (pretty name for forced removal) and kill illegal paramilitary formations that are murdering US law enforcement officers, army personel and high ranking civilians? I guarantfuckintee you that is exactly what US would do! They would wipe the core clean in southern Texas if that ever happened. I'm willing to bet you would support it all the way."

I would probably support taking action against the militias, depending on the circumstances. But I sure as hell would not support, or employ euphemism for, a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

I'm going to stop addressing your points on Milosevic. If you want to make excuses for forced removals and coordinated massacres of civilians, start a new thread. I imagine it would be interesting.

3/4/2011 2:52:21 PM

I love it. Foreigner is teaching me about my own country It is the very essence of ignorance.

You epitomize the saying that little knowledge is way more dangerous than no knowledge.

3/4/2011 7:39:24 PM

And you're a perfect example of how nationalism tends to cloud moral clarity.

[Edited on March 5, 2011 at 8:37 AM. Reason : ]

3/5/2011 8:35:26 AM

I am tired of paying taxes for the US going around to play world police and to hook up their buddies with no-bid fluffy gov't contracts. Let other countries foot the bill.

3/7/2011 4:11:43 PM