Two US soldiers tortured to death, where is the outrage from the left now????

Then you are just arguing pointless semantics. Do you think I view these terrorists as end tables or maybe pomegranates?

Of course they are "people" in the literal, dictionary sense. But if you have a grander notion of "people" and want me to agree to it then please elaborate.


Well you might want to be a little more careful with your posts then. At the very least you could use a paragraph to separate the part where you are explicitly talking about me from your rant against certain unnamed posters in the thread. I'm not asking you to put your response in two posts, just a simple paragraph break to break up those wildly contrasting thoughts will do. By saying these terrorists should not be punished you are condoning their actions and are no better than they are.

And I am special. Don't you judge me!

There are lots of countries in the world that view other countries as wrong. I happen to think that a country that ends up invading another country to fix things is inferior to the ones who don't invade. Both Iraq and America fail this test. Hence, both Iraq and America are places I wish not to be apart of. There are other reasons I hate both countries, but we'll leave this as the tip of the iceburg. Iraq is probably closer to fixing the above mentioned problem then we are, because they've had their wings clipped.

'K, but I was talking about individuals.

I managed to find the passage I was thinking of here . Billy (G.) I'm not asking you to agree with his conclusion, just to acknowlege that it is a vailid viewpoint and to refrain from the blanket statements you used at the beginning of this thread.

A person's actions are exactly what defines him. When all is said and done, the only thing we can call our own are our actions.

And this whole judging nonsense? Everyone judges other people and their actions all the time. It's built in to human nature. It's how we judge that's important. If we're fair, consistent and unbiased and if we apply our standards to ourselves as well as our friends and our enemies, we are doing the best we can. If we give the other person the benefit of the doubt and refrain from judgement when we know we are in possession of only some of the facts, we are doing the best we can. But it's absurd to say you're judging some one's act and not them. It's even more absurd to say you're judging "the sin and not the sinner." If you've already judged the action to be a sin, you've just called the actor a sinner.

If I see somebody beating a puppy with a stick, I know it's wrong. Call me judgmental for saying so if you want. But if I say he's sinning and going to hell, then I'm going too far.

Actually the extremists are killing mostly innocents, not each other.

So. You admire the suicide bombers that blow themselves up in a crowded market, at an elementary school, or an old folks home? All three of these events have occured in the past few months in Iraq.

I'll bite and say, "actually, yes", primarily because they're willing to die for something they believe in. It may suck to me, but since it's right for them, it's right for them.

And before anyone says I have a poor standpoint because I haven't lost anyone la la la, I've lost two friends in the war already and one more came home with a PTSD.

I think where the misunderstanding of what I say is coming from people who believe there is an objective "right and wrong". I don't think that at all. It's entirely subjective, what is right to one person can be horribly wrong to another, and anything society has to say about it is really a halfassed struggle to make some sense of chaos. We partipicate in parts of that struggle that fit our personal view of right and wrong, but just because others agree doesn't mean our view is any more valid than anyone elses. I suppose I consider the world with a certain nihilistic angle.

BTW Groucho you consider half of my arguments to be addressing you specifically, when in fact they are addressing things Lorelei said.

A person's actions reflects on them, but to say their actions defines them is to judge a book by the cover. What drives the actions is often far more important than the actions themselves, and the kind of bigotry that exists when we say all suicide bombers are imbeciles and assholes is what I'm trying to avoid. For them, they are doing the right thing. If we were on their side of the war, we'd agree. They're far from cowards, because they consider themselves martyrs and believe they are serving God. THey are convicted, intelligent, and organized; the three attributes of an enemy that make it a titan. If we fail in having all three of those traits (which we are dangerously close to doing on all counts), we will be defeated soundly, no matter what we bring to bear technologically, logistically, or even morally.

Bush did weasel out. The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia, were funded by Saudi Arabia and were trained in Afghanistan. We invaded Afghanistan, but did nothing, absolutely nothing to Saudi Arabia. Major weaseling there. It's taken years to get Saudi Arabia to even minimally cooperate in the fight against Al-Qaeda. But we didn't attack Bush's friends and family allies in Saudi Arabia, we invaded Iraq.

Clinton, on the other hand, had the first bombers of the World Trade Center arrested, extradited, tried, convicted and jailed. Not bad. He bombed targets in Sudan and Afghanistan after the embassy bombings in Africa.

And if you say he should have done more, then you have to ask yourself why Bush didn't do so after he was elected. He didn't even address the subject of terrorism until we were attacked in September 2001. He rejected the Blue Ribbon Commission set up to investigate the possibility of an attack on American soil. That commission submitted its report in February 2001. Bush refused to release the report and assigned the Vice President to create a new commission in March 2001. Bush said he would sit in some of the meetings. That commission never met. Not once. Cheney never even appointed anyone to sit on that commission. They were more concerned with tax cuts than security.

And you think they are killing each other instead of Americans? Our soldiers aren't American? Our civilian contractors aren't American? LOL. The terrorists in Iraq weren't terrorists 5 years ago. The war created those terrorists. According to the Pentagon, 100,000 of them. So Bush's record is an increase in the number of terrorists, an increase in the number of deaths due to terrorism, and an increase in the number of terrorist attacks. Sounds like he's not doing so well to me. Iraq wasn't a center of Islamic extremism until after we invaded. So now we have this huge distraction to deal with and the Taleban are making a come back in Afghanistan. Great job so far.

There are legal wars. The US declaration of war on Japan in 1941 was legal. The US invasion of Afghanistan was legal because Afghanistan gave aid and sanctuary to Bin Laden. The invasion of Iraq was illegal because the US was obligated to follow the decisions of the UN Security Council on the matter stemming from Desert Storm.

And i say those people, while they may be stressed, their stress is probably on an entirely different order of magnitude.

It's one thing to bve stressed over whether you might be made redundant in your job next April. It's another thing to wonder whether your wife and children won't be kidnapped or worse and whether you'll make it home alive today. Completely different order of magnitude, and not comparable.

Unless your name is Job, you've no right to criticise anyone for breaking under stress.

Right, I'm feeling scrappy, so I'll throw in on this.

The Koran does not say kill the infidels. In fact, with specific regard to Christians and Jews, the Korean considers them to be a special class -- not quite Muslim, not quite utterly pagan. They are the People of the Book.

No, the reason the boys with bombs strapped to their chests want to kill America is because they're poor, and desperate, and these men who teach them tell them that America is the reason their countries are dying, that America is the cause of all of this horror, that America drops the bombs on the houses around them and rolls through the streets in tanks shooting bullets that go through walls and kill grandmothers as often as they kill insurgents who are armed and fight back.

If you were 18 years old and some country came into your homeland and started dropping bombs, and rolling through your streets in vehicles and yelling at you in a foreign language with a gun pointed at your head, and people you know and care about are dying all around you, and there's no water and no gasoline and barely enough electricity to run a refridgerator to keep your food from spoiling...If your pregnant sister or mother or wife is terrified of going into labor after dark for fear of being shot by American patrols while in a car on the way to the hospital...If you are this young boy, maybe it is not such a big step to pick up a weapon, to listen to an Imam or a warlord or a teacher who says, "Come with me. We'll fight back."

Torture is inexcusable whenever it is used, whoever it is used by, whether it be us or whether it be by insurgents in Iraq. But we have no business whatsoever being in that country. None. Our moral justification for invasion by rights ought to have us invading Darfour, and North Korea, and Sri Lanka, _AND EVERY COUNTRY WHERE INJUSTICE AND EVIL RULES_. But we don't, and we didn't. We invaded Iraq. Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. Iraq, which had no weapons of mass destruction.

You who call yourselves the 'right', you are just as ignorant as that boy in Iraq with the gun. You listen to the men with guns and stern faces, the men who tell you your only option is to fight, that you have to hate them, that they're causing all of these problems, that they will kill you if you don't kill them first. You listen to them, and you pick up your weapon, whether your weapon is a megaphone or an email or a vote for an incompetent (in every way) administration. You are just as responsible for the deaths of each person in Iraq, civilian or military. You. Suck it up, because that's your legacy. Your refusal to think, your blind acceptance of this war as just, firmly cements this guilt as yours. You will carry it your whole life.

Every person who dies in Iraq is one too many. Period.

It was called Sanctions. Clinton was using them to great and terrible effect. Even Colin Powell and Condi Rice mentioned Saddam was completely boxed in and had no weapons...but then they decided to change their tune and lie for Bush (who no doubt WAS playing golf).

you disgust me.

Then why do you support George Bush?

actually --I despise them equally as I do the cowards who brought Shock and Awe in my name.

To be willing to die for what you believe in is one thing but to be willing to die and kill innocents in order to further your cause is another thing entirely. Right for them? How can that be right for anyone?



I don't misunderstand what it is you are saying, and yes you may have a somewhat nihilistic view of things but how can blowing up civilians be right? Where is the subjectivity in that? What society in the world condones this?

Apparently we all do.

Why is the bombing by hi-tech aircraft considered okay --but strapping dynamite to your chest not okay?

Are we judging morality according to which is more expensive?

I don't think the US is targetting civilians like the suicide bombers are. your comparing apples and oranges again kendra

If the suicide bomber is trying to fix the people they kill by killing them, then I seriously don't admire or respect them. Do you honestly think a suicide bomber is trying to make a person muslim or fix them by killing them? If the suicide bomber is doing what he thinks is neccasary to make things better for his family and freinds, then I respect what he is doing.

It is one thing to try to fix someone elses problem at the point of the gun like America does. It is another thing to torture, kill, and fight against a foreign power walking on the dirt you live on rounding up your relatives to be tortured and interogated. Ecspecially, when you know the same people have armed your enemies in the past, helped tyrants to come to power, and assassinated an elected leader out of fear of communism.

I think non-violence should be sought first at all costs, but if someone is trying to force their way on you to the point where you would rather die than submit; you have reached the point where violence may be the only solution. There is the only two purposes to violence, and don't let anyone trick you into thinking that peace is one of them. Making others submit, and refusing to submit are the only purposes of violence. America is trying to make others submit. It is that simple. Others are trying to resist. It is bad for America to have people resist. It is bad for those that agree with the way America is run to have people resist. The people resisting find their situation unbearable though, otherwise do you really think they would be doing what they are doing? They have the same conscious you do, and a religion from the same root as Christianity that is against violence just as Christianity is. Most people don't just snap and kill for no reason, and I guarantee you that a whole country never snaps and kills without some prior or existing reason. The reason may not be a smart one, but it isn't being done for no reason at all.

so the suicide bombers blowing up fellow muslims are just trying to resist? no I don't think so, they are bombing other muslims more than they are US soldiers.

The only targets of the U.S. are civilians at this point. Are we against the government? Terrorists are civilians. It is not like they are some foreign country blending in for the sole purpose of starting a war. Even if you think they are from Iran, Iran and Iraq don't fit neatly in the borders they are supposed to. There are several sides in Iraq that were never outlined by the border. There are people that are extremely upset because of the U.S. and Britain's horrible track record in the middle east over the last half a century. They are armed civilians resisting a power that they have good reason to not trust. It may be better for them to trust America, but they are still civilians fighting for the removal of a foreign power.

America is also notorious for targeting civilians. We have wiped out most of the people in large Japanese cities before the nuclear bomb, then we created the nuclear bomb and killed everyone in two cities. We have killed civilians of a different race of people than our enemies in Lebanon just because the enemy was among them. We have killed civilians in interogation in prisons. Soldiers that have snapped have killed civilians in every war we have been in. Don't make it sound like the U.S. is a moral war fighter. When you drop bombs and shoot guns, you kill people of that country no matter if they are working for their government or not. America also has killed civilians on purpose like in Japan. America is not the moral high ground, and our past actions are what leave us with so little trust in the middle east today.

Why are they blowing up other muslims? The problem with America is that their answer to not understanding another people is to just think they are crazy. They aren't blowing up these muslims just because. They are blowing up these muslims either because they in some way or another have shown support for the U.S., or because they believe that they are a type of muslim that wishes to take their rights away to worship their form of islam as Saddam took away from the Shi'ites and many of the Kurds. There are several issues going on here all at once that has everyone wanting to kill each other, and it has been building up for half a century. Their bombing is not effective, but it is for a cause that effects them directly. I have never heard of a suicide bomber killing people to fix the people they are killing. They are fighting those that they believe will take some form of freedom of way from them.

America may have their best interest in mind now, but America has rarely shown that side to the middle east in the past (Saudi Arabia excluded). You expect no one to view other muslims who side with America as traitors?

we do not expressly attack unarmed civilians if it can be avoided, in fact we use every means we have to avoid civilian casualties. You mention soldiers that have snapped, We charge them with crimes and punish them. Yes there are going to be innocent civilians killed in war, it happens, its a fact of life. Hell there are innocent civilians killed in the US during gang wars, I don't hear you cry out about them? You bring up WW2, do your homework first, do you know what Japan was doing in China, and when we disapproved they attacked us. You ever hear of the Rape of Nanking? Of course you forget that most military historians say it would have cost the Allies over 1 million men DEAD to invade Japan. So lets do the math shall we, 60,000 people in Hiroshima + 39,000 people in Nagasaki (which had a naval shipyard and factory btw) <1,000,000
Allied dead. No one will can even remotely guess how many Japanese would have died. Now I ask you, which scenario reduces the body count? Oh and just before anyone claims racism, the bombs were designed for use against Germany not Japan.

I never said anything about Iran being in Iraq did I? not really sure where that came from, however you skated right over where I posted that the leader of Al Qada in Iraq isn't even Iraqi, he's Egyptian. His predecessor was Jordanian, the insurgancy we are fighting in Iraq are comprised of foreign nationals. I'm sure they are fighting to protect thier homes, oh wait their homes aren't in Iraq.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060620/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_qaida_soldiers_7;_ylt=Ah3sPEowldWd6hpLboVYNDRX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagasaki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima

That's your secret plan? Give me a minute to stop laughing.

I agree the sanctions were extremely effective. If the goal were to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and cause their infrastructure to erode so that they had no chance of pulling themselves out on their own.

Yes, the sanctions were working so well that Saddam was continuing to obstruct the UN and doing everything he could to prevent them from lifting those sanctions.

But for sake of your ridiculous argument let's pretend Saddam was just about to cave and accede to all the UN requests. How does that get them any closer to a free, democratic government? How does that do anything other than give Saddam another 20 years of mistreating his own people and his neighbors?

Your callous indifference to the lives (and deaths) of the average Iraqi under Sassam is shocking.

I do agree with you that Americans soldiers today do not attack civilians on purpose without the full arm of American law coming down on them. You are, however, giving me a reason why we killed civilians in Japan. In our mind it was unavoidable. I do not think any country in the world has failed to kill civilians, torture, or kill people in grotesque ways. My argument is not that our enemies are more morale than us. My argument is that everyone is the same, and all people of all countries have a reason they should be wiped off the face of the earth. Freedom comes with the side effect that different people in different places are going to have different ideas about what is right, wrong, best, and worse for their countries. The quest for freedom leads to war, not the spreading of freedom, which is why war is sometimes needed.

Listen, I snapped 2-3 years ago. I know this. I don't come on here talking about this stuff to convince anyone about anything. I come on here talking about this stuff, because there is alot of anger in me, mostly from something that has nothing to do with America or Iraq. After I snapped, I have come to believe that a universal right and wrong do not exist. I know its not normal, but it is the only way that makes sense to me anymore.

The way I expect people to act is to do everything in their power to make the world a place they can stand to live in. I do feel angry at people that feel a need to force others to fit their ideals to make the world a place they can live. This means I feel angry at both sides of a conflict like the war in Iraq where both the Iraqis and Americans want other people to be like them. I do know that some Iraqis just want all western powers to stop influencing them at all, which is something I admire and respect in them. I hate one part about them and love another. I find it hard to find anything in the American stance that I admire, so I end up hating America, myself, and everything I used to stand for.

I do not expect people to like the way I want the world to be, and I expect others to want the world to be a place I can not stand. World happiness is impossible without people loosing free will. I believe peaceful methods are better only when they are more effective. I believe violence is only effective when all other methods have failed. I believe an Iraqi has just as much right to put a bullet in my head for trying to make him like me as I have for putting a bullet in his head for wanting me to be like him.

This is not meant to be a logical argument to your stance. I fully expect you to think more strongly in the manner that you already do after reading anything I type. To me this typing is nothing more than venting. It is the off-topic forums of a virtual world; nothing written here matters anyway.