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

It is your opinion that we should invade every country with a brutal dictatorship?

What you're saying here is that you don't understand why it would be right for someone, but you're not saying it's impossible for it to be. I appreciate that.

But in many cases, "willing to die for what you believe in" is the nice, more general way to say "willing to die and kill innocents in order to further your cause".

Consider, for a moment, that they believe that your point of view, that doing such things is wrong, is as wrong and dispicable as what you believe is despicable of them. If you were speaking amicably with one of them, the conversation might be, "unwilling to kill civilians in the name of God? Are the civilians more important than God? Do you lack your faith and courage?" because those mores are more highly valued than our concept of ethics. In fact, our concept of ethics may be entirely contrary to theirs.




Christendom as a whole condoned the wholesale slaughter of entire families that were accused of or linked to homosexuality or witchcraft for hundreds of years. There are parts of the world where Catholics and Protestants kill civilians in their civil wars for being of the wrong faith. During the American Revolution, many civilians died horribly as a result of Revolutionary terrorist actions (we now call this "guerilla warfare". In Vietnam and Korea, entire villages of women and children were raped and murdered, including those that were not in any way a threat (indeed, on the same side), by American and British soldiers (because in some enemy villages, these people were armed, so why take the risk was the excuse), and the concept became culturally acceptable within the military for quite some time. Even now, many believe that the entire Mideast region should be nuked, and kill every last person of arabic descent in the area, and are often lauded as television revolutionaries by the Conservative Reich/Right.

So I guess, the short answer is, all of them at some point or another.

All of the above were condoned by their respective societies at the time, or at least sizeable portions of them.

One could also point out that, as there WERE NO WMDs, that Saddam was acceding to the demands of the UN. The only thing he didn't do was allow inspection, which is understandable. He was a powermad warlord surrounded by powermad warlords, many members of the UN or connected to them. Allowing an inspection to show he had no weapons would have him steamrolled by his neighbors, and we'd be interdicting an invasion of Iraq from a neighboring country instead of invading on our own right now.

In fact, we're mostly fighting mercs and non-Iraqis as it is.

I'd say Saddam was in between a rock and a hard place, and when he chose the rock, the hard place slammed down on him. We should be staying the hell away from these brutal dictatorships; the only reason we had anything to do with them in the first place was the Cold War, and that's over. If we meddle in them, we make their problems our problems (9/11, anyone? Nairobi? Dar es Salaam? Lebanon? Karachi? Atlanta? Dhahran? Athens? NYC multiple times?)

you do know oklahoma city wasn't a foreign terrorist right? it was an anarchist here in the US

There are a lot of people in the world who've had that happen to them and worse. Yet many, probably most, probably the overwhelming majority of them, find a way to go through life without dehumanizing themselves. Many of them even find a way to go through life with a sense of dignity. To put people like that on par with people who behead is to cheapen the group who finds a better way.

Again, I feel sorry for you, I truly do. I can't imagine what it's like to go through life thinking a beheading terrorist is my equivalent. How sad for you.

Feeling's mutual.

nice spin. Not what I said.

Who said I do?

Difference being --I don't give a shit.

Nope, there's no differece there. At last, we're united on something.

you support his fucked up war.

Killing people is killing people, no matter what flag you wrap it up in, what ideological slogans you toss around, or how technologically advanced your tools for killing are. Trying to pretend that causing someone's head to be separated from their body by dropping a high-tech munition from a stealth bomber is somehow a "better way" than sawing someone's head off with a sword is moral relativism at its most absurd. Those who kill others and condone the killing of others are equals in my eyes. The only better way is peace.

uh yeah it pretty much is, nice try to back pedal though

you do know that Saddom had been santioned already right? He just diverted the money he did get into his palaces and his army, not helping his citizens.

Matter of fact, I do support overthrowing brutal dictators. Should happen more often and be done by more countries. The Taliban was sheer evil and should have been done away with long before they were. Saddam and his boys thought it was great fun to run rape rooms and gather up the 12-year-old girls to fill them. We didn't find WMD, but we sure as hell found a lot of mass graves.

For me, the war has never been about WMD or oil. It's been about getting rid of monsters in power. It should happen a lot more often. It's a shame on us, as a planet, that we allow them to do what they do.

And it's a shame on the Iraqi's part that they have so far failed to seize on the opportunity. If any of them had bothered to look 50 years into the past to read about the Marshall plan, they could have realized they'd have everything they want and then some by now. But instead, they prefer to descend into tribalistic brutality. Oh, but I'm not supposed to say their culture is inferior... whatever.

Really?

Helping an terminally ill person end their own suffering is the same as taking part in genocide?

Shooting someone who is threatening my life is the same as shooting someone for a pair of sneakers?

What separates them is the intent. It's not just that they kill. It's that they intend to brutalize and desecrate in the worst ways imaginable, and then use it to their own advantage to bring others to their side.



Nice, but I'm not holding my breath.

Your arguments can be used to justify just about anything. Street gangs, organized crime, murderous or suicidal cults, school or office rampages, pedophiles, etc.

This kind of tolerance and understanding is totally wrong and just prolongs their suffering and our inconvenience.

First, ask yourself whether this kind of terrorist activity and the insurrection is working. Is it a reasonable action that will bring happiness to the people of Iraq? Or is it self-destructive and perpetuating misery for many years and probably generations to come?

What happens if it "works" and the US leaves Iraq? Yaay we win, they left! Ohhh shit, now what?

Second, is all the terrorist propaganda accurate? Is America as demonstrably evil as they claim? Not drinking or fast women, I mean intentionally targetting civilians, solely in Iraq to steal their oil, subjugate their people and wipe out their religion, etc.

Do you honestly believe the Iraqi people would be better off if 1) America just pulled out, or 2) all terrorist activity stops and they let us help them rebuild their infrastructure and establish a democratic government?

Terrorism should be discouraged as a method of resolving political disputes, because it rarely works and any "wins" are just short-term because the culture just leads the next group with a grudge to carry on with the method.

They won't listen to me. But anyone who really cared about the Iraq people would take every opportunity to tell the terrorist leaders and the people that what they are doing is crazy and totally unproductive.

Would we in similar circumstances make the same choices? I don't think so, our culture is not so horribly broken.


Our justification for the invasion of Iraq is not invalidated just because we don't have the resources to deal with every problem in the world simultaneously. it is analogous to law enforcement dealing with the most pressing and productive crimes; it doesn't mean that we can't investigate or prosecute murderers because we don't track down every car thief.



No, the situations are very different.

The bad decisions by those on the "right" (if they are) are really only minor problems for a nation the size of America. Billybob voting to invade Iraq may make his taxes go up, maybe the price of oil and beer goes up, maybe a high school acquaintance is injured in Iraq. If things don't go well, we can pull out and pretty much resume our previous lives.

But the boy who picks up the gun handed to him by the Imam, is going to get himself killed and cause unimaginable misery for his family and neighbors for many years to come.

Big difference.

uh --no it isn't, Billybob.

You do know we funded, trained, and supplied the Taliban to make them into what they are, right? PRECISELY to make them what they are? What does that make us?

http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20060118.pdf

Very interesting read. Puts a lot of things into perspective. It's about 12 pages long, so if you don't have time now, read it later.

No.

Is it your opinion that we should never send troops into any country that doesn't attack us first?

Stupid for doing that.

But does it disqualify us from righting that wrong?

What would you tell them?: "Gosh, it's really terrible that you're stoning women for working outside the home and shooting men for shaving their beard and all, but gee, we really can't do anything about it because we made a bad decision a couple decades back. Good luck with your revolution!"

you might want to go reread your posting of you "plan" to remove Saddom. It wouldn't work, we tried it for a decade. Now if you believe that we could have sanctioned him into surrender, I've got this ocean front proprty in Kansas I'll sell ya, dirt cheap too.

I never said Sanctions were designed to get Saddam to surrender. I also never said they weren't cruel. They were designed to completely destroy a nation so the USA could go in an get the people to rise-up.

None of that required Bush's ill planned Cowbuy round-up and criminal misuse of our Military.

Saddam was busted, his only hope was to begin trading Iraqi oil to the EU. But President Haliburton Bechetel couldn't have that.

Bush and Cheney wanted to invade Iraq long before they even "won" in 2000.


Oh --and if Bushbot keeps up with his disgraceful policies on global warming, I'll gladly purchase that waterfront in Kansas.

The CIA provided support and training to Saddam Hussein for his original failed coup attempt. It earned him enough popularity that he was able to take power later on. He turned out to be a brutal dictator but we continued to support him with money and arms, including biological agents. This time around we bombed the shit out of the country in an attempt to install Chalabi, but he was such a worthless liar that he flamed out. If you believe we're there to bring true "freedom and democarcy" to the poor citizens of Iraq, I've got some ocean front property in Kansas I'll sell you dirt cheap.

That would be my opinion. Yup.