How do I explain that poppy production is 10 times higher? Simple the Taliban need money so they sell drugs. The reason we don't destroy the poppy fields is because of the whole hearts and minds thing.
3 more sacrfical lambs offered up....
- Thread starter JBeee
- Start date
Yep, that's why Saint Obama is going to increase troop levels there....so Dubya and Haliburton make bucks....
Wake up! Time to change the record!
Colpy,
You invested, stand to make a profit? The war is a sham. All wars are shams. Time for a new tune. Onward Christian Soldiers i sway out of date. As Eisenhower said, "We had better get out of the way and let the people have the peace they want." We have brains. It is time to use them. Beating each other over the head went out of style when we left the caves. Some people just don't keep up with fashion.
You invested, stand to make a profit? The war is a sham. All wars are shams. Time for a new tune. Onward Christian Soldiers i sway out of date. As Eisenhower said, "We had better get out of the way and let the people have the peace they want." We have brains. It is time to use them. Beating each other over the head went out of style when we left the caves. Some people just don't keep up with fashion.
Wake up! Time to change the record!
Colpy,
I am tired of watching our boys come home in caskets for nothing.If you like war so much, what are you doing here?You believe in the mission (whatever the hell it is) why aren't you putting you money where your mouth is?
You don't like criticism of war any more than I like war. I get just as tired of people who are willing to get our kids killed but aren't willing to go over there and put their lives on the line for what they believe. No, I will not stop trying to talk kids out of wasting their lives an this insanity.
Colpy,
I am tired of watching our boys come home in caskets for nothing.If you like war so much, what are you doing here?You believe in the mission (whatever the hell it is) why aren't you putting you money where your mouth is?
You don't like criticism of war any more than I like war. I get just as tired of people who are willing to get our kids killed but aren't willing to go over there and put their lives on the line for what they believe. No, I will not stop trying to talk kids out of wasting their lives an this insanity.
Bankers love the young, they're so impressionable. Of course they love the aged who have remained impressionable and would council youth to war in some pathetic little replay of their own lost youth, all done from behind the safety of their little wall of years.
How does that one go?... Join the Armed Forces. Visit interesting places. Meet fascinating people and kill them!
Mr Waldorf it's not my place to judge the disposition of your time (life) neither the occupation of nor the duration. The reason we don't destroy the poppy fields is that they belong to us (bankers). The Taliban did not tolerate poppy cultivation on their watch of that plagued nation. The market end of the drug business like any other is where the command and control reside. Try and have a nice long time.
Cliffy: Have you ever met a real live soldier? I worked for DND for a while and most of the men and women I worked with are currently doing a tour in Astan. Some were in Bosnia and Rowanda. Most believe in what they are doing. Would you have rather let Hitler overrun the world just so long as you are safe? I forgot you are not a jew so it was not your problem. How about letting terrorists pour acid on school girls faces just because they want an education? Sorry I forgot your not a girl so it is not your problem. Sometimes we have to help those who are not able to protect their rights.Some are just your usual garden variety government employees who do as little as possible for a steady cheque.
Have you ever met a real live soldier?
Yes, quite a few and after they came back from duty. One thing we are not being told by the media is the number of suicides of returned soldiers, the number of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome cases or the numbers who become drug addicts. Not too much mention of the wounded either.
Hitler would never have ruled the world. His biggest downfall was that he overestimated his capabilities and would have fallen anyway from spreading himself too thin. I blame the allies just as much as him because they let him get away with his expansionism so they could pull themselves out of the great depression by going to war. I think all the players were complicit in that bit of theater.
The number of terrorist acts in Afghanistan pale beside the number of civilian deaths caused by occupying forces. If you want to believe the altruistic fairy tales that the media has been feeding us about what we are doing there, that is your problem. The truth will out some day.
Yes, quite a few and after they came back from duty. One thing we are not being told by the media is the number of suicides of returned soldiers, the number of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome cases or the numbers who become drug addicts. Not too much mention of the wounded either.
Hitler would never have ruled the world. His biggest downfall was that he overestimated his capabilities and would have fallen anyway from spreading himself too thin. I blame the allies just as much as him because they let him get away with his expansionism so they could pull themselves out of the great depression by going to war. I think all the players were complicit in that bit of theater.
The number of terrorist acts in Afghanistan pale beside the number of civilian deaths caused by occupying forces. If you want to believe the altruistic fairy tales that the media has been feeding us about what we are doing there, that is your problem. The truth will out some day.
Well, the above simply proves you have no clue what you are talking about.
Europe lost so much in World War One that they were hesitant to confront the growing menance of Hitler, and understandably so......but it was pacifism, a reluctance to defend themselves, that let the Nazi monster grow so large.......it was not some great conspiracy to create industrial production... 8O:roll::roll::roll:8O
Just a little factoid for you..........France had 1.3 million men killed in WWI, and over 4 million wounded......Great Britain had over 700,000 killed and 1.6 million wounded........and you create some conspiracy to explain their hesitation to go back to war a mere 20 years later?????
Well, isn't that the beauty of opinions. They are cheep. You read the exploits of war heroes and I read a wide variety of different stuff. I listened to the stories of my father and his brothers who were over there. I read history and I read alternative views and I came up with my own opinions. Just because you don't agree with my conclusions is not grounds for saying I don't know what I am talking about. All I can say is my opinions are based on what I know and all you can say is based on what you know. That really doesn't make either of us more right or wrong, just differing opinions and conclusions based on where we focused our attention.
Sorry Cliffy, I don't deal well with relativism.....some things are matters of opinion, some are simple fact. The idea that Nazi Germany was allowed to grow ever more confident and aggressive in Europe because the allies (France and Britain) wanted a war is simply ludicrous, beyond the Pale, without merit, silly, can not be supported by any fact.....it is, quite frankly, bordering on paranoid lunacy.
I don't know what you are reading, but I suggest you get some new sources.
''they are serving and dying for YOU.''
Maybe you think so. But the majority here in the USA don't believe it and that's why we want our troops home.
Maybe you think so. But the majority here in the USA don't believe it and that's why we want our troops home.
My cousin and her Husband have served over there for their own reasons and certainly not out of desperation, but by choice.
The thing you don't get is that you don't get the whole picture, the whole story of what's going on over there like they do. They're out there in front of it everyday, You're not..... all you're getting is 2nd hand hearsay from the media.
They know who they're fighting, they know who they're fighting for, they know the people in the villages who look to them for security. They know that if they leave, then the Taliban come back and punish them for helping us in the first place, then reoccupy the areas we leave and put them right back into the same positions they were originally in before we got there, only now with less friends and family and more brutality.
People find their own justifications for being in a warzone and don't need others like you to tell them what they are. The US want's their pipline? Whoopie do, that's old news..... do you think our troops on the ground seriously give two sh*t about the US's pipeline?
No..... they're there, once again and like always, to clean up after the US's mess they continually leave behind. Why should the people of Afghanistan continually have to suffer at the hands of people like the Taliban or the US and their greed.
Our troops are one of the very few who are actually cautious in regards to Civilian casualties, and it's because our troops have justified their need there as protecting those civilians..... all the while the US air strikes them, and the taliban IED and car bomb them.
Our troops are the most respected on the NATO coalition due to the places we are fighting in and the reasons for it. Our military always took the tough assignments because ours are the best, regardless of numbers or technology. You should seriously look up some history to learn what you're trying to talk about.
And if none of that is good enough for you, we'll be leaving by 2011 no matter what happens, so you can suck it up, quit your b*tching and complaining and leave it for those troops who know what they are talking about.
And they do have opinions and explainations for their actions and reasons, they are not robots like you think they are. And no matter what they have to say on duty to the media, ask those who are no longer in the military and back over seas. Listen to them and why they feel they are over there. Some will think we should be, other say we shouldn't.
That's life.
And you fall in a very well known one as well.... it's called being ignorant.
No, but I do.... you got a problem with that?
What does my position or my family's background have anything to do with your level of ignorance? Maybe because you don't have anybody in your family in the military? Maybe you never faced a moment in your life where you thought it was justified to sacrafice your own security and safety in life to benifit those who have none?
Yeah, those poor dumb military grunts and their families.... :roll:
Do I approve of the war in Afghanistan? No
But we're in it now, and we made agreements with our allies that we would help..... and we found our country's own objectives in the war, which is to prevent the civilians from being thrown in the middle of it, anymore then they already have.
And yes, it pisses me off to know end when I hear in the news that the US Airstriked another village and killed more civilians. Which is why I am also glad we're hauling ass in 2011.
By that time the Afghan army should be up and running enough to deal with things on their own. And our troops have some of the best training in the world and were feared by the Germans in both WWI and WWII. Considering our position/location in Afghanistan, and considering we're doing a good chunk of the fighting, our civilian death count is very low.
And if the US is sending in thousands of more of their troops, from Iraq of all places, then I am glad that our troops are getting out in a few more years, because they're going to probably screw it all up with their Iraq booting mentality they're going to carry up with them.
But our military has never cut and run in the past and we have always met our obligations..... and when 2011 comes around, I'll be glad we got our asses out of there and perhaps the Afghans will stand a chance.
Hello JBeee, nice to see you around.
I spent Saturday nice with some fine military folks as they blew off some steam. Great party, great food, great people. Proud people. People who no, didn't join the military out of desperation. They joined out of a sense of duty. They're not political people... they didn't feel they can make a difference through words and debate. They felt they can help make a difference to our country, and to the world, through action.
It's nice to see the balancing act at play. I get to see both my friends who are willing to lay their lives on the line to protect and serve their country, and friends who are unwilling to let politicians get away with spending those lives carelessly. While I often disagree with you in the terms you use (no proud soldier wants to be associated with a sacrificial lamb), I do agree with your purpose and intent.
For every soldier (and might I add civilian) fallen, there had better be a challenge, a moment taken to demand that we ensure there is still reason and cause to be over there. The moment we sit by and blindly accept death is the moment we cease being a civilized (oh gawd that sounds funny in the context of war.. what could be more uncivilized?) country.
I spent Saturday nice with some fine military folks as they blew off some steam. Great party, great food, great people. Proud people. People who no, didn't join the military out of desperation. They joined out of a sense of duty. They're not political people... they didn't feel they can make a difference through words and debate. They felt they can help make a difference to our country, and to the world, through action.
It's nice to see the balancing act at play. I get to see both my friends who are willing to lay their lives on the line to protect and serve their country, and friends who are unwilling to let politicians get away with spending those lives carelessly. While I often disagree with you in the terms you use (no proud soldier wants to be associated with a sacrificial lamb), I do agree with your purpose and intent.
For every soldier (and might I add civilian) fallen, there had better be a challenge, a moment taken to demand that we ensure there is still reason and cause to be over there. The moment we sit by and blindly accept death is the moment we cease being a civilized (oh gawd that sounds funny in the context of war.. what could be more uncivilized?) country.
Praxius,
I'll repeat this again - History is his-story. It is to the victor that history is written and it is much more biased than CNN. If you want to even begin to understand the past, you have to look for many different sources, many different views but even then all you get is hear say evidence. Unless you were there in the blood and dirt, you know next to nothing about it and never will reading about other people's accounts.
It would take several lifetimes to read everything ever written about WWII, so no one is an expert on the subject. If I look only at the front of an elephant and you only look at the tail, we will both have a different idea what an elephant is. It is the same with everything. My conclusions are based on the evidence that I have come across and yours... the same. That we have differing views is not surprising but it is not reason to be obnoxious about it.
I'll repeat this again - History is his-story. It is to the victor that history is written and it is much more biased than CNN. If you want to even begin to understand the past, you have to look for many different sources, many different views but even then all you get is hear say evidence. Unless you were there in the blood and dirt, you know next to nothing about it and never will reading about other people's accounts.
It would take several lifetimes to read everything ever written about WWII, so no one is an expert on the subject. If I look only at the front of an elephant and you only look at the tail, we will both have a different idea what an elephant is. It is the same with everything. My conclusions are based on the evidence that I have come across and yours... the same. That we have differing views is not surprising but it is not reason to be obnoxious about it.
I feel sorry for the Afghanistan people. They are being held hostage between two corrupt and perverse ideologies.
I cannot pass judgement on either, as only a fool would do so when in such close proximity to one and with such a poor understanding of the other (not that that seems to slow many here down), however I can quite correctly assure the Afghani people that it is not peace or freedom that the west is offering but a muted form of conformist subservience that we herald as freedom - like we are absurdly expert on the subject!
Most North Americans can give a screed on freedom and democracy with such zealotry and certainty that it would bring tears to a mullahs eyes.
It might be a sobering thought to consider that in most dictatorial countries and indeed in most "not free" countries the subjects on the table are much broader and wider of scope than here in North America. Certainly the punishment for such discourse is very severe if not fatal but nevertheless such things are talked about as never occur to us here. We are so immersed in our technologies of confinement that we cannot imagine anything better and certainly know there could be nothing better in existence - and that is a justification for invasion and murder in our minds. I feel sorry for the fanatic infected with religion but the non religious infected with nonthinking nationalism is just as pathetic - he should be stopped because he is truly an insane psychopath. Such is the state of North America; we are collectively insane now and trying to spread our madness. So deluded are we that we cannot but wonder why people don't embrace us with flower peddles at our feat and offers of marriage to our blood soaked soldiers. We bring liberty after all! Like a perplexed centurion on a battle field in Gaul surrounded by corpses and body parts we wonder why these strange people won't accept our innate goodness.
Or perhaps a better analogy is that we sit like a lion with a main full of gore wondering why the gazelle runs from us. Do they not know we are one of gods creatures and that we are good?
I cannot pass judgement on either, as only a fool would do so when in such close proximity to one and with such a poor understanding of the other (not that that seems to slow many here down), however I can quite correctly assure the Afghani people that it is not peace or freedom that the west is offering but a muted form of conformist subservience that we herald as freedom - like we are absurdly expert on the subject!
Most North Americans can give a screed on freedom and democracy with such zealotry and certainty that it would bring tears to a mullahs eyes.
It might be a sobering thought to consider that in most dictatorial countries and indeed in most "not free" countries the subjects on the table are much broader and wider of scope than here in North America. Certainly the punishment for such discourse is very severe if not fatal but nevertheless such things are talked about as never occur to us here. We are so immersed in our technologies of confinement that we cannot imagine anything better and certainly know there could be nothing better in existence - and that is a justification for invasion and murder in our minds. I feel sorry for the fanatic infected with religion but the non religious infected with nonthinking nationalism is just as pathetic - he should be stopped because he is truly an insane psychopath. Such is the state of North America; we are collectively insane now and trying to spread our madness. So deluded are we that we cannot but wonder why people don't embrace us with flower peddles at our feat and offers of marriage to our blood soaked soldiers. We bring liberty after all! Like a perplexed centurion on a battle field in Gaul surrounded by corpses and body parts we wonder why these strange people won't accept our innate goodness.
Or perhaps a better analogy is that we sit like a lion with a main full of gore wondering why the gazelle runs from us. Do they not know we are one of gods creatures and that we are good?
Last edited:
Which is exactly what I was just saying to you, therefore both of our views cancel out because both views are based on information we both get from people through hearsay.
But then what good comes out of that?
I am fully aware of the age old saying about history being written by the victors, and that used to be true back in the old dark ages when empires didn't have to worry about legalities in butchering and killing off those who opposed them, and attempting to wipe all traces of the previous civlilization.
However, in todays world, it's not so simple for victors to have the final say. With the internet, cell phones, digital cameras and video recorders, the truth is out there for all to see. But the battle that reigns today when it comes to history and the information we all get through the media is based around how much one side can bombard the media outlets with their side of the story.
In the end, each of us are left to our own devices to hear what we want to hear, see what we want to see, and judge for ourselves what is the true answer for us.
Which is why you have your position, which is why I have my position, and all those in the military who keep going back tour after tour have to do..... we all find our justifications, and when we can't find any, then we turn to finding solutions.
One of the guys who just recently died, I heard he was on his third tour. Now he must have had something that made him want to keep going back. Whatever his reasons were, they were his alone. Others can adopt the same reasons or they can oppose them, but they are his to deal with on his own, just like everybody else on this planet.
If he felt there was no justification for the war, and thought we should pull out and leave, why did he continue to go back tour after tour?
Now granted, each soldier is different and some do..... then again some don't. Each person joins the military for their own reasons, be that for simple money and college education, to having it in the family and want to experience it for themselves, to feeling like they are doing something great with their lives and helping those less fortunate..... to those who simply like to kill things.
I personally will suck it up and accept that we'll be there until 2011..... if it is extended beyond that, I'll be a bit pissed. But until then, if the majority of our troops feel that we should remain there until then, then so be it. If a bunch of troops.... say in the hundreds or perhaps thousands, decided to march in protest against the war, then I may change my stance a lot quicker and support them in bringing our troops back home.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. The closest anybody can get to understanding what occured before most of us were born, is to listen to people's first hand experiences of when they were in the war, why they were there, how they felt about it, what kept them going through it all, etc. The other method is to look into the books and history written during WWII by all sides of the fighting.... un-edited journals from Nazi forces, what was in their newspapers, on their radios, transcripts, etc..... and then look into the same information on our side of things, and elsewhere around the world.
None of it all is going to match up, but there are always two sides to a story, sometimes 4 or 5 sides..... but the point is to take all the given information, line them up to the known actions that have occured in history, and determine through what makes sense to you personally what actually happened in a logical fashion.
Is it a 100% absolute method of learning and understanding? No, but it's still a lot better then just accepting the first thing told to you like an average citizen who never put much thought into it all.
Getting back to the original topic, yes, I am pissed about our involvement in Afghanistan and nobody should have invaded there in the first place, esspecially when it surrounds some fishy tales about the Taliban rejecting the US's request for a pipeline through the country shortly before 9/11 and the invasion following. But that doesn't mean that our troops being over there don't have some justification for being there now.
The only one thing I have a concern about in Afghanistan is not if they remain a democracy or if they flush out the Taliban completely..... my concern is when we leave if those civilians stuck in the middle of this giant mess, how safe are their lives and way of life going to be? Will the US amp up more air strikes? Will the Taliban take back over and punish all the boys and girls who have been trying to get an education? What about the hospitals and medical supplies? Will they be thrown back into a world of even worse dispair and ignorance then what currently exists?
If we stick around until 2011 and by the time we leave the Afghan army is up to par for what is needed to maintain security in their own nation, then I say go for it.
If the Afghans were directly pulling what's currently happening in Iraq, and we were actually fighting Afghans who don't want us in their country (Insurgency rather then Taliban trying to take power again) then I'd say haul our asses out right now.
If they don't want us there, then why stay? Afterall it is their country. But the US's actions of air striking most of the places they're supposed to secure is screwing everybody else's successes and is the weakest link in the whole operation. And if they're going to continue this method of attack and putting the lives of civilians at risk, then what's the point? They're going to end up hating us all the exact same way as Iraqis hate the US now.
I'm not being obnoxious about it, I am stating how I see things. If you have information in regards to the Elephant's head that I may not have come accross, by all means, let me know..... in return, I'll tell you everything about the elephants ass that I know. If something doesn't add up, then it can be addressed.
But no information or evidence provided means there's not much to actually debate now is there?
See with me, it sucks, but it is what it is at the moment. I would laugh my ass off however, if they democratically voted to put everything the way it used to be...... there wouldn't be much the US could complain about. They "Gave" (Forced) them democracy, then they democratically reject it.
And I'd also laugh pretty good if Iraq did the exact same thing and went back to an islamic state.
Then the last 8 years or so would have been a complete waste of time and money in the west's regard.
Yes, a very sh*tty and harsh thing to have occur when so many have lost their lives and parts of their bodies, not to mention the trillions of dollars spent on the whole thing...... but at least perhaps then, some of the west would learn some harsh but required lessons.
I doubt it though.