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Originally Posted by Lyle
......uuuuummmm FDR is blank buddy. I don't know what you think but IMO Pearl Harbor WAS terrorist in nature granted they at least had the balls to attack our military and not our citizens.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing
I am in agreement with Lyle on this one.
I wouldnt consider it "terrorism"Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle......uuuuummmm FDR is blank buddy. I don't know what you think but IMO Pearl Harbor WAS terrorist in nature granted they at least had the balls to attack our military and not our citizens.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing
Id consider it an act of war by a uniformed enemy.
It was an attack by the Japanese army who were dressed in Japanese military uniforms. In no legal or historical definition could it be described as a terrorist attack. You're entitled to your opinion but as usual it's at odds with the facts and the evidence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle......uuuuummmm FDR is blank buddy. I don't know what you think but IMO Pearl Harbor WAS terrorist in nature granted they at least had the balls to attack our military and not our citizens.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing
OK what about the Lebanon Marine barracks bombing in the 80's, The USS Cole, The Oklahoma City Bombing, The Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing???
But either way the Japanese EARNED their fate for what they did December 7, 1941.....it was a fight without honor and they deserved the loss they received
Either not on US soil, not done by non-US citizens or didn't cause mass casualties.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle
Lyle,my great uncle served at Pearl Harbor that day,he would never talk about the war. I only found his medals and discharge papers by accident while helping my great Aunt clean.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle
The Japanese didnt screw around with war,if they wanted to kill you,they killed you. If they found you usefull,they used you.
Say what you want about WW2,but the Japs were alot more honest about their intentions,then we have been about this little mess. We're doing very similar things,but we hire PR firms to put the happy face on it for the American Public
We didn't SURPRISE attack anyone...Iraq and Afghanistan had fair warning that we were coming and they knew why we were coming.
If we wanted to we could have carpet bombed those countries into worse shape than they are right now, instead we are grooming them to be helpful in the world and not be so volitile. It's going to take more time to do that than it would just to have flattened them.
Taking the position against the US, I'm stunned TM.Quote:
Originally Posted by Trainer MonkeyLyle,my great uncle served at Pearl Harbor that day,he would never talk about the war. I only found his medals and discharge papers by accident while helping my great Aunt clean.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle
The Japanese didnt screw around with war,if they wanted to kill you,they killed you. If they found you usefull,they used you.
Say what you want about WW2,but the Japs were alot more honest about their intentions,then we have been about this little mess. We're doing very similar things,but we hire PR firms to put the happy face on it for the American Public
Dubya is thicker than a bulls knob!!!
End of the argument.;D
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the US invade Grenada without actually declaring war or 'saying they were coming'?
They had no choice though. It was vital for the Marines to be able to steal onto the island and take out the Grenadans' fearsome coconut-firing catapaults with complete surprise or the grenadan army could have caused some nasty injuries to the invading force.Quote:
Originally Posted by X
When the US does the right thing I take the side of the US,its just that under the last administration we havent done that very often.Quote:
Originally Posted by punchTaking the position against the US, I'm stunned TM.Quote:
Originally Posted by Trainer MonkeyLyle,my great uncle served at Pearl Harbor that day,he would never talk about the war. I only found his medals and discharge papers by accident while helping my great Aunt clean.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle
The Japanese didnt screw around with war,if they wanted to kill you,they killed you. If they found you usefull,they used you.
Say what you want about WW2,but the Japs were alot more honest about their intentions,then we have been about this little mess. We're doing very similar things,but we hire PR firms to put the happy face on it for the American Public
I prefer my country to be on the right side of history not the wrong side.
I have no problem with Hiroshima,who knows how many more innocent people would have died if the war had continued,and the Japanese were refusing to surrender. Its a shame it had to come to that.
But you cant call the Japanese terrorists,they were a fully formed military,and we knew there was a possibility they could attack.
Its a language thing
Was Napolean a terrorist? Was Alexander the Great?
I dont think they exactly sent written invitations saying,"Please come to our invasion of your country, for battle and bloodshed. RSVP"
Kirkland, the Democrat Majority US Congress deemed it was ok for the US to take Grenada.
You bitches blame America for everything....look at your own God damn countries and their longer, more violent, and more unjust histories. Oh England you (and your posters on this very board) are too modest about your own dark history. You love to point the finger at us, but you guys are the start to most of the world's problems and not America.
Trainer, you are the EPITOME of the "blame America first" liberal.....I have a news flash for you, it's not always our fault, and even when it is our fault we do try and make it up.....we COULD have left Iraq in anarchy but no, not us, we have tried to help them rebuild AND our "enemies" in Iran should be happy as we put their boys (the Shi'ia) in charge instead of the Sunni's who had been in charge.
I think the Welsh have been the worst .... oppressing all those sheep for years, taking them away from their families, selling them like property, reducing them to sexual slavery.
Just wait for the day - and it won't be long now O my brothers - when we have our first sheep Prime Minister .... when little human children walk hand in hand with little ungulate children ........ now I may not be there to see it with you ........ but I have seen the promised land.
It wasnt about "leaving Iraq in anarchy"Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle
We left it that way for quite some time,and then got surprised that they werent happy with their anarchy. The whole reason we went in was to prove we could do it,and then we found out we had bitten off more then we can chew.
The whole reason we did it,was to prove that we could do it,it wasnt until we were there that we figured out that that dog bites.
We've had plenty of succesful and well thought out military campaigns,this wasnt even close to being one of them. We'd be out of Afghanistan allready if we hadnt been keeping troops in reserve to invade Iraq.
PNAC and other Neo-cons had been begging for us to invade for years before we actually did.
Nobody except the actual people who lived there begged us to invade Kosovo,and it was widely derided by the far right,even though it was a success on allmost every level.
If you ask for something,and then you get it,and its a complete and utter cluster fuck,dont come crying around saying,"Well you blame America first"because the great and glorious victory didnt happen. I thought it was a stupid idea before we did it,and I still think its a stupid idea. And the facts on the ground,bear that out.
The war with Iraq was going to happen 9/11 or no 9/11 that's the 100% truth. Clinton was taking a harder stand against Saddam before he left office....the execution of the war was FUBAR and that was the responsibility of Bush and his Cabinet but once Rumsfeld was out the door things got a lot better....Obama had better close out the show in a good way or else he's going to be branded as "owning defeat" and even though he is the President and he doesn't like the war he doesn't want to have a negative effect on Iraq and Afghanistan as his legacy.
Part of me thinks there is a certain element of US's enemies that is happy to see the US forces in Iraq, and are in no big hurry to see them leave. A group like A.Q. for example is perfectly happy to have a place to engage US in guerilla warfare, keep them busy, and the welfare of the Iraq people is not their primary concern. Ergo A.Q. would have preferred Bush stay in power longer, or that a guy like McCain get elected. Just a hunch, I can't exactly prove it.
Thats been my feeling,since we've been there we've practically been making their recruiting posters for them every time we screw up,and as much of a cluster f the chain of command is,we screw up alot.Quote:
Originally Posted by CGM
Maybe they did, it still doesn't alter how dumb the whole thing was. Reagan only did it to give US forces a victory after he'd been forced to pull them out of Lebanon. Yes Britain has hundreds of years of colonialism and kicking the shit out of other countries, but it's the US doing a more sophisticated version of what we used to do these days. Which is why everybody blames you for a lot of the problems today.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle
And the US had no choice to put the Iranian-backed guys in charge in Iraq. Bush did everything he could to avoid it but got outsmarted by the Ayatollahs.
The war in Iraq is a discrace to America and Britian.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle
We had the terroists on the run in Afghanistan and we left them off the hook and created a whole new country for them to wage there war in.
If you beleve in taking the fight to the terroists as I do,by starting the war in Iraq all we have done is made our world a more dangerous place for our children to live in.
And I can never forgive Blair for joining in like a poodle.
He had to, England started the problem to begin with....not with Saddam or WMDs but just with the Middle East in generalQuote:
Originally Posted by Master
Yes indeed ..... when the civilisation of Ur was conquered by the Hittites, then came the Babylonians, Assyrians, Scythians and Persians in one blood soaked conquest after another - when the Israelites invaded and conquered the Philistines and others and took their land, when the Arabs under Mohammad conquered the whole thing afterwards in one never-ending cycle of generational hatred etc etc etc etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by LyleHe had to, England started the problem to begin with....not with Saddam or WMDs but just with the Middle East in generalQuote:
Originally Posted by Master
That was All England's fault. :rolleyes:
X the generational hatred isn't England's fault but the more modern POLITICAL issues are more from England's doing than the US.
Well, not in the last ten years or so (I wouldn't have thought), but certainly some of the problems before that are due to Britain redrawing maps. But that is only an interim - that region has been fighting since the dawn of man and don't let them blame anyone else for it.
I'd agree that historically, Britain - not just England - has quite a bit to answer for. That is just the way history works. I like to blame the English though ;D
Your grandchildren will be feeling remorse and (unfair) guilt for America's role in their current problems. Like it or not, call it what you like, America is today's world Empire.
I'm sure there was some Babylonian getting shit from an Israelite in about 65BC ...... history repeats itself through endless cycles because we are too stupid to change our base behaviours despite seeing it all before.
Well my dear X, if they have been fighting so damn long and for every reason under the sun then get off our backs about fighting them, they obviously have a culture built on conflict, we're just obliging them
I would say that the terrorists we're fighting in these countries aren't really the terrorists we need to worry about. I think they're more like Afghans/Iraqis who are pissed off that we're occupying their countries so are fighting us. There are a bunch of people from other countries there but these guys are just muslim good ol' boys who want to physically fight the infidel. Basically guys with guns in their hands are no problem at all outside the countries they live in and no problem in the countries they live in provided we're not there too.Quote:
Originally Posted by porkyparaThe war in Iraq is a discrace to America and Britian.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle
We had the terroists on the run in Afghanistan and we left them off the hook and created a whole new country for them to wage there war in.
If you beleve in taking the fight to the terroists as I do,by starting the war in Iraq all we have done is made our world a more dangerous place for our children to live in.
The people we need to worry about are guys like mohammed Atta, the 9/11 ringleader. Atta was an engineering graduate who spoke five languages, not one of the head-chopping yahoos you get going to physically fight in Iraq etc. He decided to become a terrorist watching the Sabra/Shatila massacres and the world's indifferent response/complicity to/with them. Somebody somewhere just watched the Israelis having fun in Gaza and decided the same thing, and we'll see the results of that in a decade or so.
Fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is self-defeating in terms of reducing terrorism. Every available American serviceman was in Iraq and couldn't stop it becoming the world centre of terrorism. I come from a part of the world where a lot of people go into the military. A lot of my friends did and one is still in although he transferred to the ASustralian army a couple of years ago. I went to bury my auntie last March and there were four headstones in the row already in the cemetery. One was the son of a guy I grew up with who'd just died in Afghanistan. The ages on the headstones were 82, 63, 67 and 18. And he died for no good reason, just for the vanity of politicians. They already know they've lost in Afghanistan and are privately planning to hand it over to a benevolent dicattor-type in a few years, but until they do young men will keep being killed on both sides for no reason, and the young men killed on the other side will create generations of new terrorists.
So we need to take the fight to them in other ways. Stopping the injustices in that part of the world that are easily in our power would be a good start, but that would take strong leadership. much easier to send in the military, watch your approval ratings soar and leave a bigger problem to the next leader.
Europe was fighting wars pretty much nonstop up to 50 years ago, during which time there's been similar peace in the Middle East. America has racked up over 80 foreign interventions since WW2. The problems there started when vast quantities of oil was discovered there. The Brits just happened to be the world's superpower at that time and most in need of that oil. If it'd been discovered 50 years later the US would have total authorship of the recent problems there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle
I'm not on anyone's back about fighting them. :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyle
I am an ex-soldier and don't oppose wars as a matter of principle. The Brotish Army is fighting side by side with the US and we bury our boys every day, just like you do.
I started this thread saying George W Bush is an idiot. I still think so. I will always think so.