One, then I guess they're about due for an attack. And B, I think it's pretty apparent the U.S. aims it's piss at other countries and not our own pants, thank-you-very-much.
Three words.
War on Terror.
Stationed in Iraq are you?
US warships frightened by Iranian boats; War of Terror; US foreign policy, etc...
- Thread starter S.A.M.
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Three words.
War on Terror.
Stationed in Iraq are you?
Mr. G: "Stop being so pathetic that you can't admit winning."
Stop being so pathetic that you can't admitwinning losing. We were most certainly defeated in Vietnam, because we were compelled to withdraw, leaving the blood-soaked battlefields to the control of the Hanoi government we had opposed through a particularly long, vicious, and entirely avoidable war.
When you lay down your King and stand up from the chess table, you have been defeated. When a nation packs up and allows wartime enemies to take over the disputed territory, the departing nation has been defeated. This is very simple. What is not so simple is the cognitive dissonance of those suffering with a childish pride that cannot abide defeat, and cannot confront the prideful national defect that always brings defeat in an open society: Wrongful war. The childish denial that you display has no place in a rational and ethical society. When allowed to infect our national policy-making, such denial is a mortal threat to our national integrity.
The United States lacked the moral justification to continue (and to commence) the "American War" in Vietnam, while the North Vietnamese increasingly owned the moral high ground as the war dragged on. US intervention in Vietnam had become so thoroughly discredited, that its perpetuation would have required nothing less than a tyrannical conversion of USAmerican society- We could have continued our struggle in Vietnam, but only provided that we had entirely forfeited our national soul; the last full measures required would have included the complete sacrifice of the very democracy and liberty that we claim as our guiding ideals in the USA. But you and many other strategic and anthropic pygmies in USAmerican culture still refuse to deal, Mr. G., out of nothing but foolish pride, of the worst kind that always precedes the fall, and that dooms us to fall again if we allow such insanity to go unchallenged in our national policies.
Policy powered by empty pride is like a Navy fighter catapulted from a carrier with mostly air in the fuel tanks, and all tankers in the same status. When the strategic objective is postmodern world leadership, an unspoken claim of manifest destiny puts us far out to sea, but leaves us headed for a crash. The US has been experimenting in a global campaign requiring moral reserves refined to the highest world standards. For as long as we remain an open society, our most ambitious foreign campaigns, and especially our foreign wars, will remain subject to moral requirements. When we run out of justification for our most ambitious and violent foreign projects, then we have 2 choices left: Ride it into the ground, or eject.
But whether from the bottom of a smoking crater, or from under a descending parachute, denial won't undo reality. When it's over- It's over. Vietnam is over. We took off with insufficient moral fuel, which doomed that national flight of fancy on takeoff. We can launch again and again with our moral instruments taped over, but that fateful moral status remains, and will bite us again, however we may choose to deny it.
Stop being so pathetic that you can't admit
When you lay down your King and stand up from the chess table, you have been defeated. When a nation packs up and allows wartime enemies to take over the disputed territory, the departing nation has been defeated. This is very simple. What is not so simple is the cognitive dissonance of those suffering with a childish pride that cannot abide defeat, and cannot confront the prideful national defect that always brings defeat in an open society: Wrongful war. The childish denial that you display has no place in a rational and ethical society. When allowed to infect our national policy-making, such denial is a mortal threat to our national integrity.
The United States lacked the moral justification to continue (and to commence) the "American War" in Vietnam, while the North Vietnamese increasingly owned the moral high ground as the war dragged on. US intervention in Vietnam had become so thoroughly discredited, that its perpetuation would have required nothing less than a tyrannical conversion of USAmerican society- We could have continued our struggle in Vietnam, but only provided that we had entirely forfeited our national soul; the last full measures required would have included the complete sacrifice of the very democracy and liberty that we claim as our guiding ideals in the USA. But you and many other strategic and anthropic pygmies in USAmerican culture still refuse to deal, Mr. G., out of nothing but foolish pride, of the worst kind that always precedes the fall, and that dooms us to fall again if we allow such insanity to go unchallenged in our national policies.
Policy powered by empty pride is like a Navy fighter catapulted from a carrier with mostly air in the fuel tanks, and all tankers in the same status. When the strategic objective is postmodern world leadership, an unspoken claim of manifest destiny puts us far out to sea, but leaves us headed for a crash. The US has been experimenting in a global campaign requiring moral reserves refined to the highest world standards. For as long as we remain an open society, our most ambitious foreign campaigns, and especially our foreign wars, will remain subject to moral requirements. When we run out of justification for our most ambitious and violent foreign projects, then we have 2 choices left: Ride it into the ground, or eject.
But whether from the bottom of a smoking crater, or from under a descending parachute, denial won't undo reality. When it's over- It's over. Vietnam is over. We took off with insufficient moral fuel, which doomed that national flight of fancy on takeoff. We can launch again and again with our moral instruments taped over, but that fateful moral status remains, and will bite us again, however we may choose to deny it.
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Was there this past summer.
So you think attacking Iraqis makes you feel safer?
Covet thine own hypothesis, if thou must.
Your narrative is merely one of several extant in the wilds of the universe. Here's another. There's no reason to imagine that it will dissuade you of yours, but it does illustrate the point that your narrative can't be defended as being the definitive interpretation of the relevant events and history, otherwise there'd be more people agreeing with you than there actually are.
From: http://op-for.com/2007/04/vietnam_fact_vs_fiction.html
President Lyndon Baines Johnson:
US objectives in Vietnam were abandoned, and the war was lost- not by a soldier, and not by an army. Our cause in Vietnam was lost cause because its objective was an illusion. The Domino-Theory was equally as hollow as the Communist ideology it professed to oppose. To the people of Vietnam, we were the last in a line of unwelcome imperialist destroyers, and we were entirely rejected in blood and spirit as their saviors. Our Vietnamese enemies did not defend Communism from the USA- they defended their country from the USA. We lost in Vietnam, because we were lost there from the beginning. Because we didn't know what we were getting into, we lost that war with our very first kill.
Those brave but misguided Americans who sacrificed themselves to an ill-conceived and ill-defined cause in Vietnam did not defend their country, nor did they defend the honor of their country. They were as deprived and undeserving of victory as has been every professional soldier who has ever served and suffered in any unjust and abandoned cause. Their disgrace was no less and no greater than that of the entire nation that sent them to it.
Clausewitz:
Mr. G: "your narrative can't be defended as being the definitive interpretation of the relevant events and history, otherwise there'd be more people agreeing with you than there actually are."
It's not my narrative. It's the verdict of history, shared by the overwhelming majority of humanity.
US objectives in Vietnam were abandoned, and the war was lost- not by a soldier, and not by an army. Our cause in Vietnam was lost cause because its objective was an illusion. The Domino-Theory was equally as hollow as the Communist ideology it professed to oppose. To the people of Vietnam, we were the last in a line of unwelcome imperialist destroyers, and we were entirely rejected in blood and spirit as their saviors. Our Vietnamese enemies did not defend Communism from the USA- they defended their country from the USA. We lost in Vietnam, because we were lost there from the beginning. Because we didn't know what we were getting into, we lost that war with our very first kill.
Those brave but misguided Americans who sacrificed themselves to an ill-conceived and ill-defined cause in Vietnam did not defend their country, nor did they defend the honor of their country. They were as deprived and undeserving of victory as has been every professional soldier who has ever served and suffered in any unjust and abandoned cause. Their disgrace was no less and no greater than that of the entire nation that sent them to it.
Clausewitz:
Mr. G: "your narrative can't be defended as being the definitive interpretation of the relevant events and history, otherwise there'd be more people agreeing with you than there actually are."
It's not my narrative. It's the verdict of history, shared by the overwhelming majority of humanity.
Since when has judgement ever been the actual fact of the underlying matter?
An opinion is just that--no matter how many opine in unison.
Argument from authority-lite.
The casualties from the US bombing campaign in Cambodia and Vietnam are not included in that little bit of whitewashing. Neither are the assassinations and tortures of the American invasion.article said:
They never happened. And so none of the consequences of them - such as the rise, in Cambodia, of some genuine insanity in the middle of what had been made chaos - are presented as consequences. They come from nowhere, these horrors, and are the complete fault of whoever is committing them at the moment, in the American mind.
The US did not lose a major battle in Vietnam, and its military retired from the field undefeated. But the US lost.
Struggles so wrongheaded, so misguided, that one can win every battle and every war and still have lost in the end, should seldom be joined. We are in one now, in Iraq.
Whatever floats your boat.
Mr. G: "Whatever floats your boat."
That's a defeatist rebuttal.
That's a defeatist rebuttal.
If the US won in Vietnam then the British won in the american revolution. You can't have it both ways.
Buffalo Roam
Registered Senior Member
As usual G.F. your grasp on history leaves a lot to be desired, The British were defeated Militarily, they had to surrender and stack Their arms, and case their colors.
JSTOR: "The World Turned Upside Down": A Yorktown March, or Music ...
The Yorktown surrender was an occasion of pub- lic humiliation at which those .... and some reported that the British had cased their flags as ordered. ...
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0734-4392(199822)16:2<180:"WTUDA>2.0.CO;2-V
Vietnam ended with a cease fire that was broken the moment we removed our troops from Vietnam, as is pointed out, we never lost a battle in Vietnam, now if we did please post said battle and date.
Buffalo Roam
Registered Senior Member
Uttar Pradesh
Child Cannibalism in India - Associated Content
Check out Child Cannibalism in India - Submitted by rajen nair at Associated Content.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/118450/child_cannibalism_in_india.html
Cannibal and necrophile kill, rape and dismember dozens of ...
Cannibal and necrophile kill, rape and dismember dozens of children in India. Cannibal and necrophile kill, rape and dismember dozens of children in India ...
http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/crimes/18-01-2007/86529-Cannibal_India-0
The New Cannibalism
And he calls it a form of 'social or "friendly" cannibalism'. .... But nowhere more openly and flagrantly than in India has the 'shortage' encouraged a sale ...
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/biotech/organswatch/pages/cannibalism.html
Organs bazaar
But nowhere more openly and flagrantly than in India has the 'shortage' encouraged a sale of kidneys. There a veritable organs bazaar is operated out of private clinics, especially in Bombay and Madras.
Until a new law last year prohibited the sale of living donor organs, patients from the Gulf States - Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates - travelled to India to purchase a kidney. Now that market has been driven underground. Recent reports by human-rights activists, journalists and medical anthropologists in-dicate that the international kidney trade has declined but left in its wake an even larger underground market controlled and organized by cash-rich crime gangs expanding out from the heroin trade into the organs trade.
In some cases they have the backing of local political leaders. Organ 'donors' are recruited by 'agents' to sell a spare organ in order to cancel crippling debts, to pay for a necessary operation, or to cover large family expenses. And where there is an illegal market there are likely to be other criminal practices as well.
Child Cannibalism in India - Associated Content
Check out Child Cannibalism in India - Submitted by rajen nair at Associated Content.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/118450/child_cannibalism_in_india.html
Cannibal and necrophile kill, rape and dismember dozens of ...
Cannibal and necrophile kill, rape and dismember dozens of children in India. Cannibal and necrophile kill, rape and dismember dozens of children in India ...
http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/crimes/18-01-2007/86529-Cannibal_India-0
The New Cannibalism
And he calls it a form of 'social or "friendly" cannibalism'. .... But nowhere more openly and flagrantly than in India has the 'shortage' encouraged a sale ...
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/biotech/organswatch/pages/cannibalism.html
Organs bazaar
But nowhere more openly and flagrantly than in India has the 'shortage' encouraged a sale of kidneys. There a veritable organs bazaar is operated out of private clinics, especially in Bombay and Madras.
Until a new law last year prohibited the sale of living donor organs, patients from the Gulf States - Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates - travelled to India to purchase a kidney. Now that market has been driven underground. Recent reports by human-rights activists, journalists and medical anthropologists in-dicate that the international kidney trade has declined but left in its wake an even larger underground market controlled and organized by cash-rich crime gangs expanding out from the heroin trade into the organs trade.
In some cases they have the backing of local political leaders. Organ 'donors' are recruited by 'agents' to sell a spare organ in order to cancel crippling debts, to pay for a necessary operation, or to cover large family expenses. And where there is an illegal market there are likely to be other criminal practices as well.
It was a joke. And no, I wouldn't say it's a liberal mentality considering that Fred Thompson is a Republican as was Ronald Reagan. Why do you think Fred Thompson is even in the running especially with all this talk of everyone wanting to be like Reagan? "The Right" loves to bash Hollywood, yet it employs their tactics to their advantage, lol, especially considering that most Hollywood politicians are Republican.
- N
Attacking Iraq in the first place? I'd have felt safe if Saddam was in power. He'll, I feel safe now he's out of power too. Attacking Iraqi's now that we're already there? None of us out there this past deployed had to attack anyone unless they were shooting at us or setting IEDs or driving around VBIEDs.
So how many people did you kill?
Don't ask this.
Taking lives is an action that does emphatically call for personal accountability. For just causes, accountability is much easier. For dubious causes, it is of course much harder, and accountability may be evaded by all sorts of rationalizations- But still we all remain accountable for our most fateful actions.
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